A Fall Bike Ride

(click images to enlarge)
I dreamt on Saturday night that my blue Schwinn had been stolen.
But it had not.
So on Sunday I jumped on it and rode up Sixth Avenue toward Central Park. When I stopped at the red light at 23rd Street, a bicycler pulled up next to me and eyed the blue Schwinn – people are always eyeing the blue Schwinn – and he said to me, "Vintage bicycles make me happy." It was a spectacular day – clear sky with not one cloud, and 65 degrees on November the 8th. At 42nd Street I stopped next to an older woman on a bike dressed in black. She eyed the blue Schwinn, and my shorts, and said, "You are more appropriately dressed for this weather than I am."

As you go up Sixth Avenue, Central Park looms ahead like the Emerald City.


As soon as you cross 59th Street and enter the park, you smell the strangely reassuring cool fall scent of rotting leaves and horse manure.

The park was understandably crowded with runners and bicyclers enjoying the glorious day.

The turning leaves offered a vivid palette of autumn colors.

I bicycled northward on the Park Drive, past the Metropolitan Museum of Art

and the Guggenheim.

Onward I breezed

to the northern end of the reservoir – the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir. There, it's like being in the middle of the woods.

The reservoir was completely still like blue glass. The sun was bright and clear but lower in the sky creating a magical glow. The buildings of midtown rose up at the southern end.

I locked up the trusty Schwinn and jogged around the reservoir. Except it was hard to run because I kept stopping to take pictures.

I couldn't help myself.

Around every curve, there was another vista.

The city at it's finest...

...nature plus art.

I was having a moment, I'll tell you. New York can be so beautiful.
At the end of the run I did some push-ups in the grass covered with dry golden leaves. I didn't want to leave, and I didn't for a while.
Then it was back on the Schwinn, and southward on the Park Drive

past the boating pond

and out into the city at Columbus Circle.

It was heaven on earth.

Up On the Silver Screen

Our living room on Jane Street.

When Ted and I had to move out of our Jane Street apartment and were thrown unexpectedly into the height of the New York real estate market, our friend filmmaker Josh Kletzkin made an 18 minute movie about it called "Change of Living." I wrote about it before; you can read about the plot and watch a clip here. On Tuesday the film was presented at the opening night of the Big Apple Film Festival!

I was anxious about it. The film is personal and emotional. We have shown it to some family and friends on the dvd player, but I was unsure about seeing it with 150 strangers on the big screen. Plus, what to wear on the red carpet?! Seriously, I was nervous.

Josh is in England filming another movie so we met his charming family before the screening and had dinner at Lucky Strike on Grand Street which was good. Then we tottered on to the Tribeca Cinemas on Canal Street where we found a typical New York scene of mobs of people jostling to get in. We squeezed our way into the theater and settled down. Three films were to be shown in the program; ours was the second. There were some other guys we knew who were there to see the third film. I thought, "They are going to know more about us than they ever expected!"

The first film was shown – a heart breaking piece about homeless children in South Africa. After that, honestly, our moving dilemna did not seem so serious. There was a brief pause and then our movie started. I don't think I breathed through the entire 18 minutes. But despite some uncomfortable emotional onscreen moments, it was fun to see the movie again. I think Ted and I went through that stressful move pretty gracefully, considering. And Josh tells the story well, tying in different threads and using a clever narrative scheme; the film received enthusiastic applause.

There was to be a Q and A at the end of the third movie, but that one was pretty long. Josh's family was driving home so we all snuck out in the dark and repaired to the opening night reception next door for a couple of cold Stella Artois. I felt a sense of relief. On the way into the reception two women stopped Ted to tell him how much they liked the film. Later, on the sidewalk we passed someone checking his Blackberry. He looked up from the blue light and said, "Hey, you're the guys from the movie!" And then, "How do you like your new home?"

Coco Before Chanel

On Halloween TD and I avoided the madness of the Village Halloween Parade and slipped into the Chelsea Cinema on West 23rd Street to see "Coco Before Chanel," the movie about the young Chanel. In French with English subtitles, it tells the story of how the girl who lived in a French orphanage grew to become the most influential fashion designer of the twentieth century. I've written here about Chanel before (in fact that post is the one most visited by readers) so I was looking forward to this film. I loved watching it and being in that wonderfully romantic era of the Belle Epoque before World War 1. The movie is quiet and elegant in an "unHollywood" way.

Chanel was born in 1883, so when she was coming of age, fashion looked like this:

Tight corsets, long trains and highly structured clothes impaired movement and freedom. Feathers, lace and dripping jewelry were added on to the heaviness like icing on a cake. From an early age, Chanel, in the movie played by Audrey Tatou, notices clothing and simplifies fashion. From the nuns in the orphanage she borrows the idea of austere black clothes edged with white collars and cuffs, which become a Chanel signature. For instance, for a masquerade party, she dresses like a hobo (above) in a black suit with a white collar band shirt and vest, while the other ladies are cinched in and puffed up in their finery.

Chanel falls in love with Arthur "Boy" Capel, played by Alessandro Nivola, who takes her to the seaside resort of Deauville.


There she notices the sailors' striped shirts and adopts them as her own.

I had two shirts like this in college. One, white with blue stripes, came from L.L.Bean. The other, blue with green stripes, came from an army and navy story on Nantucket. I've been looking to replace them ever since.

"Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance," Chanel said later in her life. She reflected the modern age that was dawning and revolutionized clothes so that they followed the line of the body thus allowing the wearer freedom and comfort. In this scene, her sleek, sequined shift contrasts dramatically with the other confections in the room.


Sadly, Boy Capel died in a car crash, and Chanel never married. She had many lovers including the Duke of Westminster in England, from whom she borrowed tweed hunting jackets and Shetland sweaters. I thought that would have been neat to see in this movie, but this story did not go that far. Instead we see Chanel married to her work, creating the clothes, including the Chanel suit, that defined a century. We end with her in a blue sweater and white skirt and pearls – the epitome of timeless, modern chic.

Now that's what I call a Halloween treat!

Happy Halloween!

This photograph was sent to me by my friend jewelry designer and artist Jennifer Ale who made our 14k gold commitment rings. She took it at the Museum of International Folk Art in Sante Fe, which TD and I loved visiting years ago. This is my idea of Halloween style! (Click to enlarge.) Hope you get all treats this Halloween.

Art Jamboree #2

BB and artist Richard Haines (photo: Leah Durner)

Last weekend TD and headed down to Soho in the rain for Art Jamboree #2 – a group of artists selling work on two floors in a building on Greene Street, everything $50 or less.

My friend Richard Haines invited us. You know Richard from the What I Saw Today blog. He's an artist and illustrator who sketches mostly menswear (below). He was drawing portraits at the Art Jamboree.

(photo: Richard Haines)

There were other artist there we knew as well including Trey Speegle and Lean Durner. Leah's paintings (below) reminded me of the work of Howard Hodgkin.

(photo: Leah Durner)

We bought some cards and gifts. From Richard we bought this spare sketch which I put in a frame from A.I. Friedman.

Love her. She will go next to the watercolor we bought at Richard's gallery show, which we're getting framed.

On the floor above I found a textile designer named Lourdes Sanchez who told me she has created fabrics for Old Navy and West Elm. She was selling printing proofs on thin brown paper of her textile designs. I bought a bunch and taped them to the wall in the library. I love textiles, and I think these subtly colored floral "paper textiles" are great.

$1 each.

At the show, "champagne cocktails" were served and music played. It offered a nice opportunity to meet a variety of artists and talk about their work in a friendly, smaller setting. After the art show TD and I repaired to the closest pub for a pint (or two). It was a great way to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon. It was like a London afternoon.

Fall Days in New York

A cloudscape on Bowery.

The last two days in New York City have been beautiful, with thin white clouds skittering across a clear blue sky like shallow water lapping at the shore. Fortunately I have some free time to enjoy it!

On Wednesday I went up to midtown to have lunch with my friend Abby and then I attended a reading at the library where my friend author Michael Gross was talking about his new book Rogue's Gallery, about the Metropolitan Museum of Art – more on that in a subsequent post. Later I went to a birthday party for my friend artist Richard Haines in a tiny, rockin' East Village gay bar.

Thursday, I hopped on the blue Schwinn and headed downtown along the Hudson River Park. The river sparkled through the green.


Fall colors are coming to the trees


and the grasses that line the park.


Downtown, I had lunch with my friends from the ad agency. It was great to see them.



Back on the bike, I headed to Soho to check out some stores. Opening Ceremony, on a little street called Howard Street, carries avant garde fashion for men and women. Odin, on Lafayette, has cool clothes for guys. Then I went to one of my favorite stores in New York, John Derian, on East 2nd Street.


I've been writing here about Rough Luxe, and John Derian is a master. The store has a country vintage feel, and he offers iron tables with wood tops, lamps made out of industrial parts, and tee shirts printed with nineteenth century images.


The front of the store features tableware and handmade decoupage objects.


There is peeling paint and a weathered edge but still everything is very refined.

Next door he has another store which sells textiles and is a little softer. It's always fun to visit John Derian. And it was a pleasure to be outside enjoying the city on these afternoons. I still get amazed by the sheer power and population of New York. Uptown, downtown, east side, west side, day or night, the city's energy and its people go on in every direction. I've lived in New York for twenty-six years but sometimes on the street I still look around and think to myself, "I love New York so much."

Style on the Shelf

The post that I wrote below about Suzanne Tucker's book got me going to my library shelves of books and magazines to look at pictures of my favorite rooms and schemes. Let's fire up the scanner, shall we?

The picture above is from the World of Interiors, March 2004 (photographer Francois Jussaud), and shows a home in an industrial warehouse in Antwerp. This room is an orangerie – I think everybody should have an orangerie – and features a collection of old canary bird cages and garden chairs.

The photo below is an apartment in Paris (World of Interiors, January 2003, photographer Guillaume de Laubier). The cover line says, "Chateau on a Shoestring: the flat that thinks it's a manor." Eighteenth century furniture and colorful textiles are jumbled together on bare wood floors.


This is the Tribeca loft of designer Liz Dougherty Pierce (Country Home, September 2000, photographer Reed Davis). The industrial space is filled with a seven-foot table found in Vermont.


The Paris apartment of French actress Isabelle Adjani decorated by Jacques Grange is pictured in the Tashen book Paris Interiors. Pale blue walls, mismatched chairs, a tapestry over the table, and the requisite bare floors create a room which is beautiful and elegant but also comfortable and natural.


I also came across this painting, An Interior in Venice, by John Singer Sargent, which is one of my favorites. I love the mystery of the room as it recedes into darkness.


No matter what the size of the space, candlelight always creates an old-fashioned, romantic aura.

Antiques, plants, flea-market finds, "furniture with legs" (nothing overstuffed), bare floors and mix of wood and iron are all things we like to live with in the apartment.
I wrote about Rough Luxe below, and I would like to find more industrial antique pieces which lend a hard edge but are clean-lined and airy at the same time. I'd like to live like a nineteenth century botanist in a loft by the river. I'm trying to get to something I picture in my mind.

The Sumptuous Style of Suzanne Tucker

Carolyne Roehm and Suzanne Tucker at Christie's. (Photo: Gregory Partanio)

The other night I stopped in at Christie's in Rockefeller Center for a party for the California decorator Suzanne Tucker who has just published a lavish new book called Rooms to Remember.


Carolyne Roehm was there and I said hello to New York designer Bunny Williams who I interviewed years ago for Architectural Digest. Her office at the time was in the 60's off Fifth Avenue, and it was one of the most amazing rooms I have ever been in – a fantastic mix of impressive antiques but still very comfortable and familiar.

The author and designer Suzanne Tucker lives and works in San Fransisco. As she explains in her book, she signed on in the 80's as the assistant to designer Michael Taylor who really invented the "California style" – upholstered white furniture, bare floors, nature brought indoors with rocks and trees, and an overall open, airy, light feeling. After he died in 1986, she and a partner purchased his business.

This book showcases her work and covers a range of grand houses including a Tuscan villa in the Sonoma Hills, an Arts and Crafts home in the mountains, a French Provence-inspired villa outside of San Fransisco, and a charming, historical Edwardian house. Gleaming antiques, sophisticated colors, tactile materials and rich fabrics like silks and velvets create a rarefied level of luxe.

A graphic Jim Dine drawing hangs over an eighteenth-century Chinese altar table.

(Photos: The Monacelli Press)

The simple lines of an Italian neoclassical walnut settee contrast with a swirling arabesque iron railing.


A completely romantic green and white French toile covers the walls of a guest bedroom as well as the nineteenth-century beds.


A European cloister, complete with a tile roof and ivy, was added to a 1920s house to create an outdoor dining pavilion.


I was really taken with the scale of these houses – very large rooms, very high ceilings, floor-to-ceiling windows. One client said to Suzanne, "Design a house that I can get lost in." We don't see a lot of that here on the isle of Manhattan, but it's fun to look at how some other people live. I like the idea behind Suzanne Tucker's book: Think Big.

Anthropologie, or Rough Luxe

A rusty bicycle piled high with old leather suitcases in the window of the Fifth Avenue store.

I was invited this week to preview a new television series which will follow Keith Johnson, Anthropologie's world-wide shopper. The series will be on the Sundance Channel starting October 7th, and in each episode, Keith will travel to a new country in search of unusual decorative objects, furniture and textiles for all the Anthropologie stores, as well as artists and crafts people to hire. That sounds like a great job! I'm looking forward to this show.

Keith Johnson is the partner of Glen Senk who is the CEO of Urban Outfitters, which is the parent company of Anthropologie. Their apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan is featured in the current issue of Elle Decor magazine. This couple met when they were nine years old. Ok, that must be a record! The end of the article gave me goose bumps.

I'm a big fan of Anthropologie. Although it's a women's clothing store, I love their items for the home and their store displays. They also have a great selection of style and travel books. Their windows and in-store designs often feature a clever use of paper which I think is charming. I guess other shoppers like Anthropologie too: even during the economic downturn Anthropologie is enjoying healthy growth both in terms of retails sales and stores opening across the country. Whenever I'm in the store on Fifth Avenue there is a line at the cash register.

The home merchandise is like a trip to a Paris flea market. Glasses and dishes are piled on wood and iron displays which are also for sale. I love the antique industrial combination of wood and iron.


I recently came across this article on The Wall Street Journal.com about "Rough Luxe" which celebrates this style. Peeling paint, rusting metal and hewn wood can be romantic when treated luxuriously. The style evokes the past, but in a clean, airy way which is not musty or overstuffed. It's what they do so well at Anthropologie, and it's an inspiration.

This metal painted table in Anthropologie looks like our coffee table which I found at the flea market for $25.


One year at the Jane Street Sale, I spotted this metal lamp shaped like a flower, below. Our next-door neighbor fashion designer Zac Posen asked the seller if he would come down from the $65 price, but it was non-negotiable. I came back later and got it for $40 – sorry Zac! My sister-in-law Tracy who works in retail and knows about these things said I should re-sell it to Anthropologie and they could reproduce it.


But I like it too much.