paris is always a good idea.

i am not throwing away my shot.

#amen

how to be both.

this book grew on me. i now have a very personal relationship with it but i cannot pinpoint exactly why. the trick with this novel is that you don't know with which story you are about to start, but i'm glad my book began with george's tale. had it been the other way round i don't know if i would have loved it that much. george's story. she. gets close to you. the atmosphere that ali smith created with her writing is one of warmth and desperation. one of tears. one of the heart. one of family and sadness. one of happiness through a filter of melancholia. smith translates the picture on the cover in words and tells you about womanhood in a different and refreshing way. i see and feel colour when i think of this book. most of all a deep yellow and ochre. i see it through this filter of colour that created itself while reading these stories. i couldn't grasp everything in francescho's part of the story, but maybe you don't have to. you get the gist of it. and you get the colours. these recurring vivid colours. francescho adds the blue to this palette. almost like the girls on the picture. george and francescho. united. 
a clever thing this peculiar book. a dear thing. 

"I will not be 'famous' 'great'. I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped."

- Virginia Woolf, Diary, October 1933

carey.

carey mulligan 

for vogue us, may 2015.

#loveher

video by cass bird.

how to be a woman.

currently reading how to be a woman by caitlin moran. 

she rocks.

#feminism 

the happy reader.

the happy reader.

bookish quarterly published by Penguin Books and Fantastic Man

#lovelovelove

#gogetit

#now

picture credit (x)

"So could the search for a lasting style be a hymn to life, I ask. 'Yes', he says, 'a hymn to life, but accompanied by the huge difficulties of finding your way in a world that forces you to face reality."

- Giorgio Armani, Harper's Bazaar UK, March 2015.

ginevra.

ginevra elkann.

#naturalbeauty #vogueitalia 

portrait by pierpaolo ferrari.

#vogueuk #march2015

"I love poetry because it's like a shot, like an attack, like a dose. And for a person who doesn't have very much free time, it does its work very quickly. So I read poems on my phone when I wake up in the morning. It opens you up for the rest of the day, and suddenly your life becomes a little bit more observed. And when it becomes more observed, it can't help but start to become more beautiful."

- Michelle Williams, Elle UK, April 2015. "Fresh Spirit" by April Long.

"The conductor stepped up, tapped twice on the rostrum, and a great hush descended. I felt the stillness, the auditorium alive, expectant. Then he brought down his baton and suddenly everything was pure sound. I felt the music like a physical thing; it didn't just sit in my ears, it flowed through me, around me, made my senses vibrate. It made my skin prickle and my palms dampen. Will hadn't described any of it like this. I had thought I might be bored. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard.
And it made my imagination do unexpected things; as I sat there, I found myself thinking of things I hadn't thought of for years, old emotions washing over me, new thoughts and ideas being stretched out of shape. It was almost too much, but I didn't want it to stop. I wanted to sit there forever."

- Jojo Moyes, "Me Before You". Penguin Books, 2012. 

la femme au carnet rouge.

"Can you experience nostalgia for something that hasn't happened? We talk of 'regrets' about the course of our lives, when we are almost certain we have taken the wrong decision; but one can also be enveloped in a sweet and mysterious euphoria, a sort of nostalgia for what might have been."

"I haven't kept a diary since I was seventeen. I think it was soon after my baccalauréat that I gave it up for reasons I'm not sure of, because from the age of twelve or thirteen I had written one religiously. (Note to self: Look for my diaries in the boxes in the cellar.) I remember sticking all kinds of things in them: tickets from films and plays I had been to see, leaves I had picked up on walks and bills for meals I had eaten on café terraces. They were a record of what I had done when, down to the nearest minute. I think I held on to them as 'evidence' of some kind. They helped me to find my place in the world and, in a broader sense, to prove to myself that I really existed. I suppose I must have decided at some point that I no longer needed to do that, because I gave up writing a diary, stopped telling the story of my life and tried to just live it instead."

- from "The Red Notebook" by Antoine Laurain. a beautiful little treasure of a book. 

"[...] before you find your voice, you should decide what you stand for. This has been the biggest lesson I've learnt in my career. You need to define your opinion on issues that matter and stay true to it. [...] in the end, most of the successful and influential women I've met have made it to the top by being true to who they are, regardless of what others expect."

- Lorraine Candy, Editor-in Chief, Elle UK, Editor's Letter, March 2015

ARTlexa.

ARTlexa chung on tumblr.

l.o.v.e.

„What are you going to do? Everything, is my guess. It will be a little messy, but embrace the mess. It will be complicated, but rejoice in the complications. It will not be anything like what you think it will be like, but surprises are good for you. And don’t be frightened: you can always change your mind.“

-       Nora Ephron, Commencement Address to Wellesley Class of 1996.

[from: The MOST of Nora Ephron]

tarotscope.

a few months ago i discovered the numinous - a blog created by journalist ruby warrington that covers fashion, lifestyle while also focusing on the world as a mystical place. it combines the outer and the inner universe; which is what intrigues me. every month louise androlia publishes a tarotscope on the site that gives you some spiritual input for the upcoming weeks. what can i say? they are spot on. and i love them. check yours out for march!


picture credit (x | the rider tarot deck)

close that gap.

amen.

b.e.a.u.t.i.f.u.l.

dancer: sergei polunin

music: hozier's "take me to church"

director: David LaChapelle

boxes.

This brilliant article by Kate Arends got me thinking. Yes, we have to watch out. Watch out to see in which boxes we put the people we meet. It happens so quickly. Almost uncontrollably. What we can do is reconsider. We put people in boxes so that we can manage our lives. The brain has to in order to process certain information. The crucial point is not putting a lit on those boxes. I’m pretty sure that everyone uses this boxing-system, it would probably be hard for me to trust someone who says that they meet people on a completely unbiased level. Admitting it is not easy, but it’s honest. I think that it is okay to put people into boxes as long as you are ready to unbox them at any time. Don’t close those boxes. Reconsider their lables. It should be easy for people to get out of your box once you put them there. Let’s stick with this metaphor. It is okay to put people in a box as long as you provide them with the possibility to get out. Put a ladder in. Don’t talk much about your boxes to others, because when you do the possibility of getting out slowly begins to vanish. Go and confront yourself with the people inside. Talk to them. Meet them with open eyes and an open heart. Let them take the first step on the ladder, the second, the third. Maybe they’ll climb into another box you provided - precautionally. That’s okay too, as long as you put the ladder there as well.

But there is another thing. The boxes we put ourselves in. Often there is no ladder. Sometimes there even is a lid. Why is it much more difficult to find a way out of those boxes? 

These boxes resemble the ones we use for other people. Their lables are similar, because both come from experiences or things we saw, read, heard. These images are deeply rooted in our brain, even when our heart tells us that they are wrong. These images are one-dimensional. They don’t allow diversity, they despise individuality. You have certain perceptions of how a job has to be done, of how one should behave in certain situations, of how one should dress and if you don’t live up to them, you’d rather beat yourself up then to reconsider by letting yourself out of the box. You have to put a ladder in. You have to go easy on you. Let yourself out. Tear down those walls. What will happen when you do that? Maybe all those other boxes will begin to disappear as well. Wouldn’t that be something?

picture via pinterest (x)

there is a woman...

"There is a woman. Forever on a journey, she adventures through life, navigating its twists and turns with strength and grace. Not afraid to explore her past, she learns from every heartache, dreaming of the future and the chances it may hold. Searching for a retreat, in the loving warmth of family or a voyage to paradise, she is always open to the unexpected, while staying true to who she has become."

- Porter Magazine, Winter Escape 2014

picture via tumblr.

vienna.

coffeehouse in vienna.

"Yet as I bounce back the way I came, I find myself thinking not of sensuous headstands over the rain forest or of large soft beds overlooking a misty sunrise, but of images of hazy light over cobblestone streets and smoky coffeehouses, images of a swarming square outside a cathedral – images of Vienna, of an earlier trip with D and her family. What happened in Vienna that is supplanting the type of fantasy I used to latch on to and cultivate and cling to and employ when my life got bumpy?" 

- Andrew McCarthy, "The Longest Way Home", 2012.