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Tuesday, June 4, 2013

This weekend I decamped to Lexington, Virginia for some restorative family time and outdoor challenges. I’m almost done with Cheryl Strayed’s Wild and reading it has been giving me serious hiking urges and overall wanderlust. Plus, I miss the smell of the honeysuckle and the sound of treefrogs and the Eastern Towhee. You can take the girl out of the country but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

On Saturday we hiked up above Goshen Pass, where I grew up swimming in the summers. We crossed a swinging footbridge across the river, then hiked Hunters Trail and Little Peak Trail to Viewing Rock, where we had a great view of Lake Merriweather.

I snuggled with my nieces and nephews, ate delicious breakfasts out on the porch, inspected my parents’ gardening skills, and marveled at the stars. On Saturday night, the field leading up to my parent’s house was filled with hundreds of fireflies, making the top half of the view the dark sky filled with bright stars and the bottom half a field lit by starlight and hundreds of firefly lights. It was as if they were shooting stars. I can’t even describe how amazing it was, and there wasn’t any way to photograph it. Sometimes the best things can’t be captured.

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Shop vintage with me this weekend!

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

This weekend, we (as in me and my Butler + Claypool cohorts) will be popping up @Studio 1469 for a SS WEEKEND POP-UP (FACEBOOK DETAILS HERE). Spring/summer merchandise + handmade jewelry and accessories and surprises. Music! Impromptu dancing! Booze, probably!

Your closet needed this.

Details: 1469 Harvard Street Rear, alley off 15th Street, between Harvard St and Columbia Road.

The other weekend we all got together for a styling shoot at Lincoln Park on the Hill. Here’s the result, with sneak peeks of some of the merch in store!

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Three Stylish Reads

Monday, April 22, 2013

I always get at least 5% happier when I open my mailbox and see a fresh new copy of Vogue or Elle or any other favorite fashion glossy, but lately, a few reads have been inspiring me. While not explicitly connected to fashion, all are part of a larger, broader dialogue shaping what we want now from our homes, wardrobes, and lives.

Garden & Gun

Garden & Gun, with its memorable title and with a whip-smart, former first-female editor-of-the-New-Yorker editor at the helm, has been a favorite of mine since 2009. I stopped a woman on the street for a photo once and noticed the latest issue poking out of her bag. Immediately, we bonded. G&G has enjoyed a passionate, cultish following of Southerners and wannabe Southerners since it launched in 2007. Favorite articles include a recent one featuring one of my fave D.C. couples, Anna and Dan Kahoe, their store Goodwood and boundless creativity, and one that got me contemplating the creation of my own moonshine distillery. The magazine covers everything from music (profiles of legends like Ralph Stanley to Nashville’s new sound) to food (recipe for Mississippi Bourbon Punch, a father/son barbeque road trip through Tennessee) to conservation and craft. BLOG: Daily Shot.

Gensler Design Forecast 2013

{TopShop store at The Grove in LA. Image courtesy Gensler/Ryan Gobuty}

I have always been interested in fashion, but am especially interested in how matters of style intersect with trends and movements in related fields (architecture, design, art, music…), and how they affect consumer behavior and drive innovation. Gensler, a global architecture and design firm with offices here in Washington, has long been considered a thought leader in architecture, design and beyond. The Gensler Design Forecast 2013 distills all of the market trends that matter this year in one fascinating report. BLOG: GenslerOn.

BOMB magazine

BOMB, which started in 1981 out of New York and operates as a non-profit (supported by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs), “delivers the artist’s voice through in-depth interviews between artists working across genre and media—collaborations that reveal their ideas, concerns, and creative processes through carefully developed dialogue.” The mag covers art, architecture, film, music and more. This article, by DJ Mike Snow, is about the DJ/performance artist Aki Onda, who, like a musical Amelie, travels the world capturing sounds on a Sony Walkman and then “performs” them, toggling between various mixtapes (real mixtapes!). BLOG: BOMBLOG.

Happy reading!

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Downtown’s new shopping stop: Nordstrom Rack

Thursday, April 18, 2013

When the Filene’s Basement near Farragut North Metro stop shuttered I wondered where the working women of downtown Washington would get their retail therapy (nothing like blowing off a little work steam with an inexpensive pair of shoes or pair of tights!). Well, now we’ve got our answer and it opened today in the former Borders space: Nordstrom Rack at 1800 L Street, NW (M-F 9-8; Sat 10-6; Sun 12-5).

Temptations on deck: Kate Spade bags and jewelry, Cole Haan and Coach shoes, labels like Trina Turk, Calvin Klein, lots of fun Betsy Johnson accessories, and worth stopping in to scoop up discounted products from Phyto, Fekkai, and Bliss.

Good to know: the pricier labels (both clothes and shoes) are up front, less expensive merch is in the back. Ladies shoes range from size 4 to 12.

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