Hermes 2011

What an amazing runway show
from the clothes, to the music to the dressage horses
totally Hermes
(ignore the obligatory commercial at the beginning of the video)

Art Nouveau District of Riga, Latvia

These are stunning examples of art nouveau in architecture from Riga, Latvia. They represent their amazing Art Nouveau district.

Most of the buildings were designed by talented Latvian architects including Mikhail Eisentein, E. Laube, K. Peksens and A. Vanags.

Knott's first Halloween Haunt, 1973

Today's images come from the Knott's Berry Farm Collection at the Orange County Archives, and show the first Knott's Halloween Haunt, in 1973. Note that the event ran for only three nights -- not an entire month, like today. Also note, in the photo below, the much shorter lines at the entrance gate.

Today, the Haunt is a juggernaut and brings in much of the theme park's profits for the year. The majority of Knott's backstage warehouse space is filled with Haunt props and equipment, and a surprisingly large portion of the year is spent preparing for this lucrative event.

In the photo above, two of Knott's roving "monsters" take a break backstage. That's the least menacing Frankenstein's Monster I've ever seen. The Haunt has gotten a lot scarier over the years.

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When the first Haunt was held, the new Gypsy Camp section of Knott's had just opened. It was a flop and didn't last long, but they made good use of it during the Halloween festivities. The photo below shows what appears to be a costume contest on a big outdoor stage in Gypsy Camp.
In the photo below, Haunt host Sinister Seymour (of local late-night TV fame) poses for a photo with participants in a Seymour look-alike contest. The group is standing in front of the newly opened John Wayne Theatre in Gypsy Camp.

In case I don't get the chance to blog again this weekend,... Have a happy, spooky, kooky Halloween!

Art Nouveau Ironwork In The Grand Palais - France

This prime example of Art Nouveau in architecture is found in Paris in the Grand Palais. It is currently the largest existing glass and ironwork structure in the world. The palace features 9,400 tons of steel framework with 15,000 square meters of glass work and 5,000 square meters of galvanize iron/zinc roofing.

The Sparklefication of Halloween

From Deep Glamour
Remember when Halloween was scary?
I barely do. These days, it's all "sexy" costumes for the ladies and decidedly un-sexy, not-even-funny joke costumes for the guys. And on the decorating front, instead of ghoulish graveyards or even dark and mysterious haunted houses, those of us trying to deck out our houses for the holiday get...glitter.

A clever post by Kit Pollard of the transformation of Halloween from the dark and daunting to the bright and sparkly.
For this phenomenon, I blame Stephenie Meyer and her band of chaste, "vegetarian" vampires who, instead of burning up in the sun, sparkle like a fleet of immortals dressed for a night out at Studio 54.*

The sparkle is just one more way that vampires - who used to be a genuinely scary staple of the Halloween season - have been softened. Last year on Slate, Grady Hendrix wrote a great summary of the evolution of the vampire from bloodthirsty killer to emo virgin.

The sparklefication of Halloween is not a surprise, though - it's mostly a matter of supply and demand. With Twilight moms holding a whole lot of purchasing power, it's only natural that the glitter goods would fly off the shelves. I can't blame product designers and stores for delivering what the people want.

For some reason, I don't really know why, I have never been a fan of Halloween. The dressing up part was fine, it was the overabundance of candy that I didn't care for.
Now, it has evolved from a children's holiday to every woman's excuse for wearing the slutty-est outfit she can get away with
and of course glitter galore.
I shall ignore the whole thing as I do every year.

Halloween in Santa Ana, 1894

The earliest description of a Halloween celebration in Orange County I've found so far is of a Santa Ana "Halloween Party." The following comes from the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 2, 1894 :

"A circle of young people passed a very pleasant season in the G.A.R. Hall Wednesday evening in celebrating All Saints' day. The mysteries of 'ye olden time' were delved into by the young people in a pleasant and interesting manner and many were the happy surprises enjoyed by them all. At a late hour refreshements of tamales, coffee and sandwiches, furnished and prepared by the gentlemen, were served, after which toasts were responded to by Messers. E.B. Turner, Lon Hickox and John Nourse.

It was the hour of midnight before the party, composed of the following ladies and gentlemen, departed for their homes:Misses Conley, Collins, Clara and Grace Carpenter, Flook, Mansur, Padgam, Stone, Walker, Clara and Maye Wight and Messrs. Heron, Caskey, Gould, Nourse, Chilton, Hasel, Hervey, Turner, Hickox, McIntier, Bell and Carpenter."

So,... They celebrated Halloween by eating Mexican food and staying up late talking about history. I'm a little annoyed that I didn't get to attend!
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For the record, the G.A.R. (Grand Army of the Republic) Hall was on the southeast corner of Main and 4th St. (The building they held the party in is now long gone.)
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Halloween itself didn't really get rolling as a holiday in America until the 1840s, when waves of Irish immigrants came to this country. Even as late as 1889, the celebration of Halloween was novel enough in Southern California that the Times saw fit to explain it to their readers:

"It is the night of all others, when spirits walk abroad, and is observe with an immense consumption of nuts and apples. The apples were once set floating in a tub of water, into which the juveniles by turn ducked their heads in order to catch one of the fruit."

Striking, Reading, Working and Shopping

Really I wonder, when do the French get to the point of saying enough is enough?

The above photo isn't recent, it is from March 2009 telling us that if there is one thing that the French do with consistency, it is protesting, something, anything, everything...

OK, we've all know that this latest month of protest has been about raising the retirement age, for public workers, (about 1 in every 4 works for the State in some form or another) from 60 to 62. 

So if you are French, after 35 hour work weeks, and 6 weeks off for vacation, retirement should start at 60.

As Guy Sorman wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "The French have a long tradition of taking to the streets as an irrational answer to economic reforms." Sorman goes on to remind us that "Alexis de Tocqueville, then a member of parliament, wrote in his "Memoires" that the French knew a lot about politics and understood nothing about economics".

And it isn't just the public workers who are protesting.  High school and university students have gotten in on the fun too. " For the young, street riots are a sort of generational rite of passage.  They replay the Revolution as their parents did in May 1968"

In disagreement with Sorman I will say this.  There is a huge economic and societal problem with France when the French are unemployed at 30 and expected to work at 62.  Since there is virtually no new job growth in the private sector, the older workers need to retire to make jobs available for the young.

Still, the State needs to be fed if government pension accounts are going to have enough to pay for retirement benefits.

Here in the US, our middle aged managers have suffered for years from rampant age discrimination.  How often do we read about the 50 something year old manager who has gotten downsized and replaced with a younger and cheaper employee. That 50 year old is never going to get that level of job back.  And now with record high unemployment, many are only so happy to still have a job at 60 years old. 

In addition, many workers who have formally retired from decades of work at their career jobs, desire to continue working in related fields or to go into some new field altogether.  And before our recent economic boondogle, people could do this.  Jobs were available. Who knows now.

Recently, I've been reading the books of Elizabeth Gaskell, the female Dickens, who wrote novels dealing with the conditions of factory workers during the Industrial Revolution. A key element in her books, aside from the extraordinarily harsh conditions of life where people lived at the edge and poverty was the norm, was the desire to work.  At that time when workers went on strike or factories cut back production, people starved...to death.

Thankfully today, striking workers are not going to starve in France, the UK or in the US.

I'm very glad that at least today we live with an abundance of goods that can tide us over in bad economic times.

Virginia Postrel's article in the WSJ, Saved By The Closet, we've got so much stuff that it's easing the slump

discusses this phenomenon.
Americans have a lot of stuff—so much, in fact, that getting it under control has become a major cultural fantasy. Witness the Container Store, whose aisles of closet systems and colorful boxes peddle dreams as seductive as any fashion shoot.
Over the past few decades, as businesses have learned to streamline their inventories, American households have done just the opposite, accumulating ever more linens and kitchen gadgets, toys and TV sets, sporting goods and crafts supplies. "Because of all the shopping we've done, many of us now own lots of great stuff we never use anymore.
Because of our rampant consumerism in the past, we don't live on the edge anymore.
In today's sour economy, however, what once seemed like waste is starting to look like wealth: assets to draw on when times get tough (and not just because of all those ads promising top dollar for your gold jewelry). Material abundance, it turns out, produces economic resilience. Even if today's recession approached Great Depression levels of unemployment, the hardship wouldn't be as severe, because today's consumers aren't living as close to the edge.

Reading so much in the blogosphere questioning can we get by with less and can we survive on a wardrobe of 15 items or less for a month or some such challenge, I am very thankful that I don't have to because I have a closet, or three, full of clothes. 
And I'm also thankful that I have a job that I'm passionate about.  I can only hope that at the age of 60 I am still doing what I am doing now.

Jewelry Biz - Oh La La - An Afternoon With Lorenz Baumer

After an online discussion about who is glamorous over at Tish Jett's blog A Femme D'un Certain Age
I thought that I would weigh in on the subject.
I am not a big fan of glamour because I believe that above all it is built on artifice.
Take most film stars and celebrities.  Can they even be described as glamorous if in actuality they rely entirely on stylists to put together their public looks? 
So instead I look for elegance and accomplishment.
Yesterday I was very pleased to spend several hours with Lorenz Baumer, who is the epitiome of both elegance and accomplishment.

Lorenz Baumer is one of the world's premier jewelry designers.  He has designed for Chanel and Louis Vuitton, and not the costume fashion nonsense stuff either.  He designs Haute Joaillerie.  Here's an example of his work.

Now he has a boutique and atelier located at the Place Vendome in Paris where he creates exciting, colorful and clever pieces based on his view of nature, poetry and architecture.
Like this

and this

I just fell in love with his pieces yesterday...
and a little bit in love with him too because he was so elegant in that unique way that french men are.
And accomplished.
Next month he is going to receive the Legion D'Honneur in Paris.
So check out his website and the next time that you are in Paris, be sure to visit his boutique.

Before & After: First National Bank of Yorba Linda

Today's "then and now" photos, from 1961 (above) and 2010 (below) come from Ken Stack of OutsideTheBerm. They show the site of the First National Bank of Yorba Linda. The building became a Bank of America branch in 1945, but is now just another historic parking lot.

Historian Phil Brigandi shared some details about the before photo:

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"That's the old First National Bank of Yorba Linda building. Not sure when it was built, but it was probably around 1916, when the bank opened for business.
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"Eldo West (1879-1969) was one of the original directors. In his memoirs, Notes Concerning Yorba Linda (written for his daughter, author Jessamyn West, in the late 1950s) he recalled:

'Another development worthy of note was a promotion of a bank which was undertaken by J.W. Hargrove, a former resident of Minot, South Dakota, where he had been in the banking business. Mr. Hargrove had some $25,000 capital and secured the balance by sale of stock at $100 per share.

'I was asked to buy five shares as a civic duty, but I turned the offer down on plea that I didn't have the money and for the further reason that I considered I could use the money for quicker turn over and bigger profits in private business.

'However upon insistence of an Anaheim banker who offered to loan me the money for that purpose, I did buy five shares to enable Hargrove to qualify for a permit. I sold the stock after a few months later at par and paid back the money.

'Looking back I can congratulate myself that I did not retain the stock. It never did pay very well, and went under in the crash of '29 losing the stockholders quite a bit. Even depositors lost money."

"John W. Hargrove served as president of the bank from its founding until his death in 1931 at the age of 68. The bank survived him by less than three months, closing its doors in January, 1932 (one of a number of smaller Orange County banks to go under during the Depression).
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"Yorba Linda did not have a bank again until the Bank of America opened their branch in the old building in 1945. As the sign next door indicates, they built their new office next door in 1961. I do not have the date handy when the only building went down, but I suppose it was not long after."

La France Profonde in Fall

Pretty pictures of La France Profonde shamelessly stolen from a friend on Facebook.
Pretty aren't they?
Happy Wednesday!

Rodeo Drive - There Goes The Neighborhood

Look who's moving in next door...or actually a couple of doors down.

Solange Azagury Partridge
They've been setting up for the big opening night party for days now...and borrowing our parking spaces.  The parking lot behind the store is fully tented and decorated with a giant disco ball.
I'm trying to action an invitation to this little shindig...somehow I don't think that I'm on the VIP list.

Now, at almost 7:30 pm the party is in full on happening mode with disco music wafting into our office.
Any minute now I sure that I'm going to hear Donna Summer's "Love To Love You Baby".

La Niña or Something Wicked This Way Comes

Well the sun finally came out yesterday after almost a month of cold, foggy and drizzly weather.
Why is this notable? 
Because after the coldest summer on record I was looking forward to the typically mild months of September and October.
Not, this year it seems.
Except for one super hot week in September, the last two months have been unusually cold and now I know why.

The Super La Nina and the Coming Winter
La Nina is the lesser-known colder sister of El Nino. La Nina chills the waters of the tropical Pacific Ocean, and in turn cools the entire planet for one to two years or more. This chilling has the potential to bring bone-numbing cold to many parts of the world for this and the following winter.
Oh...lucky us, not only do we get La Nina we get a special La Nina!
This La Nina appears to be special, at least so far. It is well on its way to being the strongest of these events since the super La Nina of 1955-1956. During that powerful La Nina that lasted two years, the global average temperature fell nearly one degree Fahrenheit from 1953 to 1956.

Those of us who are affected by seasonal affective disorder, take note.
Things might get real cold.
Last Sunday was so drizzly and dreary that I opted for the next best thing to a winter holiday on a sunny beach for cheering me up, yes you guessed it, cooking a yummy dinner.
(Admittedly, I was highly inspired by the fabulous meals prepared by Faux Fuchsia and Tabitha)
So I went to my usual source for all things wonderful in the kitchen.

(Yes peeps, I was cooking recipes from these books long before that silly girl from that movie blogged about them. My books date to 1983)
Well anyway, I thought that I would make a Coq au Vin, but all the wine and brandy and bacon seemed too heavy so I decided on Poulet Poché Au Vin Blanc or Coq au Vin lite, if you will.
Super easy, super fast, super healthy
Here's the recipe (actually out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 2)

Grab your big (blue) Le Creuset cocotte and sauté your basic mirepoix ( 2 carrots, 3 stalks of celery, 1 onion, chopped or julienned) in 3 tablespoons of butter....or for a lighter version use chicken stock instead of butter...but what's the point of that.
Add an already cut frying chicken 2 1/2 lbs (I used the organic, no growth hormone kind from Trader Joe's) and cook for 10 minutes turning once.
Pour in 1 1/2 cups of white wine or dry white vermouth (I used vermouth and saved the wine for drinking.  Note: vermouth is also great to cook with and less expensive than wine...and available for your martinis)
Add enough chicken stock to barely cover the chicken.
Add a bouquet garni of parsley, thyme and bay leaf.
Cover and cook either in a 350 degree oven or on top of the stove for 25-30 minutes.
(I served it with asparagus and hot french bread, but you might want to serve it over rice)

For a super easy dessert
Apple and Berry Compote (my recipe)
Take left over granny smith apples from the fridge and peel, core and cut them into chunks.
Lightly poach in a small amount of water with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.
Add dried cranberries and pomegranate seeds or dried berries of your choice.
Cook for about 10 minutes or until apples begin to soften but aren't mushy.
Serve warm with low carb vanilla ice cream.

Unfortunately, after all this effort I didn't have the energy to plate it artfully and photograph it for BHB.
You'll just have to take my word that it looked yummy and tasted delicious, because it did.
So brace yourself for a cold winter
This La Nina is coming on very fast and very strong. Already it is colder than the six coldest La Ninas of the last 60 years when they were at a similar stage of development.

Get The Look - Nightlife

It's the season to dance, party, and let loose with close
friends and the new ones you meet along the way.
Spice up your look with elaborate jewelry to set
out a personal fashion statement.





I love this look for going out!! If you like it you can buy it here

Cardigan - $31.10


Strapless Dress - $25


Boots - $43


Necklace - $15.60


Tell me what do you think about this look!

Jewelry Biz - Big Bucks For The Bulgari Blue

OK, so I admit it...I was a little disappointed that the powers that be at Beladora didn't buy the Bulgari Blue last week at auction. It would have matched my outfit perfectly, don't you think?

Diamond Auction Sets New World Record

The Bulgari Blue Diamond, the largest triangular Fancy Vivid Blue diamond ever offered at auction, sold for $15.7 million on Wednesday at Christie's New York, setting a new world record for the price paid per carat for such a stone in open bidding
The 10.95 carat blue diamond is set opposite a matching 9.87 carat colorless diamond in a ring purchased in 1972 for $1 million. The record price amounts to $1.5 million per carat.
Bidding started at $8 million and quickly became a contest between a client in the room and two on the phone, before the gavel fell to a private Asian collector. 
And what are the chances that the buyer was from China... 

The original owner, who bought the ring at the Bulgari flagship store in Rome as a gift for his wife on the birth of their first son, kept it in the family for four decades until yesterday's sale.

 

 

 

 

Around Town - The Beverly Hills Women's Club 85th Anniversary Gala

It probably wouldn't surprise you that I'm a big believer in community based organizations, like The Beverly Hills Women's Club.
Yes, I know the very idea of a 'women's club' is indeed old fashioned, bringing to mind afternoon tea and bridge.  Well yes the BHWC is a bit old fashioned and proud of it's nearly 100 year old heritage.
And yes there really are teas and bridge and book clubs and mahjong and cotillion. But there are also, lectures and concerts and private tours and cooking classes.
Most importantly, the club also supports children in need by providing such things as school supplies to kids in a local homeless shelter and sponsoring events for Aviva Family and Children's Services which works with abused and neglected children.
This year was the 85th anniversary of the actual club house, built in 1925 by noted architects Gable and Lyons. Over the last five years, under the leadership of club president Claudia Deutsch, the building has been carefully restored, with respect to the architectural heritage.  Hopefully the club will continue to be a thriving part of the community with ongoing philanthropic service for another 85 years.
And I dressed up complete with partial up-do and other fripperies....but alas, no diamond brooch in my hair.
So here's the look...dark navy blue taffeta dress, navy blue satin shoes, sapphire and diamond estate jewelry, a mink coat (vintage) and a happy disposition.

Yes, I know...not the most attractive of photos, but that was the best that I could do with my iphone.
But I was especially happy with the Fred Leighton diamond bow brooch.

Yes, I'm posing in front of my bicycle which is parked in front a painting. 
I know, awesome decorating skillz.
Have a wonderful Sunday everyone.

2011 Spring/Summer Fashion Week

Day-2 for New York Fashion Week and I do not know about you, but I really feel about all frenziness the coming month. New York became the last weekend a hive of activity with designers, stylists, models and PR are everywhere to bring their show ready and looking for luxury. As the tension continues to rise until the first collections open and reveal new designs and trends from the Spring & Summer 2011 season, I could not wait, but to play Madame Soleil (a famous French psychic). Okay, I can not have her super powers to the new collections to guess, but all I can say from the Resort 2011 collections is that nostalgia never looked so good. The sixties were a clear trend with a healthy dose of femininity and elegance.

Why Blogger...Why?

It must be the beginning of the end. 
You know that feeling when you make a big effort on your part to say something clever or charming and you are met with total nonchalance on the other side.
And you ask yourself what did I do wrong? 
I was there faithfully everyday, giving it my all.  But as the years and the posts passed, little issues started cropping up between us that just couldn't be corrected.
How many times, like yesterday, can I allow myself to spend an hour scanning photos, uploading images, writing commentary and inserting links only to have you be completely unresponsive to my needs.
Oh I admit it, I blamed it first on my computer.  But now that I have my new super computer I have to face the fact that the problem is with you.
OK, I get it.  The relationship was always one sided anyway.
Somehow it all makes sense, especially knowing that you come from a family where long standing relationships weren't truly valued. After all, your parents moved to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes...and you know they say about the apple not falling far from the tree...or at least I think that's what they say.

Blogger, I hope that you treat your other bloggers better than you have treated me!

Spies in Centennial Park (Part II)

I've received a lot of responses about my "Spies In Centennial Park" post from last week. I've learned a lot since then, and though I'd share some of it here...

The 110-acre antenna farm at what's now Santa Ana's Centennial Park was officially known as the Santa Ana Primary Monitoring Station. It was built by the federal government in 1941 to listen to signals being sent from Hamburg, Germany (6,000 miles away) to Hitler's spies in the U.S. Thirty three spies were arrested based on this program.
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By the early 1950s, it was operating as one of eight Federal Communications Commission monitoring stations, scattered across the country. Thirteen people worked there in shifts, around the clock. They made sure FCC regulations were being adhered to in our area. But in addition to playing "radio traffic cop," the facility was also recording broadcasts from Russia and other parts of the world.
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At the time of a 1952 L.A. Times article about the facility, William J. Hoffert was the engineer in charge and Alfred K. Robinson was the assistant engineer. They couldn't talk about their spy activities, but they said they'd "brought to justice operators of illegal portable radios in local race tracks, located lost planes, and prevented the burning of at least one yacht."
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From the same article:

"During World War II, a phyiotherapy outfit in a medical building was found to be doubling as an illicit radio transmitter. Special cunning was required to discover that a clarinet player in a Berlin orchestra broadcasting to this country was varying his tempo to send messages to German agents in America.
"What seemingly is pesky static on a broadcast from England may be something else. What is there to keep a foreign enemy from making recordings of static and broadcasting them on the British program wave length? A Churchill speech might even be used to camoflage coded signals from Stalin."

Brad Weber tipped me off to this article and also told me, "I knew people -- civilians -- who were prominent in the communications and radio field and were allowed to visit the facility prior to the 1950s."
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But things seem to have gotten a bit more secretive as the Cold War heated up. Reader CoxPilot relates a story from his childhood, around 1955:

"One time we decided to take out pellet guns out to the river and hunt mice and rats. We parked our bikes at the bottom of the dip in the sand and proceeded to walk west down the river to see what we could find. This placed us parallel with the antennas. Then, suddenly, we were confronted with a couple of men with guns and badges, and were told that we were not to be in that area, and that it would be best if we left. They said they were government guards, not police, and we would not be reported if we didn't return. We never did."

Reader Jim B. related a similar experience from the 1960s, when "a couple of my friends went up to the gate one day to see if they could take a tour but were told (not in friendly terms either) to leave."
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Rich S. wrote that he was told the FCC facility was heavily guarded due to the "threat of war [with the USSR] and possibility of communications takeovers."
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Orange County Historical Commission Chairman Don Dobmeier also stopped by and said that local historian Wayne Gibson once told him the Santa Ana monitoring station was "where the Japanese code was broken" during WWII. At some point, I may need to call Mr. Gibson and see if he can tell me more about that particular story.

Everything Old Is New Again

Anne Hathaway photographed by Mario Testino for Vogue

I'm rather loving this photo of Anne Hathaway a la Holly Golightly in Vogue, and not so much for the jewelry.  I'm rather enamored of the updo.  It's a such a clean classic look and particularly flattering if you want to emphasize your clothes, your jewelry or your swan like neck....on second thought maybe this look needs to be reserved for those under 30.
Still, I would love to get all dressed up this weekend with big blingy brooch in my hair.

like this Mid-Century Chaumet Diamond Brooch in Platinum
You don't think that the diamond hair ornament would be over the top for a Saturday night soiree, do you?