Magic is rare and hard to come by, and adds something so wonderful and unexpected to our lives, like a dream come true, or a wish we always had. Two years ago in Paris, a close friend in Paris invited me to something called The White Dinner, and as he described it to me, it sounded a little odd. On a designated night in June (as close as possible to the same date every year), thousands of people converge on a location they are informed of two hours before, they all show up wearing white, and at the location, they are told to go to one of the monuments of Paris (oh yes, and they show up carrying a folding table, two chairs, linen, china, silverware, and their dinner). And at the monument, these thousands of people sit down and have an elegant candle lit dinner, and at the stroke of midnight, they pick up their card tables and leave. Huh? What? Yeah….sure….whatever. It sounds interesting but a little crazy to me, and hard to imagine. Apparently, they have no permit for the location, they just show up once a year. It sounded a little like “Brigadoon” to me, the movie about the village in Scotland that appears once every hundred years, they all have a great time, and then disappear for another hundred years. Or in this case, for a year. (The event began more than 25 years ago as an anniversary dinner for a group of naval officers and their wives all dressed in white, and they plopped themselves down in a public place and had an elegant dinner. It grew and grew and grew, and has now become a tradition for thousands of Parisians, and people who come from all over the world, if they’re lucky enough to be invited.) » read more »
Archive for the ‘Paris’ Category
April and May in Paris
Posted on April 29, 2013
Hi Everyone,
This year anyway, April in Paris has lived up to all the songs and movies about it. The weather has finally gotten warmer and gentler, after a freezing cold winter, and it has been absolutely wonderful to be here. All this week it’s been sunny and beautiful, the kind of weather that makes you fall in love with Paris all over again, as you sit having lunch or dinner on the terrace of a restaurant, or an outdoor cafe, watching people stroll by. Definitely a slice of Heaven. » read more »
Filed Under Music, Paris | 6 Comments
Paris Fashion Week, Part 2
Posted on March 11, 2013
The second part of Paris Fashion Week was even busier for me than the first, racing between fashion shows, and joining up with my daughters whenever possible, and visiting two of the showrooms where buyers place orders. The week seemed to gain momentum as it sped along, with hordes of editors, journalists and buyers flying in, parties every night, and some beautiful runway shows to see. I enjoyed them all. The whole event ends today as I write this, and all I heard for the past two days was how exhausted everyone was. Going to fashion shows all day, racing from one location to another, placing orders or writing articles, and partying at night until the wee hours is fun, but tiring and ‘hard-work’. I was just an observer, not working, so I can’t complain, but after more than a week of going to shows and events, I’m tired too, my ears feel like they’re about to fall off from wearing tight earrings, and my feet are aching from trotting everywhere in high heels. I was ecstatic to put on jeans and flats after the last show. » read more »
Filed Under Fashion, Paris | 2 Comments
Paris Fashion Week, Part 1
Posted on March 4, 2013
Hi Everyone,
It’s that crazy time of year again, which happens twice a year (In Sept/Oct and Feb/March): Ready to Wear Fashion Week, which is a misnomer right there, since it’s really Fashion Month, not Fashion Week, and is actually one week in each of four cities: New York, London, Milan, Paris. And store buyers and fashion editors and journalists race through a week of intense fashion shows in each city, then fly onto the next one, and by the end of 4 weeks, everyone looks frazzled and is exhausted. It is an intense event in the fashion world. The clothes being shown each season are for 6 months later (so what I am seeing on the runways now will be sold in stores in September for the fall and winter. » read more »
Filed Under Family, Fashion, Paris | 7 Comments
Winter Fashion Shows / January in Paris
Posted on January 28, 2013
Hi Everyone,
It’s that time of year again, the depths of winter in Paris, gray and snowy. And as I write this, it has snowed for the past 3 days, and although snow is a nuisance in any city, it is beautiful here, and I love it. And it has been VERY cold!!!
As I’ve written to you before in previous years, in January, there are the Haute Couture fashion shows. In years past, Haute Couture was a VERY big deal, the shows lasted for a week, there were many “Haute Couture” houses, and there were four or five shows a day to show the creations of the various houses. It was a flurry of fun activity running from one show to the next, with movie stars and presidential wives present, well known women on the best dressed list, and a glittering crowd with invitations to see the show. (Even now, you can only go by invitation). What distinguishes Haute Couture from other kinds of fashion is that every single item is handmade. EVERY stitch » read more »
Filed Under Fashion, Paris | 6 Comments
BOO!!!!!
Posted on October 29, 2012
Ah YESSS!!! Here comes one of my favorite holidays: Halloween. It’s such a great holiday, dedicated to fun, the acquisition of industrial quantities of candy (even if you are too old to trick or treat, you can stand there with an enormous bowl of it, to hand it out, and eat half of it yourself….just checking it out!!!). Kids get to wear silly costumes, so do adults, the whole thing has always seemed like so much fun to me. And as I’ve told you, we’ve had some memorable costumes in the family. One of my favorites was my oldest daughter’s orange dyed face (she was a pumpkin that year), which wouldn’t wash off for 2 weeks (and she had to explain at work, since she was in her 20’s by then). » read more »
Playing Catch Up
Posted on October 8, 2012
Hi Everyone, I’ve been busy writing, and catching up on work. It’s a sharp contrast to my Paris life where I work, but I play too. When I get back to California, it’s nose to the grindstone time!! But I wanted to check in with you.
I had some legal things to take care of when I got home, which is never fun. I went to the dentist, not highly amusing, but only a cleaning. I go to the dentist, (with terror), always prepared to hear that my head is falling off—-you mean you didn’t know? It’s silly of me, because I have an incredibly nice/good dentist, who has a wonderful hygienist, but I get nervous anyway. I guess most people do. (My late husband John was one of those people who made 5 hour dentist appointments, just to get it all out of the way at once (I would rather go 10 times for half an hour!!). I went to pick him up once after some rugged dental surgery, he was fine, and I passed out cold in the elevator just thinking about what they’d done to him. But anyway, I got my teeth cleaning out of the way when I got back. » read more »
Filed Under Family, Fashion, Paris, Writing | 4 Comments
September in Paris
Posted on September 17, 2012
Hi Everyone,
I’m sitting in my Paris kitchen, with my second cup of decaf this morning, thinking about the fall, and enjoying a quiet moment on a peaceful weekend. The days are still warm, but there’s a nip of fall in the air at night, and it’s starting to get chilly. It’s beautiful in Paris in the fall (when isn’t it beautiful in Paris? I love it at all times of the year, it’s still my favorite city in the world, and a wonderful place to live). » read more »
Filed Under Paris | 6 Comments
Where Has The Summer Gone?
Posted on August 13, 2012
Hi Everyone,
It feels like the 4th of July, which kicked off the summer, was only 5 minutes ago, and the summer has raced by. And I’ve been busy. As always, I feel like my supposed to be lazy summer was action packed.
Let’s see, what have I done? I came back to France in June, saw lots of friends, and spent two weeks with my children in July, a week of it in the South of France. For the first time in many, many years, we did not spend time on a boat, but relaxed at a hotel we have gone to every year since their childhood. And we had fun together. We’re incredibly lazy when we go on vacation together. We lay in the sun, ate too much, went out for dinner once, and the rest of the time, ate at the hotel. No one went fishing, they all swam every day. The weather was hot, which makes us all lazy. And we had lunch and dinner together every day. And for 5 days of it, there was a Mistral wind, which is a gale force wind, in spite of sunny weather. We laughed a lot, most of us went to bed early, and I lay in the sun in the daytime for many hours (despite my children’s warnings that if I keep doing that, I will one day look like a prune. But I always feel better with a tan). » read more »
Filed Under Family, Paris, Travel | 2 Comments