Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Around Town - Larry Crowne Premiere in Hollywood

Julia Roberts on the red carpet for the Larry Crowne premiere last night in Hollywood.
She wore a beautifully tailored Gucci suit with in navy blue, a vintage Jean Mahie triple strand emerald bead necklace and diamond stud earrings from Beladora.com and a megawatt smile.
Totally simple and non-fussy but totally chic,
don't you think?


Is this film on your must see list for this summer?
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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Saturday Morning Miscellany

Earlier this year I started planning a summer vacation in Italy.  and you know what they say about the best laid plans....
So instead of traipsing around the Italian countryside and islands
I'm reading (and vastly enjoying) the Gervais de Bédée blog written by garden designer Paul Gervais
With posts about villas of Perugia, small hotels of Sardinia and gardens of Chianti
I'm getting my little fix of the beauty of Italy
just look at the photos



Luscious, aren't they?

Have a great weekend!
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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

How To Wear Estate Jewelry - Shades of Gray For Summer

I'm not ignoring you...really I'm not.
It's just that I've been busy, really busy.

For some reason it's been a celebrity filled week
and...I'm still waiting for Lady Gaga's people to get back to my people...
you know how those things go.

I had wanted to post about the new Chanel collection
a Byzantine beauty if I ever saw one
but Tabitha beat me to it...and added poetry!
So go read her post.

Here at the HQ, we love to see jewelry worn on the head
so the diadems in these ads are especially appealing.
Also, have you noticed the recent Harry Winston and Van Cleef ads for diamond barrettes?
That is the trend in jewelry
along with vintage brooches
You heard it here first.

Summer may have officially started but it is still gray, foggy and cold every morning
and while I'd love to whip out the summer whites and pastels,
I'm still wearing winter colors like this charcoal gray
Luckily, it matches my Beladora pearl jewelry

God I look old and tired in this shot
Hopefully botox and a beach vacation will be coming up in my near future!
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Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Evolution of Style - Another Reason For Optimism

Last week I blogged about Interior Desecrations, James Likeks book about hideous interior decoration from the 1970s.  We've evolved from that time and thank god for that.
This week Maxminimus, natty gent and writer extraordinaire,
has brought us a great post First Car - First Girl,
a reminiscence of his 1970s youth, a time when printed nik-nik shirts and platformed famolare shoes were all the rage for trendy men.  Even the Allman Brothers looked bad in nik-nik shirts.
Be sure to read his post.

And today designer/blogger Scott Wood brings us Patrick Grant getting dressed
and proving that at least when it comes to men's fashion,
things have evolved from the sartorially shamefull 70s.


Note Mr. Grant's attention to detail even with the color of his cufflinks and the way that he coordinates the color of his watch strap, belt and shoes.

When it comes to men's fashion I'm unabashedly a trad. 
I appreciate well tailored clothes, quality shoes and coordinated colors.
I'm a trad when it comes to men's jewelry too.  A watch, wedding ring and cufflinks are all the jewelry, in my opinion, that a man should wear.  Even with this limited range there can be plenty of opportunities for a man to show his individualism.

So here are some cufflinks
have at it


And have a Happy Father's!
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Friday, June 17, 2011

Lost in Cyberspace

Can someone please explain to me why on certain blogs
*cough Bourbon & Pearls cough*
my profile name, email address and blog URL disappears. 
I'm having a blogger identity crisis and I'm lost in cyberspace.

Why blogger why????

Lately Tabitha has been channelling more Carolina Herrera than Highland Lass,
but I'm still dedicating this Polyvore set to her.


Highland Haute Couture


Boat neck sweater, $396
Chloé short mini skirt, £1,235
All Saints lace up boots, $315
Balenciaga leather bag, $1,895
Brooch
Cuff bracelet
18k ring
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Thursday, June 16, 2011

Angela Bassett Rocking The Red Carpet In Baubles From Beladora

Just look who was looking gorgeous last night...
yep, it was the lovely Angela Bassett on the red carpet at the Green Lantern premier.
 She was rocking a custom made gown by Mandalay
check out the detail on the back
and she was wearing estate jewelry from Beladora.com
which made me very happy






I loved working with Angela's stylist who was super professional and unbelievably nice
I hope that we can do more with her in the future

It's been a really great week all around
in spite of the gray fog that I see as I look out the window
I celebrated my daughter's birthday with a family dinner at Wolfgang's in Beverly Hills
(steak, lobster macaroni and cheese and cakebread cellars cabernet...yum)
all kinds of great stuff happened at the Beladora HQ
and I'm looking forward to seeing my father this weekend on Father's Day
and maybe even the sun will come out.

What's on your agenda for this weekend?
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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

My Daughter The Blogger

I suppose that it was only a matter of time before the beautiful Miss de Ville started her own blog chronicling her impressions of life in LA with irreverent commentary and arty photography.

3 Guides and a Girl
Armed with a selection of guide books, good shoes, a collection of cameras and a terrible sense of direction, a single girl decides to see everything worth seeing in Southern California. 
From the bizarre to the beautiful, the quaint to the quackery, no sight is safe.

I love her photography
 




and of course I enjoy reading about Los Angeles from her perspective
The Spadena house on Carmelita in BH is a really superb example of storybook architecture. Also known as the witch’s house, this spooky building is smack dab in the middle of a bunch of colonial and neoclassical monstrosities. I drive by on my way to work and it always makes me smile. As a kid, I lived a few blocks away and I distinctly remember that you couldn’t trick or treat there (they had cops outside the gates) which, frankly, is bullshit. Fun fact: this is the house Alicia Silverstone walks by in her pouty, epiphany scene in “Clueless”.

My beautiful girl turned 26 today....where did the time go....
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Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The Beautiful Angela Bassett in Beladora - OMG!

This week has started out well
especially because the lovely and talented Angela Bassett has been hitting the New York daytime talk show circuit to promote her new film, The Green Hornet.

Don't you think that Ms. Bassett is looking awesome in our drop dead gorgeous gemstone cuff bracelet and diamond dangle earrings from Beladora.com?





 
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Monday, June 13, 2011

Around Town - Artspace Warehouse

I finally made it to the Artspace Warehouse
the gallery for fine art at a reasonable price
and you know how much I appreciate quality at an affordable price
With galleries in Cologne, Zurich and Los Angeles



the galleries showcase works by emerging European and US artists

There were several pieces that I liked
and I might have purchased a painting... or three
by the Swiss artist Zanre
I told you that I was going to rock the vintage 1970s jewelry from Beladora.com
and I did!

Happy Monday
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Saturday, June 11, 2011

Saturday Morning Miscellany And Some 1970s Style

I suspect that you read all the major shelter magazines
Architectural Digest, Veranda, Elle Decor, etc.
And I'm pretty sure that you too have noticed the creeping trend towards 1970s style
big prints, color block palates, graphic and metallic wallpaper, low slung furniture and more

As one who appreciates a vintage vibe in clothes, accessories and design 
I rather like the return of 1970's decorative details
like the metallic wallpaper, shiny tubes and mirrored walls 
used in Daphne Guinness's NY apartment
and god knows if anyone can pull off groovy it is la Guinness
 Daphne's NY apartment

But 1970s style can go wrong, very wrong.
Are you familiar with author, blogger, humorist James Lileks?
If not you should be

Lileks, in his clever book sprinkled with images taken from actual 1970s interior design magazines,
shows us the horror which was 1970s decor.
And sorry but I just have to quote
no really I have to

from his book introduction
This is what happens when Dad drinks, Mom floats in a Valium haze, the kids slump down in the den with the bong, and the decorator has such a desperate coke habit he simply must convince half the town to put reflective wallpaper or he's going to lose his kneecaps to his supplier's enforcer.  Just say no?  They couldn't.  They didn't know why they should.
No, I am not saying your mom was hopped up on goofballs.  But all it takes is a few trendsetters who fall for this stuff and set the styles for the rest of Middle America.  Soon the rest of the nation finds out it has no choice - it's rotten-avocado-colored fabrics and shiny-foil wallpaper or nothing.

from his website
Sweet smokin’ Judas, what were they thinking?
Welcome back to Interior Desecrations, a brutal examination of the unlovely, unattractive, unlivable and unforgivable homes of the 1970s. All eras have some bad taste, of course – but it took the 70s to make bad taste triumphant and universal. It took the 70s to convince everyone to stick foil wallpaper on the wall, paint the bathtub purple
, smother the floors in shag so deep it tickled the tops of your ankles, and hang art that managed to clash with everything, including itself. I mean, look at this picture – what is that? A dissected Rubiks’s Cube attempts to threaten a potted plant and his child, I guess.
Love the rug, too. They didn’t even make AMC cars in those color combinations. They didn’t dare.

and more from his book
If you lived here, you'd be laid by now.  If it was 1973, anyway.  It's the lair of the Tasteful Swinging Batch - the mezzanine lined with unread books, the guitar to indicate your sensitive troubadour side, the TEAC reel-to-reel to show off your collection of progressive jazz, the TV sized just right for watching Kojac while you blow a number of primo Colombian (hey, Kojak man be the Man, but he's solid cool). There's even a recessed ladder in case you're upstairs and your date catches on fire and you have to get down quick.
Her lost the house in the divorce in '79.  Oh, she said it was because of his quaalude "problem" but she'd been planning this way before he ever took some Vitamin Q.
What do you mean paranoid?  Now you're sounding like her.

and
For the Bond Supervillian on a budget.
It has a ledge, so your minions can topple off when shot.  It has a ladder down which you can escape. It has fussy furniture whose old-world charms contrast with your Nehru-jacketed sense of icy-cool nihilism.  It's not the sort of lair you'd be proud to show 007.  But one of the lessor double-oughts?  002? 003? They'd hardly notice that the paintings are actually lithographs. And for that alone they deserve to die!

Well anyhoo, I find Lileks amusing
and I was sporting a little 1970s fashion vibe myself yesterday at Beladora HQ
 Note: earth toned hippy-ish dress and big jewelry

 
I like this big bold gold jewelry so much that I might even adopt it as my signature style for the summer.
If Marc Jacobs could bring back the Jody Foster Taxi Driver look with flared pants and floppy hats,
I can rock the big gold pendant can't I?

Have a great weekend.

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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Music - A Whiter Shade of Pale





From the Morton Report
On this day in 1967, Procol Harum went to #1 on the UK singles chart with a song that over 40 years later would be named the most-played record of the past 70 years (with more than 900 known recorded versions by other artists).




I just thought that you needed a little music trivia today.
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Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Vintage Jewelry - Why Not Wear It, Sell It or Restyle It?

Since I've been away in Las Vegas, partying it up and dancing on tables all night long
I've fallen way behind on catching up on all of your blogs.
why does FF love cooking?
where has our world travelling Tabitha gone on her latest vacation?
what fabulous things has Reggie been collecting?
who is worth quoting according to Christina?
when is David going to temp us with more vintage travel posts?
how was Pseu's trip to Paris?

Yes people, so many questions, so little time
there are things that I need to know
and to comment upon
but until then
I want to recommend 
this informative post by our Canadian jewelry expert
on how to restyle vintage fine jewelry


If you own a piece of fine jewelry that you are unlikely to wear
you can either sell your jewelry
or restyle it.
Unlike costume jewelry, fine jewelry isn't static. 
It can often be transformed into a more wearable item.
For example, at Beladora2.com we like to restyle vintage bar brooches into pendants.
Here's a Montana sapphire bar brooch which has been restyled into a pendant.

Another real life example of a restyled piece
is Lisa's art deco diamond brooch which has been added to a gold bangle bracelet
This bangle is totally wearable and brings the best of old and new jewelry together.
I'd wear this piece in a New York minute, wouldn't you?
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Sunday, June 5, 2011

Seeing The City From The 70th Story

OK, so every once in a while there is a welcomed alteration in my Vegas routine.
Last night I was invited to a soiree in one of those uber swanky suites with the wraparound terrace on the 70th floor of the new Cosmopolitan Hotel.
I didn't even know that there were buildings that high in Las Vegas
It was pretty impressive. 







There is no question that the view was superior
but I was also duly impressed with the fur lined hammock in suite's living room
You know a giant jacuzzi for 8 is one thing, but a fur lined hammock...
Really, how many hotel rooms do you know that have one?

After a quick stop at the party it was off to dinner at Joel Robuchon which I will write about in another post.
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