Yes to All >> Steve McQueen

Yes to All >> JFK and Jackie

Arts Visuels >> Classics >> Jacques Henri Lartigue

De De (his cousin), Diving with Water Ring, 1911

I am totally enamored with Jacques Henri Lartigue and his work.  Born in 1894, he received a camera for his seventh birthday, and from then on essentially kept a photo diary of his life.  Fascinated by the things most young boys are interested in, including cars, dogs, his family and friends at play, aircraft, many of his most famous photographs were taken during his childhood.

ZYX24 Takes Off, 1910

My Hydro-Glider with Propeller, (Self-Portrait), 1904

Zissou, 1911  (How hilarious is this image??  Have you ever seen someone look so serious (or fully dressed) while in an intertube?)

Grand Prix de Circuit de la Seine, 1912

Apparently, Wes Anderson is a big fan and has modeled many of his characters and images after Lartigue's work, including Max from Rushmore.  Also did you notice the photo of Zissou?  Bet that's where he got Steve Zissou's name!

As he continued to document his surroundings and outings for his entire life, he later took many photos of fashionable Parisian life and French vacation spots, but I'll save that era for another day.

Today, I'm loving the joie de vivre, humor, and idiosyncrasies captured in his childhood photographs.

Can you believe his technical capability at such a young age?  This was before digital made everything look good, y'all.

Yes to All >> Jeep Wagoneer

LustList.

LustList >> For the Library >> Forget Me Not

The Huffington Post column "Let's Bring Back," authored by Lesley M. M. Blume, is about to be released as a book!  In the column, Blume features vestiges of bygone eras that have been forgotten along the way but deserve to be brought back.  Such as:

Silk Stockings: “... Once the most divine mistress gift, along with chocolates, roses, and that sort of thing.”

Radio Dramas:  “... A picture may be worth a thousand words, but radio plays let the imagination run wild.”
Femme Fatales:  “Hollywood used to be absolutely heaving with them.”
Skating parties:  “Best when followed by hot buttered rum and a divine after-party supper.”

I'm particularly obsessed with this one:

The Stork Club: "...Each little table sported a discreet telephone on which you could call the other tables.  That is a charming feature."

I'm dying to work on a project in which we could incorporate this idea!  Now I'm all panicked that someone else in the business is going to read this same article/book, and in like three months I'm going to read about a cool new bar in New York that has phones on each table.

(Click image for slightly more legible text size.) 

Yes to All >> Le Mepris

Bordering on Obsession >> Paul Newman

Has there ever been a more handsome man?  I am convinced there has not.

Classics >> A Good Day

Yes to All >> Mr. Newman

Fashun >> Pierre Balmain, 1954

 Love these photos unearthed by Brooklyn fashion blogger Sighs and Whispers taken for Life Magazine from backstage at a Pierre Balmain couture show.  What an amazing snapshot of a bygone, and oh-so-glamorous, era.  

Also interesting to compare to current photos we see from backstage at fashion shows!  Don't these models seem much older and more decidedly feminine than runway models today?  I feel like these women look very mature and elegant.

Original post with more photos here.

Listening To >> Classics >> Summertime

Late-summer heat has this song playing on repeat in my head.  Here, the classic jazz standard by George Gershwin performed by a few of the greats.  Amazing to hear how each of them interprets it, no?

A very spare, introspective version from Ella Fitzgerald.



Possibly on the other end of the spectrum from the one above by Ella, Big Mama Thornton, who I l-o-v-e, brings something totally different to this classic... Though not the classic arrangement, this might be my favorite.

A very lush recording from Ella with Louis Armstrong, and maybe the version that comes to mind when you think of this song.

The original recording by Billie Holliday.

Stripes + Stripes =

photo by Rene Maltete

via Swiss Miss

Summer Lovin >> Rifle Paper Co.

Loved this board by Rifle Paper Co.  Makes you want to take a camping/road trip, no? 

Bon Weekend

Nostalgia + Cars pt II >> Defenders and Wagoneers

Classic >> Slim Aarons

Summer Lovin >> Surf

I don't know if it's that I live in California now or what, but surfing and surf culture seems to be a much bigger part of my concept of summer than ever before, and I can't get enough of surf videos and photos like these.  

But I swear it's not just me, or even California, and I point to Saturdays Surf NYC as evidence... when before has surfing ever been a big deal to Manhattanites?  

But even still, it makes me excited to be a Californian, where surfing seems to be everywhere you look in the summer-- surf boards strapped on cars, being hauled on bikes, stacked on people's balconies, etc.  The other day I drove up the Pacific Coast Highway from LA to Santa Barbara, watching hoards of surfers all along the coast, and relished it thinking, "Where else? Where else can you watch surfers from the highway as you drive home?"

[Secret Forts]

Le Mans Classic 2010

LOVE these photos by Laurent Nivalle of the Le Mans Classic 2010.

I like the black and whites and the colors equally, and they each take on certain aspects of the event.  The black and whites are crisp and have an immediateness, engaging you with the high-speed action and precision of the event.  The colors, meanwhile, have such wonderful romantic tones that make them cinematic and retro-- perfect for capturing the elegance and nostalgia of the classic cars.

Click through for more...

Let's Bring Back >> Styling of the Mad Men Era

In advance of Mad Men's return on Sunday, Huffington Post writer Lesley Blume has an excellent column today on what she wishes would be brought back from the Mad Men Era, including: supper clubs with tiny lamps and animal print walls (agree! so chic! so glam!), coifs (such a better word than "up-dos"-- I think I could get into something called a "coif"), hats for women, and hats for men.

Here, an excerpt from the article.  I was just going to summarize and share a link to it, but it's so well-written I just had to post part of it here.

"Time-wise, the Mad Men era is so close to our own, and yet so far away culturally. Elaborate social ritual is of paramount importance in the Mad Men realm; details are to be fussed over, not shunted aside in favor of soulless efficiency. The Mad Men world makes a fetish of ornamentation and deifies mysterious artifice; our culture, on the other hand, prizes an almost apathetic informality and rewards the tackiest forms of extroversion. 

I once saw Mad Men brilliantly described as an exercise in "loathing nostalgia;" indeed, the epoch's glamor co-mingles uneasily with many of its deplorable practices and attitudes. The sexism, the homophobia, the racism: those things can stay done and dusted. 

Yet there are other things from that decade that are acutely missed, perhaps especially by style-minded people who didn't get to experience them the first time around. For those of us who grew up in the subsequent era of Gap-sponsored khaki casualness and fast food, the Mad Men world represents a glamor lacking in our lives today."

You can find the rest of the effects she wishes would be brought back here, including horn-rimmed glasses for men, foxy flight attendant uniforms, and three martini lunches.  So worth checking out-- the captions for the images are as articulate as the above excerpt and very entertaining.

Nostalgia >> Land Cruisers and VW's "Thing"

Going with a theme today apparently... nostalgia.  Sometimes it just happens.  But seriously, I love these cars.

The "Thing"-- removable doors, top, and a windshield that folds down.  What more could you ask for in a car to hit the beach in?

 Notice the available colors above are "Pumpkin Orange," "Sunshine Yellow," and "Blizzard White."  Not only did the colors have great names, but they were painted in that wonderful flat lacquer that doesn't have any of the obnoxious glittery "pearlescent" nonsense that car colors have now.

via Secret Forts