Miro Vogue cover

Yes, this is a French Vogue cover, and yes, the artist is Joan Miro.

I wonder when Vogue will decide to let Lara Stone keep her clothes on and will actually do a cover like this again.

You can look at a painting for a whole week and then never think about it again. You can also look at a painting for a second and think about it for the rest of your life.” ~~ Joan Miro

Color me mine

Is this what spring is about?

Pierre Hardy Neoprene and Patent Leather sandals

Where did I find these beauties?

At Polyvore.

Every fashionista knows this site, at least that's what I thought until I realized my fashionista friend didn't know about it.

And yes, I want to increase her shopping possibilities, so more about Polyvore just for her.

"Next time you stand in front of your closet with no idea what to wear, remember there’s an army of wannabe Anna Wintours and Rachel Zoes on Polyvore.com ready to offer inspiration. In just a few clicks, these aspiring stylists, artists, and creative kids-next-door can turn out a trendy head-to-toe look by tapping Polyvore’s vast database of designer apparel and accessories. Leading the charge is Jess Lee, cofounder and VP of product of the online platform that straddles the intersection of style and social commerce."

Read more about this creative startup at Fast Company.

Go play now.

"What a great illusion is to suppose that beauty is goodness."~~ Leo Tolstoy

Roksanda Ilincic

Buy this here, it's 50% off. We like that.

Roksanda Ilincic is a Serbian designer living in London.

She is known for her bright, avant-garde dresses. 

You can see her 2012 Spring collection here.

Effortless Elegance.

"Elegance is refusal."~~ Coco Chanel

Well said, Coco.

Cinemagraphs II

Another cinemagraph from here.

I found this article in The Atlantic, explaining more about how Jamie Beck and Kevin Burg are creating these beautiful images.

"We began seriously creating them during fashion week this past February. Our first few animated images were sequenced still shots looped in rapid succession which is a fairly common way of making an animated image. From there we began utilizing more fluid motion isolated in certain parts of an image to capture a moment of time, but also to un-freeze a still photograph by showing that moment's temporal movement. The process involves still and video photography but editing is very manual and varies greatly from one to another so we're routinely solving new problems when creating them.
We feel there are many exciting applications for this type of moving image. There's movement in everything and by capturing that plus the great things about a still photograph you get to experience what a video has to offer without the time commitment a video requires. There's something magical about a still photograph -- a captured moment in time -- that can simultaneously exist outside the fraction of a second the shutter captures.
To put it in less "artspeak" form: Our Cinemagraphs are a way of adding motion to a still image. On average, the more intricate ones take a day to edit and the simpler ones take 3-4 hours. It's something we'd been experimenting with for about a year but it really came together during fashion week with the post "Les Tendrils" and culminated with "Anna Sees Everything" which touches on the "ultimate portrait" -- an image that captures the essence of a person through an action or a scene they are closely associated with. Another example of that is "We all get dressed for Bill." The image format of these is .gif -- and that's been highly influential to their style since a .gif adds many interesting and archaic limitations to what is possible. The .gif format is practically as old as the internet itself and we find it interesting that as a format it's getting new life, particularly on Tumblr. But ultimately it's a delivery mechanism in the same way JPEG is to still images."
from The Atlantic.

My name is Marc

Paris through the Window, Marc Chagall, 1913

"My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."~ Marc Chagall

Banksy ~ Girl with Red Balloon

Banksy ~ Girl with Red Balloon

"Hope is the dream of a soul awake."

Two Sisters

Two Sisters(On the Terrace)

Pierre Renoir

For Octavia.

Confine yourself to the present.

Wassily Kandinsky

Composition X

"Confine yourself to the present."~Marcus Aurelius

Earth laughs in flowers.

Tamara De Lempicka

Portrait of Ira P

Happy Anniversary!

Marc Chagall

Les Maries de la Tour Eiffel

Les Maries de Kauai

Couture Dress made by me.

Beautiful Kauai.

The World's Most Expensive Photograph

Self-Portrait by Cindy Sherman

This photograph was sold at Christie's this week for a record sum of $3,890,500, making it the most expensive photograph sold to date.

Cindy Sherman is an artist that is actually alive and still working. She normally works in series, photographing herself in various costumes and different makeup.

In 1995, she was the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowships, also knows as the "Genius Awards".

 This fellowship grants $500,000 over five years, no strings attached, to important scholars to encourage their future creative work.

More self-portraits

Sunday Shine

Portrait of Adele Bloch Bauer

Gustav Klimt ~ 1907

"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”~Leo Tolstoy

Egoiste

L'Egoiste Nr.15

Natalia Vodianova by Paolo Roversi

These images are from issue 15 of Egoiste Magazine, aka as The Most Beautiful Magazine in the world.

Egoiste, the French cult magazine that comes out every few years, is back with a new issue this month.

In US, you can only buy it from a certain bookstore in New York. 

If you want to get it, you can go here.

Egoiste was created in 1977 by Nicole Wisniak that wanted to bring together the best photographers and best writers of the moment. There have only been 15 issues so far.

"Le plus beau journal du monde" L'Express

"Is it a magazine or a work of art?"~Philippe Sollers, Le Point

"A masterpiece of esthetics, intelligence and even ethics"~Elle

As you can see, my expectations are pretty high.

Please arrive safely to me.

Spend some time alone each day.

Hokusai Print

"Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values."~Dalai Lama

On the Shortness of Life

Death and Life

Gustav Klimt~1916

I got some bad news today, that made me think at Seneca's "On the Shortness of Life" essay.

You can read all of it here for free or just go through the quotes that I chose.

It's pretty inspirational.

Enjoy and Reflect.

"Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing."
"You have all the fears of mortals and all the desires of immortals. You will hear many men saying: "After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties." And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? "

"The fairest day in hapless mortals' life
Is ever first to flee."

"Why do you delay," says he, "Why are you idle? Unless you seize the day, it flees." Even though you seize it, it still will flee; therefore you must vie with time's swiftness in the speed of using it, and, as from a torrent that rushes by and will not always flow, you must drink quickly. And, too, the utterance of the bard is most admirably worded to cast censure upon infinite delay, in that he says, not "the fairest age," but "the fairest day." Why, to whatever length your greed inclines, do you stretch before yourself months and years in long array, unconcerned and slow though time flies so fast? "

"Life is divided into three periods—that which has been, that which is, that which will be. Of these the present time is short, the future is doubtful, the past is certain. For the last is the one over which Fortune has lost control, is the one which cannot be brought back under any man's power."

"It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it."

Lucius Annaeus Seneca