sneak

celebutopia

Forget Alexa Chung. If I had a pair of superga sneakers I'd wear them with jeans and oversized jumpers and big gold bangles and messy hair and I'd wear them all the time. None of this mini skirt business, no sir. It's just all Ashley Olsen, all the time.

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aussie aussie aussie



This always happens. I say I'm not interested and that I don't care and then, suddenly, I'm sitting in my lounge room at six in the morning crying a river at the Opening Ceremony. I guess there is always a sense of dormant patriotism that rears its head. And living in a house full of boys certainly doesn't hurt your chances of falling in love with sport, either. And, at its heart, sport is all about passion. And I can always get behind passion. I can't wait for the feverish early morning cups of tea rugged up by the television with my brothers, taking in our favourites - swimming, track and field, decathlon, walking (who doesn't love walking? ridiculous sport), judo, gymnastics, basketball, hockey and my personal love; dressage. It's fun! It should be.

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cinematic style - Franka Potente in The Bourne Identity



I'm not going to waste any time talking about how good this movie is. It's pretty fucking good. And, I guess, with the redux coming out in a matter of days, now seems about as good a time as any to revisit it in all its fast-paced, action-film-on-crack glory. The film that turned Matt Damon into a star. And what a star - they did a good job in this film of making him look like one too. Farm-boy, bred-on-milk-and-corn good looks and a piercing stare, but a jujitsu-honed body that could snap at any minute and, ninja-style, render a whole office of customs officers completely useless. He looked harmless and dressed harmless (those turtlenecks!) but boy he packed a punch. But really it's Franka Potente that I want to talk about. I loved her early noughties uniform in this film. Midi skirts, wedge knee high boots, leather jackets and, yep, more turtlenecks. It kind of reminds me a little bit of what Julia Roberts wore in Notting Hill. There isn't that much between the two films, so it makes sense. It just has a little more of that Charlie's Angels badass kick to it. I mean, those leather jackets, let's talk about those. Motorcycle jackets with bootleg jeans to charm the pants of the porter at the Hotel Regina. Tailored leather jackets with elasticated waists (DIY peplums!) for hand-on-hand combat in Parisian apartments. Wool coats with leather epaulettes and ribbed sweaters to hide out from bounty hunters in the country. The kind of clothes that you can get stuff done in.

She was no, nonsense, Marie was, and I think that's what I like best about her. In the tradition of action movies, she was a hapless "civvie" dragged along for the ride because of unhappy circumstance who ends up being more useful than anyone could know. This is action movie lore. But somehow Marie ended up being better than just your average Jane Black screaming her way through various action scenes. A little known German actress at the time, Potente was exposed to international audiences in the German thriller Run Lola Run. So, I guess, in many ways, it was a risk to cast Potente, but she was so right for the role. The way she contrasts against the other main woman in the film - Julia Stiles - is perfect. American CIA bureaucrat versus European layabout slipping through the cracks of a cracked system. She even had choppy hair, against Stiles' long blonde mane. That tattoo, that go-getter sensibility, that motorcycle jacket (pretty Acne, no?). What a lady boss, the perfect partner for the butt-kicking Jason Bourne, on a mission to get his memory back. I'm sure you've all seen this film, but next time, take a chance to appreciate those leather jackets. They're pretty fine.

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matches

“Like a work of art,” she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which traversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave.... In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the clouds going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs Ramsay said." 

Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse


These are my matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. 

Buckets of fresh flowers from the market // Dreaming of London, cake and tea and time to read by myself, thanks to Jessica on the Benah blog // Of course, at the first sign of sun, I whipped out the sandals // What a dreamy set up at Violet Cakes in London // A cotton canvas candy-cane stripe wrap // I made chocolate mousse with strawberries for impromptu dessert the other day. It was delicious. // I want to live at Violet Cakes // I found a whole heap of postcards from friends this morning. I had packed them up in a paperbag and stashed them at the bottom of my underwear drawer for some reason! How amazing is the Barcelona one? I miss travelling.

It's funny, because it's always going to be about the small things. Always about sitting for hours in a cafe with a slice of something nice and a big newspaper and not thinking about anything. It's never going to be about 15 course degustation meals and bright, blowsy molecular gastronomy. It's Nigella, not Heston. Always. Always. Maybe that's the meaning of life? Finding time to revel in the small stuff? Finding time to sweat it, with shallots and lescure butter and just a pinch of salt, because it is important. Or maybe none of this is important, not at all. Not sandals, not buckets of mixed roses, not cotton canvas candy-cane wraps. But thinking about all of it is kind of the point, isn't it? I remember when I was writing my final essay for English last semester, about whether or not a work of fiction can truly convey the perspective of a non-human other (ie a tree, or a lion, or, in the case of the books we were studying, a Tasmanian Tiger). Delia Falconer, who is an Australian writer and a bloody good one at that, wrote a fantastic article on the subject that sums up so much in so little. The very act of writing from an animal's perspective, and trying to discern what they might be thinking is intensely, immensely human. I think the same about questioning the meaning of life. We may not ever get an answer - or, indeed, we may get hundreds and hundreds and hundreds - but the devil is all in the act of trying to find out. Perhaps, as Lily Briscoe discovered, the great revelation may never really come, but there will be plenty of small miracles daily. I live for those. I live for sunshine on a rainy day and forgotten postcards found at the bottom of underwear drawers.

When I'm in London early next year I'm going to go to every single place mentioned in this guide at least once and Violet Cakes every day. I've been slavishly clicking through the slideshows on their website, feverishly google-searching, saving images, making plans on dog-eared maps, booking morning tea and afternoon tea and tea tea tea dates in already. It's not till February! But I know a good cake when I see it. And I'm looking at one right now. I fear my next London trip is going to be dominated by cake eating, on the back of a Paris fortnight that is going to be characterised by macaron eating. This is definitely not a problem, not a problem at all. Violet Cakes, keep a ginger and molasses cake slice warm for me! (also ping: Nordic Bakery, get those cinnamon buns out).

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Express



The next time I'm in Europe I'm going to catch trains, I'm going to catch lots of trains, and I'll just have a couple of Louis Vuitton duffel bags with me, and they'll all be full of books - books and oatmeal-coloured sweaters - and I'll lean back into those velvet chesterfield seats and drink a vodka martini, or better yet, a tall, cold glass of Maker's Mark and Apple Juice and I'll eat delicious things from gilded plates and watch the sunset from square windows and sleep in a tiny nook and wrap cashmere around me always and I'll have coffee in Munich and lunch in Brussels and dinner in Paris and oh, how wonderful it's going to be!

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boy

"Isn't it super to have it to ourselves?" Jack said at that moment. "I feel like a sultan, or some millionaire. They do - you know - ring up restaurants and say they want to book all the tables so that they won't be disturbed." 

"They do?" Benny asked eagerly. At least it was conversation and he seemed to be making the best of the place being empty. 

"Well, I did it today, of course! Carlo, we need the whole place to ourselves... a pianist possibly. No? Well, all right. Just a few violinists at the table later. Just don't let any hoi polloi in, no awful Dubliners having their lunch or anything sordid like that."

They laughed and laughed just like last night...

"I must remember every detail of this place to tell Mario about it," Benny said, looking happily around. 

"You're lovely, Benny," Jack said.

Maeve Binchy, Circle of Friends



1, 5, 6 - La Garconne // 2 - Freunde von Freunden // 3 - Mymu Espadrilles from My Chameleon, Maison.Balzac L'eglise candle, Isabel Marant sweater from The Corner Shop, Aesop Resurrection hand balm. // 4 - Kinfolk Volume 2, Rachel I need to give this back to you!!! // 5 - Ambitious holiday reading lists

This scene is probably my favourite in the whole of Circle of Friends. It's right after the 'big' dance, the kind of scene with lots of drama and action and romance and generally considered to be a turning point in the novel. But I like this one better. I think that - in Circle of Friends as in life - what happens after the turning point is what counts. Alone in an Italian restaurant in the docks of Dublin, Jack Foley, the blue-eyed boy captain of the Rugby team and Benny, hopeless, hopeful Benny, have their first lunch together. At the party Benny got all dolled up in a dress that exploited her ample cleavage because she was desperately in love with Jack and she wanted him to smile at her. The next day, without a party dress to wear, she grabs a green sweater from the cupboard of her friend's room-mate and ties her hair back into a big bunch. She's not wearing anything special, not dolled up in the slightest, but Jack's eyes lights up when he sees her. She's just lovely. I've always loved the character of Big Benny Hogan. She's a small-town girl navigating university and friendship and family and Dublin in the late 1950s, and this novel is one of those coming-of-age tales that simply do not age. The good ones - Bonjour Tristesse, Looking for Alibrandi - will resonate with you even when you have come of age, even when you are much too old to be worrying about first kisses, first loves, first broken hearts. 

As soon as I saw the new La Garconne editorial I thought of this scene. I thought of Benny smiling over candlelight in her sweater and jeans and espadrilles and I knew that I had found my new uniform. I'm not the only one who has fallen in love - Dee and me must be on the same page. How do they always, always, always get that styling so right? I dug out my Mymu espadrilles, a Mediterranean summer distilled into a shoe, shrugged on an oatmeal sweater and turned the cuffs up on my jeans. I'm not going anywhere - still home sick - but I felt nice rugged up and cosy in my room. I've been using my Aesop handcream all through winter to counteract cold hands and dry skin, and I love the smell. We have rosemary leaf in our garden and there always seems to be mandarins and cumquats around, and so it reminds me of my place. When the weather loses some of this icy chill running through it at the moment I'm going to spread out in the garden with one of my (many) new books and read for a little bit. Holidays are almost over, and I don't want to go back to uni. It's my last semester and I'm not quite sure that I'm ready to let go. Not yet.

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Melbourne photo diary


Federation Square // Trams!!! // Delicious lunches at Nama Nama // A visit to Thursday Sunday's studio // Mixed Business for an amazing breakfast

Blue skies, being cold, eating well, walking lots, seeing plenty, winding down and growing up. That's Melbourne!

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toothy


I've come down with something real bad and I'm lying at home rugged up and silent so I'm not smiling per se but here are a few things that might make me smile; my brother being back from queensland, the last three episodes of game of thrones season 2, a new book, warm raglan sweaters and not brushing my hair. 

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Baking with HRY and RKB

 "The sublime moment of cooking, though, is really the moment when nature becomes culture, stuff becomes things. It is the moment when the red onions have been chopped and the bacon has been sliced into lardons and the chestnuts have been peeled, and they are all mijoteing together in the pot, and then - a specific moment - the colours being to change, and the smells gather together just at the level of your nose. Everything beings to mottle, blend from raw to cooked. The chestnuts, if you're doing chestnuts, turn a little damp, a little weepy. That's what they do; everything weeps. 

The passage from stuff to things, the moment when the vegetables weep, is a meditative moment and has no point, really, except the purely ephemeral one of seeing it happen. You cook for yourself, or I do anyway. Martha picks through things, New York girl with a New York appetite. Luke, like an astronaut, would prefer to live on a diet of milkshakes and nutrient pellets. Cooking, for middle-class, end-of-the-century people, is our only direct, not entirely debased line with the hermetic life, with Zen sitting, with just doing things without a thought.

No wonder monks make good cheese."

Adam Gopnik, "Lessons from Things" from Paris to the Moon


 All pictures by Rachel Kara. Isn't she a talented thing?

We had been building up to this afternoon for a long time. Maybe since we first made the plan the week before, maybe since we first bonded over lamb sandwiches and lemon tarts, maybe since we first commented on each others blogs saying "what is this mysterious Youeni place and where can I attend?". We had been building up to this afternoon the whole of our friendship, really. The reality was, as it so often is, so much better. Some toasted sandwiches pregnant with cheese and tomato and basil and all of that good stuff, some gingerbread dough, sly and short, a cake with great aspirations of cinnamon glory. So, we burnt it a little. So it didn't rise as much as we hoped, so instead of slicing it in two and filling it with cream and raspberries we ended up slathering the whole whipped-up, rich rosewater-y mess over the top and around the sides like a Cake Boss. So, by the time we finished it was dark outside and Masterchef had begun and we had spoiled whatever plans we had of dinner with cake and cream and cookies and cheese on toast. Okay, I lied. It was cheese and butter on toast. Delicious tubes of Lescure butter with flecks of real salt peppered throughout like rough-hewn crystals.

I once read somewhere, I think it was the OG domestic goddess - Nigella herself - who said it, that baking is an activity imbued with an uncanny sense of magic. Unlike any other kind of cooking, which is less about transformation than it is about a kind of relentless onslaught against a thing's natural state, baking is a work of alchemy. How many times have I failed in the kitchen because i haven't followed recipes to the letter? Leveled cups of flour. Leveled tablespoons of baking powder. Leveled jugs of golden syrup or canola oil (rose bakery carrot cake, I'm looking at you). Baking in my kitchen wearing track pants and a sweater is the closest I have ever come to feeling like I was in Harry Potter. That moment, that wonderful, awe-inspiring moment, when the gooey wet mess that you poured into the cake tin and placed, somewhat doubtfully into the warm confines of the oven, swells with such magnificence and pride, and bronzes and crackles along the top, and turns into something that it wasn't and now is. How did it go from that to this? How did it, to use Adam Gopnik's term, go from stuff to things?

I don't think I'll ever get to the bottom of this mystery, and I don't particularly want to. That sense of wonder is what allows me - even when things don't turn out quite right - to still be overjoyed at what I have produced. I cook hopefully, and so does Rachel. I think that's what makes us suited to working together, and that's what makes us able to hatch grand plans of world food domination, one Sydney cafe at a time, and that's what made this afternoon so much fun. The first of many - the next will be a picnic in my garden in warmer climes, we'll be taking menu suggestions or invite requests shortly - this baking day was warm and joyous and long and delicious, as all baking days ought to be if they possibly can. It signalled at something we already knew - stuff into things, Gopnik there you go again - things it can be easy to overlook. That Rachel can make a mean toasted sandwich, that our food collaborations are going to continue long into the future, that this kind of stuff - photos and words and hopes and dreams and not just numbers and stuff and a rating out of ten, because what's the fun in that? - is what people really want to hear and read about when they look at food, and if it isn't then explain the whole Masterchef phenomenon, hmm? And that it really is better to travel hopefully than it is to arrive.

For more pictures of this eventful afternoon, see Rachel's blog. And if you love us like we love baking, then check out our first ever collaboration, a review of Sydney's coffee-providore du jour, The Grounds. There's something in this whole food thing. Rachel and I are still working our heads around it, but when we do, you can be sure that we'll be all over it. Stay tuned!

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cinematic style (sort of) - Stana Katic's coats in Season 3 of Castle


Sure, she's got great hair. She rocks an equipment silk shirt and a pair of flared jeans like it's her business. She's got the masculine-chic dress of a pretty girl doin' a man's job down pat (big watch, turtle neck sweaters, heaps of blazers. No skirts. Ever). And I guess it would be hard to look bad when you've got Nathan Fillion running around after you drooling like a dog and turning you into a bad-guy ass-kicker known as Nikki Heat. But it's not about any of that. Not at all. It's all about those beautiful, beautiful coats. Belted camel numbers, collarless crimson pieces, cropped pea coats, sweeping - yet still fitted - military toppers, the kind of leather jacket that would make James Dean swoon and trenches galore (well, she is a detective). Girlfriend - or whoever styles girlfriend, you genius you - has clearly taken a leaf out of the Detective Benson playbook, and for that I, and all other devotees of crime time, owe you a debt of gratitude. There's something about a lady policeman rocking a turtleneck and a cashmere coat, you know? There's something about how great a belted coat tied tight at the waist looks as you duck under police tape. Not that I would know anything about that, of course. I thought I had a wardrobe of coats. This girl is a professional coat-wearer. And damn she looks good doing it!

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