wild prairie

source

I want this for christmas so bad that I'm tempted to just get it myself and wrap it up in red and green with a big velvet ribbon and stick it under the tree. That's how much I want it. I've been getting out my Slim Aarons print almost twice weekly because I just can't stop looking at it. There's something about the home and homewares that's getting me excited at the moment, more excited than clothes, or beauty, or books, or movies. I've got new sheets, new pictures, and dreaming of enough coffee table books that my house just looks like this. Time to move out, maybe??

X

You have read this article apartment / art / books / christmas / home / houses / me / presents / want with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/12/wild-prairie.html. Thanks!

sunshine

kinfolk

"It is sunshine - flowers in sunshine, girls in sunshine, the nude in sunshine." 

Painter Frederick Frieseke, on his artistic goal 

X

You have read this article art / dreams / photos / pictures / quotes / summer with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/09/sunshine.html. Thanks!

cold beer beautiful girls

"Pink peonies are my favorite flowers; they remind me of my mother's garden in Napa, where I grew up. She received the vase on her 40th birthday, a gift from some of the crew on Apocalypse Now; she gave it to me on my 40th birthday. The yellow Pelican camera case was a gift from the camera crew on my film Somewhere—I'd been introduced to them by the late cinematographer Harris Savides—and later they worked on The Bling Ring. It reminds me of Harris and my camera team. The photo cube was a gift from photographer Andrew Durham—it's got pictures of my daughter from a trip to Morocco and Portugal when she was a toddler. The Contax T3 is my favorite camera; I use it all the time to take snaps on-set. The sparkling wine, called Sofia, is from my father's winery. When I was a kid he told me he would produce a vintage for me when I turned 21. The Louis Vuitton cherries were part of a display at the Vuitton store in Los Angeles; when they were taking the display down I asked if I could have them. The photograph of Charlotte Rampling was a present from the photographer Helmut Newton, whom I love. I'd written a piece about the image for Vogue, and he sent it to me after he read it. The framed artwork at right (with the words "Cold Beer Beautiful Girls") is by Ed Ruscha; I'd borrowed it to use on the set of Somewhere and ended up buying it. I've loved Steiff bears since I was a child. My husband gave me this one years ago. Now it's in my kids' room. I love that I have an excuse to buy more of them." 

Sofia Coppola's favourite things. BRB while the internet explodes.

X

You have read this article art / flowers / inspiration / photos / pictures / quotes / sofia coppola / style with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/08/cold-beer-beautiful-girls.html. Thanks!

all of the light

freunde von freunden

Why do houses from Los Angeles always seem like they've emerged, fully formed, from an Ed Ruscha print? This one is the dream; pistachio-green cabinets in the kitchen, washed cedar floors in the lounge room, fresh flowers drooping over white tables in the bedroom, and books simply everywhere. I think it might be the light that makes it beautiful - all of that wonderful, sun-drenched, champagne bubble light that Los Angeles produces so well - or it might just be this house (with all those books, and all those flowers, and all that wonderful, wonderful white noise). I have a friend that wants to move to Los Angeles, and I know if she did she'd have a house like this, and I would be visiting every day if I could. The dream.

X

You have read this article apartment / art / books / dreams / flowers / future / home / houses / magazines / photos / pictures / want / white with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/04/all-of-light.html. Thanks!

alignment

Gary Bigeni is one of my most favourite Australian designers. His fluid, elegant silhouettes are some of the most flattering in the entire world, his colour scheme the most playful, his prints the brightest, boldest, most keenly realised. I still remember the first Gary Bigeni piece I bought. A plain, simple tee shirt in my favourite shade of oatmeal beige from bloodorange, it was a silk cotton mix that dropped straight from my shoulders with a mercurial sheen. I wore it on and off (mostly on) for the next three years. I wore it today in celebration of Gary's perfect simplicity. His new collection - Alignment - draws inspiration from the confidence and self-certainty of the older women, assured of her style and her position and herself. The styles were the kinds that you seem to be constantly searching for - the voluminous draped shift dress, the slightly baggy tapered trousers, the silk tee shirt, the perfect loose sweater - some in Gary's trademark block colours and neutrals, others in the most incredible of prints. A collaboration with the Melbourne-based artist Matthew Johnson, the muted, washed out geometric dot patterns, or the impressionistic lattice work formed by squares or hexagons adorned the separates. The interplay between colour and neutrals, print and block, drape and fit was perfect, as always.

X

You have read this article art / australia / colour / fashion / fashion show / fashion shows / MBFWA / RAFW with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/04/alignment.html. Thanks!

paris photo diary

"What truly makes Paris beautiful is the intermingling of the monumental and the personal, the abstract and the footsore particular, it and you. A city of vast and impersonal set piece architecture, it is also a city of small and intricate, improvised experience... We love Paris not out of nostalgia but because we love the look of light on things, as opposed to the look of light from things, the world reduced to images radiating from screens. Paris was the site of the most beautiful commonplace civilisation there has ever been: cafes, brasseries, parks, lemons on trays, dappled light on bourgeois boulevards, department stores with skylights and windows like doors everywhere you look. If it is not so much wounded - all civilisations are that, since history wounds us all - as chastened and overloud in its own defense, it nonetheless goes on. The persistence of this civilisation in the sideshow of postmodern culture is my subject, and the life it continues to have my consolation. I see the moon these days from Paris because I once saw Paris from the moon." 

Adam Gopnik, "A Family in France" from Paris to the Moon
 

Waking up to a classic Parisian view // Walking through the entrance to the Village St Paul // Majestic Notre Dame Cathedral // Nanashi also make good cake // That bloody tower // my favourite; the booksellers by the Seine // Locks on the Pont Neuf // Basilica of Sacre Coeur // Three delicious photographs from the Inez & Vinoodh exhibition at the Gagosian // A carousel and a by-gone era in the Tuileries // That vaulted ceiling of Notre Dame // What a view, baby, what a view.

It seems too futile to say it, when so many other have come before me, when it's so patently obvious if you take even a brief cursory look at this blog, when it's been said so many times that it seems to have been rendered completely meaningless. I love Paris. I love Paris. I love Paris. I love Paris because of Madeline and Monet, I love Paris because of my mum, I love Paris because of Isabel and Phoebe, I love Paris because it's the only city in the world that I can truly say and believe is beautiful - heartbreakingly beautiful - not just a cool hangout, not just somewhere to eat tacos and drink beers with friends, a place that seems to have emerged, fully formed, breathtakingly spectacular from the first flutter of the eyelashes, on screen and in books and in pictures and in magazines and in my mind, always in my mind, because loving Paris is like walking - upright and resolutely aware - in a permanent dream-state because it's just not possible for everything to be this beautiful and you must be dreaming for it to be like this because if it was real, if it was really truly real, how could you ever, ever think of leaving? Paris, you're the one (I know this now, more than I have ever known it before, I'm just sorry that it took so long). I'll be seeing you.

X

You have read this article apartment / art / cake / europe / food / france / holiday / look books / love / paris / photos / pictures / quotes / travel with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/02/paris-photo-diary.html. Thanks!

the louvre by night

Every time I go to Paris I say I'm not going to the Louvre but I always inevitably end up there. Every time I go to the Louvre I get a map but I always inevitably end up throwing it away and wandering aimlessly, discovering parts of the Museum I must have seen before but have no recollection of. Every time I wander I somehow always inevitably end up on that viewing platform opposite the Winged Victory of Samothrace, my mum's favourite, thinking of how beautiful it is. Every time I end up at the Winged Victory of Samothrace I always inevitably decide that next time I come to Paris I think I just might go to the Louvre, after all.

X

You have read this article art / france / holiday / paris / photos / pictures / travel with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-louvre-by-night.html. Thanks!

framed

Sometimes I get distracted in art galleries by the frames. I know it's probably not very fashionable to say this but I love a good old gilded number. I love flourishes, gold leaf and crazy, baroque embellishment. It doesn't work on everything - you wouldn't want your modern so and so in one of these bad boys would you? - but it's almost necessary that if you're lucky enough to own a Turner, or a Rembrandt or a Caravaggio then it had better be in a frame like this.

X

You have read this article art / europe / france / history / holiday / paris / photos / pictures / travel with the title art. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2013/02/framed.html. Thanks!