But back to Reality

Walking from Chinatown to Soho after dim sum at Harmony Palace (94 Mott Street) with the Queen of All things Delicous, Sandy Pei (owner of Snacky in Williamsburg), we saw a little Target sign and found the Proenza Schouler for Target 3-day intro sale at Opening Cermony on Howard Street! it was cooooollld out, so it wasn't so crowded when we got there.
There are some really cute things in girly cuts-loved all the visible seams on the cigarette pants and the delicate cheapo cotton shirts in patterned blueberry blues, grapey purples, cirtus yelloows, cherry, persimmon--I believe I was really feeling the fruit colors pretty vividly.
We picked up some pieces fast but sadly mostly larges left in everything. That blue dress there? So pretty but
1. Only XL's left
2. I'm not a fan of polyester ''silk''. Like those pajama pants my mother used to buy me.
3. Still very pretty and I wish they'd had my size as did about a thousand other chicks, I'm sure.

We got some tops but I'll have to return the dress I couldn't resist (in a raspberry amoeba-like print with those visible bust seams I love but in my heart I know really don't look good on me).
The good news is I can bring it back to any Target which is always a fun outing.
You have until the end of today to check it out, so bust out of work early!

What I did on my Weekend Vacation

What a great weekend. Kaelea, my what's up-to-the minute and cool guru, and I went to see the Ruffian show at the National Arts Club. We saw Spring 2007 as well back in October which knocked us out, but here are some pics of my favorites from Fall 2007:See the whole collection and keep up to the minute notes on all the shows at NY Magazine On-line . Look at the whole Spring Collection as well...here's a peek:

Baby? It's cold Outside!

I have too many coats but now that it finally got cold in NY I'm wearing just one: a long A-line black tight weave with a giant black long haired sheeps wool collar I found for $50 in a vintage shop in Milan. It makes my head look really small but it's warm baby. If I could get three more, I love the cut of these coats I saw on the perfectly beautiful site, Le Train Bleu.
It's cold outside but let's feel good out there.

(Top: Bi La Li Trapeze Coat on sale for $310;
Middle: Bi La Li Loose Wrap Jacket on sale for $385;
Below: Mackage Anabel Coat, $620)

Sandy!

Happy Birthday Sandy! Hope it was wonderful about it!
Love, Icky and Maxine

Just print this out for your Loved One

Dear (their name here),
Just wanted to let you know that Valentine's Day is February 14th so if you're thinking about what we can do or where we can go to make it a little more special, or what you can get for me that will really make me feel great and thus score you some major points, just read this blog entitled "Your Destiny is Stone Golden" at www.bonbonoiseaudesign.blogspot.com
And as always, actions speak louder than words or gifts but gifts are pretty good too.
Love,
(Your name here)

You can now just e-mail it from your secret e-mail address or put it on the fridge, near the coffeemaker, or in their coat pocket.

Les Coeurs Necklace

The "Les Coeurs" necklace is the classic "I love you" and I think you're sexy" necklace. I've kept in my core collection because people respond to it in a very lovely way. That and it's sexy-a waterfall of vintage brass heart charms dripping into your decollatage. It's a classic Valentine.

LOVE

Two days left to get this. There's 11 of them. Yessssss! I wonder if they're Robert Indiana OK'd.

A Little Chocolate and some notes on Bars

A giant box of chocolate for just one person is weird and overwhelming to me. I'm a fan of the intimate gift. I say, finish with a little chocolate after a little something special and you're golden. My choices?
1. Baci, the Italian chocolates with a hazelnut in the middle and wrapped in silver foil. When you open them there's a little glassine love note written in four different languages. If someone gave me just one, it'd make my day.


2. Moving up the ladder, my favorite kind has to be of the Jacques Torres variety. He is a chocolatier extraordinaire. I love the champagne truffles, and a small bag of would make a sweet Valentine's gift along with a little something else. But these chocolate bars are not only fantastic in kind of funny in a Willy Wonka, "you're swell" kind of way.
3. Speaking of bars--I love a good bar probably more than little pieces. I love the old fashioned packaging on the Bonnat and the chocolate itself is intense. You can get them in NYC at Dean & Deluca. (and look at the goodies they've got (see hearts above)! Beautiful, edible, sweet and fancy. Will let recipient know you want to spoil them.
4. Mademoiselle de Margeaux is fine fine French chocolate and will make you look savvy. I tasted the milk chocloate twigs with the caramel which were insanely good but I bet the dark chocolate with orange would be awesome too. And it's such a pretty and friendly looking box.
5. Chocolove delivers a delicious bar and would make a sexy gifty, say to top off a little pair of La Perla panties--again, I'm a fan of the appetizer gift and the entree gift. They do a great job with glamorous flavors and its nice to pick something that matches the recipient's personality.
These make great gifts for friends I think.

Photo Shoot

We took the pictures today. Got some great stuff
and then just messed around with the lighting tent in a delirious
haze.
We did a series of silhouettes using the
side of the tent in front
of the light that I think came out beautifully. Not sure what else to use them for but
I love this one.

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day whether Hallmark created it or not is one of my favorite holidays. No pressure or anything, but I think you can really express yourself and your love in many beautiful ways on a day dedicated to vitamins L,O,V and E.
It's a good day to think about the nature of love, to give yourself a little love, to send a little compassion out into the world, to give someone special something special, to get drunk with your friends and wish for things.
For the next fourteen days, let's try to focus on ways to send a little love every which way but loose. I'm focused on a lot of things these days, namely getting ready for these tradeshows, leaving for Paris, getting my linesheets and lookbook done, adding the finishing touches to my new collection, calling stores, and the orders that are starting to come in for Valentine's Day, amongst other things like feeding my cats, calling my parents, watching the finale of Top Chef. But isn't it more fun to think about Valentine's Day ideas? Let's do that for the next 14 days starting today:

Just Make Something
I am romantic.
Every year I make my husband a Valentine. He keeps them all which is romantic of him.
I made this one for him when we were in India. It's a love garden.
The back. My biologically incorrect rendering of a human heart in a valentine-shaped horned she-heart.


The middle.

Still Life

I'm thinking about how to shoot my Fall 2007 pictures. I'm way behind schedule on that adventure. This newest of the new collections ( I just got back from the metal studio and working on it) is based on my childhood ideas of Bonnie and Clyde. These are pieces I'd like to see a modern day Bonnie Parker wear for when she's on the lamb but more on that later. I have some big ideas for the shoot which I won't be able to make happen--this involves an old rusted out jalopy, wolves and suitcases full of money in a snowy forest. Then I have my back-up small ideas, set-ups involving old coins on a wooden table, an old style leather satchel, bonbons hanging over the side-soft lens-rosy feel.
In the meantime, This January tableau on my mantel set my color palette for this wintry collection. I think the white cottony looking stuff --I can't stop looking at it-it's full of small seeds and it keeps falling apart and clinging to the cats---is actually what happens to Rose of Sharon in the winter, when it's confused and thinks it's Spring and then realizes, "No, it's winter for real".
And, non-sequiter, this is a close-up of the picture on the proper left. That's my mom and my uncle when they were little kids, somewhere in Germany.
And my father in the army. I swiped this one last time I visited them, so I haven't framed it yet!

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday Jen. Girl, you'll be a woman soon.

Henri and Me

We went to see the Henri Cartier-Bresson show at the ICP in Manhattan yesterday. All pictures from his Scrapbook, in chronological order, hence the title of the show "Scrapbook".
If I could make a wish right now, it would be for the pieces I'm working on now
to posses that same roguish grace as a Bresson photo, a holy-looking asymmetry, imperfect, poetic, of the people. Right now my new pieces are gaining their momentum from thoughts of Bonnie and Clyde. Long story. I'll tell it tomorrow. But this show is exquisite.

Spring 2007

I designed Spring 2007 back in September 2006 which always feels weird. I'm a very immediate person. I titled the collection "Il Etait Une Fois Dans Le Fôret" or "Once Upon a Time In the Forest". I was thinking of my favorite old fairytales set in the forest, the kind my German grandmother, my Oma used to tell. Germans like their fairytales grizzly, and that's how I remember her versions of Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and Goldilocks. These were stories but I think she used to tell them in a way that let me know she'd never let that stuff happen to me--if I was a good girl I guess. Anyway, it was these memories of those fairytales and the idea that some of the elements I used in the jewelry were things one might find along the path of the forest if one were a major player in the story-like Gretel or Red or Goldi. Maybe these things would protect you or help you find your way. Or maybe they were just the things you find, like a pine cone or a nice rock that would comfort you if you kept them.
Anyway here are some previews of my favorites and some of the favorites of the shops that bought them at the Le Showroom tradefair in Paris in October. You can find them on my site (this is my first pug of the blog), Bonbon Oiseau.

I'm designing Fall/Winter 2007 now. It seems funny.

Ode to Mark Bittman

I've been reading "The Soul of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlman all morning while my cat, Icky drinks out of the toilet. I catch her doing it now and then and consider it a gentle reminder that she is an indeed an animal. I don't stop her but instead, I am excited by all that I can do on a Saturday in which I can do whatever I want. I break out the laptop and check out the video section of the NY Times on-line. I've just discovered the Video feature of the Times site since I got a new fast laptop for Christmas. Hooked. That's some good stuff, stuff I now save for when I have "some time".
What I find today makes this Saturday a good Saturday, an accomplished Saturday: A video of Times food writer, Mark Bittman learning to make scones at Tartine, a bakery in the Mission district of San Francisco.

I love Mark Bittman and now I love him more after seeing him in this clip, a New Yorker in San Francisco. Mark is wearing this great white-striped navy blue French Navy Shirt. He's sparkly. He's going to have a good time even if the owner, who's teaching him to make her scones, is kind of dry toast. But I like the fact that she means business. There are all kinds of chefs. Personality is second to spirit.
Sidenote: I have a special kind of love for Mark Bittman's column, "The Minimalist" in the Wednesday food section. I always want to cook all of his recipes and it's a rare day when I don't find them compelling. Our palates have a kinship. In my opinion, if an American household owns one cookbook let it be his How to Cook Everything. It's the New Settlement Cookbook, the Joy of Cooking of the oughts. Now that I've seen him in action, I'm hooked the way I'm hooked on Anthony Bourdain's and his show on the Travel Channel, No Reservations.

And back to the video!
Tartine looks Frencher than France, a place I'd go back to San Francisco for, wait in line just to look at the beautiful good goodies they put out in the case. It's glamorous looking stuff. Even the scones look sexy. And scones are hardly ever sexy. I'm much more a "cooker" than a "baker" but my executive decision is to buy the sexy looking Tartine Cookbook to see what I can rock.

Good day for a Blog

I normally tell friends and business acquaintances I am a very busy person, and would never have time to maintain a blog, but today seemed like a good day to start one. Most of my favorite people and designers and many people I've never met seem to have blogs these days, so why not? They must be busy people too. Let's at least try, ok?
The title comes from an email I got yesterday from my good friend Jen. Our old mutual friend Dr. Larry signed off an email that way to her: "I love you and your destiny is stone golden." He's not around anymore as in the "not alive" sense, but he was an innovative thinker, an admirer of "the arts" and "the nature" was an all around life-liver. Those are traits I can really get behind. Jen wrote, "You should sign off all your Bonbon emails like that"
She's so right.
This blog is for Dr. Larry and all the lovely people and things I know and don't know, who will inspire me at some point to make this blog about something.