Queen for Life

Emily Blunt was the best perpendicular girl thing to happen to The Devil Wears Prada (yes, Anne Hathaway is growing on me), and now she's playing the young Queen Victoria in a new movie, coming out in early March.

It's not The Tudors, but perhaps it will get us through until Season Three begins. In the meantime, you could pick up one of WendyB's Victoria buckle rings in celebration.

Trailer here.

What she said

Because there are times when enough is enough. From Opinionista:

There’s something brilliant about six word memoirs. Paring an experience down to its simplest element can be cathartic, forcing you to shave off all the messy emotions and perceptions that calcify around your memory of What Actually Happened. So when I heard about the first anthology of six word memoirs, I thought it was a fantastic concept. And I was right.

Now there’s a new installment out in bookstores, Six Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak. Needless to say, it’s all about relationships, and apropos of just about everything, I’ve got an entry in there.

Deciding what to write was a battle, to put it mildly. Encapsulating five years, a few dozen blog posts, and around a grand worth of vodka tonics in six words required some serious carving away of emotional fat. I went through plenty of options, including:

• We never could eliminate the bullshit.

• Inertia isn’t the same as happiness.

• I knew myself…within your parameters.

• Feminism never mentioned all this crap.

Or even the cryptic but remarkably accurate:

• I can’t believe I didn’t know.

But in the end, when you wring out all the stories and meanings and significance and blame, there’s really just what happened:

• Moved in. No ring. Moved out.

And mine? Well, for 2008, I'm going to say, Shock to system leads to bliss.

Five Years in Six Words

Wednesday's Wordle: Put a ring on it

Icons we mourn: John Updike

John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.

Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.

A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir ''Self-Consciousness'' and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams. He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for ''Rabbit Is Rich'' and ''Rabbit at Rest,'' and two National Book Awards.

NYT

Shuesday: Ooh. Aah.

These are pretty as a picture. To wear with this, perhaps? Or this?

Clearly I have no idea that it's January.

Excess fabric

Not on Kate, of course. Kate was perfect, even if she was "speechless". Again. But what was with the folds and flowers and bubbles of satin at the SAGs? Bad Amy and Marisa!

Wednesday's Wordle: Praise song

Because you were wondering

Isabel Toledo, the Cuban-born designer of Mrs. Obama’s inaugural outfit, did not know positively until this morning if the new first lady would wear the lemongrass-yellow coat and matching dress she specially designed for her. “We’re all up here watching the T.V.,” said the designer in a telephone interview from her New York studio. “It’s great. We’re so happy.”

Ms. Toledo, who has been making clothes in New York for 25 years, said the coat and dress were made of Swiss wool lace, backed with netting for warmth and lined in French silk. “I wanted to pick a very optimistic color, that had sunshine,” she said. “I wanted her to feel charmed, and in that way would charm everybody.” Ms. Toledo sounded overwhelmed. “This is so wonderful,” she said.

About thirteen people in her studio worked on the outfit over the Christmas holidays. “Chinese ladies, Polish ladies, Spanish ladies—I have a picture of everyone working on her clothes,” Ms. Toledo, who is 48, said. She added, “We’re all grateful for this opportunity, and we don’t even have a PR person!”

Like the other designers who have made inaugural clothes for Mrs. Obama, Ms. Toledo worked with Ikram Goldman, the owner of a boutique in Chicago called Ikram, where Mrs. Obama has previously bought clothes. Ikram also sells clothes by Narciso Rodriguez and Maria Cornejo, other favorites of Michelle Obama.

NYTimes

Shuesday: Love it? Leave it?

I want to like this shoe, really I do, but ... there's just something wrong. Maybe if the cherries and leaves were the right colours? Thoughts?

Fasten your seatbelts

It's going to be a bumpy night.

It's award season again, and I've been glued to the set.

I happen to have watched Gilda last night,
I'm surprised to find I haven't written about this movie before.

Plus, the young Marilyn Monroe!

All About Eve

Must haves: Baby, it's cold outside

The thing about being on the Beast Coast is that you spend a lot of time in your coat wardrobe between November and March. Especially this week. So why not have one that's custom tailored?

Shuesday: More of the same

I can't help myself. I try to shake things up, but there are clearly themes I return to again and again. These are delicious - more patent, more black and white, more strappy goodness. What's a girl to do?

(Fly off to a place where such shoes could be worn at this time of year, perhaps?)

Plus, they're called Lola. How could one resist?

Golden Globes 2009

There was skin, mostly in plunging necklines, there were tablecloths masquerading as dresses, some to better effect than others, there were people dressed appropriately for their age, and those who were not, (also, please stand up straight, ladies!) Some of you didn't make it out of the 1980's.

And then there were Sally Hawkins, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Ms. Zellweger, the Witches of Westwick. No one can explain those frocks.

These were my top three.

Wednesday's Wordle: Inauguration fever

Wordle

Shuesday: Crisp like a granny smith apple

Black and white is so crisp and clean - perfect for a brand new year.

(I blame the trip to the Viceroy for making me want to re-do the apartment in prints such as these. In the meantime, more shoes!)

Icons we mourn: Pinter and Kitt

Apologies for the delay and the clumping, but I couldn't let these two get away without recognition. And I think it's a fun pairing, after all.

Harold Pinter, the British playwright whose gifts for finding the ominous in the everyday and the noise within silence made him the most influential and imitated dramatist of his generation, died on Dec. 24, 2008. He was 78 and lived in London.



Eartha Kitt, who purred and pounced her way across Broadway stages, recording studios and movie and television screens in a show-business career that lasted more than six decades, died on Dec. 25, 2008. She was 81 and lived in Connecticut. Forever Feline, Forever Fierce.

2008 in sentences

Again, the first lines from each month of the last year.

January: I know this is delayed, but the holidays, NY Eve ... you understand, don't you my darlings? (I love it when the first day of the year is a Shuesday, don't you?)

February: Couldn't put it better than WendyB (again!)

March: As you're no doubt already aware, The Scot visited the FG for a few days in February.

April: Yes, I still pay my bills the old fashioned way, with handwritten cheques and stamps and all that jazz.

May: Showmance: When actors engage in a romance for the run of a show. Once the run is over so is the romance.

June: A master left us today, too soon. (Yves Saint Laurent)

July: I'm so out of here. Prada

August: Got a secret. Can you keep it? Swear this one you'll save. Better lock it, in your pocket.
Taking this one to the grave

September: I'm taking it a little easy this weekend.

October: I know, I know. But isn't it amazing how colour and font make something so beautiful almost menacing?

November: Satan made me do it Busty Satan, that is.

December: Tis the season when the shopping guides come calling, and this year, the "Under $100" category's going to wear itself out.

Previously.