Before I forget.....

I remember I promised to show you Max's new do! I think it's great, especially since he bleached it AGAIN (he'll pickle his brain! I should know!)....his head now looks like it's flocked!...in a good way! You have to be careful what you say around Max when it comes to hairdos......

Tres bien, oui?

It seems everybody's going blonde these days....some of us have been at the bleach bottle since we were 14 but still....this is my latest hair picture...

I was about to put my hair into a roll then realised what a freak I looked, Jamie put such a good rinse in my hair when he did my roots, I'm loving the colour (sorry to disappoint those who thought I was a natural blonde - as if!), I'm drawn to those strawberry-ish 1950's colours....although I've been staring and staring at Donna Jordan in the Beautiful Fall with her white white hair and eyebrows, I love that sort of alien 1970's look, David Bowie in The Man Who Fell to Earth is one of the best examples of that. He was so white and skinny and perfectly coiffed and dressed in that movie, I had a huge poster of him with his orange aviater sunglasses and Man Who Fell to Earth look on my wall when I was a teenager. Exquisite.

Annabel sent me some more of her pictures the other day, I had to share these with you, beautiful, spooky and slightly alien if you don't mind me saying.


Looking forward to getting some new A.P.C. and Eley Kishimoto stock in to look at....and try on....and make another film of!!!
Meanwhile my kids have been being pretty scarey....

Bless them......

Madame x

BIRTHDAY CAKE - WE ATE IT

I dropped in on Pippa today. I can't wait to see the video she was working on with the latest A.P.C. and Sonia buying expeditions featured! I went in and grabbed some coffee and a banana eclair [cut into two very exact sized pieces] while Johan was presenting me with a fake bottle of Lanson Champagne in Maison Bertaux. I could just sit and look at all the cakes all day.

Over in the States Rick Ross also loves cake and an entourage of other rappers there too:

Maybe they should jump on a jet with all that money they say they have and visit Pippa and I in Maison B and let us feed them some cakes from upstairs. Though maybe they mean money, or cocaine, or chilling with their girlfriends instead of chillin wit their boys*.

I mean here is the chorus** by Flo Rida [gettit? Flow Rider in Florida?!]:
I could spend a hundred thousand in a day,
Getting cake er day (er day), er day (er day),
Comin through yo hood in that 7 tre,
Getting cake er day (er day), er day (er day),
I told ya'll, I don't want no cake on my birthday,
I want my cake er day (maan), er day (maan),
I could spend a hundred thousand in a day,
Getting cake er day (er day), er day (er day)

Some of them are big guys. This could be from eating a lot of cake?! Does anyone else feel me on this?

I started a Flickr group recently to liberate all of you who were wanting to take picture of your food but were too scared cause you thought I was gonna hate on your for peepin' my steelo. But NO! Check out WE ATE IT! Then ask to join the group and start submitting your pictures! Already some friends have tracked each other down by accident - Ina Featherbed from New York joined the group and then realised that ..Philippa.. in London was a pal of hers and they are back in touch. Cool or what?

Here is a selection of WE ATE IT pics to whet your appetite!





Okay so that is all for now, let's hope Pippa's video gets online soon!

xx Emma

* check urbandictionary.com

** check justsomelyrics.com

More winter.

I know it seems unfair and unnatural somehow to be talking about next winter already....but I had to share my trip with Max to Paris to see next winter's A.P.C. because I know you'd love a butchers at it, also cut in with Sonia's offerings to keep you cosy and glamorous next chilly season. I shouldn't tempt fate but the sun seems to shine on our Parisian forays....there was something wierd with the bikes this time and they didn't accept our credit cards so we walked a lot and took the metro....Paris is a great city to walk around, I love it there so much....

So....first we'll be taking delivery of spring and summer....remember how you all loved those sailor dresses we teased you with in our movie 6 months ago? And I predict a bit of filming and photography happening when we get it in next week....you'll all be the first to know....

madame xx

JEAN TOUITOU'S BLOG

JEAN TOUITOU EST LE CRÉATEUR DE LA MARQUE FRANCAISE A.P.C. CRÉÉE EN 1987. IL VIT ET TRAVAILLE A PARIS
ジャン・トゥイトゥーはフランスのファッションブランド A.P.C.を1987年に設立。パリで活動している。

Didn't know I could type in Japanese huh? Well I can't. I just copied and paste that part from the header of Jean Touitou's Blog, which is called just that.

Things I know about Jean Touitou:
He is the creater of A.P.C.
He works in France
He used to work for Joseph
He collaborated with Jessica Ogden on the A.P.C. Madras range
Max and Pippa have met him

Things I learnt about Jean Touitou tonight from reading his blog:
His notes are FUCKING hilarious
His photos are AMAZING and also hilarious
He only has two friends that are the same age
His office is now in the A.P.C. recording studio
He discovered a particular species of youth the "fringed whore"

Monsieur Touitou - please excuse me for ripping your work to put on the Maison B blog. But more people just have to see it!

And blog readers, below is a selection of stuff I have snatched from the Jean Touitou Blog at honeyee.com
I suggest you visit there as quickly as possible it is inspiring and HILARIOUS.


I wish this car mine.
この車が欲しいなあ。

I walk　into the club, Judith , Christopher and myself are astounded : The young only think about their hair, and the old are just too ugly.
ジュディットとクリストファーと一緒にクラブへ入った瞬間、三人で唖然としてしまった。若い連中はみんな自分のヘアスタイルのことしか考えていない。一方、年寄は醜いなんてもんじゃない。

Type of youth who only thinks about his hair, fingering it every thirty seconds .
I also call this species of youth " fringed whore" .
自分の髪のことしか頭にない若い子のスタイル。３０秒おきに自分の髪を触るタイプだ。僕はこういう人種を
" fringed whore"とも呼ぶ。



Can anybody believe it's so complicated to get out of the toilets ?
You never know what button needs to be pushed to flush that thing.
お手洗いにこんなに複雑な機械があるって、信じられるかい？
流すのに、どのボタンを押せばいいのか、さっぱりわからない。


I am working on a dress for Sofia Coppola. It's fun to make the outmoded posture of a fashion designer at work. Here I play an ironic comedy about myself.
ソフィア・コッポラのためのドレスを製作中なんだ。いかにも昔のクチュリエの様な時代外れの古くさいポーズをとるのが面白かった。自分に対する皮肉った演出をして遊んでみた。

- - - - - - - - - -
And the joke about the Italian women's shoes you will have to flick through the blog and find yourself cause I can't find it again now. I snorted laughing! But there a loads of pictures of food, behind the scenes at A.P.C., Jessica Ogden on holiday and pictures from gigs and studios. Everything in English and Japanese - a nice treat for some I am sure.

xx Emma

Shocked

Found out Heath Ledger had died last night while standing in the queue at Tesco watching Sky News. Really shocked me, especially since Annabel and I had been gossiping about him on Monday....a friend of hers had worked with him and he was a tortured soul it seemed....and beautiful tortured souls are my favourite. All the more horrific then, to read about the coroner's undecided verdict as it scrolled along the bottom of the screen...I had to wait 'til it went around again before I would believe it. A rare beauty who only just skimmed the top of his potential..sad sad sad.



Madame x

There are things I don't understand....

Had a surprise call from my friend Annabel at the weekend....she was going to be around for a few days before flying back to New York where she lives and we managed a long lunch together to catch up somehow....it was like a speed-talking convention as it's been aaaaaages, but as we parted I had that lighter-than-air spring to my step you get when you've spent quality talking, laughing, righting wrongs time with a fantastic lady-friend!

Annabel used to work at Shop, god about 10 years ago! She was a cool teen with short duck-fluff hair and we got to talking and it turned out she worked in the x-girl shop in New York and was now in London working at Sotheby's and was looking for a Saturday job, so of course naturally.....

So over the years our paths have often crossed either here or in London, and Annabel has always been working at her photography which is amazing, I remember even looking at her polaroids of friends from school and they had something extra-special, check out her website http://www.annabelmehran.com/, I'm so proud of her, she's busy busy busy, regularly working for Teen Vogue as well as stuff for New York Times and Art Review if you please!!!

We only had a few hours so we decided on lunch at her fancy hotel, Browns on Albermarle St - I'm so glad we did!!!!! The sommelier looked at us, brought the champagne TROLLEY and assumed (rightly) that a glass of pink champagne was in order - he knew class when he saw it! Annabel gave me the cutest little tiny book of love letters to Josephine from Napoleon, here's a picture for scale...

Very romantic it is..."Je vais me coucher, ma petite Josephine, le coeur plein de ton adorable image, et navre de rester tant de temps loin de toi; mais j'espere que, dans quelques jours, je serai plus heureux et que je pourrai a mon aise te donner des preuves de l'amour ardent que tu m'as inspire..."

We both had a divine salad and our cup of tea was accompanied by these treats!

I LOVE going to fancy places to eat! It's all about the extras you didn't ask for isn't it?

I suddenly realised the hotel backed onto Dover Street and I've never been to Dover Street Market and Annabel had never heard of it so we decided (especially after I said Alaia and Lanvin) we needed to check it out.....It kind of wasn't what I was expecting.....I don't get it. Lots on sale at the moment ( I got a pair of leggings down from £60 to £24) and I kind of felt sorry for the clothes as I don't think they get many visitors, I mean, we can talk....but it was a strange atmosphere, but apart from one really bouncy japanese shop assistant who loved his job so much, it was kinda dour. I liked Arts and Science and the World Archive the best and they had those divine Alaia big lace corset belts which would look good with anything!

Annabel was similarly confused....


Bev and I have had an unofficial bookclub for a few months now but we've decided to make it public!!! So far we've read Berlin Bromley by Berlin, Fabulous Nobodies by Lee Tulloch, Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs, The Beautiful Fall by Alicia Drake and Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton....our reviews for these we will post next week but in the meantime we plan to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides if anyone wants to join in....We also thought it might be fun to meet upstairs for tea and cake once a month to discuss instead of doing this all in cyberspace! Let us know if you want to join, and boys are allowed, Jonathan already put his name down!

Last bit of sale....do rush down for a bargan!!!

Madame xx

Gone Tomorrow...

So, I'm so furious! Max dyed his hair a beautiful, glamorous blonde a couple of days ago...inspired by David Bowie's Serious Moonlight tour hairdo if you must know. Very bold.

Sarah took this picture of his bombshell moment....and all it took was a stupid pisstake from a so-called friend and he only shaved the lot off the next day!!!! Just jealous I reckon......I think you'll all agree it was pretty damn fierce!

Anyway he's left with a sort of blonde velvet grade 1 which is also great, I'll show you next week, promise....

Grrrrrr........madame xxx

Snatching the best bit....

Went to see my mum at the weekend with the boys and surprise her with "something extra" - as the boys put it - my sister! I love being by the seaside so much it must be in my blood and we managed to grab a perfectly golden afternoon in-between all the lashing rain, and even have ice-creams! Something wrong about that fluffy ice cream that coils out of the machine (never without a flake!) but especially in January...god knows what it's made from but it's GREAT! When I used to do flits to New York in my twenties whenever I could rustle the money together, I had an obsession (with food, or not eating it, but that's another story...) with Tasti-Delite and they had tiny shops dotted around Manhattan, and would change the flavour every day, in fact you had a choice of two flavours or original vanilla AND it was only 40 calories!!! I would have a little pot - not wanting to waste calories on a freaking cone for god's sake! - once or twice a day and it is the only thing I've ever tasted that is quite like that weird British seaside ice-cream in texture and taste.....

Duke took his remote controlled car which my mum kept saying was £5 very well spent, and worried dogs whirring along the promenade with it...

Joe kept us entertained with an imagined catalogue shoot...


We even saw some enormous kites and realised they were attached to boys on wheels hurtling along with their jeans under their buttocks but they defied gravity and stayed up, or up as far as they were in the first place...

Anyhoo, not much else to say except don't wait 'til summer to go to the beach, it's bracing but beautifully lonely in the winter, and the ice-cream tastes even better!


Madame xxx

HAVING A BAD DAY?

Hi everyone

It is cold, it was Christmas and New Year already, work has started and January is the longest month of the year... Doesn't your next pay slip seem FOREVAH away?

May I recommend a good dose of THIS - a site called Cute Overload - to help you get to the end of the month.

And if that doesn't work why not drink some 7UP from a cocktail glass like I am to cheer myself up?

xx Emma

Bigger and Better

I'm writing this lying on my bed eating a slice of my mum's christmas cake, a hulking great wodge of which I brought back to London....As I fold back the tin foil and the characteristic christmas smell comes wafting out I feel sad the whole festive hoo ha is over but also optimistic about the year ahead.

Here's Max sweeping up the last of the needles after taking down the christmas tree at the shop...he actually managed, with Superduck's help, to force it into a garment bag, quite impressive when you saw the size of the tree, and then take it to be recycled.....

One of my favourite christmas memories is the boys' faces when they opened the costumes Stevie and I made for them( I say I, what my role was was making tea and snacks and sewing the odd oversized wool stitch). There's always the danger with children that you can think you've got the perfect present then their face falls and they look at you as if you're insane for thinking they'd want THAT! There's no sugaring the pill when you're five, no siree, "don't like it!" and on to the next present....but we however, got it spot on with Duke's Jedi and Joe's cat"person" (he's actually obsessed with Michelle Pfeiffer in Batman Returns but we drew the line at a snap-fastening pvc leotard and instead made an androgynous-ish tunic, which looks quite Edward Scissorhands and cat-mask!).

Duke the Jedi took up his perfect position under the tree so as to get access to his presents with minimum legwork:

They're now obsessed with Stevie's studio, we were in there on Saturday and they were sticking glitter on denim with the promise they can come back and make them into jeans next time....they were trembling at the thought of course and now harbour aspirations in fashion design....

The best thing about starting work is when your mates pop by to say hello again. We had one of those brilliant coffe-morning type gatherings the first day back which was so lovely with Sarah, Superduck and Lucy and I all vying for attention with Sarah snapping away with her brand new camera...


So pleased she gave me the soft-focus treatment...I should always insist on it!!

One of my low points over christmas was eating a promotional item as I was SO hungry! Beth very kindly sent me a YMC biscuit of a coat and I hadn't brought my packed lunch that day so....


Well I was tired and hungry and very cold by the look of me in the picture! That reminds me, Michael Murphy sent me a funny thing the other day, a timesaving device that I'm sure we could all do with slipping in our handbags!

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! I don't know how I haven't lived without one frankly!

So, this is the year I get things done, and to prove it, I'm being very regular with my blog as you can see and also exploring other creative outlets....witness if you will the little movie I made during a shoot with Constantine last week....Only last Thursday and already edited and blogged! That's the new me!!!

Three of my most beautiful,statuesque blonde girlfriends agreed to me exploiting them in a shoot Constantine asked me to style....we had so much fun loping about in the basement, dressing up and allowing bonnetising without so much as a murmer! Can't wait to see the pictures but here's an idea......

So big thanks to Alex, Gwen and Johanna, I'm so lucky to have such beautiful friends! And enormous thanks to Stevie who let me pillage the Bodymap archive AND rifle her costume store! Steve and Claire at Rellik for pulling out all the stops and letting me run off with their Laura Ashley stock at Christmas! Nathaniel thanks for being my silent assistant in a hood, and you will notice a smattering of Spring/Summer Eley Kishimoto in there too!!!!

Oh yes, this is the year to get things DONE!!!

If you haven't visited the sale yet, it's all 50% off!!!! See you soon.

Madame xxxx

G'DAY G'DAY

I haven't post on here for so long, I feel almost a little bit shy...

Well that moment passed quite quickly, let me tell you were I have been!


Christmas in Australia.
I went home to visit my family and here is the view on my sister's street as all the neighbourhood kids hang out in their PJ's waiting for Santa to come along in a fire truck and hand out sweets. And yep - that is the bush at the end of the street.


I occupied myself with helping Mum in her garden, then convering her house with Christmas lights. Then when we went up to Launceston, I encouraged my brother in law to do the same. Quite a successful effort I would say but a challenge to get the lights up in one day when it is 30 degrees and there is a hot wind whipping your hair into your face.


I also had my THIRD birthday party in Tasmania for the year! Woo hoo!! Check out the cake mum made me with R Kelly and Myself together as we should be. You can't really see but around the edges are gold dollars. I told mum it also needed to have icing dope leaves all over it to be for a true playa like me, but she said the kids could eat that so that is why she has the piped green round the edges like that. Chronic.


There were other delicious treats to be had from the Jackman and McRoss Bakery where I always want to visit first off when I get home. And of course it is a main occupation to check out cakes at any establishment... No banana eclairs mind you. Maison Bertaux still tops the world with those!!!

More Jackman and McRoss delicious delicious things. Underneath the salmon is scrambled eggs. I know Pippa won't like either of these but never mind.

The best part of going home for Christmas had to be hanging out with my Neice and Nephews.

Here is my nephew Sam. I swear I didn't teach him how to do that!! He was throwing signs as soon as I saw him. What a pimp. He is going to make a great Bogan when he grows up!!

Anyway hopefully after my tiles get delivered today [it's a long story] I am going to head into town and catch up with Madame, see what is on sale at Maison B - WOO HOO - and give Pippa the present I bought her when I was at home. I hope she likes it - I definitely do... I'm not sure if it belonged to a dead lady though which is often the most attractive feature for Pippa! It really made me laugh to see her dead on the stairs is Sarah Lee's pictures on Pippa's birthday.

xx Emma