Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween. We’re excited to trick-or-treat around our beautiful/autumnal neighborhood. It’ll be fun to ring all of the brownstone doorbells and see the neighborhood children in their costumes. Here are some beautiful but also spooky Halloween images and a dark little poem by Edgar Allan Poe to get in the spirit of the day. Happy Halloween!

From “Spirits of the Dead”:

Be silent in that solitude,

Which is not loneliness–for then

The spirits of the dead, who stood

In life before thee, are again

In death around thee, and their will

Shall overshadow thee; be still.

–Edgar Allan Poe

1. Anoush by Manray

2. Pumpkin by Yayoi Kasuma

Here’s a snap of me as a hippie gypsy on Halloween when I was Henry’s age. And, here’s Henry as a ghost pirate last year and the year before as Super Mario.

Refinery29 Country Club

NY fashion week was a busy one for me with projects like the background for Lela Rose’s fashion show and the cover lettering for Marie Claire Magazine.

Another fun one was for Refinery29. Piera reached out to me over the summer with the email subject line “Top Secret.” What could be more enticing than an email with that header?

They hit me up to create mood boards inspired by fashion designer oeuvres to be printed and sent to each designer with a hand-written note from Piera and Christene telling them about the Refinery29 Country Club concept.

The Country Club–an interactive pop-up that paid homage to 29 handpicked visionaries with a miniature golf course featuring nine designer-inspired holes you could play through.

Here’s the New York Times coverage of the event and WWD, and some images after the jump. Looks so fun (I couldn’t go since I had Vivian the day before).

Susan Sontag quote

I recently stumbled across this great quote:

To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

–Susan Sontag

This book looks good.

Worn Stories by Emily Spivack

Last week I had my post-partum follow-up visit in Soho. I got the green light to jog and have gone a few times already (where’s the snail emoji?). Dave came with me and then to brunch at Balthazar (with Vivian in tow of course). Next we hit up one of our favorite NY bookstores, McNally Jackson Books.

I am completely guilty of judging books by their cover and wandered around the store picking up covers that called to me. I am obsessed with this one designed by Peter Mendelsund whose site I immediately poured over to much amazement. Other covers I love at the moment include: The Vacationers by my friend Emma Straub, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl (I’m half way through), and this gem, Worn Stories.

Initially I picked up Worn Stories for aesthetic reasons but then began to read a few of the essays standing right there in the shop, blocking the aisle with Viv’s stroller. I started with Andy Spade, Simon Doonan, and Rachel Comey and realized that the book is so much less about sartorial things and so much more about the meaning and history we imbue objects with and how they compel us to convey our own stories. I had to buy the book of course and since have read most of the essays. My absolute favorite ones are not from famous fashion folk but from a Holocaust survivor, a lawyer and an author. The first person essays are poignant, moving, funny, touching, and thought-provoking.

From author Emily Spivack’s eponymous site where you can submit a story and read many others not in the book, “Worn Stories offers a revealing look at the clothes that protect us, serve as a uniform, assert our identity, or bring back the past–clothes that are encoded with the stories of our lives.”

The photo above is from my Instagram, where you can follow along as I post photos of: kids, book covers, the tiled floor at some old restaurant, and other random stuff like the shadow a bike leaves on the sidewalk on a sunny day.

Condé Nast Traveler China: Illustrations

Condé Nast Traveler China recently reproduced a story I illustrated for its U.S. counterpart a couple of years back. It’s interesting to see how the story is laid out differently from the original.

Yesterday was my birthday. Dave and Henry brought be breakfast in bed as I nursed baby Vivian. It was so sweet. We ordered Mexican for dinner. Tonight my mom is coming over to babysit Henry so Dave and I can have a romantic dinner…well, with Vivian in tow. Since I’m nursing all the time and she’s always catnapping, I’m basically never out of her sight, so she’ll join us. Maybe we’ll go to one of my all-time favorite spots in Brooklyn, Franny’s for some Brussels sprouts with estratto di pomodoro and bottarga followed by casarecci with arugula and walnut pesto. I’ll try not to drop crumbs on Viv’s little head.

See more pages below…