Twkinkle, Twinkle Litte Stars.

When I was a kid my parents set jewelry in our apartment. My dad's uncle is a jeweler and my parents were kind of like his worker elves. They had work benches in their bedroom outfitted with high powered lights, drills that were operated by foot pedals and sounded like a dentist's office, and little wooden trays that held what looked like millions of sparkling diamonds. They would lick the top of a metal hand tool and get a diamond to stick to its edge. Then, they would force it into the tiny, tiny golden prongs of earring posts and drill and hammer them into place until they were secure and matched their pair. I would often sit in their room as they worked and look in awe at their tools, their little piles of diamonds, their magnifying glasses that had flip lenses like Dwayne Wayne's. The whole process fascinated me. They did the side work less and less as I got older, and sometimes I forget how much a part of my childhood the jewelry drills were, but when my friend Rahul passed along this slide show from The Wall Street Journal of the Tiffany & Co. Laurelton Diamonds facility in Antwerp, Belgium so many memories came rushing back.

My parents had the same magnifying glasses as this man has hanging around his neck.


Rough cut stones ready to be drilled.


A stone being examined under a high powered microscope.


So many workers, so much light.


Examining a diamond for flaws.

A backlit stone.


This is almost exactly what my parents' benches looked like.

Granted, no high powered electric microscopes were involved in my parents' home operation, but the fascination of watching diamonds go from rough stone to twinkling manifestations of love and devotion is still something to see. I think I have a more realistic attitude towards diamond jewelry and an even more nostalgic attachment to it than most. It's so amazing to me that a stone, mined from the earth could universally captivate so many. It must be something in the reflection of the light, right? Something like that.

To see the whole slide show, with captions and all, follow this link.

Funbelievable.

My date (that's my mama!) and I "shopping" at Bergdorf's on Fashion's Night Out.

Dear Ms. Anna Wintour,

Thank you for inviting me to your party last night. It was so much fun! I saw a little, Indian man in acid-colored golfer gear talking to a bedecked zaftig lady in ruched ruffles of black on black at Bergdorfs! That was fun. There were too many people on the 7th floor for me to see Mary Kate and Ashley, but I did watch Andre Leon Talley walk by. Anna, that was wonderful!

One of the gorgeous windows at Bergdorf's.

I saw your frenemy Grace Coddington at her exhibit at Prada. She let me get a picture with her, which I thought was very kind of her. Next time she tells you off in the office, let her go easy. She was sweet to me.

Look, our photo came out "soft" just like Coddington likes it! She set up those suit-wearing wolves at a Red Riding Hood themed exhibit at Prada.

I bumped into one of your cover girls, Sasha Pivovarova who told me that she'd really rather be a full time artist and that I should check out her exhibit at Bendel's down the street. I did. There was a giant doll made of all sorts of things! That was cool.

God, if you ever want to feel dorky and stocky stand next to a supermodel! Recent I Want To Wear It. post subject Sasha Pivovarova's art was on display at Henri Bendel's. She's really tall.




Shots of Sasha's show at Bendel's

I also got an astrological reading at Bendel's. I wanted a Poppy King lip reading, but I settled for a star-ologist instead. She told me I was an old soul, with a natural ability to lead, but a tendency to get stuck doing grunt work and loving people who lack commitment and structure. That made me think about all sorts of things that weren't fun, but then I spotted a fashion illustrator doing portraits of women who waited on a line and that made me happy again.

Custom portraits at bendel's.

Anna, I was a little worried throughout the night that the mix of mobs, booze, and expensive (with a capital E) clothes would prove disastrous for you. I was having thoughts of the Terminal 5 exhibit that backfired when art got wrecked, ruined, and snagged by drunken revelers. I thought the triumph of the evening could turn out badly for you in the end, but maybe I wasn't giving the fashionistas enough credit.

It was crowded everywhere! But, I think the biggest crowds were at the bars, not the registers. I wonder what the final takes for the evening were.

The next stop of the night was at Opening Ceremony, and let me tell you, Anna, it was a hipster mobscene! The store was p-p-p-packed to capacity and even the sidewalk was jammed with people wearing fake prescription glasses and giant bows on their heads. It was the place to be. I really wanted to see The Mulleavy Sisters there, but alas, it wasn't going to happen.

All I saw of Rodarte were their Kurt Cobain t-shirts on the car they customized outside. The hipsters were packed into every square foot inside and outside the store!

My last stop was at Topshop. Where I bumped into Karen Elson, literally. She stumbled down a few stairs in her stilettos. I felt so bad! Good thing she's got practice in those things. She teetered but didn't topple. Once she steadied herself, I told her how much I loved her work, which I guess is an awkward thing to say to a model? But I do. So I said it.

Mannequins were out for fashion too.

My Mom admiring a gorgeous orange Thakoon dress. We shopped with our eyes, not our pocketbooks.

Anna, all in all, I had the best time. I satisfied some dreams my ten-ear-old self has been carrying around since she became an avid Vogue reader (um, hello? Meeting Grace Coddington? ALT? Supermodels?) Amazing.

I'm sorry I didn't buy anything, but maybe next year?

Thanks for the good times,
Anna Y.

Go-See: Marlene Dumas at MoMA

My Mama at the MoMA with the Dumas faces.

Marlene Dumas is an artist whose work runs the gamut between gorgeous and grotesque. Her figure-centric paintings and drawings are controversial in their tone and subject matter, often provocatively (even disturbingly) exploring those primal themes of birth, sex, and death. Some of her work is hard to stomach, but some of it is an incredible treat for the eyes. I just went to see her show Measuring Your Own Grave at the MoMA yesterday and her piece 100 Models was like heaven. A grid of faces, mostly female and all rendered in watery-looking chalk, stare out at you from three walls of a room. Each face could be it's own novel, they are so expressive and yet so simple. Some of them smile, some avert their gaze, some stare intently with colored eyes. All are engaging. Go see the show!

Details of Dumas' piece 100 Models.

When Times Get Tough, the Tough Get Sewing

I grew up with a mother who had some serious sewing skills. She made each one of the Halloween costumes in this here photo:

That's me as Rainbow Brite (with a handmade orange yarn wig!), my younger brother Franklin as a tiger cub, my brother Jason as the most phenomenal E.T. with a glowing orange finger, and my sister Tracey the cheerleader. My Mom (that's her behind me) sewed all of those. Looking at this photo kind of revives the theory that I formulated around the time that this pic was taken: My Mom has magic powers.

Unfortunately the sewing gene skipped a generation. For all of my craftiness, I lack a certain finess when it comes to needles and thread. But, my belt is tightening (money not fat!) and sewing is one of those skills that could be very helpful for the bank account. You know, buy a girl a dress and she has an outfit for one night, teach her to sew and she can make fabulous things inexpensively for many nights. Yeah, something like that.

Where to start? With the basics. I was looking for a good intro to sewing class but if I had the $350 they were charging I'd be knee deep in retail racks right now. So instead I created my own sewing curriculum.

I'm going to Sew U! Built by Wendy designer and '90s guitar strap hero Wendy Mullin has penned a how-to book that covers all of the basics of sewing. It even comes with three simple patterns to get me going. I'll supplement the text with video instruction on YouTube. Then I'll graduate to sewing Built by Wendy's more complex patterns. Perhaps my term project will be a winter coat. Or, a cute as anything shirt.

I'll get to pick out my own fabrics and assuming that the garments hold up, I'll be able to pass down some special items to my future bamabinas that won't have Forever 21 labels in them. Also, this will be a great way to spend my time, not my money.

Get yourself a sewing machine, and let's start our own sewing circle. What do you say?