The House

I’ve written about my friend, Flip’s house a few times… here and here. She’s got incredible taste and an unerring eye for amazing pieces.  She and her husband took a 19th century townhouse, formerly divided into numerous flats, and pulled it back into one amazing home. She’s even been featured on Apartment Therapy where she won rave reviews from their hyper-critical commenters! Now Flip has started her own blog, an off-shoot from one she was doing with a shop here in Baltimore.  Her blog is called The Caledonian Mining Expedition Company. I am sure that there’s a fascinating explanation in there somewhere, but I haven’t heard it!

Here’s one of my favourite posts to date. It features some jaw-droppingly fabulous images from le Château de Moissac-Bellevue, like this, and this…Take a couple of minutes, wander over to the Caledonian Mining Expedition Company, say hey to Flip and then let me know what you think!

I think Flip’s fantastic!

I just returned from attending a fabulous lecture by published author, and fellow blogger, Emily Evans Eerdmans at the equally fabulous Evergreen House in Baltimore.

Emily took the audience on a historic trip from the time of Napoléon and his consort, Joséphine, along through the 1800s and right up until Madeleine Castaing’s death in the early 1990’s. A fascinating journey in beautiful rooms and stunning interiors, all with a thread connecting them through time.Emily is just a delight… smart, funny and very well-versed. And she’s gorgeous, too!  One of the most interesting things that Emily said in her lecture is that Madeleine Castaing is the Coco Chanel of interior decorators. Her innovations, though sometimes subtle, are all around us in so many ways. And Lisa? Lisa is my friend Lisa Simeone, former host of NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered and all ‘round gal about town. She and I attend a lot of these great lectures together!  Here we three are in the Leon Bakst Theatre at Evergreen. You can just see the stenciled roosters in the upper left of the image.

The brilliant Emily Evans Eerdmans will be the premiere lecturer at this year’s House Beautiful Lecture Series at Evergreen House in Baltimore on Wednesday.

Here’s what Evergreen has to say about Emily…

Napoléon's consort, Joséphine, was renowned for her flawless taste and the creation of the severely chic Empire style owes much to her influence. Nowhere did her personal style more crystallize than at her country house Malmaison. Join design and decorative arts historian Emily Evans Eerdmans as she discusses Malmaison’s interior decoration and its revival in the mid 20th century by such legendary designers as Madeleine Castaing, George Geffroy, Henri Samuel, and Emilio Terry.

I can’t wait, and hope to see you there! Tickets are here.

I found a group of limited imprints of six of the costumes that Cecil Beaton designed for the film, My Fair Lady, in 1964. Beaton won an Academy Award for Best Colour Costume for his designs, which remain classic today.

I thought it would be fun to look at the sketches and then the finished product. I think that this is the most well-known of the dresses from MFL. It’s the dress that was worn in the black and white scenes at Ascot.

Probably one of the most pivotal scenes is at the Ball, when Eliza dances with the prince in this spectacular dress.

This is the Prince’s mummy, who is wearing a gorgeous tone-on-tone purple gown with a green sash and elbow-length gloves. Of course the most incredible thing about her costume is her hair and headpiece.

I can’t remember the scene where Eliza wore this dress… can you?

There are two other sketches that I can’t find the film images for. If you know what scenes they’re in, or who they are, let me know and I’ll add them to the mix.

I do love this movie! It, along with Mary Poppins, is one of my all-time favourites! What are yours?