There has never been a more striking color contrast or combination than that of Black and White: from clothing to furniture, photography to artwork, and yes, even in food (B&W cookie, anyone?). It just works, beautifully. Here in California, where there are no real noticeable changes to our seasons, to signify the emergence of fall and winter, we just tend to add more black to our wardrobes. 

Years ago, there was indeed a point when I wore entirely too much black, year-round; seemingly stuck in a period of perpetual mourning, a state of sartorial abeyance. (Or so it seemed.) And while I have finally started adding bits of color to my wardrobe, looking at the images below, I now remember why I still opted to decorate my apartment in the visual romance that is Black & White: It just works… Beautifully!

I missed LACMA's showing last year of The Clock (bad timing, I suppose), but it won't happen again this year.  In case you haven't heard of Christian Marclay's brilliant project, I've included a clip from Youtube, below. In short, he has taken fragments from thousands of films and television shows and bridged them in such a way that at any given second, whatever time being shown in the film clip on screen is the actual time that you're viewing it: real-time viewing. It will be shown in the Bing Theatre from Noon this coming Saturday, September 22nd until Noon on Sunday, September 23rd; a 24-hour movie-clip marathon. The only drawback I can anticipate in seeing something like this, will be the illumination of cell phone screens as people check their devices - trying to ensure the film's accuracy. Other than that...

LACMA
Bing Theatre
5905 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA  90036

’m always interested in how the “haves” live: Do their private interiors complement their public personas and vice versa? Fortunately, magazines like Architectural Digest and Elle Décor provide us glimpses into the (sometimes) beautiful inner sanctums of the rich and famous.

Is it just me or does it seem that, more often than not, we tend to decorate our apartments/homes in a style similar to that in which we grew up? Maybe this stems from being unimaginative, lazy or just having inherited ones fair share of "family heirlooms." While I think Ivanka Trump’s (and husband, Jared Kushner) Upper East Side apartment, decorated by Kelly Behun and featured in this month’s Elle Décor, is, without question, a sleek and serenely sophisticated space, I expected something a little more glamorously metropolitan and less austere. Even though she has decided to follow her father's footsteps into the world of high-end real estate, thankfully, she has forged her own road aesthetically, and has not adopted the overly gilded and ostentatious style of her father’s Trump Tower apartment. And while the infusion of cerulean blue definitely punctuates the space, offering visually electric pauses to the otherwise calm palette, from the lacquered desk to the bookshelves, it really does seem more like accents from that of a hip bachelor’s pad and not of a young, cosmopolitan couple with child. The beautifully colorful accents are very remininscent of Louis Armstrong’s 1960’s kitchen. Nonetheless, the apartment is still as chic as its owner. 

What I find most impressive about this home is the sophisticatedly chic silhouette of the foyer's hand-painted, meandering tree by Bob George Studios. Its seductively swaying and far-reaching shadows, seemingly being cast by the tabletop's branched arrangement, hauntingly appear to dance across the pale grey wall. (On first glance, does it not remind you of the evil trees from the Wizard of Oz's haunted forest?)

All images by Eric Piasecki

It’s back! Fashion’s Night Out returns this Thursday, September 6th, all across the globe. Unfortunately, I don’t live in New York City, where Anna Wintour of VOGUE fame, started this phenomenon back in 2008, but I’m glad to be a resident of sunny Southern California where we have Rodeo Drive, the Beverly Center and Melrose to rival the stores of Manhattan any day of the week. So if you like the idea of rubbing elbows with a celebrity or getting your elbows rubbed by one stop by one of the many locations that will surely make this year’s Fashion’s Night Out a fashionable success. Did you ride the huge Ferris Wheel last year on Rodeo Drive?