AT THE BEGINNING of the summer, P & I bought folding bikes and on every sunny day over the past few weeks, we went on as many bicycle rides along the English countryside as we could, often ending up in charming, cosy pubs, places with names like The Wallace Arms and Rose & Crown; The Black Bull and Robin Hood. On one trip, our longest, we went from the city all the way to the seaside ...
I am not a huge fan of aphorisms, but every once in a while I come across something that makes PERFECT SENSE and lately, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about these words: Your energy is your currency. Spend it wisely. Invest it well ...
IN THE SECOND week of May, just after the Bank Holiday, we decided to spend some time back in London. We normally visit several times a year, but since 2020 was the year of the Great Lockdown, the last time we had been was the May previously to meet up with a friend from Spain—it was hot then and perfect for traipsing about. P had heard that there would be a heat wave this time around
WHEN I FIRST began putting together this instalment of Life Lately, had actually disabled the entire TIG Instgram account (as in, removed it from the internet) and deleted the app from my phone—hence the title. Also took time off from Twitter at same time and reclaimed all of the EXTRA hours left from those two alone to catch up on reading (currently reading this book). Recently, in our triweekly articles series, we had included two very interesting articles on this very topic: The Case for Deleting Everything and America Offline, both of which had confirmed my restless feelings and urge to be extremely and wildly social media-free.
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN DIOR perfume ad that ever caught our attention was the 2008 Sofia Coppola-directed Miss Dior Cherie television commercial starring model Maryna Linchuk frolicking around Paris, bounding through boulevards, trying on sunglasses, and riding her bike to the strains of Brigitte Bardot’s “Moi, Je Joue”. Coppola has worked for a range of brands including Gap, Marc Jacobs and H&M, brands who were all looking to inject some of Coppola’s visually stunning, sensual style to their products. The director applied many of her signature filmmaking techniques to these commercials, including plenty of pastel colours, hip soundtracks and languid camera movements.
These are the random thoughts floating through my head these days according to my google searches. They tell the story of a distracted mind that clearly is not getting much work done. They tell the story of a year spent in lockdown ...
I AM NOT sure why―when it happens every year―I am so unprepared for winter. The cold. The dampness. The continual overcast skies. And most of all, the darkness. Yes, the days have been, happily, incrimentally longer every day since winter solstice, but tonight, the sun still set 4:17pm. 4:17pm! On Sundays, everything moves a little more slowly ...
We are city people, P and I. Before Valencia and before Edinburgh, we lived in a huge metropolis filled with millions of people. We barely knew our neighbours in the tall building where we lived, and the ultimate luxury was having an elevator all to ourselves on the way up to our condo after a long day at work in an office complex in the west end ...
AFTER I LEFT the (traditional) working world for good two years after I began This Is Glamorous, every night, before I went to sleep, I found myself really looking forward to the next morning. That first cup of coffee, reading, working at my desk in my pyjamas. It was, and has been ideal for a long time.
RECENTLY ON INSTAGRAM, we posted an English countryside cottage (above) that captured the imaginations of thousands. Many of you asked if it was the cottage from the 2006 Nancy Meyers film, The Holiday. It is not (although there are similarities), as Rosehill Cottage from The Holiday sadly doesn't exist, its exterior built from scratch in an empty field on a hillside overlooking the town of Shere.
We live in a quintessential English countryside village, the kind that looks like it’s a movie set, a beautiful place with stone cottages that have names like Rosebank and Appletree Grange. It's the kind of place where there are cosy pubs and a greengrocer for fruits and vegetables ...
There is a footbridge in our old home city of Valencia, Spain that is famous for having, along both its railings, clusters upon clusters of cheerful red geraniums, a live flower installation that is maintained all year long ...
I USED TO joke with P that This Is Glamorous began as the musings of a girl in her underwear. While that may not be strictly true (sometimes I wore track pants), the casual work-from-home attire did not mean that I did not get things done.
When I first saw images of Oursin (above), the seafood restaurant by the fashion designer Simon Porte Jacquemus and Caviar Kaspia, located on the 2ème étage of the Galeries Lafayette Champs-Élysées, was immediately reminded of a snippet of film or video I watched with P recently about an artist who constructed his entire home with alcoves and cubbies ...
WAS REMARKING recently how one of my pet peeves is when people don't know the difference between its and it's. Bad spelling and grammar in general are annoying, but when people mix up its and it's, especially so. And in this age of social media everything ...