THE NEW YORK DIARIES – DAY 4




Day 4 and eek! yet another washout – this time it was relentless. I was still wearing my not-quite-dried-out stinky Cons and it rained from the minute we stepped out of the hotel ’til about 5pm. Ugh! We went on a wild goose chase hunting for a couple of nonexistent flea markets before finding a very small one where D foraged for his beloved reggae records and I tapped my (trench) foot impatiently. As it really started tipping down monsoon-style we decided to jump in a cab and head to Bergdorf’s to dry off. Well, it being a Sunday, of course it wasn’t open yet. Doh! So there was nothing for it but to kill time at Starbucks in Trump Towers. Actually, I quite liked it!
By the time Bergdorf’s opened we were so sick of our sodden umbrellas (although I was rather taken with their natty umbrella bags) we couldn’t even muster the excitement to coo over the Goyard luggage. Seriously, it was that bad.

Finally we made it to a good flea market (The Antiques Garage, 112 West 25th Street between 6th and 7th) where we were in shabby chic heaven. I could literally have spent the entire day there. I really had to rein myself in with the spending otherwise I would have bought all manner of useless tat. In fact I bought very little, a $3 ‘gold’ chain to wear my dad’s rings on, and some vintage luggage labels for my scrapbook. I would have bought one of these name rings if I’d found my name!







Feeling quite pleased with myself for only spending a couple of dollars we exited the flea market and found ourselves slap bang in front of New York Vintage, the poshest and biggest vintage store I have ever seen.
Oh my word. When the shop guy asked D if I was a designer and D told him I was a stylist, well, a whole other room suddenly opened up for us. And then boxes and boxes of silk scarves were brought to us to rummage through. Can you imagine getting this sort of service in London? Forgeddit. Half an hour later and $100 lighter we left with a bagful of vintage Charvet and Celine scarves and ties.


Thankfully, the rain decided to ease up so we ambled to Mercer Street Books where I bought some black and white postcards to send to our families and D bought more used records.


Back to What Comes Around Goes Around where they let us have a snoop downstairs. Luckily there were none of the things I wanted (vintage Levi’s jackets/Ralph Lauren-esque jumpers/chinos/cuban heel ankle boots) in my size otherwise lord knows how much I would have spent. I did buy a new pair of old Converse though, should have really done it days ago!

By the time we got back to the hotel we were utterly exhausted. We lay on the bed for a wee rest, half watching the New Kids on The Block documentary and the next thing we knew we’d both passed out and it was only 9.30pm. Another early night in the city that never sleeps. Oh dear!

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THE NEW YORK DIARIES – DAY 3




Another rainy day, on and off but not as bad as day 2. We headed to Soho for breakfast then to R by 45 RPM where D proceeded to try on every scarf in the shop before buying me a nylon puffa neck-warmer. As we were paying for it, in walked Lauren Hutton! I tried to keep my cool while frantically mouthing and head jerking to D. She was wearing lime green high top Cons, a denim knee length skirt, some sort of blue outdoorsy jacket (isn’t she a hiker?) and a straw (straw!) backpack. She looked amazing. And she tried on a neck-warmer thingy like mine.

Then to Prada where D wanted to buy a shirt he’d seen in London. Beautiful store, it was like being in a film and I don’t care if it’s fake, I just love being asked ‘how are you’ when I walk into a shop. Unfortunately they didn’t have his size but they did have a lovely little blue man-clutch which I just couldn’t resist for myself. Well, it’s an investment isn’t it?
After lunch, more meandering and yet more shopping, this time for a giant suitcase to carry all our wares home in, we went to the movies.

I love seeing films in New York, I have fond memories of seeing my first Sofia Coppola and Miranda July films there. We decided on Wild Combination, a documentary about Arthur Russell, the experimental musician and disco producer who frequented the legendary New York Loft parties and died before his time in 1992. It was a great little film and very moving at the end. There was only a bit of footage of the Loft parties – I would have loved to see more of that time – but lots of interesting characters and storytelling.

Little did we know that there would be a Q & A with some of the participants immediately afterwards and it turned out D knew a couple of them quite well so we chatted to them for a while after the Q & A session. D was pretty hyper all the way home and wore me out with his excitement so we had a quick bite to eat then straight back to the Bowery’s fabulous marshmallow pillows and 400 threadcount sheets.





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THE NEW YORK DIARIES – DAY 2



Everything about New York was great apart from the weather. We had one beautiful day and four shitty ones! It was quite cute how the Bowery put their little weather forecast signs up in the lift, even though the forecasts were bad they kind of cheered us up.


Stupidly, I had only brought two pairs of shoes and both are on the leeky side. Tip: Do not wear leaky Converse to New York if you are planning to spend several hours a day on foot and the forecast is showers. We found that everyone wears snazzy wellies in New York when it rains – seriously, there were more wellies than Glastonbury. My wet squidgy feet and the constant up-and-down of the umbrella started getting on my nerves but I perked up when we got to Anthropologie. Mary Portas would love it! It has everything – charm, atmosphere, great merchandising. There is something to see wherever you look and even though the clothes don’t really float my boat, they have such a good selection of books and knick knacks you just have to buy something. I bought the Poppy King book, Lessons of a Lipstick Queen (part autobiography, part business manual, part self help) and a box of New York matches.

We also checked out APC (gorgeous store but nothing we can’t get at home), What Comes Around Goes Around (wanted everything but all madly expensive) and the MOMA shop. After lunch we headed to the New Museum of Contemporary Art which is a great space and has the biggest lift in the world. Seriously, the lift was about the size of a house. Alas, two of the floors were closed as they are putting together an Elizabeth Peyton exhibition which I would have loved to see but will eventually land at the Whitechapel Gallery in London according to the info on the New Museum’s website.
We consoled ourselves with more shopping. Why does being on holiday feel like shopping in the sales? You get into this now-or-never frenzy buying the most crazy amount of stuff like there’s no tomorrow. We bought a huge I Love New York scrapbook coffee table book and this New Museum laundry bag which I think should be tax deductable as I am so going to use it for my shoots.


We also popped into the John Varvatos shop a few doors down which used to be CBGBs. Although D turned his nose up, I actually thought they’ve done a really good job with it. They’ve kept a lot of the original stuff on the walls and sell records and vintage band tees from What Comes Around Goes Around.

Dinner was at Sala, a random restaurant we spotted across from the hotel. Phenomenal Spanish tapas, I could go there again right now. G wanted to take us out clubbing but we were too pooped so another early night for the lightweights.

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THE NEW YORK DIARIES – DAY 1



I’m back from my five-day shopathon in New York! D and I decided to stuff the credit crunch and splash out on a joint birthday pressie so we treated ourselves to four nights at The Bowery Hotel. We arrived on Thursday afternoon and we hadn’t even left Kennedy airport before we ran into trouble. D got stopped at passport control because they thought he was a wanted man – poor D! We had to sit in a waiting area for about half an hour while they checked his ‘papers’. I don’t think my quips of ‘is this like being in The Wire?’ went down too well. Finally they let us go and we hotfooted it to The Bowery. What a cool hotel! I’ll do a separate post about the hotel but it was beautiful and the staff were top-notch from start to finish. After checking in and freshening up, we had a bite to eat then went for a wander to the West Village to check out the Marc by Marc Jacobs shop (why waste time, huh?). Last time we were there two years ago we got a fab haul of cashmere scarves and gloves, a couple of belts and my famous $30 black PVC tote bag which is still going strong. Alas, nothing tickled our fancy so we left empty handed. We went back to the hotel via Dashwood Books where I couldn’t help buying a Japanese magazine full of Bruce Weber pictures and trivia. Of course, I couldn’t read a word of it but it looks good!
We promptly conked out at the hotel but had to stir ourselves as we had promised our friend S we would check out his exhibition opening.





Talk about mobbed! We queued for about 20 minutes to get in then did a quick 180 before going to the hotel bar to meet my friend G for drinks followed by dinner at Gemma. Gemma was great – buzzy, good food (although pricy) etc but we were both so zonked out we didn’t last long. We were fast asleep by 10pm.

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