Black & White and Wet All Over

New York is a wet and slushy mess today.  I thank my lucky stars that my morning commute is from my bed to my desk.  I still can't completely escape the grey skies and black and white landscape though.  Here's how it's inspiring me today. 

Place de la Madeleine - Rue de la Paix Paris 1942 by Marcel Bovis

Place Vendome, 1978

All photos from tumblr

Home

Winter is the time for comfort,

for good food and warmth,

for the touch of a friendly hand

and for a talk beside the fire:

it is the time for home.

- Edith Sitwell

Photo of my apt via instagram

Winter Reading

The love of learning,the sequestered nooks,

And all the sweet serenity of books.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As much as I love reading on the beach in the summer, there is really nothing better than snuggling up with a good book in the winter.  Yesterday, I stopped by the Strand Bookstore in the newly renovated Club Monaco store on lower Fifth Avenue, who is also having a big sale by the way, where I picked Speedboat by Renata Adler. It's a reprint of the original that was published 1971 with an afterword by Guy Trebay. Buying new books is probably the reason why I still haven't finished The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt which was my goal this holiday vacation. 

Very curious to hear what you all are reading this winter.

Bon weekend!

HC 

Photo by me via instagram.

Chic, Le Sport

Christmas came early to Habitually Chic. Yesterday, I received a copy of the book Jacques Henri Lartigue: A Sporting Life.  In French, the title is Chic, le sport ! which obviously, I find amusing. I was first introduced to the book at a press preview at Hermès whose 2013 theme for the year was "a sporting life" which was inspired by the photos of Lartigue. The book was a collaboration with Actes Sud who produced a gorgeous volume with not only photos but of the drawings and journal pages of the peripatetic photographer.  While I have seen many of Lartigue's beach photos of sun kissed skin on the Riviera which also populate the book, I hadn't seen his winter sports photos, some of which I've posted here. Many are from Megève and Chamonix where the skiers and skaters wore wool instead of moisture wicking techo fiber jackets or helmets for that matter. Their skies were probably wood too. No wonder Hermès was inspired.