“
Whenever you give up an apartment in New York and move to another city, New York turns into the worst version of itself. Someone I know once wisely said that the expression "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there" is completely wrong where New York is concerned; the opposite is true. New York is a very livable city. But when you move away and become a vistor, the city seems to turn against you. It's much more expensive (because you need to eat all your meals out and pay for a place to sleep) and much more unfriendly. Things change in New York; things change all the time. You don't mind this when you live here; when you live here, it's part of the caffeinated romance to this city that never sleeps. But when you move away, your experience change as a betrayal. You walk up Third Avenue planning to buy a brownie at a bakery you've always been loyal to, and the bakery's gone. Your dry cleaner move to Florida; your dentist retires; the lady who made the pies on West Fourth Street vanishes; the maitre d' at P.J. Clarke's quits, and you realize you're going to have to start from scratch tipping your way into the heart of the cold, chic young woman now at the down. You've turned your back from only a moment, and suddenly everything's different. You were an insider, a native, a subway traveler, a purveyor of inside tips into the good stuff, and now you're just another frequent flyer, stuck in a taxi on Grand Central Parkway as you wing in and out of La Guardia. Meanwhile, you rad that Manhattan rents are going up, they're climbing higher, they're reached the stratosphere. It seems that the moment you left town, they put a wall around the place, and you will never manage to vault over it and get back into the city again.
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Nora Ephron (I Feel Bad About My Neck, And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman)
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It has to be in a man's heart to love you, be faithful to you, respect you, and treat you like a queen. If it isn't in his heart, it doesn't matter how good you look, how much you do, how long you've been holding him down, or what your title is. He will view you on the same level as every other woman... ~facts
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La'Tonya West (From Main Chic To Side Chic: The La'Quela Chambers Story)
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God, the woman was cool. She had that pulled-together LA look about her, like she was ready to do a photo shoot for Vogue called Business Casual Chic.
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Lynn Painter (Nothing Like the Movies (Better Than the Movies, #2))
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The woman serving me was wearing a white sports bra that looked like it had been mauled by tigers--desert isle chic.
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Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity!)
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I was the sort of beautiful that women knew they could never truly emulate. Men knew they would never even get close to a woman like me.
Ruby was the elegant, aloof sort of beauty. Ruby was cool. Ruby was chic.
But Celia was the sort of beautiful that felt as if you could hold it in your hands, like if you played your cards right, you might just get to marry a girl like Celia St. James.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid (The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo)
“
In praise of mu husband's hair
A woman is alone in labor, for it is an unfortunate fact that there is nobody who can have the baby for you. However, this account would be inadequate if I did not speak to the scent of my husband's hair. Besides the cut flowers he sacrifices his lunches to afford, the purchase of bags of licorice, the plumping of pillows, steaming of fish, searching out of chic maternity dresses, taking over of work, listening to complaints and simply worrying, there was my husband's hair.
His hair has always amazed stylists in beauty salons. At his every first appointment they gather their colleagues around Michael's head. He owns glossy and springy hair, of an animal vitality and resilience that seems to me so like his personality. The Black Irish on Michael's mother's side of the family have changeable hair--his great-grandmother's hair went from black to gold in old age. Michael's went from golden-brown of childhood to a deepening chestnut that gleams Modoc black from his father under certain lights. When pushing each baby I throw my arm over Michael and lean my full weight. When the desperate part is over, the effort, I turn my face into the hair above his ear. It is as though I am entering a small and temporary refuge. How much I want to be little and unnecessary, to stay there, to leave my struggling body at the entrance.
Leaves on a tree all winter that now, in your hand, crushed, give off a dry, true odor. The brass underside of a door knocker in your fingers and its faint metallic polish. Fresh potter's clay hardening on the wrist of a child. The slow blackening of Lent, timeless and lighted with hunger. All of these things enter into my mind when drawing into my entire face the scent of my husband's hair. When I am most alone and drowning and I think I cannot go on, it is breathing into his hair that draws me to the surface and restores my small courage.
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Louise Erdrich (The Blue Jay's Dance: A Birth Year)
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They [best dressed women] don’t want to look like their daughters. They want their own individual brand of chic. […] The cut and fit must be exactly right, and they are willing to spend hours in the fitting room to make sure of it. They spend money, too. But if any one of them went broke tomorrow she’d rather choose one perfectly cut expensive dress and make it do for years than buy a dozen cheap ones.
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Joan Crawford (My Way of Life)
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Chic Murray once told me, he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, ‘Did you fall?’ He said, ‘No, I’m trying to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.
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Billy Connolly (Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly)
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Hun var så meget penere i ansiktet og snakket morsommere og var malet og var det de kalte chic, men hun var ikke så meget til det andre, slet ikke så storartet til det andre, det såes på hende, ingen bryster, flat, haha, gikk engang med hatten bak frem for å finde på noget.
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Knut Hamsun (Ringen sluttet)
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Ever since I’d met Edna Parker Watson, I tried to wear suits whenever possible. Among other lessons, that woman had taught me that a suit will always make you look more chic and important than a dress. And not too much jewelry! “A majority of the time,” Edna said, “jewelry is an attempt to cover up a badly chosen or ill-fitting garment.
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Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls)
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Stephanopoulos was waiting for me inside. She was a short, terrifying woman whose legendary capacity for revenge had earned her the title of the lesbian officer least likely to have a flippant remark made about her sexual orientation. She was stocky, and had a square face that wasn’t helped by a Sheena Easton flat-top that you might have called ironic postmodern dyke chic, but only if you really craved suffering.
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Ben Aaronovitch (Moon Over Soho (Rivers of London, #2))
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But Hillgarth had already come across him in a very different guise. In October 1941, he had bailed Dudley Clarke out of a Spanish jail. There was nothing so odd in that. Hillgarth was often bailing people out of jail. What made the occasion special, and acutely embarrassing, was Colonel Clarke’s outfit: he was dressed as a woman. A Spanish police photograph shows this master of deception in high heels, lipstick, pearls, and a chic cloche hat, his hands, in long opera gloves, demurely folded in his lap. He was not even supposed to be in Spain, but in Egypt. In spite of the colonel’s predicament, in the photo he seems thoroughly comfortable, even insouciant.
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Ben Macintyre (Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory)
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The bar was manned, or should I say womanned by a skeletal heroin chic concentration camp survivor with an elaborate set of tattoos and an incredibly bizarre set of piercings. I swear, if women continue to insist on making their selves this unattractive I’m going to swear off sex permanently.
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Randall Moore (Falco, the Dark Angel)
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This busyness was not about money--despite the chic catalogs piled on the kitchen table. It was only marginally about good-heartedness or politics. I was a woman disconnecting from my moments alone, when the world seemed to shatter into terror, into madness coming toward me at the speed of loss. The moment for which--I could not have guessed--my spirit and writing longed.
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Mary Sojourner (Solace: Rituals of Loss and Desire)
“
George Orwell argued that there are many prejudices we can get over, but smell repulsion is one of the most difficult.
By turns frisky and indolent, Jicky by Guerlain has the personality of a cat.
Mitsouko by Guerlain is as delicate as spiced tea with a drop of milk.
Habanita by Molinard signifies comfort - like being stuck in a cafe in Paris on a cold day, comfortably trapped in a room filled with cigarette smoke, an old lady violet-scented dusting powder and the aroma of buttery baked goods.
L'Aimant by Coty is warm and sweet, like cut plums sauteed in butter and brandy and sprinkled with candied violets.
Femme by Rochas smells like the inside of a woman's butter-soft suede purse that has accumulated the feminine smells of perfume, lipstick and other womanly objects. This classic fruit chypre smells like softness.
Caleche by Hermes is like red lipstick for the outdoorsy aristocrat who can't otherwise be bothered to wear makeup. Caleche is a perfume for the woman who doesn't have to try too hard. It's the epitome of Parisian chic, reserved, elegant and well thought out without being fussy.
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Barbara Herman
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She’s just supersophisticated and chic. That girl in the coffee shop (Fudge? Fudgie?) is so lucky to have this elegant woman as her mom. I feel like the sorority would love someone so cosmopolitan, and I hope Dean Grace agrees.
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Jen Lancaster (Housemoms)
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Covered in Stephen Burrows inside-out chicness or resplendent in Chloé blouses tucked into skinny jeans tucked into $400 boots, she has never underestimated the power of a beautiful thing. She knows, without her yoga instructor’s telling her, that size 4 is the size that’s right for her. The Bendel is subtle and a little shy—she hides her Penelope Tree eyebrows under oversized sunglasses; her swinging straight hair under turbans and berets; her freshly manicured toenails beneath oversized clogs as she looks for the simple throw-on at $275. The Bendel does not eat during the day, except for an occasional asparagus. She prefers her store’s boutiques with their maximum of chic and minimum of stock. The Bendel woman is methodical and thinks ahead, and if she has stayed past the sensible 3:30, thank God for Buster, who will get her a taxi.
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Julie Satow (When Women Ran Fifth Avenue: Glamour and Power at the Dawn of American Fashion)
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—and every woman in the room thinks of her husband … with his cocoa-butter jowls and Dior Men’s Boutique pajamas … ducking into the bathroom and locking the door and turning the shower on, so he can say later that he didn’t hear a thing—
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Tom Wolfe (Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers)
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The other woman was chic and polished in a way Yvette could never be. Wavy, light brown hair, a sheer blouse and high heels only made her more attractive—and left Yvette feeling underdressed, out of place and far too intrusive. She’d come to the bar to give Cannon a message, to release him from any obligations, and instead she’d just...enjoyed him.
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Lori Foster (No Limits (Ultimate, #1))
“
Most Beautiful Woman In The World
She has no special talent
No special beauty mark
No invention with a patent
No voice of a comely lark
No hourglass physique
No sunbeam likened smile
No lingering mystique
No manicured nails to file
But what she had she flaunted
With the style of a fur- lined stole
With the chic of a runway model
She flashed her beautiful soul
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Ruwaida Van Doorsen
“
So many women have cancer now. Do you think a new esthetic can develop? Cancer beauty? I mean, if there could be heroin chic, the esthetic of the death-wishing drug addict? Will non-cancerous women be begging their cosmetic surgeons to give them fake node implants under their chins and around their necks? Under their arms? In their groins? So sexy, that fullness. And it works so well as an anti-aging technique, to fill out that sagging turkey neck. Who wouldn't want it? And the jewelry, the titanium pellets piercing those tits. So S&M/bondage."
Dunja kept talking in Nathan's head as he segued into a parallel inner dialogue with her about health and evolution, about the theory that concepts of beauty were not just concepts, but perceptions of indicators of reproductive potential and therefore of youth, about selfish genes using our bodies as vehicles only to perpetuate themselves, about how perhaps cancer genes could begin to make their own case for reproductive immortality as well, and so they too would put immense pressure on cultural acceptance of formerly taboo concepts of beauty, concepts which used to indicate disease and nearness to death but now mesmerized and seduced and mimicked youth and ripeness and health, and so her little fantasy of a culture forming around her own dire straits could theoretically...
Nathan could only just manage to keep looking into her searching eyes, feeling at that moment very sentimental and ordinary, and therefore mute. Could he really say anything about classical concepts of art, and therefore beauty, based on harmony, as opposed to modern theories, post-industrial-revolution, post-psychoanalysis, based on sickness and dysfunction? Could he make a case for her new, diseased self as the most avant-garde form of womanly beauty? He didn't dare, but she did.
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David Cronenberg (Consumed)
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When reexamining her short life from a distance of twenty years, I found lessons about a dysfunctional culture and how woman struggle to build a life within a patriarchal society. The The nineties' media morphed into a newly minted sensation factory in which the burden of leading a public existence went from tolerable to excruciating for both Carolyn and John. While one part of the culture was basking in a champagne supernova of pared-down chic, another British music invasion, and languid cool, the tabloids began a feeding frenzy that forgot the objects of their fascination were human beings.
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Elizabeth Beller (Once Upon a Time: The Captivating Life of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy)
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2024: New styles for floral nails. You don't have to settle for a plain, one-color manicure anymore—there are so many creative options available that any woman can select a manicure that fits her preferences, needs, and special occasions. Choose stylish nail art for this spring in the cutest and chic floral nail designs.
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Salome Wilde
“
& so I bring my journal writing & sit amongst / the ferociously chic at Cafe Flor (which I call / Cafe Voyeur) in an era when everyone has a therapist & no one has a lover. and I have a slice of carrot cake / and a frothy mochachina, sprinkled generously with nutmeg / & cinnamon, sitting there pondering "The Convolution of Desire / & Terror that is the paradigm of human sexuality." And I write / it down completely impressed with myself, smug with the glow, / wondering if anyone-man or woman, or middle aged transsexual / with bad makeup from the nether twilight world of the Tenderloin-- / would stop by to cruise me. YES, EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE / I HAVE AN OUTSTANDING MOMENT OF OBSOLETE HAPPINESS.
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Barbara Anderson (1-800-911)
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Louise, who at twenty-three could easily look like a sixteen-year-old boy, wore trousers, a vest, and a tie. Joan wore a chic dress with a nipped-in waist and wide skirt, her red hair in a wavy, shoulder-length pageboy. The juke box in the bar was a good one, with Ray Charles singing “Hey Now” and new records by B. B. King, whose performances on Beale Street were a Memphis sensation. The most popular song of the night, hands down, was Kitty Wells strumming “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Wells was from Nashville, and the burgeoning country music industry in their home state was a subject of fascination for both women. Louise, intrigued by the fashion for cowboy costumes and yodeling, could do a fair imitation of Hank Williams. Louise had a new swagger that Joan hadn’t seen in her before. She was more assertive and suffered fools even less. When a pretty young woman stopped by their table to compliment Joan’s hair and flirtatiously ask, “Why don’t you cut it short?” Louise sent her on her way with a proprietary growl, saying, “Leave her alone. She’s not gay.
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Leslie Brody (Sometimes You Have to Lie: The Life and Times of Louise Fitzhugh, Renegade Author of Harriet the Spy)
“
They say, une femme d’un certain âge. A woman of a certain age. And no one has to be too certain what that age is.
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Anne Barone (Chic & Slim Armoire Boudoir Cuisine & Savvy: Success Techniques For Wardrobe Relaxation Food & Smart Thinking)
“
This is my cat, Juju," the woman says, noting my obvious confusion, maybe even my fear. "He's my good luck charm."
"Uh, yeah," I say, backing away ever so slightly. That's some collar.
I love the rhinestones. Trés chic."
"Rhinestones? Don't be silly. I buy all his accessories from a jeweler. His collar is from Catier. As they say, diamonds are a cat's best friend."
My upper lip twitches. Nobody has ever said that. And I'm pretty sure she means Cartier.
She blows the cat a kiss, and I swear, if cats could smile, this one does, his giant face twisting with love or hunger.
"He's huge," I say, watching his tail flick a bit menacingly.
"He's a rare French breed, a Chartreux. He's just, how do you say? Big-boned?" She chortles out a laugh. "I really should put him on a regime like the vétérinaire said. He weighs nine kilos. Can you believe it? I strain my back when I try to pick him up. But he truly doesn't like les haricots verts or les courgettes. He's quite the gourmand."
My head spins with confusion. I wonder, What cat would like green beans and zucchini? as I convert the math in my head. Her cat weighs around twenty pounds. And, apparently, he hates vegetables but adores his bling.
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Samantha Verant (The Spice Master at Bistro Exotique)
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Perfume is to smells what eroticism is to sex: an aesthetic, cultural, emotional elaboration of the raw materials provided by nature.
The ladies of the court, led by Marie-Antoinette, resorted to the only thing that could keep them one step ahead of the commoners, however wealthy they were: fashion. In fact, this is how fashion as we know it came into existence: the latest trend adopted by a happy few for a season before trickling down to the middle classes.
Just a touch of the negligence etudiee that distinguishes chic Parisian women from their fiercely put-together New Yorker or Milanese counterparts.
Perfume needs to be supported by image.
You're not just doing it to smell good: you're perpetuating a ritual of erotic magic that's been scaring and enticing men in equal measure for millennia.
Perfumes are our subconscious. They read us more revealingly than any other choice of adornment, perhaps because their very invisibility deludes us into thinking we can get away with the message they carry.
These scents severed fragrance from its function as an extension of a female or male persona - the rugged guy, the innocent waif or the femme fatale - to turn it into a thing that was beautiful, interesting and evocative in and of itself.
Perfume's advertising relies on the 3 aspiration S: stars, sex and seduction, with a side helping of dreams or exoticism. Descriptions, impressions, analogies, short stories, snippets or real-life testing, bits of history, parallels with music or literature.
Connecting a scent with emotions, impressions, atmospheres, isn't that why we wear it? Isn't it all subjective?
Just because you don't want it in your life doesn't make it bad. And it's not entirely impossible to consider perfumes beyond their "like/don't like" status. What intent does t set out to fulfill? How does it achieve its effects? How does it fit in with the history of the brand or its identity? How does it compare to the current season's offerings? Does it bring something new?
The story told by the perfumer blends with the ones we tell ourselves about it; with our feelings, our moods, our references, our understanding of it. Once it is released from the bottle, it becomes a new entity. We make it ours: we are the performers of our perfume.
Both lust and luxury are coupled in the same Latin word: luxuria is one of the 7 deadly sins. The age-old fear of female sexuality. The lure of beauty, set off by costly and deceitful adornments, could lead men to material and moral ruin but, more frighteningly, suck them into a vortex of erotic voracity. A man's desire waxes and wanes. But how can a woman, whose pleasure is never certain and whose receptive capacity is potentially infinite, ever be controlled?
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Denyse Beaulieu (The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent)
“
Warm skin tones looks best in elegant warm shades. Think fire and earth tones: reds, oranges, yellows, and browns.
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Eliza Chamber (Glamour: How to Be a Chic and Elegant Woman)
“
Vianne,” he says. “I wanted you to meet my daughter.” He reaches back for a classically beautiful young woman wearing a chic black sheath and vibrant pink neck scarf. She comes toward me, smiling as if we are friends. “I’m Isabelle,” she says.
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Kristin Hannah (The Nightingale)
“
but Wetmore launched out, with Alma for a tacit text, on the futility of women generally going in for art. "Even when they have talent they've got too much against them. Where a girl doesn't seem very strong, like Miss Leighton, no amount of chic is going to help."
His wife disputed him on behalf of her sex, as women always do.
"No, Dolly," he persisted; "she'd better be home milking the cows and leading the horse to water."
"Do you think she'd better be up till two in the morning at balls and going all day to receptions and luncheons?"
"Oh, guess it isn't a question of that, even if she weren't drawing. You knew them at home," he said to Beaton.
"Yes."
"I remember. Her mother said you suggested me. Well, the girl has some notion of it; there's no doubt about that. But—she's a woman. The trouble with these talented girls is that they're all woman. If they weren't, there wouldn't be much chance for the men, Beaton. But we've got Providence on our own side from the start. I'm able to watch all their inspirations with perfect composure. I know just how soon it's going to end in nervous breakdown. Somebody ought to marry them all and put them out of their misery."
"And what will you do with your students who are married already?" his wife said. She felt that she had let him go on long enough.
"Oh, they ought to get divorced."
"You ought to be ashamed to take their money if that's what you think of them."
"My dear, I have a wife to support."
Beaton intervened with a question. "Do you mean that Miss Leighton isn't standing it very well?"
"How do I know? She isn't the kind that bends; she's the kind that breaks.
”
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William Dean Howells (A Hazard of New Fortunes (Modern Library Classics))