I sat opposite a girl at dinner last night called Louisa Guinness. She and two of the other girls at the table were wearing these beautiful rings that looked like Anish Kapoor voids, round rings with concave centers. So of course we start chatting about them. It turns out Louisa is a jewelry designer who has started a collection of pieces with big name British artists. These cuff links are designed by Tim Noble and Sue Webster and are called The Bastards Got Me. Marc Quinn has made a frozen strawberry pendant in white or yellow gold with 54 diamonds for seeds, and there are pieces by Sam Taylor Wood, Gavin Turk and Antony Gormley.

The jewelry is not that easy to get hold of--everything is made by hand either in the artists' studios or at Hatton Garden so the productions are small. However, it is not impossible. Louisa's website shows all the artists that she works with and includes the jewelry that inspired her collection, pieces by Max Ernst and Calder for example. The jewelry is available to order at Ben Brown Fine Art on Cork Street in London but take a look at Louisa Guinness' website where you can also contact her directly.

I am in london doing a shopping story for the magazine. The thing that has struck me more than anything is how green London is, i know this isn't exactly news - there are more parks in london than any other city in the world but there are also so many flowers everywhere. I think we are not just a nation of shopkeepers, but more specifically, florists. I am staying at Number Sixteen Sumner Place, a divine hotel on a smart, residential street in South Kensington - they have knocked the gardens of the four buildings taken to make the hotel together to make this long and very green garden where can have breakfast. It is really charming and amazingly the weather is too.

Naturalizer Shoes are getting behind closet purging. From May 3rd through 11 take your unwanted and gently used shoes - the ones that you would wear to an interview - and still could wear to an interview - and hand them in at your nearest Naturalizer, store. They will donate them and a pair of brand new Naturalizer shoes to the charity, Dress for Success, as well as offer a 20% discount on a pair for yourself.
Dress For Success is a wonderful charity that helps disadvantaged women get their lives together by helping them dress for job interviews. If you have other clothes that you think would be good go to the Dress For Success website and donate directly, this is just such a wonderful pro-active and confidence building charity for women who need a helping hand.

One of the things that nearly always sends me into total confusion and a muddle on a decorating job is the hardware. One doesn't always want to have the recognisable hardware in bathrooms that comes from some of our favourite bathroom supply shops. Try The Hook Lady, she runs from all sorts of swirly designs to a hook as simple and smart as this one. I have just ordered some shelf brackets from her too for $20 a pair.

Aren't these new fabrics pure, spring heaven. This is Carolina Irving's new Collection, which she is selling at Hollywood at Home, Peter Dunham's glorious shop in LA. If you live, at all, nearby head over there, the store shows all the fabrics (as well as a ton of other treats, furniture, antiques and more fabric) and they are happy to see the general public! See below for directions.

Carolina's house is in the latest issue of domino, the one with Julianne Moore on the cover. She has so much taste, check it out, it is very inspiring to see how she uses fabric and mixes pattern. For interior designers the collection is going to be available at John Rosselli.

I went into Porthault the other day looking for blue floral prints. Rose (the appropriately named lady who sees over this herbaceous store) sent me pictures from the stock books in Paris.  I just about slid off my chair as I looked over what she sent.  Firstly aren't these books heaven? New York is just about bursting with spring, so I can't get enough of a floral print.  After these charming flowers that I have never seen before came a page of the more familiar hearts...

How about those pale grey ones?  DIVINE, I have never seen a grey and white Porthault heart bed before, but am trying to work out how I can sleep in my very own, quite soon.

D. Porthault
470 Park Avenue, NYC
212 688 1660

I was up at Bergdorf's 7th floor (the website does not reflect the department one bit by the way) over the weekend.  They have transformed the place into a burst of bright colors.  They have a series of cheerful ceramics--these plates are about $35 each and come in yellow, red, green or blue.  They also have these cranberry pink glasses which are blown in Scotland.  Porthault has opened a concession and they have a huge room filled with more muted ceramics and glass.  There are also wonderful trays with a cut out trellis design in a bunch of colors.  It is really inspiring and gets one feeling ready for a cocktail on a terrace somewhere.

Grana and Mau is a most charming website, only just gone live this week, which sells clothes and bed linens for little girls and boys.  There are the most adorable little embroidered pajamas, nightdresses and bed linen.  I am sending a friend of mine a white baby pillow embroidered with beige hearts. I love the beige and white option for newborns--one doesn't always want to color code a baby.  The pajamas are totally adorable offered in 'Mau' or European styles and embroidered with dragon flies or boats for example.

I got sent this email today from Marc Jancou Contemporary for Thomas Zipp's exhibition. Just as I was about to delete it in a fury of grrrrrrrrrrr, I wish people would stop sending me junk and how do I get on all these databases, I noticed that the picture was actually kind of great. So I clicked further, and I love it. Is it a crazy string tree tied with a bow? If someone looked inside my head right now I think it might look a little like this, and I love the textured black background. I find it a strangely cheerful and perky image. I might even go and check out the rest of the paintings.

Exhibition opens tonight at Marc Jancou Contemporary on Great Jones Alley, and runs until May 24th
212.473.2100.

I was flying around town on a mission yesterday, looking for champagne flutes, charger plates and trays for hors d'oeuvres.  Charlotte Moss' shop very quickly rose to the top of my list of places to go.  I am ashamed to say that I hadn't been in before, for various dreary reasons.  I loved it.  I found the most beautiful glasses for champagne, not exactly flutes - they are Venetian colored glass. I bought a pale peachy pink and a stronger more purply pink.  Then I was on to Italian paper desk sets, box files, letter racks, pencil pots, pen trays, note blocks all covered in beautiful papers.  There are wonderful stacks of books and accessories - fabulous silver trays, napkins, cutlery - all in a Charlotte Moss house and all in their appropriate room.  There is something about the big, established and traditional interior decorators that always amazes me. The detail is just so good and the comfort level so high.  Whether you are into the look as a whole or not, I find that there is always a lot to learn from them and style elements to pinch!

The shop is a great resource, it is bright, beautiful and cheerful and so are all the girls that work there.

This bud vase is hand made by Charlotte's stepson and is $60.  I do love a bud vase, they are so easy to fill and are so pretty on a small table, one's desk, bathroom, just easy peasy.

The store is at 20 east 63rd Street, NYC T. 212 308 3888

While I was in Chicago I met Winifred Grace, a local jewelry designer making beautiful necklaces, bracelets and earings.  She sells her pieces at some great stores around the country including Belvedere which I included in my story on Atlanta - actually I spent way too much time at the Belvedere jewelry counter while I was there.  Winnie's look is very cool/urban and perfect for wearing everyday. She uses a combination of oxidized silver and gold.  This necklace with its nest of discs is one that I particularly like. It is $200, but for Domino Daily Dose readers there is a 15% discount being offered on jewelry orders placed until the 15th April, you just have to mention that you read about it on Daily Dose once you are at check out.  So hurry up!
And because i couldn't resist, here is a picture of Winnie in her studio....

While we are having this conversation, I thought this might be worth putting out there.  Love the idea of this hanging in a kitchen. I found it at X21 Modern in San Francisco.

So the poll for hanging a stuffed fish is pretty tight, but more of you are saying NO.  I wasn't sure myself, although, I am a bit of a "never say never when it comes style questions - I have voted yes, twice!

I am in Chicago shooting the next shopping story - thank you all who gave their favourite places. I have been to nearly all of them and loved, loved, loved SCOUT as you promised I would.  So, what is the first thing I see when I walk into Larry Vodak's fantastic shop - this enormous sail fish hanging on the wall.  He has such flair, of course it looks great.  I think the trick is the fish needs to be big to carry it off, there is no point showing off a small catch, and again this proves that even the most questionable taste can be made really chic.  If you want to join the vote click here.

I have been looking at other blogs recently, and being a big Polaroid fan, I headed to this one, My Polaroid Blog.  It is a total delight.  Jen is a prop stylist in California and her pictures are these ravishing ethereal images that I find incredibly appealing and inspiring. Worth checking out. She has several other blogs too. I am so impressed by the quality of people's blogs and the time they find to devote to them -- especially more than one, am in total awe.

I was away last week and it is amazing when you time a trip to coincide with the clocks changing, because you leave town in the winter and return to spring. I don't know what it is about the clocks changing that brings on the daffodils and the budding of the trees so punctually - it is as though they are on deadline.
I got directed somehow over the last week to this lovely blog called {Frolic!} -- a name which feels so season appropriate. Firstly I would like to go and live in that vase of Lily of the Valley, and secondly this site is full of lovely things that you will enjoy escaping to while you are knee deep in paper at your desk.

I have just been sent an email about Edith Wharton's estate which is facing foreclosure unless they raise $3 million by Easter Monday. These pictures above show the incredible restoration that the house underwent between 1997 and 2006. It seems such a huge shame to lose this wonderful piece of American Heritage from public hands. To donate to the fund you click here.

Am off to Chicago next to search out the cool stores for our story on the city.  Your comments are always welcome and I'd love some direction before I leave on the 24th March.

OK OK, now for something a little safer. I have just come back from a trip to England where I went to see the Interior Decorator Robert Kime at his barns in Wiltshire.  The barns are sadly not open to the public but he has a wonderful shop on Kensington Church Street, and a website.  Apart from his fantastic antique textiles, own line of fabrics and wallpapers, and furniture, he also has a great selection of lighting.  I am in the middle of decorating a house in the country and one of the hardest things I find to source is good lighting, especially wall sconces and picture lights.  Robert has an excellent selection, like these library lights which you can attach to the tops of bookcases.  If you are looking for metal lights check this site - there is a comprehensive and very smart selection.

On the corner of Bank and West 4th is the new Marc Jacobs store. Some are getting their knickers in a bit of a twist about it because he has so many shops already, and the little hairdressers that was there before.....blah blah blah, yeah yeah yeah.  So the bad hairdresser has gone and a troupe of young, charming and hilarious people have arrived all working in Marc's shop selling things one might want rather than a bad Hillary Clinton hairdo.  (I have got it wildly wrong, for which I am very sorry. A glib and flippant remark has taken center stage in a post that was not supposed to be about either Marc Jacobs or the small hairdressing salon that was there before. It has been incredibly foolish and short-sighted of me. My intention was to shine a light on a young girl and her blog that I found to be charming and charismatic. Sadly I managed to cast a rather nasty shadow over it, for which I feel quite devastated. I am not for a minute a champion of small businesses being pushed out by greedy landlords looking for larger corporations to take their place. I was brought up in a shop where my mother had to fight similar landlords. I am a huge supporter of small businesses, and they have been the almost exclusive focus of my articles since I have been a writer. I am really incredibly sorry for the offense caused and hope that it is possible for the level of upset to calm a little.) I can hardly pass the door without one of them saying hi or waving from inside. Now isn't that what we are afraid of losing when the neighborhood gets swanky.
Here is Ginny:

She has started a blog My Favorite Color is Shiny which is so charming. It's mostly about the goings on on the corner of Bank and West 4th, like a man carrying balloons or the guy sitting outside the vintage bookstore across the street.

or things that she thinks are pretty...like the 'jar of good thoughts'
.
There is something so utterly appealing about seeing a record of real local life from a corner shop on one of the prettiest corners in NY.  Who would have thought that LVMH would ultimately have been responsible.

Still in LA and visiting Mansour on Melrose Avenue. Mansour is a carpet dealer associated mostly with rare and ravishing Persian rugs - way beyond my budget. But Ben Mansour, son of papa Mansour who started the company has created Mansour Modern. It is filled with wonderful things that not only work on more contemporary spaces but with younger price points. The stock is broad, moroccan rugs, tibetan wool rugs, flat weaves, neutral wool and silk rugs - great stripes, self spots. You could do a whole house here without it looking like you went to one shop. Check out the Mansour Modern site.

I was in Los Angeles last week and went to the launch of Celebutantes, a book written by Amanda Goldberg and Ruthanna Khalighi Hopper.  It is a wonderfully entertaining flick through Oscar week for Lola Santisi, the daughter of an Oscar winning director who is working (she is trying to cure herself of career deficit disorder) for her unknown fashion designer friend, desperately trying to get one of his frocks onto the red carpet.  The book is a charm but then so is Amanda who is a friend of mine.  At her book launch she had the most wonderful sea green eyeshadow that made her eyes look like a pair of butterflies - note to self when in a little black dress and no jewelery - dress up the eyes.  AND THEN most chic of all she had immaculately manicured battleship grey nails - the colour: Stormy from Rescue in NY where they have a slew of amazing other colours, but the grey is really good.

When Deborah and I were in Paris the other week we stopped by Deyrolle, one of the most beautiful shops in Paris. It has been on the same premises since 1831, a shop selling taxidermy and curiosities. Two days after our visit a short circuit caused a terrible fire.

Louis Albert and Francoise de Broilly, who own Deyrolle, are friends of mine, and we hung out with them in these beautiful rooms just days before the fire. Their website shows images of the beautiful animals, birds and insects - many of which have been lost. If you have any beautiful examples of taxidermy that you would like to sell Deyrolle are looking to replenish their stock. There could not be a happier home for these animals. My thoughts are with Deyrolle and I am posting this blog with love and sympathy.

I got shot in San Francisco. At X21 or Sultana as it is called online. X21 is a crazy store on Valencia street, they have some pretty eccentric stock amongst which there is more normal things like these chairs. But the scale is often over the top so they have this thing where they shoot female shoppers with the items they are putting onto 1st Dibs, to give a sense of the size, and i got a staring role while i was in there.

This trip to london seemed to have a jewelry theme, I was taken to Jacqueline Rabun in Grosvenor Mews (just behind the Lanesborough Hotel - Hyde Park Corner). This is a rare treat, the store is set in old stables and the old stalls are very much part of this ravishing store. Jacqueline's jewelry is almost entirely made of either silver or gold, with a little splash of pave diamonds here and there. The feel is totally amoebic/organic and the contrast between the shining gold shapes and the grey of the shop - which smells richly of a geranium/lavender concoction, it is all totally chic. I loved my time here, a jewellers not only for women but for women to shop in.

London and more specifically Chelsea green: one of the most charming spots in the city and in recent years the small shops have become more and more desirable. Felt is one of the newer stores there, a jewelry boutique with prices from £20 to £3,000. I spent hours trying on and finally left with a necklace for £100, after trying on nearly all the vintage furs tucked at the back. I loved and wanted a piece by Pippa Small that requires a little saving and an emerald bead necklace that had just the right amount of sparkle and absolute magnificent colour.

This is something so incredibly exciting I just couldn't believe it when I clipped it from my copy of Australian Vogue Living (one of my absolute favourite magazines). I had no idea that Cecil Beaton had done a line of fabric and wallpaper designs. As yet they are not available in the States, but they are in London through a company called Beaudesert and are online. I really long to use the papers, have to try to find a spot that I haven't already covered in something. My particular favorites are Beaton Bouquet and Beaton Pansies -- take a look.

OK, so you have to look really carefully to spot it, but this is a photograph of Deborah being shown a black rose by Christophe and Emanuel at Odorantes in Paris.  Odorantes is one of my all-time favorite shops in the world.  It is a florist on the rue Madame that sells only scented or astonishing flowers and they are all grown in or close to Paris.  The shop is divine: It is painted zinc grey with