So this is what we were up to in Venice last month. We, meaning Sophie Djerlal from the Italian Vogue and myself getting this story in the box before anyone else. Honestly, we loved it. The Palazzina Grassi is a wonderful hotel and Mr Starck who is a venetian resident by the way, has done a marvelous job. I stayed at the hotel during the production and experienced every bliss of it.
Thierry ,photographer and Michael, an artist from Berlin.
Gilberto, a brazilian psychiatrist and Dimitri, press agent.
And last but not least, Eric Gizard, the interior designer, in a shaky incarnation of the Statue of Liberty discovering that she's holding the biography (in Russian) of Peter the Great and... its content.
At first, I had very little furniture, so I used my moving boxes as coffee table and would put up a grand decor out of scratch to entertain friends and improvised a tent as a guest bedroom when they stayed overnight or visited me from abroad. 
In time, I purchased from the flea market a massive 1930's mahogany double desk and far to much stuff too, but the lamp on the desk and the high narrow painting are reminiscent of my former life as a painter. I burned this painting last week. ah! ah! 
The photo on the left is a portrait of your humble servant taken in New York at that time. God, it looks like a century ago. 
The nautical family flag is all that is left from my ukrainian grand father's steamship "Iolanda". The New York Yacht club has a model of her. Its an interesting story which you can read about here. 
My former entry calls for this one. As I started to work on a somewhat regular basis for Condé Nast, I moved in April 1992 to a studio on the much sought after and elegant rue Guynemer along the Luxembourg garden. It was a strike of luck really. The place was a large high ceiling single room and a spacious kitchen decorated in the 70's. I kept the place for as long as I could afford it. It would not last more than three years but that is another story...
Fading in the sofa of my Parisian flat.
The photograph on the mantelpiece represents the staircase leading to the apartment of the editor Claude Gallimard, my ant's second husband. Most of the greatest French writers of the XXth Century have climbed these stairs but very few had access to his private quarters under the roof of the hotel particulier rue de l'Université in the 7th arrondissement of Paris. For a couple of years, I lived on the same floor but it was not a happy house and was glad to move out of its gloom.
These rocks are fossils and bear the beautiful name of "navel of the world". They come from Ouessant (Ushant in English).
Poster of the Month. January 2010
The official portrait in the spirit of Caravaggio,
and the fun backstage.
For the first post of the Year, let's have something joyful and extravagant. These kids who seem to be fooling around with buckets of paint are professional painters with an impressive clientele. They signed the ceilings of the Hotel Ritz, the walls of Catherine Deneuve, Stefano Pilati, Air and many others. When invited to do a group portrait, I aimed for the obvious approach: I'll paint the painters. You can check their portfolio here.
