Shame on you, Vogue.

My September issue had been sitting in its plastic wrapping waiting patiently to be opened for a few days. When I finally did tear it open and sit down for a quick flip through and I got to page 668 in the article about Charlotte Casiraghi, I found an appalling mistake.

In writing about Charlotte's grandparent's - Princess Grace and Prince Ranier - wedding, Mario Testino wrote that "The groom wore a sword, the bride a high-necked froth of lace made by Edith Head, who costumed her movies" which would be a fine, if not flowery sentence if it were true. Grace Kelly's dress was designed by Helen Rose, who also costumed her movies. Edith Head was at Paramount and Grace had a seven year contract at MGM, but was frequently lent out to other studios. As part of MGM's deal to let Grace break her contract and leave Hollywood for Monaco, they insisted that Helen Rose, MGM's Edith Head, would make both her civil and religious ceremony wedding dresses.

(I was able to see this dress at the Victoria & Albert this spring and it is beyond gorgeous in real life.)

My main problem with this sort of blatant error in Vogue is, you call yourself reputable, this would have been remedied simple fact checking. And, what about the times when a subject is less well known to me and you have this sort of error. I might believe you, and then be absolutely wrong myself. Wow, Ms. Wintour, Mr. Testino, I expected more.

I am back!!!

So technically, I got home six days ago, but I had to spend some time running errands, catching up on Glee and getting used to pacific time zone again.



I am officially unpacked, laundered and my room is returning to order and cleanliness. I am finding homes for some of my new treasures.

Like this little beautiful, albeit, impractical box from Zambia. It is resting on a super cute dress I picked up in a vintage shop in London.

Or this delightful new passport case I HAD to get after my passport got completely soaked and warped at Victoria Falls. I mean, when you go to London, a trip to Smythson is always in order! Love that store. And that is sitting on a sweet little tray I haggled over for minutes in Livingstone.


But my favorite souvenir would have to be a little treasure I found in a vintage shop in London. I'll give you some hints,

It has a lock,


it has some keys,


it has a latch that looks like this,


Give up? It's a black Hermes Kelly that just needed desperately to come home with me! It's a little worn, but it is the most beautiful bag I've ever seen. It was on my life list to own one of these, but I didn't foresee that happening until at least 75. I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty excited about it.


I'll be back soon with photos and travel journal entries from Africa and London. In the mean time I am going to continue to love being near my reverse osmosis water purifier and my laundry machines, and appreciate being an American in a way I've never experienced before.

an open letter to vanity fair.

I just wanted to say I was beginning to doubt you as of late. When one of your covers this year was Tiger Woods, and then Michael Douglas, I thought, what is happening to the VF I know and love? Well, that all changed today as I got VF in the mail and saw my main object of obsession - Grace Kelly - on the cover. I tore off the plastic and flipped directly to page 182 and read the article - not the best, but it is way better than the drivel on Tiger's mistresses a few pages before. While you're still a little bit trashy these days, I feel like you're headed in the right direction. So, let's dump all of this coverage on crazy Tiger Woods and Kristen Stewart and get back to celebrities that people (i.e. me) care about.

Best regards,
Molly

So this is love.

My dear friend Cathleen is getting married next month. One of the things that sealed the deal as far as our friendship goes was when we first started talking dresses she said, "You know Grace Kelly?" To which my friend Analee said, "Does Molly know Grace Kelly?"
I was given the small task of finding shoe ideas to compliment her GK style gown - a task that I have absolutely enjoyed. In my searching I found the perfect pair of shoes. As in, if I were Cathleen I'd throw caution to the wind, and buy them for my wedding and then wear them every single day for the rest of my life, or the life of my knees. Find these beauties here.



Then somehow I stumbled into the occasions dresses at Nordstrom and found this.

My goodness, how much am I in love right now?

I can make an impact. I can.

Ali judges me subtly for my obsession/fascination with Grace Kelly. She says things like, "I just don't understand your relationship with Grace." I'm not sure what it is, really, either, (at least not specifically), but if you were to come into my room you would see traces of Grace everywhere. I have framed pictures hanging in my closet and one on my dresser, and a shelf entirely dedicated to coffee table books (9) (including the book she wrote on flowers and gardening), biographies (6) and DVDs (10) of her movies and a few tv appearances. I have been obsessed with her for many, many moons, and have made it a goal to watch all of her movies - and I've succeeded over the past decade except for one. Green Fire (1954). The bane of my obsessive existence.
Apparently, Grace hated the script and didn't want to make the film but only agreed to do it so she could be loaned out to Paramount to work with Hitchcock again, and subsequently hated making the film as well as Stewart Granger (just look how she's trying to get away from him on the Spanish language version of the poster). It's also supposedly a really mediocre-at-best film, but this does not change the fact that it is the one Grace Kelly movie I've never seen. I've even watched the ballet documentary she narrated in 1982.


About six months ago I discovered TCM.com. Now, despite my loathing of Ted Turner and how he now owns, among everything else, just about all of the movie rights to every movie ever made, I love the channel and the website is delightful as well. On tcm.com they have a suggestions page, where you can post requests for movies. So, for the past six months, every couple of weeks I've been going on and requesting them to play Green Fire, because it is out of print and I am not about to spend $40 for a VHS of a mediocre movie. And today, when I wandered on the site to request it again, guess what?! It is now scheduled to play July 28th at 1:30am (July 27th, 10:30 pm pst if you want to come over and watch it with me)!! They've answered my pleas and I am thankful. Now, the only trick is to set the DVD recorder for the right time, unlike the time I set it to record Two Women (1961) for Ali and accidentally set it for pm instead of am.* I still feel rotten about that. (But then I found that it is on DVD, so we're not entirely out of luck with that one.) So, at about 12:10am on July 28th, I'll be able to cross another thing off of my beckie-inspired list of things to do before I'm 30 list!

*This is not the source of Ali's hostility over my obsession with Grace, because her below the radar, quizzical expressions started long before that happened. Although it might be the source of some other hostility.