Hasta La Ideas

“Macarons are the quintessential confectionery delight. In the macaron, the color, texture, and flavor become so much more than the sum of their parts. And since the flavors aren’t dictated by the cookies’ form, each one becomes a vessel of endless possibility for the most fantastic flavor imaginable.”

–Will Cotton, discussing his collaboration with Ladurée. The artist’s macaron flavor (think ginger-infused whipped cream) and box debuts this week in Miami at Art Basel Miami Beach.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

An illustration by A. Robida that accompanied Octave Uzanne’s 1894 essay.

“Reading, as we practice it today, soon brings on great weariness; for not only does it require of the brain a sustained attention which consumes a large proportion of the cerebral phosphates, but it also forces our bodies into various fatiguing attitudes.”

-French bibliophile and writer Octave Uzanne (1851-1931) in “The End of Books,” an essay that appeared in a 1894 issue of Scribner’s Magazine

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“I have a bit of an obsession with stationery. I am almost fanatical about choice of paper, notebook, writing implements. It’s getting out of hand. You’re always searching for the perfect writing implement and I think I’ve finally found it. It’s the rOtring Tikky Graphic, a German pen. I buy these by the dozen because I am afraid they might stop making them. It’s for me the perfect writing implement.”

-Author William Boyd, whose first James Bond novel will be published on October 8 by HarperCollins, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Looks from the Narciso Rodriguez resort 2014 collection.

“I was raised in a very rococo, gold-leaf, crushed-velvet, red environment….And my bedroom was the bone of contention in this Mediterranean, French-villa dream. It was white. It had a very brilliant royal-blue rug and black-and-white furniture. One wall had a very graphic black-and-white op-art thing going on. And it was strange for a kid to live in an environment like that….I was always fascinated by graphic art and typography and architecture. And so I was constantly cutting things and making blocks and making buildings out of shoeboxes.

I came from a lower-middle-class situation in Newark. It was humble. But I think from those humble beginnings, I was able to create my own world. And I really loved things that were black and white. It wasn’t until recently that I made a connection through the early years, through different points in my career, where everything is about blocking a sihouette or an environment or a situation….I realize that I live in the same environment I did as a kid, but with less junk and better art.”

–Narciso Rodriguez interviewed by artist Rachel Feinstein for Interview. He’ll show his spring 2014 collection this evening at SIR Stage37 in New York.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“The Wrights preached practicality over the ‘total absurdity of the Old Dream,’ and no place was riper for implementing their vision than ‘The Vanishing Dining Room.’ Conceding that, to ‘a reader accustomed to a room devoted only to dining, with fixed and formal furniture, we may seem to have done frightening and unstabilizing things,’ the Wrights’ iconoclastic solutions included placing the dining table on lockable casters, so that it could be rolled next to the sink for clearing after the meal; using disposable paper plates and cups to eliminate part of the dishwashing chores, upholstering chairs in plasticized materials, and streamlining meals to limit the number of dishes and utensils needed—no more soup to open dinner, followed by salad, a garnished roast, and dessert; the one-dish, freezer-to-oven-to-table-casserole was king. Some of these suggestions have stood the test of time. Others have been dropped or modified to marry convenience with convention and aesthetics, although the rolling dining table, however intelligent, will always evoke images of Marx Brothers mishaps.”

-Culinary historian Cathy Kaufman on Russel and Mary Wright‘s 1950 Guide to Easier Living in “The Vanishing Dining Room,” an article that appears in the latest issue of Vintage Magazine

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.