buy yourself flowers

Rose Jaune

Gitte Lee : The Art of Personal Style

I am back in London finishing up some projects and I had the honor of meeting with my new friend Gitte Lee again. Gitte is one of the most charming and elegant women I have ever met. She has a great instinct about style and how to enjoy life and she shared some of her secrets with me.

Gitte Lee modeled in London over 50 years ago and now is returning to the fashion spotlight. Expect some exciting things from Gitte in the near future including some of my photos of her and some other fashionable ladies in Time Out London and Stella Magazine. Gitte and I started discussing why as of late older men and women are becoming more in vogue in fashion and advertising .Not only are positive and beautiful images of older men and women who are aging gracefully and living life the to the fullest inspirational, but they give people of all generations something to aspire to . A picture of an elegant older lady in an ad campaign adds an element of history, quality, timelessness, and it tells a story. These images are so powerful because there are very few of them and the more they are put out into the world, the more positively people will respond to them.

Like many of the ladies I feature on Advanced Style Gitte has a unique sense of personal style that perfectly suits her. She has her own timeless and elegant and uniform ready for all occasions . Her outfits are the same for every season, a sweater, long coat, and pair of loose trousers. She wears her signature black glasses and different hats to protect her skin from the sun. The true secret to Gitte's style is that she changes fabrics to suit the season, lighter cotton for the summer, and heavier fabrics during the colder months, but sticks to a simple and clean color palette and structure and accessorizes to suit each outfit. Each beautiful combination is subtly different with the change of a hat or bag and they can be worn day or night in all types of weather.

Gitte was very particular about the way she dressed as a young girl, so she decided to start making her own clothes at the age of nine. I asked her if her style had developed over time, but she told me that she has dressed the same for as long as she can remember. Her signature overcoats were purchased in India and she know longer feels the need to shop as she has everything she needs inside of her closet. We can all take some style cues from Gitte and look out for more of her soon and if you are in London stop by Selfridges Forever Shop to take a look at my photos in person!

Tadich Grill

I wanted to post some photos from lunch on Tuesday at Tadich Grill, the oldest restaurant in San Francisco. Apparently it was established in 1849, although the location on California is definitely not the original spot. I don't know if I can officially back this spot up as a, 'Places to Visit' worthy restaurant but - it's definitely of note. It's truly an old fashioned, no frills kind of place. I don't know what dinner is like, but at noon it's a very boy's club high power business exec. lunch meeting type of place. Interpret that to be good or bad as you wish.

The menu is predominately seafood based, of course I'm really allergic to seafood, but I mostly just wanted to go here for the interiors - dark wood and the Art Deco light fixtures. If I wasn't wearing my pink 20s dress that day (the weather was truly just too chilly for it) then at least I could spend some time in a place that reminded me of the 20s. And they call themselves "The Original Cold Day Restaurant" - pretty perfect for my 30s tweed fox hunting coat and a chilly over cast early afternoon.







I tried to take as many sneaky photos as I could - but there's so many waiters walking around all the time it was hard not to feel like a tourist. Here's a photo I stole from yelp - I wish we would have eaten lunch at that bar instead of at a table, but maybe next time...

secret shame

"Elizabeth had turned the key in the Fox lock, releasing a heavy metal bar that scraped across the inside of the front door with an impressive prison-gate sound, and was about to attach the Segal lock when the phone in the apartment started to ring. By the time she had opened the second lock and was sliding the key into the last one - this was New York, after all - the phone was on its fourth ring. At almost midnight, it had to be the West Coast calling.

She could still grab it in time, but Elizabeth didn't hurry. Slow, with purpose. Slow, giving the internal anger and hurt time to shoot from zero to a hundred. It needed only seconds, like the start-up speed of a Maserati. Except it was never at zero. Not anymore. Hadn't been for the last eight months. And she couldn't imagine a time when it would ever be there again. As always, the hurt overpowered the anger, and what welled up into her throat came with tears that choked her."

I used to love the Sweet Valley High series. No shame in that: I was very young, and I wanted to work at a student newspaper just like Elizabeth. I eventually grew out of that phase, and gave all my books away because I thought they were so uncool...then many years later, began buying them again for 50 cents a piece at book fairs. No shame in that either: I love the cheesy but brilliant pastel hued cover art, by artist James L. Mathewuse*.
There is, however, some shame in the fact that I downloaded and read the first chapter of the upcoming book Sweet Valley Confidential, which catches up with Elizabeth and Jessica 10 years later. The writing is like a terrible creative writing project, and yet, I kept reading. You can download it and read it for yourself here.

* The New Yorker has a piece about the genius of the original cover art, which you can read here.

stars and stripes

keep a dollar in your pocket

Well friends, I'm taking the plunge! Starting a business is proving quite a costly venture and I have an insatiable desire for cheese but cannot presently afford to cram my noggin full of the stuff (perhaps for the best as dairy and belly do not always agree). If you run a business dealing in handmade or vintage attire and are interested in advertising I would love to hear from you! I promise you readers that I will be especially selective and wont be participating in any kind of sneaky advertising.

For information regarding site stats, rates and spots available please contact me at hannahandlandon (at) hannahandlandon (dot) com!

ps. A "mix tape" for your listening enjoyment available here! Click below for the artist list :).

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under milk wood

"Mrs. Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peels off her pink-and-white skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a brilliantined trout" — an excerpt from Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas.

We get a lot of emails from people who want us to write about things, to talk about their work, their products, their projects. For the most part, we don't (who on earth had the great idea to approach us to write a feature about Ugg Boots?). But, when it's something beautiful and wonderful and exciting and magical, well, then, with pleasure. I was delighted to see the short film that collective Spilt Milk have made to promote their run of Dylan Thomas' famous play, Under Milk Wood.

Under Milk Wood runs from August 11-15 at 10pm, at Symposium Hall, The Space as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. More information and tickets are available here. I wish I could go, the costuming alone is a delight!

Perhaps you've seen The Edge of Love, the recent-ish biopic of Thomas, documenting his love life. Admittedly, my favourite part of this slightly lacklustre film was the costuming and the moodiness of the Welsh countryside. But Thomas' work and prose and astounding way with words rings true throughout, his poems dark paens to love, sadness, confusion, war.

7.28

I think this year will be a good one... It definitely started out differently. No grandeur adventures this year. Instead a hodge podge mish mash of errands and lovely little things. Cold weather mornings and fancy lunches at the Tadich Grill. Shopping around Haight Street - where I found an amazing 30s/40s faded cotton paisley peter pan smock shirt that works as a 60s esque mini. I ended up wearing it last night to the party instead of my 20s dress... Speaking of, photos of party things to come! Although, I didn't really worry about taking pictures yesterday, I just let the day happen as it may. It felt nice. I did brake my tradition of wearing a 20s dress for all my 'twenties' birthdays and taking proper pictures, but I think that's okay too.

INSPIRATION OF THE DAY

INSPIRATION!!!!
Pretty girls!
tags. kate moss, jane birkin, craig mcdean, courtney love, dazed and confused, lily cole for playboy, alaia ad, ellen von unwerth, araki, versace.