Hello my little marshmallow peeps, how’s every little thing? Me? I’m fine. I got exactly zero sleep last night so I’ve got my flawlessly tailored crabby pants on, but it’s Tuesday which means it’s time to find out

What Miss Plumcake is…
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Reading: Tales of the Alhambra by Washington Irving. If Ichabod Crane is all you know of Washington Irving, you’re missing out. Somewhere between the Arabian Nights and a travelogue, this is a fantastic and entirely-too-neglected classic. Plus you can read a chapter or so a night, so it’s handy to have by the bed.

Watching: Juliet of the Spirits. Fellini at his trippiest, it’s not merely a surreal masterpiece from my very favorite director –some would say the female version of 8 1/2– it was and continues to be a hugely influential movie for designers not just for Gianni di Venanzo’s luscious cinematography but for Piero Gherardi’s over-the-top costume confections. Beautiful, strange and surprisingly empowering. It was Galliano before Galliano was. Brilliant.

Hearing: Etta James At Last. Do you not own this album? How do you not own this album? Plus it’s available as a $5 download from Amazon.

Smelling: Inis Or. This actually smells awful on me, but it’s a decent little inexpensive juice if you like fresh but not too sweet aquatic fragrances.

Loving: Proper Vegetables. The Irish, in my limited experience, are not a vegetable loving people. Except when it comes to peas. Then it’s like that Monty Python sketch when they try to order a strawberry tart without so much rat in it. Somewhere, somehow, someone is going to slip you some peas.

Hating: The Stupid Perfect Shoe. ARGH. Why am I not buying new shoes until I’ve worn all my current shoes just once? These are PERFECT AND THEY’RE ON CLEARANCE. ARRRRRRGGHHmhnfndfddghhh

Wanting: Sonia Rykiel Bag. I’m really not a bag girl but I like this one. I basically resent having to carry a bag at all and for the past week I’ve just been using an antebellum sterling silver calling card case. Sure I’ve got the Birkin, which is the size of my car (WHO? WHO needs that much space?!) This would do me juuuust fine.

Buying: Kiyonna Bellini Ballet Wrap. I’ve been loving variations on these for the past few month, wearing one side pinned up with a brooch as a sort of a wrap. Right now I’m liking a sort of more structured, Antwerp Six, look. Long and lean with attention to unusual proportionals.

Hello my little bourbon biscuits, it’s Tuesday and while I am wandering about the hills and dales of the Emerald Isle with my two besties, I thought I’d take a minute and share with you an Irish-tinged edition of What Miss Plumcake is…

Reading: The Complete Short Stories of Oscar Wilde If all you know of Wilde are his pithy quotes and frothy plays (both of which are still highly recommended) you owe it to yourself to check out some of his no-foolin’ literatoor. Beautiful, tender and razor sharp, these are some of my favorite short stories. Half Daudet and half Kipling, it’s all brilliant.

Watching: The Commitments I was just learning to play the saxophone when this film about a bunch of misfits from Dublin and their dream of blue-eyed soul stardom came out and I fell in love. Even if you saw it years ago, rent it and be reminded what a great flick it is.

Hearing: U2 – Achtung Baby I’m just going to go ahead and say that the seventh studio album from Bono and the lads is the most important pop album of the 90′s.

Smelling: Vol de Nuit by Guerlain I’m wearing the vintage, which is even more heartbreakingly beautiful, this 1933 creation by Jacques Guerlain was an homage to Antoine Saint-Exupery (yes, the Little Prince guy) and his novel, Vol de Nuit. On me Vol de Nuit is a pale butter daffodil floating in a cup of softly spiced milk tea. Unusual comfort at its best.

Loving: Funnel-necked peacoat Until last week I didn’t have a coat. It doesn’t get very cold in Texas so usually I either wear my vintage blonde mink stole or my lynx stoller. However, I figured it would be a bit nippy here in Eire and I thought maybe it would behoove me to get some sort of outwear that didn’t once have a mother and a dream. I picked this up for a song from Lane Bryant and I just love it. I’ve never worn double-breasted before, but it looks great and is a fantastic spring coat. Word to the wise: apparently the buttons fall off easily. I reinforced mine before I left across the pond and haven’t had any problems at all.

Hating:  Stupid Giraffe-print Bag So when did this become attractive? Because this is not attractive. I’ve been seeing these things for YEARS and I just cannot TAKE it anymore. This is not a good bag! The original, which is Dooney and Bourke (and why would you even knock off Dooney and Bourke? That’s like knocking off Juicy Couture.) is bad but at least it’s potentially well-made. These are just AWFUL. So please. Stop buying them. They’re not hip, they’re not clever. They’re just dreadful.

Wanting: Let ‘Em Hang soccer boot shirt from Studs Up Football Club Oversharing time. I’m pretty good about being friends with my exes. One of my favorites played in Serie A for seven years and is an all around good egg. Obviously he was great looking (mama, as previously mentioned, does not do ugly)and we still see each other occasionally, but the only time I ever regret relegating him to the friend zone is when he walks around with his boots hung around his neck. Do I find the strung boots look hot because it is sexy on its own merit or is it a product of conditioning? The world may never know, but I do know this is a piece of class kit and it needs to go into Miss Plumcake’s personal collection with a quickness.

Buying: Revlon Hushed Blush nail color Why do I always forget Revlon makes great nail colors? It’s been a million years since I’ve bought anything but OPI or Essie, but I picked up this understated blushed rosewood color when I couldn’t find my beloved Kreme de la Kremlin and have been twitterpated ever since. Is the product as good as OPI? No, not really, but the color’s great and there’s no reason a well-applied manicure with Hushed Blush won’t last you a week.

Hello my little gangsters of love, how’s every little thing? I hope you all are recovered from yesterday’s Monday Hotness, because now it’s Tuesday and time to find out What Miss Plumcake is…

Reading: Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair by Pablo Neruda – Dual Language Edition Do you want to know how good Pablo Neruda’s love poems are? They got me into a co…commi….into one of those things, with the two people and the feelings and the listening instead of replaying Gareth Bale’s jaw-dropping hat trick at the San Siro in your head until it’s your turn to talk again. That’s powerful mojo.

Watching: Turtles Can Fly I say watching because I can only get through about fifteen minutes at a time. The first movie filmed in Iraq after Hussein’s fall, it takes place on the eve of the American invasion and tells the story of 13 year-old Satellite and his young friends who clear minefields in a Kurdish refugee camp on the Turkish border. Equal parts Les 400 Coups, The Great Escape and Waiting for Godot, it’s not easy to watch but it’s as important a film that’s been made in the past decade.

Hearing: Cultura Profetica – DiarioHot hot babymakin’ reggae en Español. Sure back in college I owned Bob Marley “Legend” and watched The Harder They Come with a bunch of my trustafarian pals one night, but that’s about as far as I got. Until, of course, I get this dropped on me –in Spanish– by my…uh…person friend:

I would like to live in your legs
Creeping up you like ivy
Or sail the thousand leagues
fixed at the helm of your hips

Yeah.

Smelling: Serge Lutens – Ambre Sultan Let us make a hypothetical situation. Let us say that once upon a time, and definitely not like, the first weekend in January or anything, there was a girl who had a special friend (and that was totally okay because it was before her person friend came in the picture) and that special friend happened to be a scorchin’ hot former professional soccer player from Casablanca. And let’s hypothetically say that one day this special friend invited the girl over to his house for a homemade Moroccan meal and to watch Casablanca in the traditional way, which apparently involves a several-hour massage with sweet almond oil and some mysterious green stuff he got at the souk followed by some premier grade necking, something just highly ill-advised involving mint tea and eventually breakfast. With me so far? All of that, without the mint (which seriously, I give points for creative enthusiasm, but that was just poor planning all around). That’s Ambre Sultan. Or so I’ve heard.

Loving: Better Business Bureau Charity Checker (click here for a list of BBB-approved organizations doing relief work in Japan). Chip in if you can.

Hating: Everyone in town for SXSW. Listen, I get it. I love Austin too, that’s why I live here. But you and your girl jeans and your ironic facial hair can just go back to Cleveland now. Stand up straight, get that hair out of your eyes and get a soul-killing job like the rest of us!

Wanting: Jeanne Moreau’s buffalo plaid cap from Jules et Jim. WHY? WHY is it so hard to find this thing? I just don’t understand.

Buying: Dream Curves Seamless Hi-Waist Bike Short Man I love these things. Alluring? Not so much, but I like the way they smooth my stuff out without locking it down. There’s nothing worse than shapewear that pancakes your butt or causes the Vesuvius of all muffin tops. Plus they don’t roll, by which I mean they roll a little but not so much they make me want to die and or kill.

Alas, glamor month has begun not with a bang, but with a whimper.

My beloved computer Lappy Rockefeller has given up the ghost after six years of faithful service.

She died surrounded by the things she loved: zebra-print duct tape, a MAC 226 blending brush (for structural support), and the crumbs of a thousand McVitie’s digestive biscuits.

Lappy’s last days were spent in relative calm, playing video of Xabi Alonso standing around glistening and rubbing his lovely ginger chest on almost-continual loop which is normal and not at all a sign that she needs to get out more and maybe you stop being so judgy because you don’t know my her life.

Anyway.

Lappy will be replaced on my couch –though never in my heart– by Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Laptoppe who is hurtling his way through time and space and is scheduled to arrive at stately Château Gâteau tomorrow, when –assuming I’m ever able to figure out how to set the damn thing up– hijinx will once again ensue.

Until then, let me point you in the direction of Twistie’s thought-provoking post, Talking About Eating Disorders, where I invite your comments.

Finally, Lappy or no Lappy, I cannot leave you without at least a brief Moment of Glamor courtesy of two of my very favorite “celebrated sodomites” Stephen Fry and Oscar Wilde.

Ah, the importance of being fabulous.

Reading: At the Back of the North Wind by George MacDonald Criminally under-appreciated, the Scottish fantasy author –arguably the first successful British fantasy author– influenced everyone from Mark Twain and J.R.R. Tolkein to C.S. Lewis, whose novel The Great Divorce features MacDonald as a character. Unfortunately, the man who served as Lewis Carroll’s mentor –fun fact: it was MacDonald who suggested Carroll submit his little book about a girl named Alice for publication– is virtually ignored. I’d read Lilith ages ago and grew up with Princess and the Goblin and Princess and the Curdie, but I’d missed At the Back of the North Wind until just recently. It’s Oliver Twist meets The Water-Babies, and heartbreakingly beautiful. Don’t miss it.

Watching: Casablanca I still don’t know if Elsa got on the plane, but I sure had a fun time watching it.

Hearing: Club Can’t Handle Me by Flo Rida feat. David Guetta What? Like fat white Episcopalian girls can’t like Flo Rida now? It’s a killer track! Also I would kill for his watch. ALSO also, I totally think he draws in his beard.

Smelling: Iris 39 from Le Labo I went on a little jaunt to Dallas on Saturday and Sunday to do a little shopping, see Andre and visit my brother who I’m beginning to suspect does not own any clothes without illustrated rhinocerosesses on them. The familial visit didn’t happen, the Andre visit was a train wreck, albeit a very poignant, elegant Alphonse Daudet/Guy de Maupassant-style train wreck, but the shopping, the shopping was good. Unlike Austin, Dallas has a proper Barney’s and proper Barney’s have proper fragrance counters, including Serge Lutens, Frederic Malle and Le Labo. I’m wearing Le Labo Iris 39 today and if you like your unflaggingly elegant iris with a little bit of filthy filthy sex, Iris 39 might be worth a go.
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British Vogue – By far the best, sharpest journalism of its kind. It’s a spendy subscription, but worth every penny. Less fawning than American Vogue and less kiddie-porn than Paris Vogue, the UK version of the Conde Nast giant is my favorite fashion publication.

Yves Saint Laurent Tribute Sandals – The word iconic is overused, yet it’s justified with the YSL “Tribute” series. With new iterations released every season, still maintaining that sky-high heel and architectural platform, they’re destined to become the YSL signature wink for those in the know as much as the legendary Le Smoking.

Menswear Gold Watch – We’ve been seeing women wearing men’s over-sized watches for a few seasons now –wear it slightly loose, like a bangle– but mostly with round faces. I’m really feeling the louche good taste/bad taste 70′s feeling of a big chunky square face now. Think borrowing your grandfather’s (or father’s) Rolex, but not getting the links taken out.

Madame Grès: Sphinx of Fashion by Patrica Mears- Fashion isn’t stupid. It’s shallow, but it’s not stupid.  The history of why we wear what we wear is fascinating and real lovers of fashion know their history.  Sure any yahoo can recognize a Chanel jacket or might be able to tell you that Valentino is known for bows and its signature shade of red, but if you’re really interested in fashion, you’d do well to dig deeper. Madame Grès, described as the “couturier that time forgot”  by Linda Grant, is a fascinating study and although few know her name, anyone who has noticed those Grecian goddess dresses that’ve been ubiquitous on the red carpet for half a decade might be interested to know it was the reclusive Grès who brought that look to the forefront of modern fashion in the 1930′s.

Be sure to check back at the main ‘Tis the Season page to look back on profiles you’ve missed and look forward to ones that are soon to come!