START THE WEEK

ONE of the most beautiful poems ever written in any language is To Autumn, by English poet John Keats. The poem is both simple and complex; the language so lovely and well-chosen that you can virtually see the images from the poem come alive in front of you.

If you have been reading this blog for some time you will know that I adore John Keats! There was nothing not beautiful about him, and he was both a sensitive poet and a strong young man. He was good at boxing and famously beat up some brutish guy whom he saw torturing a puppy. (Sadly, Keats died at 26 by tuberculosis).

As the week starts and summer leaves, I will transcribe two lines from To Autumn. The poet is supposedly speaking to the season:

"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too..."

Enjoy the music of autumn! Have a good start to the day, the month and to the season! xxx

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! Today we got the book The Star Qualities: How to sparkle with confidence in all aspects of your life!

The book was written by Caroline Goyder and published by Sidwick & Jackson in 2009.

It is a very interesting book, covering all the situations which may cause us shyness, awkwardness of nerves -- situations like facing a room full of strangers, making a speech, going to an interview, talking to a gorgeous man or woman sitting across the bar!

The book is also quite original and fun, because it features collaborations and advice from celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Dame Helen Mirren, Ewan McGregor, Sarah Jessica Parker and countless others. Sometimes the advice is just a quotation, and sometimes it is a complete chapter on its own.

I think this is a lovely book, with practical and down-to-earth, doable advice.

Also, I must add that it is a very pretty edition, in light beige, thick paper, with fonts and design that make the book attractive, pleasant and easy to read!

I bought The Star Qualities from Sheffield, UK, two years ago, and it will always remind me of that nice city and the amazing Waterstones store in Orchard Square!

(Orchard Square is a quaint square in Sheffield, with a fantastic moving-figures clock).

Have a great weekend, always with beauty and a good book! xxx

BEAUTY FRIDAY

WE say hello to September as August packs the bags! Beauty is for all seasons! :-)

THE LIPSTICK QUEEN

EVERYTHING about lipstick is beautiful, and has to do with beauty and glamor! How I wish I could live in The Lipstick Building! This is a real skyscraper, shaped like a lipstick tube, in Manhattan, New York (Third Avenue, between 53rd and 54th Streets).

There is nothing not glamorous about lipstick, from its shape, design, history and purpose.

Many women find employment and careers in beauty and the manufacture of beauty products. I am now reading Ugly Beauty, which tells the story of the rivalry between Helena Rubinstein and Eugene Schueller, who founded L'Oreal. I am amazed that Rubinstein's empire started with the manufacture, on a workbench, of her facial creams. I am also amazed at her immense dedication to beauty and making beautiful!

Lipstick makes us more beautiful and is a symbol of independence. Women who marched for women's rights wore red lipstick for freedom! I will say more about how lipstick and make up are revolutionary in a later post.

Have a beautiful Thursday afternoon, always with a good book, and a tube of lipstick nearby! xxx
P.S. Optional: Male readers can erase the last bit of the sentence. 

THE ONLY REASON

ANNE BRONTE'S novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is lovely, and has a lot to say about women artists and a woman's art! 

Protagonist Helen Graham is revolutionary for her age and time in that she has her own studio, works with oils, and paints original art. In the 19th century, women were rarely taught to paint with oil, because oil was considered the highest form of art and therefore only suitable for male artists. Also, women were discouraged from having their own studios or producing original art. Usually, they were encouraged to copy the art of men.

Jane in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre works with watercolor, but she paints images from her own dreams and imagination; what's more, painting in the novel motivates the plot to an amazing discovery!

Anne Bronte was, according to all biographies, a lovely girl, with delicacy of feeling, good sense and honor. Her letters are sensitive, honest and straightforward. Anne was pretty and could draw very well too. 

However, please don't think that the beauty of The Tenant means that Agnes Grey, Anne's first novel, is also good. It's not and, in the person of protagonist Agnes Grey I have come as close as possible to hating a fictional character. I wanted to jump into the pages of the book and kill her! Mrs Oliphant's Hester, however,from the eponymous novel, comes close second to this. Hester is another novel to avoid at all costs. The only reason why it is still on my bookshelf is because it contains interesting descriptions of fashion and beauty.

Fashion, make up and beauty are art too, and of course closely connected. More about this in a later post! xxx

A BOW RIBBON FOR A LADY

IN Charlotte Bronte's Villette, protagonist Lucy Snowe is plain at first, then starts to experiment with fashion, to the extent that one night she dons a pink silk gown! With a black lace shawl! Then she puts flowers in her bonnets, or a bow ribbon round her neck!

Paul Emanuel, a fellow teacher who is in love with Lucy, raves with jealousy to see this, because he thinks that Lucy is in love with another man!

Now I am reading a novel by Margaret Oliphant called Phoebe Junior. I find many things to annoy me, but I have to say that Oliphant is very good at describing female beauty and fashion. On the contrary, her male protagonists are often nothing to look at.

If Mrs Oliphant were alive today I would advise her to have a look at male heroes like Christian Grey, Gideon Cross or Edward Cullen!
;-)

START THE WEEK

MORNING COFFEE, then straight to the beach! Or at work. Or somewhere fun. Or all of them together. Have a beautiful day for a Monday! :-)

SUNDAY BEAUTIFUL

GLAMOR is lipstick and a bright smile! Thank you to all who like and read this blog! Have a beautiful Sunday xxx

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HELLO and welcome to The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review! This week we have a book by Marilyn Yalom, called Birth of a Chess Queen.

The book is about the story of a chess piece, the Queen, and how it relates to specific historical persons and events. Yalom traces common points between the rise of the Queen as a central piece in chess and the rise in importance of female queens in Europe.

Though I am not sure if the rise of the female queen resulted in the rise of the Queen on the chessboard, I have to say that this book is very well written and full of amazing historical information! The stories of a string of European queens come alive in Marilyn Yalom's meticulous and thoroughly-researched account.

Yalom is a profound academic and senior scholar at the Clayman Institute for Gender Studies at Stanford University. What I wouldn't give to ever work there! Marilyn Yalom offers her own Research Fund Award to students. Personally, I love it that she shares a name with another profound woman, Marilyn Monroe!

I recommend Birth of a Chess Queen for anyone interested in history, women's history and in chess.

Have a lovely weekend, always with beauty and a good book!
xxx

BEAUTY FRIDAY (Beauty is a woman's business)

THE FIRST WOMAN self-made millionaire made her fortune through cosmetics, and was none other than Helena Rubinstein!

A poor immigrant from Poland, Rubinstein opened her first beauty salon in Melbourne, Australia, in 1903. She sold pots of homemade face cream. The demand was great, and Helena's marketing skills were amazing. Within two years, she was rich. By 1915, she was a millionaire. 

My information comes from the book Ugly Beauty by Ruth Brandon. I find it endlessly fascinating that beauty helps women have a profession or make a career! Beauty is a woman's business!

Enjoy the beauty and the Friday! xxx

THE LIPSTICK OF COURSE!

WEAVING is associated with the sister art of combing and braiding the hair in old religion, fairy tale and in literature!

Weaving also includes the woman's art with the needle, and her magic ability to weave the social fabric through motherhood.

Looking very much like a pen, the needle brings woman power! In times very difficult for women, ability with the needle could help a woman survive through poverty.

Riddle: It is in a woman's dressing table or bag, it looks like a needle, it looks like a pen, and also means beauty and power.

Answer: The lipstick, of course!!!!!!!!!!

A DISCOVERY OF SECRET LETTERS

LETTER-WRITING and literature go so well together that they become one in epistolary literature! Great novels comprised entirely of letters are Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and Pamela, and Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre de Laclos.

A discovery of secret letters forms the plot of A.S. Byatt's Possession, while letters make momentous appearance in Bram Stoker's Dracula, Elizabeth Gaskell's Cousin Phillis, Alcott's Little Women and so on and so forth into novel-writing eternity!

Emails help to build Christian and Ana's relationship in Fifty Shades of Grey! What I wouldn't give to get a love-stricken email from Mr Grey, CEO!

I have to say that, in real life, among the most talented letter writers must be, for me, Lord Byron and John Keats. Reading their letters is like reading a lovely and exciting novel. Both Byron and Keats were Romantic poets, both were beautiful and both died young (Keats <3 had just turned 25). Yet their personal beauty was equalled by the beauty of their prose, the beauty of their language and the power of their words!

BEST OF THE BEST

AMONG the most memorable portrayals of red hair in popular literature must be Mistral's Daughter and Till we Meet Again, both novels by Judith Krantz.

Both novels were very popular in the 1980s. Red hair is the magic thread that runs through the Maggie-Teddy-Fauve triad in Mistral's Daughter: the three women are grandmother-daughter-granddaughter and the novel tells us the story of all three. Maggie and Teddy are models, but Fauve, though she could have been a model, prefers to work for grandma Maggie, who opens a model agency.

Eve in Till We Meet Again also has magic red hair. The red is woven with gold for Judith Krantz, and it means shine, passion, feeling and absolute beauty!

Another memorable Judith Krantz red-haired girl is Valentine O'Neill from Scruples. Valentine is not beautiful, just pretty, but she is so clever and capable that she threatens to overtake the novel from protagonist Billie! No wonder [MAJOR SPOILER] Judith Krantz killed Valentine off in the second book, Scruples II.

These novels were not without faults, especially in their depiction of the male hero. Krantz's male protagonists are not that good, in my view. I think the one male protagonist I could stomach was the good-looking American colonel who marries Eve in Till We Meet Again!

I prefer today's book boyfriends/ husbands, e.g. Jace Wayland (Mortal Instruments), Edward Cullen (Twilight saga), Gideon Cross (Crossfire trilogy) and, best among the best, Christian Grey from Fifty Shades!!!!!! Yes!

MERMAID MEETS BALLET

THIS picture is so beautiful, I just had to share! Mermaid meets ballet! It's a fashion photo-shoot from 2012, I think for Australian Vogue. And the boy is beautiful too ;-)

START THE WEEK

THIS wonderful collage is for anyone going back to work tomorrow -- for those still on holiday, this is just a wonderful collage ;-)

Here is what the pictures have to say!
The illustration: Work can be fun!
The painting: The sea os for all seasons, not just the summer.
The photograph: Beauty is always with you!
The frame for the wall: On a bad day, there is always lipstick!

Have a great start to the week! xxx

Work and the desk can be great fun!

Clouds don't stop fun at the sea!

Beauty is everywhere!

No words necessary!

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

TODAY I would like to talk about not one book but three, all of them on housekeeping!

They are Mrs Beeton's Book on Household Management, Clare Coulson's House Rules and Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook!

Mrs Beeton's Book on Household Management comes from the Victorian era. It was written by Isabella Beeton, writer and journalist. Published in parts at first, Household Management got out in a single volume in 1861. Sadly, Mrs Beeton died four years later, at the age of 28, immediately after the birth of her fourth child.

For the Victorians, housekeeping was a skill and an art. It was the Victorians who elevated the orderly home to an article of faith. Cleanliness, thrift, taste in decoration, were all essential virtues. Household Management was a 19th century housekeeping bible!

Clare Coulson's House Rules is a lovely volume, full of useful advice for the modern woman and household manager. Advice is divided per room (e.g. kitchen, bedroom) but also per activity (entertaining, etiquette). There are pretty illustrations and it is well-written and easy to read. Coulson is fashion editor at the Daily Telegraph. I love her book!

Finally, Martha Stewart's Handbook is the absolute bible of housekeeping. The advice is amazing, it helps you to organize and it is very pleasant to read. It taught me many things I didn't know. It's a wonderful book! The only thing, it is quite large in size, and therefore not very easy to handle.

Have a good weekend, always with beauty and a good book! xxx

END THE FRIDAY NIGHT

I WASN'T going to write again in the blog before the weekend book review, but I saw this amazing painting and I just had to share! Beauty, roses, fashion, mirrors -- perfect for The Lipstick Papers! And what a lovely way to end the Friday night! xxx

A BLOG FOR YOU

HI ALL, thanks for reading and visiting this blog! A blog for fashion, beauty, books -- blog for you! ;-) P.S. The Lipstick Papers Weekend Review coming soon!

BEAUTY FRIDAY PART 2

BEAUTY is everywhere, as summer reaches its peak! In the agricultural diary, August is the month of produce (grapes, nuts, figs) and a "boundary" month, leading from one season to another. It was a custom in some parts of Greece to jump over a fire on the eve of August the first!

BEAUTY FRIDAY FOR 15 AUGUST

THE VIRGIN MARY was renowned for her beauty, and that is why she is also called The Rose of Paradise and the Queen of Heaven!

The 15th August marks the assumption of Mary to Heaven; it can be called Feast Day of the assumption of Our Lady, Dekapentavgoustos (Δεκαπενταύγουστος) in Greek, Ferragosto in Italian.

In Patmos and Cassiope, Greece, the day is marked with an epitaph, or funereal procession, for Mary. In seaside Italy, a statue of Mary is brought from the sea to town, and then loaded on a truck full of grapes and carried around town. This way, Mary blesses the town, the sea and the fields and produce of the land.

Have a beautiful 15 August, wherever you are!

LESSON LEARNT

WHEN I was in my late teens, I read Danielle Steele novels by the truckload. I guess these were the equivalent of young adult novels today, which did not exist in my time, or were few.

A favorite theme for Danielle Steele is the journey. Often the young lady protagonist would go on a journey, either for a holiday, a purpose or a quest, and there meet love and adventure!

The journey is an old theme in literature, starting from Odysseus in the Odyssey, then Aeneas in the Aeneid and Dante in Divine Comedy.

Personally, I loved young Edward Waverley's journey in Sir Walter Scott's lovely novel, Waverley. Like with every journey in a book, Edward travels both outwardly, across Britain and through battle and war, and inwardly from childhood to young adulthood.

Those Danielle Steele novels were not without faults. Yet, you know what? I wish I had learnt something from those novels too: taking control of your life, believing in love, not waste time, get rid of all things negative at once. Better learn from a novel than learn the hard way.

More on Sir Walter Scott and Danielle Steele in later posts!

GOSSIP GIRL

HOW I would love to do this one day, gossip under a champagne-laden table!

Of course, when I say gossip I only mean the positive form --exchange of news and ideas-- "good" gossip. I don't mean the claustrophobic gossip meant to do harm or used for social control. This is the kind of gossip which, as George Elliot shows in Middlemarch, is positively evil and should be avoided at all costs.

"Good" gossip can be found in a wide spectrum of novels, ranging from Charlotte Bronte's Villette, where Lucy and Ginevra gossip about the men at a ball, to Fifty Shades of Grey, where Ana and Kate sometimes gossip about Christian <3 In Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, Elinor's strict refusal to do even "good" gossip is shown to be actually harmful and repressive!

I wish you all a great start to the week! xxx

M is for MONDAY

START the week with beauty, roses and a good book! The roses book I had ordered has arrived, and I will review it for The Lipstick Papers as soon as I read. A lot of thanks to all who read this blog! New posts coming soon! xxx

THE LIPSTICK PAPERS WEEKEND REVIEW

HI all, this weekend I am going to talk about a book I have just started. It is a Greek Cypriot special edition book, which also exists in English translation, and is called, The Cyprian: The Aphrodite of Cyprus in Ancient Sources and Archaeological Accounts!

The book was commissioned, funded and published by the Leventis Foundation, which is a Cypriot cultural and research institution.

Though I have just started it, I am impressed by how much lovely historical, cultural and archaeological information there is inside about Aphrodite!

Aphrodite is among my favorite Goddesses and I am proud she comes from Cyprus! However, it is difficult to pick a patron Greek Goddess, because, (a) they are all cool, and (b) being jealous deities, you don't want to anger anyone by picking another!
;-)
At any rate, this book contains an incredible amount of reference from ancient sources and a wonderful collection of photographs from archaeological sites and findings.

Also, it features some new developments in Aphrodite research, such as the new Aphrodite temple discovered near Larnaca (the Ancient Kition, Κίτιον).

According to Homer, Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and Dione, a Goddess who bore Zeus this beautiful girl. According to Hesiod, however, she was born from the sea foam outside of Paphos. Shakespeare follows the Paphos story, calling Aphrodite "the Paphian", the Pafitissa (η Παφίτισσα) as we would say in my native Cypriot Greek. I think Aphrodite is not only the Goddess of beauty, but also the Goddess of Mermaids!

Until next weekend, xxx

BEAUTY FRIDAY

WHETHER you are on the beach, working, doing something creative or all three of them together, have a great Friday -- with beauty and summer in the heart! The Lipstick Papers Weekend review coming soon! xxx