Friday, August 9, 2013

Dolce & Gabbana Rock Inspired Shoes for Fall

For Ally Betker Assistant of Vogue, no outfit is complete without a perfect pair of stilettos. She shares the rock-inspired Dolce & Gabbana velvet heels she's lusting after for her fall 2013 style.

Celine: Fall/Winter 2013

Our Favorite Fall 2013 Leather Goods
Cabas Phantom Large in Calfskin and Suede Beige
Classic Medium in Palmelato Calfskin Lacquered Black
Gourmette in Curly Lambskin Fur Black
Luggage Phantom in Supple Calfskin Red
Luggage Wine in Calfskin Satin Powder
Diamond Clutch in Multicolor Pony Calfskin White

Goop: Tomatoes

"Tomatoes are finally in season, and my vegetable patch is bursting with fresh fruit."
- GP
Here is what Gwyneth Paltrow is making with them, quick, easy recipes that don't require a whole lot of ingredients.

Homemade Bloody Mix

This recipe makes a fresh and delicious Bloody Mary mix.

Ingredients
makes about 1.5 cup

- 18 slow-roasted tomato halves
- juice of 1/2 lemon
- 3 teaspoons of cayenne pepper sauce to taste (or any hot sauce of your choice)
- 1 heaping tablespoon of worcestershire sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon of fresh pepper
- dash of celery seed
- pinch of salt

Preparation

1. Blend slow-roasted tomatoes on low in a Vitamix.
2. Strain into a jug
3. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix. This keeps in the fridge for up to a week.
Bloody Mary

Ingredients
makes about 1 drink

- 2oz or 2 jiggers of vodka (Kettle One is the best for Bloody Marys)
- 1 lemon wedge for garnish
- handfuls of ice (to fill the glass)
- about 1 cup of Bloody Mary mix

Preparation

1. Fill the glass with ice. Add 2oz of vodka and about 1 cup of mix. Squeeze a lemon wedge into the glass and drop it in. Mix and drink.
Michelada

Ingredients
makes about 2 drinks

- 1 Corona (or similar light beer)
- 1/2 cup Bloody Mary mix
- 1 lime
- coarse salt in a shallow bowl

Preparation

1. Rub lime on rum of each glass and dip in coarse salt to coat.
2. Add a handful of ice to each glass. Pour half a beer in each glass and add about 1/4 of a cup Bloody Mary mix. Stir to continue.
Basic Fresh Tomato Sauce

Make this sauce in the summer time, when fresh tomatoes are abundant, and keep in your fridge, jar or freeze to use all year round.

Ingredients
make 1

- 6 ripe medium tomatoes
- 1 1/2 garlic cloves, minced
- sea salt
- olive oil

Preparation

1. Pour boiling water over 6 scored tomatoes (using a knife cut an 'X' into the bottoms of tomatoes). Wait 30 seconds for them to cool, then peel (skins should come off easily)

2. Heat lug of olive oil and 1 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic in pan over medium heat. Cook for a bout a minute until the garlic softens and becomes fragrant.

3. Roughly chip the peeled tomatoes and add the pan with the garlic. Simmer until boiling, ten turn it down to medium heat and add a big pinch of sea salt. Let it cook down to a nice sauce.
Cocktail Sauce

Use this fresh tomato base instead of the usual ketchup.

Ingredients
makes 1/2 cup

- 7 ripe tomatoes
- 1/2 cup packed fresh horseradish, grated
- 1/4 teaspoon of wasabi powder
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 teaspoon dark muscovado sugar
- 1 teaspoon of worcestershire sauce
- pinch of salt
- a few healthy grinds of fresh pepper

Preparation

1. Score the tomatoes and cover with boiling water. Let cool then peel to remove skin. 

2. Core the tomatoes then scoop out the caviar (the inside). Press the caviar through a sieve, retaining the juice and discarding the seeds.

3. Put the deseeded tomatoes and the juice into a sauce pan over low heat, breaking up the tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon. Add a pink of salt and dash olive oil to the pan and let it all simmer for about 30-45 minutes until reduced to a heaping 1/2 cup. Let it cool in the refrigerator.

4. Combine the juice of 1 lemon, the worcestershire sauce and sugar in a small mixing bowl and mix until sugar dissolves. Add to the cooled tomato mixture. Add the horseradish and wasabi powder and mix to combine. Season with salt and pepper to taste.


Thursday, August 8, 2013

Phillip Lim: Fall/Winter 2013 Campaign

Watch Sonomama' the film

Why Men Need Women

WHAT makes some men miserly and others generous? What motivated Bill Gates, for example, to make more than $28 billion in philanthropic gifts while many of his billionaire peers kept relatively tightfisted control over their personal fortunes?
New evidence reveals a surprising answer. The mere presence of female family members — even infants — can be enough to nudge men in the generous direction.

In a provocative new study, the researchers Michael Dahl, Cristian Dezso and David Gaddis Ross examined generosity and what inspires it in wealthy men. Rather than looking at large-scale charitable giving, they looked at why some male chief executives paid their employees more generously than others. The researchers tracked the wages that male chief executives at more than 10,000 Danish companies paid their employees over the course of a decade.
Interestingly, the chief executives paid their employees less after becoming fathers. On average, after chief executives had a child, they paid about $100 less in annual compensation per employee. To be a good provider, the researchers write, it’s all too common for a male chief executive to claim “his firm’s resources for himself and his growing family, at the expense of his employees.”
But there was a twist. When Professor Dahl’s team examined the data more closely, the changes in pay depended on the gender of the child that the chief executives fathered. They reduced wages after having a son, but not after having a daughter.
Daughters apparently soften fathers and evoke more caretaking tendencies. The speculation is that as we brush our daughters’ hair and take them to dance classes, we become gentler, more empathetic and more other-oriented.
There are even studies showing that American legislators with daughters vote more liberally; this is also true of British male voters who have daughters, especially in terms of referendum and policy choices about reproductive rights. “A father takes on some of the preferences of his female offspring,” argue the researchers Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick and Nattavudh Powdthavee, then at the University of York. For male chief executives, this daughter-driven empathy spike may account for more generous impulses toward employees that temper the temptation toward wage cuts.
Is it possible that proximity to infant girls prompts greater generosity? Additional studies, in a variety of fields, suggest this is the case — and that it might extend beyond daughters. Consider, for example, the series of studies led by the psychologist Paul Van Lange at the Free University in Amsterdam. To figure out what motivates people to act generously, Professor Van Lange and three colleagues set up a game in which more than 600 people made choices about sharing resources with someone they didn’t know and would never meet again. The participants chose between these basic options:
(a) You get $25 and your partner gets $10.
(b) You get $20 and your partner gets $30.
The first option is the selfish one; you’re claiming most of the resources for yourself. The latter option is more generous as it involves sacrificing a small amount ($5) to increase your partner’s gains by a much larger amount ($20).
The players expressed consistent preferences in each of the nine rounds they played on Professor Van Lange’s watch. The data showed that players who made the more generous choices had more siblings. The givers averaged two siblings; the others averaged one and a half siblings. More siblings means more sharing, which seems to predispose people toward giving.
And once again, gender mattered. The givers were 40 percent more likely to have sisters than the people who made more self-serving, competitive choices. (There was no difference in the number of brothers; it was the number of sisters, not siblings, that predicted greater giving.) And Professor Van Lange’s team pointed to another study showing that the more sisters a father has, the more time he spends raising his own children. After growing up with sisters, men who have opportunities to give are more likely to do so.
SOCIAL scientists believe that the empathetic, nurturing behaviors of sisters rub off on their brothers. For example, studies led by the psychologist Alice Eagly at Northwestern University demonstrate that women tend to do more giving and helping in close relationships than men. It might also be that boys feel the impulse — by nature and nurture — to protect their sisters. Indeed, Professor Eagly finds that men are significantly more likely to help women than to help men.
Some of the world’s most charitable men acknowledge the inspiration provided by the women in their lives. Twenty years ago, when Bill Gates was on his way to becoming the world’s richest man, he rejected advice to set up a charitable foundation. He planned to wait a quarter-century before he started giving his money away, but changed his mind the following year. Just three years later, Mr. Gates ranked third on Fortune’s list of the most generous philanthropists in America. In between, he welcomed his first child: a daughter.
Mr. Gates has reflected that two female family members — his mother, Mary, and his wife, Melinda — were major catalysts for his philanthropic surge. Mary “never stopped pressing me to do more for others,” Mr. Gates said in a Harvard commencement speech. The turning point came in 1993, shortly before he and Melinda married. At a wedding event, Mary read a letter aloud that she had written to Melinda about marriage. Her concluding message was reminiscent of the Voltaire (or Spiderman) mantra that great power implies great responsibility: “From those to whom much is given, much is expected.”
Along with guiding much of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s philanthropy, Melinda played a pivotal role in shaping the Giving Pledge. She read a book about a family that sold their home and gave half the proceeds to charity, and began spreading the word about the idea. When Bill Gates and Warren Buffett convened dinners for billionaires to discuss philanthropy, Ms. Gates made sure that wives were invited, too. “Even if he’s the one that made the money, she’s going to be a real gatekeeper,” she said. “And she’s got to go along with any philanthropic plan because it affects her and it affects their kids.”
In a provocative 2007 presentation in San Francisco, the psychologist Roy Baumeister asked, “Is there anything good about men?” (The short answer, if you haven’t read “Demonic Males,” by Dale Peterson and Richard Wrangham, is not much.) But our saving grace, Professor Baumeister argues, is that across a wide range of attributes, “men go to extremes more than women.” Men are responsible for the lion’s share of the worst acts of aggression and selfishness, but they also engage in some of the most extreme acts of helping and generosity.
On this point, the economists James Andreoni at the University of California, San Diego, and Lise Vesterlund at the University of Pittsburgh report evidence that whereas many women prefer to share evenly, “men are more likely to be either perfectly selfish or perfectly selfless.” It may be that meaningful contact with women is one of the forces that tilt men toward greater selflessness.
THE warming effect of women on men has important implications for education and work. In schools, we need to think carefully about how we organize children into groups. In 1971, in the wake of Texas school desegregation, Elliot Aronson, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, validated a simple but powerful approach to reducing stereotypes and prejudice.
His core idea was that students would learn to respect and care about one another if they had to rely upon one another when collaborating in small groups toward shared goals. Professor Aronson made each student responsible for teaching the group about a different topic that would be covered on a coming test. It was like working on a jigsaw puzzle: the group needed pieces of information from every member in order to put together the general understanding that would be measured on the test. After the experiment, stereotypes and prejudice fell — the students became significantly less hostile toward one another — and the minority students got better grades.
What would happen if every classroom followed the jigsaw structure, with mixed-gender study groups providing boys with the opportunity to learn from girls? In addition to gaining knowledge, perhaps they would learn something about teaching, helping and caring for others. When some of those boys grow up to become rich men, they might be less like Scrooge and more like Mr. Gates — or at least less likely to become your wealthy neighbor who refuses to pay his share of the hedge trimming. Or your (not so) great-uncle who always flies first class but sends your kids cheap birthday presents.
At work, we sorely need more women in leadership positions. We already know from considerable research that companies are better off when they have more women in top management roles, especially when it comes to innovation. Professors Dezso and Ross have recently shown that between 1992 and 2006, when companies introduced women onto their top management teams, they generated an average of 1 percent more economic value, which typically meant more than $40 million.
We recognize the direct advantages that women as leaders bring to the table, which often include diverse perspectives, collaborative styles, dedication to mentoring and keen understanding of female employees and customers. But we’ve largely overlooked the beneficial effects that women have on the men around them. Is it possible that when women join top management teams, they encourage male colleagues to treat employees more generously and to share knowledge more freely? Increases in motivation, cooperation, and innovation in companies may be fueled not only by the direct actions of female leaders, but also by their influence on male leaders.
It’s often said that behind every great man stands a great woman. In light of the profound influence that women can have on men’s generosity, it might be more accurate to say that in front of every great man walks a great woman. If we’re wise, we’ll follow her lead.

Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of “ Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success.”

The Poop Cycle

What happens after you flush it?

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Tasty Trend: Cronuts


You have probably never tasted it, but you have likely heard of it: the cronut.
It rolled out in May at Dominique Ansel Bakery in New York City. Since the, it has taken off. A black market has sprung up, with scalpers selling them up to $100 a pop. Social and traditional media have lit up with coverage, and imitators around the world are trying to tap in on the success.
Chef-owner Dominique Ansel only makes about 300 cronuts a day. Some customers camp out overnight to get their hand on one. And some leave disappointed. Cronuts always sells out.
Lee Hatch didn’t let that dissuader her. She and her husband were visiting Manhattan from Sydney, Australia, where they’d first hear about the cronut.

“This is our third attempt of lining up here,” Hatch says. “And we though, well, we’re on holiday, we’re here for a month, so we’ll five it a go if it’s the last thing we do before we go home.”

Ansel worked on the recipe for two months, trying to perfect a dough that would hold up in the fryer and could be filled with cream without becoming to soft.

He finally hit on a winning recipe, “something that people have not seen before,” he says, “It’s something that has a doughnut shape, it’s flaky like a croissant, and that’s why it’s called a ‘cronut.’ ”

So why has it caught on?

Irma Zandi is president of the consumer trends company Zandl Group. “There are part of the brain that become super active when a fad idea is heard, and people want to pass it on,” she says.

The New York Magazine food blog Grub Street wrote about the cronut when Ansel first made them.

“And on the same night,” Ansel says, “they called us and told us that their traffic on the website increased 300 percent, and they had over 140,000 links to the website.”

It was then, Ansel says, he knew he had a hit. And the long lines outside the bakery are, in fact, part of it.

"The waiting itself is a huge part of the pleasure," Carruth says. "Not only because we feel we're participating in something that's fashionable or trendy, but because we're sort of signalling that we value a certain kind of experience."

And for those who can’t make it to New York City to wait in line, imitations have sprung up all over.

So how long can the cronut buzz last? 

“We can only sustain so long one product, one brand, one entrepreneur having the spotlight,” Carruth says. “So I would be surprised is a year from now there are still 10,000 tweets a month about the cronut.”

Zandle says “it’s going to wear off,” but he says that’s not necessarily a bad thing for Ansel.

“It’s put him on the map in a way that he could not have imagined,” Zandle says. “I think he will be able to parlay it into something more for his business.”

Ansel says he won’t forsake his other pastries for the cronut.

“Before the cronut, we were very busy, very busy at the bakery,” he says. “If the cronut is not here tomorrow, we’ll still be very busy.”

And despite the current frenzy, Ansel says he is not interested in mass producing the cronut or jacking up the price. For now, he is still charging the original $5 per cronut and limiting customers to two each.

The flavors change each month  - July’s was blackberry lime, and Augusts flavor is Coconut, which Ansel has described as involving “coconut milk cream, coconut glaze, cinnamon sugar, and just a light sprinkling of toasted coconut on top,”

Time's Arrow: Designer Handbags

Time's Arrow. Forward-thinking leather goods and accessories for the curious and the bold.

Time's Arrow is a companion to the bold, the curious, and the forward-thinking. It's a bite into a rare fruit, a stomp through an enchanted hard, an embrace of the oddly inviting. It believes every journey of distance and time is punctuated by imagination and growth.

Made in luxurious leathers, their bags are a thoughtful marriage of utmost utility and modern beauty. They think ahead, exploring the beauty of the bag both inside and out.

FALL 2013

Nikon: The New Cool Pix A

Meet the new flagship of the COOL PIX Advanced Performance collection, the COOL PIX A, a one-of-a-kind Nikon camera that produces high-resolution photos and Full HD 1080p videos in a class of their own. The COOL PIX A is exceptional in every aspect. For exceptional image quality, it employs a Nikon DX-format CMOS sensor, the same type used in their outstanding DX-format D-SLR cameras, but in a compact body. For exceptional clarity and low-light performance, it features one of the most impressive NIKKOR lenses they've ever put on a COOL PIX camera. For exceptional versatility, it's compatible with many Nikon accessories like a Wi-Fi adapter that lets you instantly share your photos. Simply put, the COOL PIX A produces the kind of photos and videos that will leave you dazzled with friends and family asking, "What kind of camera do you have?"
Available in Black and Silver

COOL PIX A, $1,099