Lux Lotus

Who is Lux Lotus?

My name is Lauren Cerand and I've been collecting my thoughts on art, politics and style here at Lux Lotus since 2004. Lux Lotus doesn't mean anything specific; I made it up. I often write about travels, clothes, and flights of fancy, as well as experiences I've recently enjoyed, and what I think that I might like to do next.

For more about me, read my interview at NOGOODFORME.

For information about my professional projects and upcoming speaking engagements, or to send me a message by email, visit LaurenCerand.com. I can also be found on Twitter and Facebook.

Scroll all the way down to search by term, or archives, and to join my very occasional newsletter. This post will remain at the top.

On Adoration

Of course, tonight was magical. When the Italian man with the bottle of wine in his overcoat pocket is with your party, it bodes well. Especially when he has, a) boar hunting, and b) dalmatian, stories. And how about when the hostess brings up her natural proficiency in archery? Swoon. As I gamely chatted, I was immensely grateful to the man who patiently explained to me, over dinner in London last spring, the difference between hunting (foxes), shooting (birds), and stalking (deer). Even better, I came home to a charming letter, postmarked Mayfair, mocking me mercilessly for the American lingo in my last dispatch. I can't wait 'til I get there, either; hopefully for a good long time, as we say.

The Lux Lotus Guide to New York

Hotel bars I like: Bemelman's at the Caryle, where I spent my hurricane exile, and Bar Pleiades at the Surrey across the way.

Downtown: The Blue Bar in India House.

Haircut: Gerald DeCock in the Hotel Chelsea penthouse.

Work of Art: Joseph Cornell's "Setting for a Fairytale," at the Guggenheim; "Bedroom from the Sagredo Palace, Venice," at the Met. I've been paying homage to those two since I was a teenager.

Brunch or lunch with friends: The Fat Radish. Any time of day, Cornelia Street Cafe is happening, in the loveliest of ways.

Place for a tryst: Bacaro. Dinner at Duane Park in Tribeca when there is a burlesque show is entertaining, in the right company.

Unexpectedly good, affordable theater: 59E59.

Vintage: make an appointment with Sally Cohen, who also has a few things on display at Estate Jewels in Fort Greene (and at the Brooklyn Flea on the weekends), another absolute must-visit.

Fragrance: Aedes de Venustas, if you've never been. I wear "Carnal Flower" by Frederic Malle, which I buy at Barney's.

Place for quiet conversation: The Morgan Library Dining Room or Cafe, or Cafe Sabarsky at the Neue Galerie, or join a private club (the old-fashioned kind; that's what they're for).

New York novels: That I've publicized, and highly recommend–– Lightning People by Christopher Bollen, The Exquisite by Laird Hunt, YOU or the Invention of Memory by Jonathan Baumbach, Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. Further reading –– Katherine Lanpher's Leap Days (essays), Amor Towles' Rules of Civility. For more reading with a sense of place, visit Idlewild Books.

On Fortune

This evening, a Lunar New Year dinner party in Chinatown ("We'll be wearing red")–– this afternoon, I received a telephone call from the extremely chic hostess, an artist who became a jewelry designer after a fateful trip to India, to advise that we'll dine at nine and accommodate a guest's lover's flight from Paris.

On Housekeeping

First, if you'd like to read Lux Lotus posts via Facebook, for your convenience, you may.

Second, a reader politely requests a guide to my New York. I will happily supply my top 10 recommendations in categories that you suggest in the comments ("Hotel Bar," "Haircut," "Work of Art," that type of thing). "Vote" as many times as you like.

On Portraits

Lately I've been fascinated by Gerald and Sara Murphy, the iconic Jazz Age ex-pats who set the standard for Americans in the South of France, and frankly, anyone and anywhere they went. He was the heir to the storied leather-goods manufacturer Mark Cross, she was richer and had parents who objected to a suitor "in trade." She was 32 when they married, and five or six years older than he. Delightfully mis-, or perfectly, depending on how you look at it –matched, off they went to France, in pursuit of a more favorable exchange rate and number of miles from their perturbed families.

Known for an innate and fully comprehensive elan, the couple was widely sought after and said to have influenced more than one portrait by admiring members of their circle, most famously Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night and, more loosely, Hemingway's Garden of Eden. Many sketches of them exist in that sense –– Calvin Tompkins' 1962 profile in the New Yorker is exemplary, as is Peter Schjeldahl's review of a contemporary show on their "art & style" –– but photographs are extremely hard to come by.

Descriptions will have to do, and the one that is most oft-employed in Sarah's case is a particular habit she had of wearing her very precious pearls casually slung over a shoulder as she walked down to the beach at Antibes. Naturally, when I made plans to spend a few days of much-desired relaxation on the beach in sunny Southern California next month, then immediately came across a twenty-year old, sixty-four inch strand of Chanel pearls at Estate Jewels, well, you know: I knew it was mine.

If you enjoyed this post, see "Craft Can Save Your Soul," which I wrote about influential, inspiring artists, Joseph and Anni Albers.

Miss Cerand accepts with pleasure...

Invitations that I have accepted this week, through Wednesday:

I will speak at Adelphi University on February 10.

I will be visiting Los Angeles from February 16-20.

I will join the benefit committee for the 1st Annual Art Fag City Awards on February 23.

I will discuss Madame Bovary at McNally Jackson –– and especially my thoughts on the novel's rise to infamy following a highly publicized obscenity trial in Paris in 1857 –– as part of its series with Time Out New York, on February 28.

I will speak at Backspace Writers Conference in May.

On Queues and Coronets

I may not answer everything, or even try, but those that begin thus are duly bumped up: Hello Tsarina, Your loyal subject here... 

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