Summer shoes and bags from Nice Things ....

Due to the fact that this weekend  looks like the sunniest so far in this weather-tormented spring, I've felt confident enough to write about the ultimate summer shoe: the espadrille. It has been around for centuries, maybe even thousands of years. The Archaeological museum of Granada owns a pair of espadrilles that were found on human remains inside the "cueva de los murciélagos". It is estimated that these shoes are around 4000 years old. Clearly, the visionary who wore them knew this primitive version will then develop into something more sofisticated. 

This light sandal, made with jute rope or braided hemp and with linen fabric, comes from my home country, Spain, where they were being worn around the XIII century by the King of Aragon's infantry men. Later on, it also took Salvador Dalí on seaside strolls and a young JFK on Cape Cod vacations. It's name is derived from "esparto", which is a kind of plant that was originally burned and then braided to make the soles. 

By the 1940s, the girls had gotten in on the game and the sandal became a Hollywood staple, Its ribbons crisscrossed the ankles of Sophia Loren and Grace Kelly, and Rita Hayworth accessorized her one-piece with a pair for 1947's The Lady of Shanghai. The espadrille reached new heights in the late 60s, when YSL introduced the high-heeled wedge and every arguably fashionable young lady owned a pair when on vacation in Nice or St. Tropez. 

My favourite espadrilles this season are from (also Spanish) brand Nice Things, and they come in a variety of designs to please even the toughest espadrille-lovers. From flowers to geometrical designs, crochet or classic one-colours, each pair is handcrafted in Barcelona in collaboration with Naguisa, another Spanish brand specialized in the production of espadrilles maintaining the traditional crafting methods, combining design and practicality. The result is a beautiful collection of shoes from the classical lace-ups to a more modern take with bright rubber soles. If you are like me, you will want every single one of them to combine with ripped boyfriend jeans, white flared dresses and high-waisted bikini and a straw hat like the everlasting Audrey Hepburn. 

Grace Kelly, Lauren Bacall, Rita Hayworth and Audrey Hepburn

XOXO

P.D. The not mentioned above but added pouches and bags are just to lift up your holiday spirits and make you fall in love a little bit more (if the gorgeous espadrilles weren't enough) with Nice Things

Sources: CondeNastTraveller, Espadrilles.eu, Nice Things and Naguisa 

Books #2 ...

Here is one great book I read this summer. I never considered myself a massive fan of J.D Salinger. I'd read "The Catcher in the Rye" but it hadn't struck me as an instant classic like other books like "The Waves" by Woolf or "Tender is the Night" by Fitzgerald. Those are books that when you turn the last page, you are changed, your mind is a little bigger, wider, you feel a bit enlighted. None of that happened with Salinger; I liked the book but not to the status of icon where most people place it. However, "Franny and Zooey" was an unexpected surprise. I'll admit I bought it because of its author and its length (I was about to go on a trip and needed something light, in weight) 

It is November 1955. Princeton University. Franny Glass experiences an existential crisis while dining with her egocentric boyfriend and returns to the Glass home in New York where Zooey, her older brother, attemps to make sense of it all. 

I know the synopsis written above is short, vague and not very informative but I don't want to give anymore. You need to read the book with no previous thoughts or prejudices to admire it in its greatness. Its aesthetic is like nothing I have ever read before; you can clearly picture in your mind the atmosphere, clothes, decoration... you can almost smell the smoke coming from a lit cigarette or the scent of shaving cream. 

It will be like you are there. So prepare yourself, get your 50s frocks out and be ready for the Harvard vs Yale.

As I have said before, I am not a skilled communicator (I blame it on my billingual brain...) but I am giving you an extract of an article from "The New York Times" about the book.

"Franny and Zooey" by J. D. Salinger"

Review by JOHN UPDIKE

Quite suddenly, as things go in the middle period of J. D. Salinger, his later, longer stories are descending from the clouds of old New Yorkers and assuming incarnations between hard covers. "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters", became available last year in "Stories from the New Yorker 1950-1960", and now "Franny" and "Zoey" have a book to themselves. These two stories -- the first medium-short, the second novell-lenght-- are contiguous in time, and have as their common subject Franny's spiritual crisis.

Few writers since Joyce would risk such a wealth of words upon events that are purely internal and deeds that are purely talk. We live a world, however, where the decisive deed may invite the holocaust, and Salinger's conviction that our inner lives greatly matter peculiarly qualifies him to sing of an America where, for most of us, there seems little to do but to feel.

Introversion, perhaps, has been forced upon history; an age of nuance, of ambiguous gestures and psychological jockeying on a national and private scale, is upon us, and Salinger's intense attention to gesture and intonation help make him, among his contemporaries, a uniquely relevant literary artist. As Hemingway sought the words for things in motion, Salinger seeks the words for things transmuted into human subjectivity. His fiction, in its rather grim bravado, its humor, its morbidity, its wry but persistent hopefulness, matches the shape and tint of present American life. It pays the price, however, of becoming dangerously convoluted and static. A sense of composition is not among Salinger's strenghts, and even these two stories, so apparently complementary, distinctly jangle as components of one book. 

Read the full article here

XOXO

Snapshots. Cinque Terre...

XOXO

Snapshots. Genova....

XOXO

Snapshots. Barcelona...

                                                                      XOXO

Summer, kind of wonderful ....

Here it is, again. How come we never realize when it starts but always know when summer is coming to an end? I think we relate summer to a state of mind rather than to a season or a time period; everyting we see is brigther, feelings are stronger, bodies are warmer... Summer is the dream, the utopia we fantasize about during those cold January afternoons and comes to life as soon as eyes lock. 

Everybody has their own version of this humanly shared dream. Summer adventures are surrounded by a halo of sea salt and sunscreen and, once summer is over, tend to stay that way. I think we find hard to talk about some of our summer experiences with people who haven't lived them. We store them up, treasure them for a year, sometimes don't even think about them at all until spring comes along and you feel the heat spreading again. People feel a little bit ashamed, and gilty for things you did and know shouldn't have. There is just something about summer air, makes you do and say things you normally wouldn't. Your impulses guide you, not your head. But it doesn't mean they aren't true or real. Right or wrong, I would never wish to forget anything. Summer is what makes us human, keeps us alive during hard winters, the promise of the sun coming out at the end of the road.

And then there is the people. Friends you  only have 10 days with but you live them like there is no tomorrow. A year's gone by but it doesn't seem to matter, with a smile everything is understood. 

Summer has been intense. Between waves, water pistols, cider, pouring rain, chlorine, fire, sea salt, sevillanas, yellow fields and pizza.

♥

Aquí esta, otra vez. ¿Cómo puede ser que nunca nos damos cuenta cuando empieza pero siempre sabemos cuando el final del verano se acerca? Creo que relacionamos el verano con una manera de vivir mas que con una estación o un periodo de tiempo; todo lo que ves es más brillante, lo que sientes es más fuerte, las temperaturas corporales más elevadas... El verano es el sueño, la utopía con la que fantaseamos durante esas frías tardes de Enero y que se vuelve realidad en cuanto las miradas se encuentran.

Todos tenemos nuestra propia versión de este sueño compartido. Las aventuras veraniegas están siempre rodeadas de un halo de sal marina y crema solar y, cuando el verano acaba, suelen quedarse así. Nos cuesta hablar acerca de estas experiencias estivales con la gente que no las ha vivido. Las guardamos celosamente durante todo un año, a veces ni pensamos en ellas hasta que vuelve la primavera y el calor empieza a cosquillear. A veces hay vergüenza y un poco de culpa por cosas que pasan y sabes que no deberían. Hay algo en el aire del verano, hace que digas y hagas cosas que normalmente nunca osarías. Los impulsos guían y no la cabeza. Pero no significa que no sean reales o verdaderos. Bien o mal, nunca querría olvidar absolutamente nada. El verano es lo que nos hace humanos, nos mantiene vivos en los duros meses de invierno, la promesa del sol al final del camino. 

Y luego está la gente. Amigos con los que solo te permites 10 días al año pero los vives como si no hubiera mañana. Los años pasan pero no importa, una sonrisa es pura complicidad y entendimiento. 

El verano ha sido intenso. Entre las olas, guerras de agua, sidra, lluvia, cloro, fuego, sal, sevillanas, trigo seco y pizza. 

XOXO