Expect to hear a lot more about Lulu Frost this year. Lulu, real name Lisa Salzer, started out making ribbon belts for preppy college friends five years ago. Now her jewelry line sells at Barneys, recently launched at London’s Harvey Nichols, has a strong following in Tokyo (she makes a special, bow-bedecked collection for the Japanese), and has spawned a series of mainstream accessories for the likes of Urban Outfitters and Ann Taylor Loft. Phew. And she has more collaborations in the pipeline. Hard (and sickening) to believe Lisa’s still years off 30.
 
We met a couple of months ago over devilled eggs at the Tipsy Parson, when I discovered that she was utterly charming as well as prodigiously talented, and last week I ventured to her SoHo studio overlooking the baroque Police Building, where she let me rifle through the sparkly antique Czechoslovakian brooches (called pastes), Art Deco dress clips and liquor tags that become her whimsical vintage-contemporary jewelry.
 
It was all I could do not to sweep her whole Spring/Summer collection off the mirrored table and into my handbag the minute her back was turned, I loved it so much. More dangerous still? Lisa's first travel-inspired collection will launch this Fall. Stay tuned.

This morning I sploshed through the rain to Skylight Studios in SoHo, where Burberry Prorsum’s Autumn/Winter 2010 fashion show was being live-streamed from the London catwalk.

After a glass of Buck’s Fizz (the Brit Mimosa) and a mini smoked salmon sandwich, I took a pew in front of Vogue’s Hamish Bowles and Tom Florio, put on the 3D glasses I’d been given at the door, and settled down to watch the screening while fashion types in Dubai, Paris and Tokyo did the same, and thousands logged in online.
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After skiing Utah’s bouncy powder a couple of years ago, I resolved never to brave the chill winds and scratchy slopes of the East Coast. But with the end of the season fast approaching, no skiing on the horizon, and an offer of a bed in a house in Stowe, Vermont, for the weekend, I succumbed.

And guess what? The ice I’d been warned of (“I hope you wear a helmet,” said a friend portentously when I told her I was going) never materialized. We swooshed down empty pistes coated in fresh flakes and bordered by ghostly trees. It was cold enough for our goggles to freeze at the top, and the sky was a blunt off-white instead of Park City’s perennial blue, but that added to the otherworldly atmosphere.

I took the photo above on a trail called Sterling, which was probably the prettiest I’ve ever skied—don’t miss it if you’re in Stowe before the snow melts.

Powder report from the WOM blog: You can Ski With An Olympian at Four Seasons Whistler

Donald Maxwell (right) in La Fille du Regiment
Photo by Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

On Tuesday I had the surreal experience of watching a many times removed cousin I’d never met perform at the Met. Until my excited opera-groupie parents lunched him in London last month and urged me to get in touch when he was in New York, I hadn’t even known the family had been blessed with a professional baritone. I got the impression that Donald Maxwell was hot stuff, in the operatic sense, but when we spoke on the phone it had seemed impolite to ask him what part he was playing in La Fille du Regiment, Donizetti’s comic opera about an orphan girl raised by an army regiment. So until I opened my program I had no idea whether he was the lead or a member of the chorus (clearly I should have done my research—it’s been a busy week).

It turned out he was one of the principals—Hortensius, butler to the Marquise of Berkenfield, and the first main character to appear on stage. Despite our not being acquainted in the slightest, I felt a strange sense of pride when he bellowed his lines. It was certainly an improvement on my brother’s French Horn recitals, through which I yawned a great part of my teenage years.

The other big surprise of the night was that the lover leads, Marie and Tonio, were both off sick—a huge disappointment for most of the audience, but less for me, not being exactly well-versed in their work.

Diana Damrau’s understudy, Leah Partridge, rose to the challenge with extraordinary aplomb, and, Donald told me later, no apparent nerves, while Peruvian superstar tenor Juan Diego Florez’s stand-in was not his understudy but the spirited, and diminutive, Lawrence Brownlee.

His performance was also impressive, and so delighted was he with its reception that it was unclear at the end of one scene whether he would ever finish beaming at the audience and allow the action to continue.

And then there was Kiri Te Kanawa, who played the Duchess of Krakenthorp, a minute part that consisted mainly of a beautiful screech, and for which I imagine she was paid more than her co-stars (that night, anyway) combined. And given each member of the chorus makes $120,000 a year, according to the opera buff sitting next to me, that’s quite a lot.

All in all, it was a spirited and entertaining production with an interesting interplay of classical and military numbers, well choreographed and full of humor.

Afterwards, I negotiated the Met’s warren of backstage corridors and eventually found Donald in his dressing room, sloughing off his inch-thick make-up, and he told me a few juicy details about the production, which I swore not to repeat.

There are still two remaining performances of La Fille du Regiment before the production returns to Covent Garden, so go, and make sure you applaud extra loud for Hortensius.

The Reform Club covered in snow, another off-season Hamptons perk

The joys of traveling off-season are well documented by this magazine. Hotels and airlines slash their rates and you get to hang out with the locals instead of joining tourist hoards in the two-hour line for the Uffizi, or rising at dawn to grab the last lounger by the pool.

But weekending in the Hamptons in the dead of winter is taking the off-season thing a bit far, right?

Wrong. I spent last weekend in Amagansett and discovered there are many benefits to wintering on the South Fork.

The first boon: the Jitney. It arrived early, which never happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Tina Brown and Sir Harold Evans, founder of this magazine, were onboard, which, along with the free party mix, lemonade and WiFi, added to the excitement.

Second, while not cheap by any stretch of the imagination, our suite at the Reform Club cost half what it does in summer. As well as his-and-hers marble showers (a strange, but attractive-looking concept) it had an open fire, which we kept ablaze throughout our stay. You wouldn’t do that in July.

Because the branches of the trees were bare, there was huge celeb shingled mansion snooping potential (Gwyneth Paltrow, Paul McCartney and Jerry Seinfeld have properties in Amagansett).

The beach was deserted and icy, the sky brilliant blue, reminding us of the wonderful Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in which Kate and Jim frolicked in snowy Montauk a few miles east. It was certainly bracing, but bracing was what we needed after that fireside red the previous night. And much as I like gawping at the scenesters in summer, I prefer my ocean view uninterrupted.

Finally, Catherine Malandrino in East Hampton had a 60 percent off sale. So if I do make it back to Long Island this summer my maxi dress and I will fit right in.

BBC Films

Watch as many Hugh Grant movies as I did over Christmas and you’d be forgiven for thinking that all Londoners lived in stucco-fronted Georgian villas within walking distance of Hampstead Heath. 

But if you want an insight into what life is like for some of the less fortunate citizens of that sprawling city, go and see Fish Tank, which is set in Barking, a desolate suburb of East London crowded with industrial estates and junkyards and crisscrossed with motorways.

The film follows 15-year-old Mia, who lives on a council estate with her single mother and younger sister, a deliverer of perfect one-liners who, along with the tumbleweed, deserves a best supporting actress nomination.

Cider-drinking, head-butting, four-letter-word-squawking Mia (brilliantly played by Katie Jarvis who was spotted arguing with her boyfriend at a railway station and had no acting experience) doesn’t exactly have the world at her feet. But she can dance. Redemption comes, for a while, in the form of Mia’s mum’s new Irish boyfriend, Connor. And then things take a turn for the even worse.

Billy Elliot? No. Depressing, yes. But, like a pre-Happy Go Lucky Mike Leigh, Fish Tank is also funny and entertaining, and director Andrea Arnold (a woman!) gives the bleak landscape, bathed in England’s low summer light, a rare, unexpected beauty. 

The jobs, jobs, jobs rallying call, the odd mea culpa, a nod (via more jobs) to the environment—there wasn’t much in Obama’s State of the Union speech last night that was hugely surprising.

But what did surprise me, and the couple of ex-pats I watched it with, was the audience. Tonic Bar on frigid Times Square was packed with Manhattan Young Dems who cheered, whooped, and occasionally jeered at the flat screen TVs during the 70-minute speech. This scene would never occur in London.

There are several reasons for this, the most obvious being that there’s no State of the Nation equivalent—the nearest is the distinctly unsexy annual Budget, delivered with none of the theater of the SOTU.

And I suspect many of those hot Young Dems had come for “networking” purposes. Networking in plunging Hervé Leger dresses, no less. Either way, it's another thing Brits don’t do as well as you lot.

And then there’s our Prime Minister, unelected, two-and-a-half disastrous years in, who has all the charisma of a slice of stale bread. But I don’t think even a newly minted Tony Blair would have packed out a Leicester Square bar.

Perhaps it’s Americans’ unfailing sense of optimism even in these dark times, a tenet, of course, of Obama’s speech, which brings them out. We Brits like to protest—I don’t know anyone my age who didn’t turn out for the anti Iraq War march in February 2003, “Make Tea, Not War” banners and all. We’ve never had anyone to inspire us the way Obama has here—but even if we had, I’m not sure we’d be able to shake off that cynicism.

His popularity may be at an all-time low, his spirits dashed after Massachusetts, but at least New Yorkers still care about and believe in politics enough to hear Obama speak—he still has an audience.

Paddington finds a furry friend

Photo: JimmyMac210 / CC BY 2.0

As children, we all experienced that moment of sheer, sweaty terror when we turned around to find our parents had disappeared, and we had no way of knowing either where they or we were. It happened to me in Trafalgar Square, which probably explains my pigeon phobia.

I continue to get lost frequently on account of my appalling sense of direction (although this has happened less since I got an iPhone, because it always knows where I am. It’s when I lose the iPhone that I panic).

Still, back in the day, my brother and I disappeared less often than most children because my mother strapped reins to us when we ventured into crowded places. These were basically dog leads for kids, not at all painful and far less inhumane than they sound.

My breeder friends tell me that such practical accessories are frowned on today, which is perhaps why a company called SafetyTat is launching temporary (so they say) personalized tattoos that read: "If lost, please call" and your phone number.

It's the Paddington Bear luggage label for the 21st century. I'll be slapping them on my niece and nephew next time they come to stay, and I might get some for myself while I'm at it.

What is the derivation of the deviled egg? I’m sure it’s a question that’s been troubling you, particularly given recent world events.
 
According to Wiki, they originated in Roman times, but they came to my attention in the early Eighties, when I was forced to circulate my grandmother’s fearsome curry and cayenne-ridden creations at family parties. They were the height of sophistication in West Sussex in those days, especially when accompanied by a limp spear of tinned asparagus wrapped in a slice of suspiciously shiny, perfectly round ham.
 
And now they’re back. That comic-kitsch canapé has been on the menu just about everywhere I’ve eaten in New York the last couple of weeks.
 
Blame April Bloomfield for kicking off the trend a while ago at her Spotted Pig pub, where the deviled egg nestles next to devils on horseback (what is it with devils?) and pickles (the other current comeback kid) on the snack menu. She’s doing that other Brit ovum, the Scotch egg, at her new place, The Breslin.
 
I sampled a rather déclassé version over at Moto in Williamsburg, stuffed with tinned tuna and anchovies. And I’d go so far as to say I enjoyed a couple at the Tipsy Parson, another Brit-influenced joint newly opened in Chelsea. Because these were a different mayo-and-curry breed altogether: subtle, light and moist. Not your grandmother’s deviled eggs, in other words, or mine.