Serge Gainsbourg article in Vanity Fair

Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg on the set of the movie Slogan, June 1968. By Gilles Caron/Contact Press Images.

I have been loving the most recent issue of Vanity Fair! It must be a music-themed issue, because there is an article about Syd Barrett, an excerpt from Eric Clapton's new book, an Annie Leibowitz photo essay about folk singers, and a great article about Serge Gainsbourg, which you can read in its entirety here. In addition to many photos of him (always smoking of course) there are photos of his Paris apartment, which has been basically sitting untouched since his death in 1991- cans of food in the cupboard, full ashtrays, the whole 9 yards. And the writer interviewed many of the amazing women in his life, including Jane Birkin, Anna Karina, Francoise Hardy and of course his daughter Charlotte ...basically every chic French woman in recent history.

Of course one of my favorite parts of the story is about a handbag... I knew that the Hermès Birkin bag was named after Jane Birkin, but I didn't know that she was known to carry a wicker basket as a purse. I think it's great how this woman who inspired the design of a highly coveted handbag with a price tag ranging from $7000 to $100,000 herself used a basket as a handbag. That's the best! (Read this Time Magazine article for more on the history of the Birkin bag.)

Bat art is online!

We finally posted images from Hollow Face, Hand Wing on our site! Click here to see Shawn Creeden's amazing bat paintings, embroideries and the limited edition woodblock print he created for the show (pictured above). We have been loving having all the bats hanging in our gallery space at the Shoppe!

The Birds and the Bees

We've had a little bit of an obsession with bees and bats recently, so I was super excited when I stopped in at the post office yesterday and saw these new pollination stamps. Also, after watching "Life in the Undergrowth" (see Derek's post below) I have a whole new appreciation for bugs, so these new stamps were right up my alley.

The design is pretty genius- according to the USPS website, "Artist Steve Buchanan created an intricate graphic scheme for the stamps that emphasizes the ecological relationship between pollinators and plants and also hints at the biodiversity necessary to ensure the future viability of that relationship. To that end, the four different stamps are arranged in two alternate blocks that fit together like interlocking puzzles. In one block the pollinators form a central starburst. In the other block, the flowers are arranged in the center." Pretty cool, right? And certainly more interesting than some of the other stamp choices out there. (The lady at the post office said she preferred the Disney stamps, and that these would have been her "last choice", but I may have to disagree on that one!)

Art Appreciation

The cool kids over at Fecal Face have posted a nice interview with one of our favorite artists ever, Mr. Jim Houser. Check it out, it includes lots of fun pictures of his magnificent work.

WOW!!!!

We recently rented one of Sir David Attenborough's nature documentaries "Life in the Undergrowth" and a week later I still can't stop thinking about it. Practically every single frame of the movie completely blew my mind. Go rent it tonight. And in the meantime, check out some clips over at YouTube. The one above is a time lapse of a spider building a web. Ridiculous! But I must say, of all the amazing things captured in this superb documentary, the slug sex scene is hands-down the most outrageous, surreal, unimaginable, crazytown stuff I've ever witnessed on film.

Fun Thing About Owning a Shoppe #233

Giveaways!!! We're during a little promotion with the wonderful folks over at Apartment Therapy, San Francisco where we're giving away one of our prized Lorena Barrezueta dishes. Go check it out, and maybe you'll be the lucky winner! We'll be adding a bunch more of her pieces to our online Shoppe in the very, very near future, so keep an eye out for those as well...

DIY Wednesdays on design*sponge

We are so excited to be the new DIY contributors on design*sponge! From now on, you can visit the site every Wednesday afternoon to see a new craft project that we've created. Last week we started with a trio of shadowboxes made out of old wine crates that we lined with gift wrap, and this week we recovered one of our old office chairs with a pretty striped fabric. (Click here to read today's post.)

It's going to be a fun challenge coming up with these weekly projects- and what great timing since we just moved and are in desperate need of some cheap and easy decor for our new apartment.

Sea Lions & Pine Cones

We took Shawn on a whirlwind mini tour of SF before he headed back to New York, and we all agreed that the best things we saw were the sea lions at Fisherman's Wharf and these pine cones hanging from the wires outside Mollusk.

It was such a nice treat to get out of the neighborhood, even for a couple of hours! Now it's back to work packing orders and sprucing up the shoppe for tomorrow morning. More soon!

Some pics!!

Finally... here are some photos of our Shoppe. The opening was a blast (expect a full report soon!) Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us.