After posting a couple of days ago...regarding vintage style manuals for advice versus modern magazines for the inspirational ensembles contained within...I decided to try and add a little order to the piles of magazines scattered hither and thither around the apartment. They are now (for the most part) corralled into three locations...and stacked by title...for one horribly nerdy moment I was going to arrange them by year and issue...until I realized that it would be far more practical (and less of a pain in the neck down the road) if I just put my favorite issues at the top of each pile. Like the September 2005 issue of L'Officiel...Claudia Schiffer looking kittenish on the cover...and inside...hideously expensive jewelery on thoroughly unconcerned infants...suits and sweaters worthy of a Hitchcock heroine...some very simple, yet thoroughly grown-up little black dresses...and L'Allure Parisienne, an editorial whose pages I find myself coming back to over-and-over again simply because they so perfectly encapsulate that kind of casual-yet-not-casual-running-around-town vibe that, personally, I find so addictive.

On a side note, Jalou (publisher of L'Officiel, Jalouse, muteen, et al) has an online archive featuring all back issues...going back, in the case of L'Officiel, to 1921...which you can browse to your heart's content...for free. Just the thing for those really hot days when you just want to sit beside the air conditioner...