Diane, A Shaded View on Fashion

EGR reports from Casa Septiembre , Puerto Vallarta México

 Villa  Casa Septiembre is conveniently located  in  Conchas Chinas Beach  which is one of the prettiest beaches around the area in Puerto Vallarta Town. Everytime i come to visit i feel lucky to be here and this time i wanted to share this experience with the shaded viewers, i hope you enjoy it.

You can rent by the Day,Week or Month INFO www.casaseptiembre.com

Room with a view Grand Hotel Baglioni, Bologna

Dear Shaded Viewers,

I was becoming convinced that any hotel with the word Grand in it was most likely going to turn out to be the opposite. As a guest of YOOX I was invited to Bologna where their headquarters are located and they reserved a room for  me in the lovely Grand Hotel Baglioni.  This is the view out of my window.

I am going to try and remember this room when I return to my not so Grand Hotel in Milan. Grand Hotel Baglioni has been the only hotel that I've stayed in so far in Italy where the internet connection actually seems to be working. I might even be able to post some Undercover dollmaking soon.

All Diane's photos are taken with the Samsung ST50 camera

Atelier Sul Mare - Museum of Contemporary Art on the northern coast of Sicily

Dear Shaded Viewers,

I have just arrived at the Atelier Sul Mare and the only room I can show you at the moment is my own.The black is a mix of lava and cement. The door feels a mile thick. It's a bit on the dark and volcanic side what with the red door and the ocean view. No internet in the rooms and I did not notice a telephone. You are forced to disconnect.

The hotel is situated in Castel di Tusa, a little fishing village 20 KM from Cefalu. Twenty out of the forty rooms were designed by internationally recognized artists like : Raoul Ruiz (La Torre di Sigismondo) Paolo Icaro (Il Nido), Hidetoshi Nagasawa (Mistero per la Luna), Sislej Xhafa (Il Bagno Turco),Danielle Miterand, Agnese Purgatorio, Antonio Presti, Luigi Mainolfi (La Stanza della Terra e del Fuoco), I will visit them all tomorrow and show them to you.

Tomorrow I will visit Fiumara d'Arte, about 2 kilometers from here and contains the biggest Regional museum of contemporary sculpture in Europe. The park was created by Antonio Presti and his idea was to make an open air museum where you could walk through the Sicilian wild. Monumental sculptures have been made by artists: Pietro Consagra, Piero Dorazio, Tano Festa, Hidetoshi Nagasawa,Antonio Di Palma and many others.

Later,

Diane

Mama Shelter - Paris' Chic New Home for the Recession-Afflicted Fashion Flock

Paris is one beautiful city, but it's more friendly (if anything in Paris can really be called friendly) to the well-to-do who happen to have a pied-a-terre in the 16th or a bank balance big enough to sustain a week-long stay at the Ritz. If you're on a budget, then your options, when it comes to stylish hotels, are fairly limited. There are a fair amount of fuddy-duddy spots, but if you're looking for something built in this century, then it's slim pickings. Until Mama Shelter opened its doors, that is.

The Philippe-Starck designed boutique hotel is located a bit out of the way, in the 20th, but it has become the white-hot center of a rapidly gentrifying area called SoPig (yes, that's really the nickname), Paris' answer to Nolita. One of the forces behind the project is the Trigano family, best-known for turning the Club Med chain into a worldwide phenomenon. They see the potential for a similar global impact with the Mama Shelter concept - a high-design and highly-affordable hotel that minimizes overhead without scrimping on giving travelers everything they might need. That translates into iMacs in every room, which have integrated television, music and DVD controls, bathrooms with rain showers, heated towel racks (which are actually really handy in the winter! I had never used one before) and Kiehl's amenities. The beds are plush with super-soft sheets and the decor is cute without being annoying. 

The only objection I had was the lighting in the room... the carpet is almost entirely black and the ceiling and walls are painted in a dark shade and there are very limited lights. I kept running into things, and I was imagining that if Diane was there, she'd be in big trouble if she kept her shades on. And God help anyone who happens to lose a contact. Other than that, it was definitely the nicest room I had ever been in for 79 Euros (the starting rate). 

Downstairs is the Mama Shelter restaurant and bar, a typically Starckian blend of surreal decor elements. Every night of the week the place was packed, with both hotel guests and locals (and people coming from Paris' interior for a lively night of chic 'slumming', akin to when UESiders ventured below 14th before it became ultra-trendy.) The food was decent, but slightly overpriced (you get the sense that the hotel makes up some of their profit margin in this department) but the bar's cocktails were completely worth the high price tags. It seemed to draw a really diverse crowd of people, which, given how segregated Paris sometimes feels, was an impressive accomplishment in itself. 

For those looking to make a night of it, La Fleche D'Or, an interestig music and dance venue that is about as lively as Paris gets when it comes to a youthful, independent spirit, is located across the street. Daytrippers can pay their respects to Oscar Wilde at the Pere Lachaise cemetery, a short walk away, before stopping in to the hotel for some lunch.

All in all, if you're on a budget but unwilling to settle for a 1-star hotel in the center of Paris, then Mama Shelter is your best bet. The 3 line on the Metro runs right up to the hotel basically - the Galleni stop is a 5-minute walk away - and when I was rushing to get into the city to make it to a show (i stayed there during the couture) I only needed to leave about 30-40 minutes of travel time. A bit of a pain, but perhaps less than dealing with a Parisian taxi driver.