In the dead of night on the streets of Rome there is a shop open that is full of junk (gold 1980s fanny packs, pink corsets, ancient basketball posters, styrofoam mannequin heads, American political pins, odd designer handbags, etc. etc.). It’s called “Miss France,” because Maryse Fabre, the 74-year-old French woman who runs it, was [...]

My experience on the fashion frontlines at the Karl Lagerfeld show in Paris was full of unexpected good fortune from strangers. After an hour of lying frozen in the same position on the ground of the Tuileries Gardens, wearing nothing but tights and a few trash bags, my limbs were trembling and I had lost [...]

I cut right from India to the land of the colonizers themselves. During my weekend in London I took advantage of that dry British humor by passing my time with a gaggle of Etonian boys. My host resided alone in the drafty townhouse of his parents, studying law by day and drinking G&Ts by night. [...]

The lovely indie-chic romantic comedy, 500 Days of Summer, tells the story of a male 20-something phenomenon: the guy who is desperate to settle down to one woman and only one woman. He is the prince in this modern Los Angeles anti-fairy-tale, instead of the emotionally unavailable wanker so prevalent in popular films and everyday [...]

On a recent trip to Venice, my sister and I found ourselves eating one of the most delicious meals of our lives at Osteria Ai 40 Ladroni, or The Forty Thieves. It is an exceptional restaurant not only for its to-die-for squid ink pasta dish but also for the fact that it’s where my sister [...]

The recent romantic comedy, He’s Just Not That Into You, was an unexpected burst of truth on contemporary dating in an age of Facebook, email writing, and text message disasters. Gigi (played by the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin) waits at the phone every night for her crush to call her. She fails to see the difference [...]

As an expatriate lurking in the snowy streets of Moscow and sporting ridiculous fur hats, my friend recently met an older Russian man who was selling his book of poems on the sidewalk. She apologized to the poet for not being able to buy his book, saying that she did not understand enough Russian. But [...]

My friend recently had an unfortunate evening in Moscow that involved “a charming cocktail of vodka beer rum wine baiileys rum and our old friend jager” (according to her latest email). And at that point she left her purse in the “cab” (which was actually a civilian car, since proper taxis don’t really exist in [...]

One of the most endearing ways to pass a Sunday afternoon is at the guignol theatre in the Luxembourg Gardens, where Parisian children become entranced by tranny-looking marionettes beating each other on the heads with sticks, brooms, feather dusters, and other phallic objects.
On this particular Sunday there was a brawl between a woman and the [...]

Today a semi-sinister man dropped a bundle of business cards on the street in front of me. I picked them up and tried to give them back to him, but he was walking too quickly. And then he dropped an orange Louis Vuitton card case. I picked that up too. And then I realized that [...]