Cosy as can be

Images courtesy of The Sartorialist

It's been raining non-stop now for three days and two nights. It's freezing and I'm excited - I'm over summer (and this season they call autumn in Sydney, which is really summer all over again) already, the sweat, the humidity, the fake tan; it's finally time to bring out the winter woollies!

It's something I actually miss from the -14 degree New York winter - the fact you seriously needed to wear a beanie/beret/knitted-by-your-gran hat that covered your ears because otherwise they'd fall off (instead of just wearing one to 'accessorise'); actually needing proper, beautiful leather gloves lined with cashmere, because if they were lined with synthetic you'd have numb fingers as soon as you walked out the door; and sloshing around in gumboots because they were a basic necessity (walking to work in six-inches of snow without them is not a nice feeling), not just because they're the latest celebrity trend.

I love getting all cosy in my coats, beanies, scarves and thick woolly stockings, I can't wait until the rain stops and the chill sets in for good.

Goodbye, New York

Well I'm finally in the air, bound for L.A. on an American Airlines flight that has wireless! America never ceases to amaze me.

Though I will miss many things about New York, the cold is something I definitely won't (this morning it was -11 Celsius which is a tad too chilly for me), so as I bid farewell to this lovely city I came to call home, I leave you with 15 things I fell in love with during my stay - you might even say, New York's best bits...

1. SoHo in the morning. Before the tourists have arrived, with the sun lit cobble streets, the uberchic New York women on their way to work, the cabs making their way down the empty streets - between 8-10am, SoHo is a beautifully quiet and magical place to just go for a walk.

SoHo's famous lofts

2. Brunch at Brown Cafe. Started by a bunch of Aussies a few years ago, their down-under coffee skills were certainly passed along in this Lower East Side café. Amazing lattes, amazing baked eggs, amazing raisin toast, amazing almond croissants…you get the idea.

3. Escaping to Central Park.

4. Vintage shopping in the Lower East Side. This indie district puts Auckland's K’ Rd to shame – in a five block radius, there are more than 25 breathtaking vintage stores, some harder to find than others, for hours of fun-filled rummaging. My favourites? Fox and Fawn, Marmalade, Daha Vintage, Some Old Rubies and The Dressing Room.

Jean Shrimpton in the Lower East Side

5. Hidden bars. The thrill of discovering yet another hidden gem never fails to excite me; there are hundreds of bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn hidden behind obscure doors, down unexciting stairwells or just in the middle of no-where. Some of the better ones include 151, Chloe 81, Beatrice Inn, Apothéke, Bobo and Larry Lawrence.

6. Delicious, addictive, mouth-watering cupcakes.

7. The quaint boutiques in NoLita. In a time when even luxury brands are considered mainstream (for their ‘oh that's Prada/LV/ Karen Walker!’ obviousness), sometimes it’s nice to own a beautiful dress that no-one else owns/knows where you got it from. Street after tree-lined-street, NoLita is home to the best boutique shopping in New York with young, up and coming designers continuously opening new stores in the charming little area. And if you need a coffee pit stop, try Ruby, an Australian café that knows how to make a proper cup of coffee.

The lovely NoLita

8. 'The Ivy' at Chloe 81. Most Wednesday nights, we would pop down to Nylon magazine’s (thing/event/excuse to drink, or whatever) The Ivy at Chloe 81, conveniently located just across from my apartment. A bit of a scenster event, The Ivy is a great night for some amusing people watching, and the dark underground bar complete with scattered candles and corner leather booths made our blatant staring very possible, much to our delight.

9. Times Square at night. No matter where you are around Midtown, the fantastic bright lights of Times Square are always somehow visible, with the 'woooow' factor never dissipating.

Audrey Hepburn in Times Square - my reaction exactly

10. Rooftops. Nothing beats drinking in New York's skyline from your very own rooftop. Everyone has access to one - some are bare, some have luscious gardens, but it doesn't really matter when they all give you the same result. Sipping a glass of wine in the evening and gazing at a lit-up Empire State Building, sunning yourself complete with brolly, deckchair and lemonade gazing over at the Empire State Building, having snowball fights with your boyfriend, reading a book in the afternoon sun, now looking over Downtown...who needs a back garden when you have skyscrapers?


11. Williamsburg. On a Saturday morning, you'll find all the burg' indie kids dressed in some version of Hunter gumboots and Anoraks walking their mini pooches (not the posh kind, the cute mongrel kind that look like teddy bears), plaid shirt wearing couples going for walks to get the paper and a coffee from Olso, fur coat wearing friends scouring the vintage stores together and skinny jeans wearing kids riding retro bicycles through the streets. It's basically a community where everyone is eternally, effortlessly cool.

12. Brooklyn Bridge. Walking over it, the view from it and the view of it. It's an all-round great bridge.


14. Cafe Habana. Hands down the best breakfast I've ever had - the price ($5.95 for most meals) is just a bonus.

15. Flea Markets. Last but not least, you can't forget New York's incredible flea markets, where you can get hoards of costume jewelery extremely cheap, classic vintage pieces like a 70's Bill Blass dress (for me the one that got away - I'm still not over it), Kenzo pants and Calvin Klein shifts from the 80's and even YSL cashmere for $5 a pop. The best flea market by far is Brooklyn's indoor market in DUMBO (because no-one wants to stand outside in -6 Celsius trying on fur coats, no matter how cheap they are).

Snow, snow, snow, snow

Photos courtesy of the New York Times and The Daily News

I should be in a taxi to JFK airport right now, getting ready to fly to L.A. and then onto Auckland. But instead, I'm sitting at my local cafe having breakfast and watching a blizzard unfold - the worst we've had all winter, go figure.

According to the New York Times, New York dispatched 1,600 plows to deal with the storm and an army of salt spreaders who put down 130,000 tons of rock salt on the roads and pavements. Not that it does much good - as soon as a plow goes past a blanket of snow falls minutes later, which seems to be good news for the kids being dragged in toboggans by their Starbucks carrying mothers.

While 6-inches on snow fell on Manhattan overnight, another 5-inches is expected to fall by the end of the day - that's a whole 11-inches of powdery snow! If I weren't in such a bad mood about my cancelled flight, and if my gumboots weren't packed right at the bottom of my suitcase, I'd be having a lot of fun right now.

Hello cupcake

Holy headrush, who needs cocktails when you can have sugar? Manhattan seems to be the unofficial town of cupcakes and I've had a bit too much fun trying out as many as I can get my sticky little fingers on.

Without further ado, the top five cupcake purveyors in town:

1. Sugar Sweet Sunshine - 126 Rivington St
This cute Lower East Side bakery, decorated with funky light fixtures and mismatched thrift-shop furniture, is renowned for its trademark little pieces of heaven - their $1.50 cupcakes. Best flavours: Pistachio and Spicy Pumpkin

2. Magnolia Bakery - 401 Bleecker St, at 11th St

If you're willing to wait in the line that seems to perpetually snake around the blue-awning corner, you'll be rewarded with delicious cupcakes frosted in pretty pastel colors. Best flavour: Hummingbird

3. Babycakes - 248 Broome St, btwn Ludlow and Orchard

Their radically wheat-free, sugar-free, dairy-free cupcakes are the yummiest in town - and you’ve got to love a place that sells frosting shots for a buck, mmm. Best flavour: Red Velvet

4. Billy’s Bakery - 184 Ninth Ave, btwn W21st and W22nd St
This Chelsea bakery, known for its moist, buttery cupcakes topped with to-die-for icing, are beautifully displayed with the retro charm of a family kitchen circa 1940. Best flavours: all of them

5. Buttercup Bake Shop - 973 Second Ave, nr. 51st St

The tiny bakery sports a retro 1950s look, with a pastel colour scheme and fake pressed-tin ceilings. Best flavours: Devil Dog and Lady Baltimore

Colour us beautiful

Cynthia Rowley Fall 09

Proenza Schouler Fall 09

Oscar De la Renta Fall 09

Micheal Kors Fall 09

Vivienne Tam Fall 09

Marc Jacobs Fall 09

Jason Wu Fall 09

J. Medel Fall 09

It's one of those well know facts about New York, that come October, all the pastels and pretty colours are put away to hibernate in the depths of closets, where New Yorkers suddenly turn into an army of little-black-dress wearing soldiers.

But if this week's Fall runways were anything to go by, it might actually be possible for Manhattanites to erupt in candy hues and neon next year, creating a different winter uniform altogether.

The fashion flock were jolted out of their recession fatigue this week after fuchsia popped up at Oscar de la Renta and Michael Kors highlighted his black dresses with acid yellow and screaming raspberry. If you really want to stand out in the crowd then Marc Jacobs is your man - with an entire collection that exploded with blinding neon colors including hot-pink hooded jackets, lemon capes, and metallic cerulean minis.

Next winter is all about making the entrance (or should I say, entrances) of a lifetime - so follow the leaders and let colour be the rule, not the exception, in your wardrobe.

Rodarte

Photos courtesy of fashionologie

It was quite fitting that guests, including a doe-eyed Kirsten Dunst, sat in tinfoil-wrapped folding chairs at Rodarte this morning. Laura and Kate Mulleavy mixed more materials than ever (leather, lace, metallics, crystals, and of course those knits they're so well known for) for their Fall collection that there were moments when the models looked like they could have been wrapped in the seating.

The collection is more or less another evolution of the Rodarte aesthetic which has been in place for a few seasons now - an elaborate collage of wearable arts and craft. The short, semi-structured minidresses were sure to draw some Balenciaga comparisons, but the sister's are all the better for it - and those romantic knits, they really get you. But really, who has $2000 to spend on a Rodarte skirt these days anyway? One can dream.

Marc Jacobs

Photos courtesy of nymag.com

This evening's Marc Jacobs show was a show-stopping affair to remember.

Being held at the N.Y. State Armory meant Lexington Ave was bustling with police, intense security, barricades lining the street, paparazzi crowding the sidewalks and women teetering in such mammoth high heels they could only walk at a snails pace from their private cars and up the grand staircase.

Refreshingly, Vogue Editors were as close as you got to 'celebrity' (Posh Spice and the Olsen's were MIA), and there was no shortage of breath-taking sartorial success's - while Anna Wintour had changed from her casual fur coat at Donna Karan into a beautiful black embellished number, Carine Roitfield wore a heart-stopping floor-length white fur coat.

Also rather refreshing was the show actually starting on time. 8.01pm saw poor journalists and guests who arrived late either locked out or made to stand and watch from the door.

The collection itself oozed an 80's spirit of New York, full of neon-yellow and metallic-pink - a colour palette that personally I could never see myself coveting. I was born in the 80's and to say I'm glad I was just a tiny-tot, able to avoid the wing-like shoulder pads, heavily hair-sprayed up-do's and weird asymmetrical prints is a grosse understatement.

That being said, Jacobs was able to make the 80's feel fresh, with high-waisted jeans, some simple sequined tops and a few futuristic but wearable coats. Overall, not so much my cup-of-tea, but I'm still in anticipation for what he conjures up tomorrow at the Marc by Marc show.

Prima Ballerina

On Monday and Thursday evenings, and on Saturday mornings, somewhere on the Upper West Side, you'll find me dancing up a storm - attempting things like Développés, Piqués, Relevés, Ront des jambes and well, you get the point.

After an eight year hiatus from Jazz Ballet and Tap, I'm now burning calories in a haze of Centre Stage, trying to Chaîné up and down the dance studio in my trusty pink ballet slippers - I try not to look at myself too much in the unavoidable wall-to-wall mirror, that way I feel far more graceful than I probably look.

My main motivation to start dancing again was one part exercise and one part soft ballet shoes with ribbons, leotards, tights and high buns.

My reasoning goes something like this - while most of us can not reasonably aspire to the ultimate leanness of, say, Christy Turlington, one can try. And why not when trying means twirling around the room in a pretty leotard à la Jody Sawyer.

Spring in my step

The frigid and frightful winter days are (hopefully) over for another year.

I've just had two winters back-to-back moving from the Southern hemisphere to North and my skin is now more of a blinding white than a charming Nicole Kidman ivory.

But, there was no better pick-me up than the tropical heatwave we had this weekend. I nearly did cartwheels when it hit 14 degrees (Celsius) on Saturday evening.

In this economy, there has to be a good reason to go shopping - and I'd say the arrival of spring is a pretty good one.

Away with the coats! Let the hunt for pastels and all things summery begin...

Hat: $18, Laila Rowe; laila rowe.com

Top: $29.99, Thakoon for Target; target.com

Platform heels: $98, Pierre Hardy for Gap; gap.com

Sandals: $395, Miu Miu

Bikini: $270, Syla by Sylvie Cachay; syladesigns.com


High-waisted shorts: $640, Fendi; net-a-porter.com