Amsterdam on my middle finger

January 24, 2016

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I don’t usually write about fashion, I wasn’t even sure I had a category for that, but this calls for an exception.

Siberian goldsmith Ola Shekhtman apparently has been crafting a new ring while moving around the world: Paris, London, Washington (D.C.), Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, Boston, Stockholm, Edinburgh, Charleston, Berlin.

Now, she doesn’t have all of my cities: I call for Jerusalem, of course, and Milan. In a while I might be needing Moscow and something in Taiwan, but that’s a different story. Still, I would be satisfied to wear Paris on my annularis (because it’s Paris). And hey, when somebody talks about construction sites without the proper knowledge I can always show them Amsterdam on my middle finger. Doing it without the ring is far less elegant.

art and fashion

Beauty and Ugliness: an exhibition

A few pictures from the recently closed exhibition on Beauty and Ugliness as an aesthetic paradigma in which what’s ideal and what’s grotesque melt together as sides of the same coin. The exhibition featured works by Brueghel (lent from the other exhibition at Palazzo Reale),

October 25, 2026 9:00 am

Spooktober

Spooktober 25 – The Phantom Farm House (2)

Continues from yesterday… ATORRENT of rain held us marooned the next day. Miss Leahy was confined to her room, with a nurse in constant attendance and the house doctor making hourly calls. She was on the verge of a nervous collapse, he told me, crying

October 25, 2026 6:00 am

books and literature

Alix Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches

I wouldn’t have started this book on my own, and for many reasons. One of them is that in Italy it’s marketed as Young Adult Fiction, and I hate most of that stuff, and the other is its imposing length: 600 pages. I was distracted,

October 24, 2026 9:00 am