Set your clocks to get your hands on the covetable new Wildlife kids’ fashion range from H&M in collaboration with illustrator Kelsey Oseid and her Minneapolis-based company Kelzuki. Oseid’s gouache designs have appeared in a number of children’s books and we love her nature-themed prints featuring whales, birds, beetles etc. This new range, in association with H&M is unique in its own right but borrows from Kenzo, Molo and even Stella McCartney Kids.
Particularly noteworthy are the Bear and medley of animal sweatshirts, boots and trackies. H&M Kids x Kelzuki launches this Thursday 26 September at hm.com.
Alexa Chung’s chic wipe-clean Bateman trench, £395 at alexachung.com:
A fresh take on a classic by Scandi brand, Rains, check overcoat £130 at Rains:
Stockholm brand, Stutterheim make this flattering A-line Mosebacke in a satisfying mid-weight rubberised cotton and it comes in a range of colours, £180 at Stutterheim:
Ganni’s Tiger Mac is made with biodegradable water repellent thermoplastic, £230 at Ganni:
Barbour’s Alexa Chung collab is excellent. We particularly love this Glenda cotton-blend coat £300 at net-a-porter:
A relaxed waxed-cotton raincoat with an oversize hood, £250 at TOAST:
Simple and chic, this black Stala raincoat would go with everything. £89 at Samsoe:
If you’re thinking about going away for half term, then we highly recommend these three companies that specialise in great places to stay with kids.
Kid and Coe have a fantastic selection of places to stay with over 1,000 hand-picked places in over 50 different locations (everywhere from Suffolk to Lake Tahoe). There is great advice and guides to where you’re staying and if you list your own house, you can even do exchanges with fellow ‘hosts’.
The Little Voyager was founded by Ilonka Schäfer, mother of two, who was looking for family friendly holiday accommodations that really lived up to the brochure. The website feels very personal and the team are excellent at giving advice and answering all your questions. Best for babies and toddlers.
Smith & Family is a fairly new outshoot of Mr & Mrs Smith, the website recommending luxury hotels worldwide. Smith & Family have extended this search to include great places with kids – look out for the ‘Family stays for Less’ section where you can find their latest special deals.
Flowers made from tiny chicken feet bones; this is the work of Emma Witter, artist in residence at the Sarabande Foundation, the creative community for emerging artists founded by Alexander McQueen. We can’t help but feel he’d have approved of these fragile and beautiful sculptures that play on the idea of the memento mori, and giving Witter’s inaugural exhibition its name, ‘Remember you Must Die’. Haunting and captivating, see the sculptures on display this weekend alongside special objects and photographic prints.
Where does Diana Henry go to buy her groceries? What does she eat for breakfast? We devoted fans flock to the master for the answers:
From the Oven to the Table feels so autumnal. Do you have a favourite season for food?
I like autumn best. So many of my favourite ingredients are in season now – pumpkins, truffles, apples, hazelnuts and walnuts – and I love the way that the cooler weather sends you back to the kitchen. I am a kitchen hibernator and I love turning towards the home again after all the cavorting and lack of structure that is so much part of the summer.
Who are your favourite people to cook for?
I really like cooking for old friends more than anything else. You don’t have to stand on ceremony, you barely have to make an effort with the conversation, you can put a roasting tin on the table and ask someone else to serve. If you want to be very casual it’s fine; conversely, if you’ve felt like using table linen and silver cutlery they don’t question that either. I love big talkers and a range of ages too. It’s a good lunch or dinner, in my opinion, if there’s been a bit of arguing! We have some old friends – they used to be neighbours – who are the noisiest, most opinionated, least reserved people I know. They visit as a family. I love having them over. Casual gatherings with old friends are definitely my favourite.
These recipes draw on flavours from all over the world – a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Is this how you like to cook?
I’ve always cooked like that. I grew up in Northern Ireland where exotic ingredients just weren’t available so I have always loved the foods that were used in other parts of the world. I think it’s just the mark of someone who grew up in a very ‘small town’ place. Cooking was my way to get beyond the limits of where I was born.
Could you share some of your London haunts for food shopping?
I actually buy an awful lot from the internet and am always getting deliveries, but I have a good fishmonger – Purkis in Muswell Hill – a bus ride away from where I live. In East Finchley, which is also nearby, there’s a great shop called Tony’s Continental. It has wonderful fruit and veg, sesame bread, spices, pulses and different kinds of feta. The display outside the shop is always beautiful – a big spread of fruit and veg really cheers me up. I get my meat in Turner and George when I can, and I go into Chinatown for Chinese, Thai and Vietnamese ingredients.
An autumnal pile at Tony’s Continental
Where’s home, and what do you love about your area?
I live in Highgate in North London. The best thing is the architecture – beautiful Georgian houses – the fact that it’s high up (I love the feeling of looking out over London) and – the very best thing – how much green space is round me. I am right near Highgate Woods and Hampstead Heath. It’s a great place for walking. It’s also leafy and quiet but just 15 minutes away from King’s Cross on the tube.
What do you eat for breakfast?
It depends on the day. If I have a lot to do and need to get on then it’s black coffee – lots of it – and toast with home made jam. At the weekend I love French toast and bacon with maple syrup (so do my kids). If I am feeling really hungry and have time I have eggs on toast (sometimes with avocado as well – shoot me now!) I love boiled and poached eggs. I also keep pickled herring in the fridge at all times in case I fancy them. (I’ll have them with rye bread, cheese, slices of cucumber). I do adore a Scandinavian breakfast. Fruit is important too. I am now moving onto frozen raspberries as the summer is nearly over, and stewed apples. I have these with Greek yoghurt and brown sugar.
Where do you like to eat out in London?
People are always asking me this! My favourite places are Rochelle Canteen, Brawn, Quality Chop House and Noble Rot. I also like the Provencal cooking at Sardine. All these places are very casual and have an ‘honest’ voice, both in the cooking and in the decor.
Rochelle Canteen
Margot Henderson, at Rochelle Canteen, just has the most perfect taste, I think – nothing is fussy or fancy or pretentious, she just does elevated home cooking with the very best ingredients. She is also a very generous cook. I love her food. Brawn – which is just across the road from Rochelle – is similarly unpretentious and I love the rickety furniture. The food is a mixture of French and Italian. QCH is British, but not rigorously so, and the service is wonderful.
Noble Rot, which is in Lamb’s Conduit Street, is like my canteen, the place I will go if I have to have a meeting or see someone. The wine list is great – always something new, always something interesting – the food is mostly French but there are also Italian and Spanish dishes on the menu. The staff are delightful. I rarely sit in the restaurant at the back, I’m usually in the bar. If I’m going out for a special occasion I often go to Chez Bruce – I’ve been going there for decades. I make myself go to new places all the time – because I want to see what’s going on – but I love going to places where I KNOW I will have a great meal.
When you get a menu are you decisive or dithery?
A bit dithery – I usually want everything.
Best meal you’ve eaten recently?
I went up to Newcastle to eat at Hjem, a restaurant with a Swedish chef in the countryside (about 40 minutes from the city). I absolutely loved it. It was New Nordic in spirit but using, obviously, British ingredients. It really made me think and sometimes, especially if you write about food, you both want and need that, to come across a mixture of ingredients you hadn’t thought of, or to be startled by something really simple. The best dish was heritage potatoes (grown nearby) with pickled blackcurrant leaves and thin slices of frozen cultured butter. I probably think about that dish every day right now.
Heritage potatoes at Hjem
What do you listen to when you cook?
Often Radio 4 though it annoys me much more than it used to (perhaps it’s age!) I also love music. If I need to cook quickly I will deliberately put on Motown and disco – it speeds me up. If I can just cook in an ambling kind of way it will be Joni Mitchell or Carole King. I also listen to Van Morrison an awful lot when I’m cooking.
3 things in your kitchen you couldn’t live without?
Ingredients-wise it’s salt, lemon and either olive oil or butter (don’t make me choose between the fats). For equipment it’s good knives (I love Opinel), all my old bashed roasting tins and my shallow 30 cm cast iron casserole.
What are you reading at the moment?
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. It isn’t uplifting but I didn’t expect it to be. Also Kathleen Jamie’s Surfacing. I usually have several books going at the same time so I have a choice of what to read depending on my mood.
What are you looking forward to this autumn in London?
Walks on those lovely misty autumnal afternoons (even though I have lots of green space near me sometimes I go into town specifically to go to one of the big London parks – I like urban parks); making a special meal at home for friends over Halloween; seeing pumpkins appear outside greengrocers and also carved, outside homes; eating white truffles somewhere as soon as they come into season; the weather getting cold enough to light the wood burning stove in the kitchen.
Find recipes from Diana Henry’s new book, From the Oven to the Table: Simple dishes that look after themselves and enter our competition to win a copy here.
Princess Caroline ‘Lee’ Bouvier Radziwill, the New York socialite and sister to Jackie Kennedy was renowned for her glamour and style. Doted on as one of Truman Capote’s ‘Swans’, muse to Andy Warhol and Georgio Armani, Lee would holiday with Mick and Bianca Jagger in the Hamptons and support her sister, The First Lady on diplomatic missions. This October a collection of her treasure will go on sale at Christies, New York. Think Gucci sunglasses, Chanel jewellery, Limoges china as well as fine art and furniture from her homes in New York and Paris. Browse the sale here, ahead of the auction on 17 October.
We’ve waxed lyrical about Tim Walker’s Wonderful Things at the V&A, but he wasn’t the only fashion photographer to open an exhibition this week. Offering the counter-balance, Venetia Scott’s first solo show presents a stripped-back selection of just 30 portraits arranged on white walls at 5 Carlos Place. In Fragile Face Lay Flat, Scott (also Contributing Fashion Director of British Vogue) draws on her own archive of inspiration; pulling out model’s faces from fashion editorials spanning over 12 years’ work, and cropping the frame so that the focus is solely on the women – rather than the clothes or setting. Familiar faces include Kate Moss and Elle Fanning, with the pictures arranged to hang at eye level meaning there’s an immediacy with which we lock eyes with the photographer’s subjects. Hosted in partnership with Sion & Moore gallery at the MATCHES townhouse in Mayfair, the exhibition is free but only runs until 28 September, so hurry.
Journalism has been much denigrated and eroded over the last few years. To survive, it needs to offer readers a new voice and these are two, completely independent companies doing just that.
Co-founded and edited by James Harding (former Director of BBC News and Editor of The Times), Tortoise is not about chasing breaking news but rather understanding what’s driving it. Slow news and open journalism. You need to become a member but it’s no ordinary kind of club. Its newsroom draws not just on its editors and reporters but the wisdom of its own members – using their expertise, interests and determination.
Essentially, Tortoise journalism works though a system of organised listening. Daily, they hold ThinkIns: live, unscripted conversations in their London newsroom as well as out on the road. The idea is they harness the diverse experience and expertise of members to shape stories.
As a special offer for A Little Bird readers, you can join now for £50 for a year instead of £250. Just go to www.tortoisemedia.com/friend and use the code ALITTLEBIRD50 to get your discounted membership.
Hailed by Stephen Fry as ‘A Truly Wonderful Site’, The Browser was set up around 10 years ago to offer fascinating, longer reads on topics that you might not normally come across in your daily newspaper. Editors Robert Cottrell (former Moscow bureau chief for both The Economist and the Financial Times) and Caroline Crampton read hundreds of articles every day and select their top five reads, a daily podcast and a daily video. On Saturdays, subscribers also receive the Best of the Week and on Sundays, an Audio Browser dedicated to podcasts. Subscribing for a year costs $49 (or $5 per month) but you can get a free 14 day subscription here.
‘Go out into the garden and use your imagination!’ Tim Walker’s mother would say, in the face of boredom. Once outside, the little boy would do just that, entering the make-believe of his mind, arranging scenes and taking pictures; an extraordinary life’s work was just beginning. Today that ‘garden’ is the V&A’s archive, from which Walker has picked out ten treasures or ‘wonderful things’ as the inspiration for a series of new projects on display for the first time in this utterly spellbinding show.
Tim Walker’s fashion photography needs no introduction. But, for anyone who needs to be brought up to speed, the first part of the exhibition provides a whistle-stop tour. In a bright, white dream room, highlights from 25 years’ worth of work hang thematically in clusters; Into the Garden with its bloom of flower-filled fashion shoots, past the Alice in Wonderland fairytale sets, onwards to the photographer’s muses Tilda Swinton, Kate Moss, Grayson Perry, and over to his portraits; David Attenborough with a whopping egg and the iconic shot of Alexander McQueen leaning on a human skull, a year before he died.
Playful pictures are met with playful curation; blink and you’ll miss these three blind mice down at sock-level and hiding beside the leg of a table. Great glossy drips of paint splurge from the ceiling; scrapbooks lie open, and fonts in the picture captions swirl and swoop in different directions. An added bonus; these captions have all been written by Walker himself, so it’s his voice that guides you through the exhibition.
But it’s when darkness descends that we really enter Walker’s wonderland. Starting with a burned-out cathedral, we are drawn through a series of immersive rooms that feel like stepping through film sets of mad invention. In each we meet the V&A objects and artefacts that have formed the springboard for Walker’s new photographs. There’s a modesty plaster fig leaf made in 1857 to cover Michelangelo’s David during Queen Victoria’s museum visits, the launchpad for a whole series of male nudes, and a sky-wall dotted with peep-holes. From ivory Indian chess pieces and a pair of 16th century Krishna and Indra watercolours spring Walker’s shots of billowing silks and glitter-coated faces that float up on Cloud 9 through Worcestershire’s delphinium fields.
Objects from the archive include an Alexander McQueen ballgown, an embroidered casket from 1675, the golden shoes of poet Dame Edith Sitwell, an enormous rolled photograph of the Bayeaux Tapestry, a Book of Common Prayer, stained glass windows and more, resulting in over 150 new photographs. Weaving it all through with magic thread is the design, masterminded by Shona Heath, Walker’s long-term collaborator. Wonderful props and mini-scenes that play with scale, colour and texture ensure we’re not mere on-lookers to Walker’s imagination, but we’re walking around in our own fantasy-land too.
And it is Heath’s final touch at the end of the show that carries you out with a spring in your step, imagination ignited. Walker’s scrapbooks have been blown up to giant scale – we’ve swallowed Alice’s shrinking potion again – and we’re tiny looking up at his words scribbled in pencil above, ‘Ends are always followed by beginnings, something new could start now, right here! There really are so many wonderful things.’
Oh how we love a Diana Henry cookbook. Her latest, From the Oven to the Table: Simple dishes that look after themselves is out now, and it’s packed full of the most tempting recipes, most of which can be shoved straight in the oven in a roasting tin. We share two of our favourites, and have three copies to give away:
ROAST PEPPERS WITH BURRATA & ’NDUJA
Image Credit: Laura Edwards
You barely need a recipe for this, it’s just distinctive ingredients, melting together, each providing a contrast to its neighbour: chilli-hot ’nduja that falls apart in the heat of the oven, cold creamy burrata, and charred peppers. Most people, when you give them a plate of this and some ciabatta to mop up the juices, will just be quiet and eat.
Serves 4 as a starter
6 red peppers
a little extra virgin olive oil
sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
60g (2¼oz) ’nduja
about 400g (14oz) burrata
ciabatta, to serve
Preheat the oven to 190°C fan (400°F), Gas Mark 6.
Halve the peppers, deseed them and put them into a gratin dish, roasting tin or a baking sheet with a lip around it. Brush them with olive oil, season and roast for 20 minutes. Break the ’nduja into chunks and divide it among the peppers, putting it inside them. Roast for a final 10 minutes. When they’re cooked, the pepper skins should be slightly blistered and a little charred in places. Leave them until they’re cool enough to handle, then tear them or leave them whole – whichever you prefer – and divide them between 4 plates. Drain the burrata, tear it and serve it alongside the peppers and ’nduja. Offer some ciabatta on the side.
ROAST STONE FRUIT WITH ALMOND & ORANGE FLOWER CRUMBS
Image Credit: Laura Edwards
I like crumble – who doesn’t? – but it can be a bit stodgy, more about the crumble than the fruit. In this dish, the fruit shines more – it gets gorgeous caramelized edges – and the ‘crumble’ is rich with nuggets of marzipan and scented with flower water. This is a big pudding and I usually have left overs, but that means you can eat them for breakfast.
serves 8
900g (2lb) stone fruit:
a mixture of peaches, nectarines, plums and apricots is good here
2 tablespoons caster sugar
finely grated zest of 1 unwaxed lemon, plus juice of ½ lemon
65g (2½oz) good-quality marzipan
½ tablespoon orange flower water
50g (1¾oz) plain flour
30g (1oz) ground almonds
65g (2½oz) cold unsalted butter, cut into cubes
15g (½oz) flaked almonds
icing sugar, to dust (optional)
whipped cream or crème fraîche, to serve
Preheat the oven to 200°C fan (410°F), Gas Mark 6½.
Halve and pit all the fruit. Cut the larger fruits – peaches and nectarines – into 6 wedges (each half into 3). Put all the fruit into a dish, sprinkle it with the sugar, lemon zest and juice and turn it over with your hands. Take 30g (1oz) of the marzipan and put little nug gets of this in among the fruit. Break the rest of the marzipan into little balls, but reserve it for now. Sprinkle the flower water over the fruit. Put the flour, ground almonds and butter into a bowl and rub them together with your fingertips. You want to end up with a mixture that looks like small pebbles and gravel. Sprinkle this over the top of the fruit, then put the balls of marzipan on top, too, leaving patches of the fruit completely uncovered. Bake for 30 minutes, or until the fruit is completely tender and the crumbs are golden, scattering over the flaked almonds halfway through the cooking time. Leave to cool a bit (I like it at room temperature, but you might prefer it warm) and dust a little icing sugar over the top, if you want. Serve with whipped cream or crème fraîche.
Win a Copy of From the Oven to the Table by Diana Henry
We have three copies of From the Oven to the Table: Simple dishes that look after themselves by Diana Henry to give away. Just enter our competition below to put your name in the hat:
From the Oven to the Table: Simple dishes that look after themselves by Diana Henry is published by Mitchell Beazley, £25,www.octopusbooks.co.uk
Interiors shop, florist, bookshop, restaurant – visit this downtown Soho hotspot and you’ll never want to leave. The 7,000 square foot flagship is from the interiors firm behind The Boom Boom Room at The Standard and Gwyneth Paltrow’s former Tribeca apartment. It is filled with their Founding Collection, consisting of furniture (their daybed is particular inviting), lighting, sculptures and much, much more. The ‘library’ is curated by Phaidon and the French inspired restaurant, La Mercerie Café is delicious – don’t miss the buckwheat pancakes.
Shopping: John Derian, 6, 8 and 10 East 2nd Street, NY 10003
There is nothing quite like the pleasure of visiting the quirky interiors emporium that is John Derian and Company (three separate shops next door to each other). Filled with decoupage plates and paperweights as well as furniture, prints, imported French quilts, table linens and other ephemera, Mr Derian manages to combine wit with great taste. All of of his items are handmade in his studio in New York along with some of our favourite European labels such as Antoinette Poisson and Astier de Villatte. You’ll be sorely tempted to buy and take almost everything home.
Shopping: Glossier, 123 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10013
Don’t miss this fun and dreamily outfitted shop where you can try out samples from the cult beauty brand which has made its founder, Emily Weiss, a financial ‘unicorn’ (fast work as she only set up the company in 2014 and this shop opened less than a year ago). Dismiss any thoughts that this is a millennial only brand – although you may find many 20-somethings at the shop – make no mistake that they really do work on all ages. Our particular favourites are the Milky Jelly Cleanser with Vitamin B5 ($18), the Priming Moisturizer Rich ($35) which is a brilliant base for makeup and of course, their best seller, the Boy Brow ($16).
This six storey house in Soho (which took four years to restore) is the spot to pick up some designer labels such as Chanel and Gucci from the tightly edited selection by founder and Creative Director, Laura Heliard Dubreuil. This is shopping without the crowds as it very much feels like somebody’e personal home and there’s even a branch of David Mallett, the Parisian celebrity hairdresser, on the fifth floor, his only other post outside of Paris.
Having been a hugely popular staple on NY’s dining scene, Keith McNally’s French inspired restaurant became a victim of it’s own success and shut down. After a five year hiatus, however, Pastis reopened in June just around the corner from the original location and seems to have recaptured it’s original glory (that might be also due to the furniture, tiles and even phone number which were held over from the previous venue). The menu is still the same heavenly mixture of salade nicoise and steak frites with a few new additions. Perfect for lunch after visiting the nearby Whitney Museum of Modern Art via The Highline.
Established over 100 years ago, there isn’t a better place (we think) in NYC to pick up fresh bagels and some cured or smoked fish with cream cheese. Pick up a take away or if you’d rather sit down, visit their cafe on Orchard Street or the restaurant at the Jewish Museum on 5th Avenue (they also have another location in Brooklyn). This place never changes and we like it that way.
You’ll have probably heard of the Cronut – it’s the reason why there’s very often a queue outside these small bakeries in Soho and the West Village. While it brought fame for Ansel, it definitely isn’t the French Pastry Chef’s only offering and you’ll find it hard to choose between the Frozen S’Mores, the Cookie shot and the Blossoming Hot Chocolate. A real treat.
Tim and Kit Kemp founded a sucessful recipe for boutique hotels in London with branches such as the Convent Garden, a firm celebrity favourite. Their first New York hotel, The Crosby, has a great location behind Soho and captures the same comfortable but cool vibe whilst their second opening, The Whitby is uptown near all the major museums and two blocks from Central Park. The rooms are substantial (rare in New York where rooms can be hardly bigger than a broom cupboard) and we particularly like the sunny terrace outside at The Crosby for lunch.
Note: This guide only covers Manhattan but we do believe that a visit to New York wouldn’t be complete without visiting some of the amazing restaurants and shops in Brooklyn and one of our favourite spots, the beautiful Brooklyn Botanic Gardens at Prospect Park (www.bbg.org), 52 acres of amazing fauna.
We’ve teamed up with the recently arrived French luxury sample sale company, Arlettie, to give A Little Bird readers VIP access to the upcoming Hugo Boss event. A large selection of menswear, womenswear and accessories will be at the sample sale – we particularly like their elegant dresses and great separates. The sale will be open to the general public on Friday 20th September but A Little Bird readers can get in early from 8am to midday on Thursday 19th September (you can of course also access the sale in the following days too as below). Download your invitation here and don’t forget to sign up for Arlettie’s other up coming sales here.
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It’s goodbye for now…
The team at A Little Bird are taking a break to recharge and make some exciting changes behind-the-scenes. We look forward to seeing you again soon.
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