Curated Letter N°21
March & April 2023 Edition
The elegant shortcut to staying informed—because being well-read is always SOPHISTICATED
My Dear Friends,
There’s a certain luxury in hitting pause and tuning into ideas with shelf life. Consider this your intelligent reset: no fluff, just substance and style.
Reset, reframe, and return. I’ll be here next month with more that matters.
– Yours, Harper
Bookology
Because a good book is still the most elegant way to know something someone else doesn’t—until, of course, you decide to recommend it.
Podtails
Fresh voices for a season that always suggests reinvention—consider it as a mental edit.
It is not about the Money
Financial Tips & Tricks
The podcast is aimed at women looking for financial tips and tricks but, most of all, confidence. A qualified financial planner and money coach, Catherine offers advice across a variety of topics, including how to plan your calendar to reduce impulse purchasing. ‘This podcast is for women to learn practical money management tips to be financially resilient.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
How To Fail
Motivation
A podcast which ‘celebrates the things that haven’t gone right’. A wholly uplifting and heartening listen, Day speaks with the likes of Tom Kerridge, Fearne Cotton and Lily Allen to discuss what each guest has learned from their past failures.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
Art Detective
Art&Culture
Bitesize chunks analyse famous artworks and put them in their cultural and historical context. Understanding art allows us to understand history: to pin it with images and pepper it with the faces, colours, drama and expression of its time. This series is designed to give bite-sized insights into the world of Art History, bringing one image to life across a wide-ranging discussion with experts.
Subscribe where ever you get Your podcasts
Cultured
The bits that didn’t fit elsewhere—but are absolutely worth knowing, because curiosity is always in season.
Japan´s UNESCO Listing
In 2021, UNESCO recognized the islands of Amami-Oshima and Tokunoshima as Natural World Heritage Sites. The islands were added because of their unique ecosystems, which are habitats for many endangered plant and animal life that exist nowhere else in the world.
Picasso in the Garage
The gallerist Anne Pfeffer and her husband Herbert stand accused of concealing hundreds of works stolen from the daughters of Jacqueline Picasso and the art dealer Aimé Maeght.
At least 553 drawings and original prints by Picasso, worth more than €13.5m, were stolen between 2006 and 2008 from their neighbouring houses in Paris by a handyman.
Mistress leaves the Shadows
For 18 months, and at the cost of €5m, the Parisian restoration specialists Ateliers Gohard—known for restoring the Statue of Liberty’s torch—have painstakingly renovated the 18th-century decor of Du Barry’s home by gradually stripping away layer upon layer of paint to reveal the colours the king’s mistress chose.
This and That
An ever-shifting selection of cultural cues, eyebrow-raisers, and global talking points–relevant, and just ahead of the curve.
Largest Pink Diamond
The 170-carat stone has been named the “Lulo Rose”, after the mine in Angola where it was found. It is believed to be the largest pink diamond mined since the 185-carat Daria-i-Noor, cut from a larger stone and now among the Iranian national jewels. The Lulo Rose is a type 2a diamond with few or no impurities.
Fake Assistant Method
Life is easier with an assistant- if you can´t afford one, just create a fake one. It works!
The fake assistant is polite but persistent, fervent but never gruff. He told me once that he learned to be dogged by his mother, a line producer for 60 Minutes. If there’s a secret email address or VIP phone number out there, James will unsheathe it. He is not afraid to ask for what he needs. He is also 100 per cent fake.
it’s “one way to circumvent the ego.”
22 Year Legal Fight
After a more than two-decades-long battle, Manolo Blahnik has declared a landmark victory in a high-profile trademark dispute in China. The London-based shoe brand was successful in its hard-fought efforts to invalidate a Chinese trademark registration incorporating the “Manolo Blahnik” name, which since 2000 has impeded the luxury shoe brand from launching a meaningful expansion using its own name within mainland China.
.. to live by in April!
“Let go of who you think you’re supposed to be; embrace who you are.”
Brenee Brown PH.D, American Research professor, lecturer, author