Love, Lost Weekend & What I Wore

The other week, I stopped into one of my favorite new-to-me cafés in the city, Lost Weekend, for a quick coffee and also to take pictures of myself getting said coffee. #META. More #META? This is me, asking myself five questions about the Montauk-meets-the-LES establishment:

Hi, Sean! What are you drinking? A cappuccino. Always.
What are you eating? A lemon poppyseed muffin!
How did you discover Lost Weekend NYC? While strolling around adjacent Chinatown, where else?
What do you like about it? #1: It's Supercute. #2: They sell cool isht, like good coffee (duh), and also 'zines, tees and candles. Plus, their space is intimate, but bright and spacious. A great place to sit for a friend date or an afternoon blogging sesh.
And what are you wearing? Hat by American Apparel, shirt by Uniqlo, sweater by Saturdays Surf NYC, coat by Uniqlo, jeans by Cheap Monday and vintage lace-ups. And bag by Steve Mono! And vintage gloves!

This is a good example of 'uniform dressing', seeing as the foundation of this look was blogged a mere week or two ago, in this post (and the jeans and sweater debuted here.) I just switched up my accessories - the bag, the hat, the gloves - et voilà, it's a more polished outfit, with purposefully complementary colors and a slightly less boho patina. Which version do you prefer? Photos in this post: David Williams, me. Visit Lost Weekend at 45 Orchard St., or online on Twitter or Facebook.

WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE PARIS

Chelsea recently moved to the city and I couldn't be happier. Nothing like having a bestie around for frolicking and galavanting...and also eating your weight in good cheese, drinking tons of coffee and rhapsodizing about Paris. Speaking of, I just finished David McCullough's The Greater Journey (I blogged about starting it here), a historical work that's unexpectedly gripping from the get-go. McCullough artfully weaves together the lives of American expatriates in 19th-century Paris; I wish it were twice the size, really. One of the details I found most fascinating is the way art students would spend days and weeks replicating paintings in the Louvre.

As much as I respect and appreciate copyright law, it made me think about how truly helpful it is to attempt to copy something as a part of the learning process. It can teach you so much about which elements of a work you really appreciate and why. It's one of the reasons I think Instagram is such a great tool for photographers - there's endless inspiration and no harm or hassle in trying different styles of shooting. I've found that my favorite Instagrammers make great use of shadow, negative space and a simple or muted color palette.

Instagram is not the Louvre and an iPhone photo is not Degas, but here are a few of the accounts on IG that have influenced how I shoot: @jasonhudson, @alice_gao, @dabito, @amerrymishap and @lifeserial. And don't forget to follow me @thisfruitsnaps! Images, clockwise from top-left: spoon at La Colombe, Chelsea at home, the backyard of Saturdays Surf NYC, my book.

CAFÉ DU MONDE

I've recently been obsessing over café imagery...they can be such wonderful places, no? When living abroad there were so many cute little cafés (and quite a few that were just crap), all of them expatriate magnets. They were a reminder of home, providing a shared cultural experience that spanned across any given Western nation, just booming in popularity in the East. I'd love to open my own café-cum-boulangerie someday...just so I could make it perfect and hang out there all the time.

images via Flickr, Pinterest, Dapper Lou (x2), Pinterest, Lingered Upon, and Leo Patrone for Kinfolk (the ones that just say "Pinterest"...I've lost the links! If you took this picture let me know and I will link to you!)