Wearing:

A gift from my friend Kamea, who runs Georgie and used my German Shepherd Major Dukes as a model, this Georgie “Julia” moto jacket looks like suede, but doesn’t feel anything like it — in the best way. This Georgie moto jacket — in a distressed brown exclusive to Intermix — has a wonderfully slinky feeling…

Hating:

Translations always stiffen a story — local settings blur into blank spots on a foreign map, characters are stripped of their cultural context, and a narrator’s conversation with a reader is distilled of comfortable connotations.

While I felt compelled to finish Haruki Murakami’s hyped novel, I skipped pages without missing much, and wondered why, if 1Q84 gets Nobel Prize buzz, Stephen King hasn’t won plenty of Pulitzers. (Murakami’s device of name-dropping obscure symphonies and Russian lit would mean more if one was trying to get laid in a Brooklyn cafe, and the last Pirates of the Caribbean was harshly criticized, not high-fived, for having characters without clear motivation.)

Maybe I would have enjoyed 1Q84 more in its original Japanese.

Mostly because I can’t read Japanese…

Wanting:

So I’m still using the white earbuds that came with my iSomething or the other. These Vivienne Tam “Butterfly Lovers” earbuds — noise-canceling, built-in mic’ing, beautiful — could change that…

Wearing:

While in New York last month, I breakfasted with East-greets-West fashion designer Vivienne Tam (whose translucent skin glows, even on a winter-ish workday morning.  If she develops skincare, I’ll buy it all). She was wearing the sweetest coat, a simple hooded black nylon coat with hidden buttons, set off by quilting in an abstract fan pattern.  She offered to treat me at her Soho boutique, and I picked out the same Vivienne Tam coat, in a deep emerald green.

For once, strangers stopping me in Los Angeles don’t demand my German Shepherd’s name or age (or social security number), but only offer a “Nice coat…”

Hating:

On third thought, I suppose this Helmut Lang twisted loop drapey cardigan is perfect for those days that the front of your thighs is freezing, but your ass is on fire…

Wanting:

Remember that after snagging this Helmut Lang wool jersey jacket in black, I was hunting for it in gray?

Found it. Want it.

What’s that? But every jacket or coat I already own has a drapey shawl collar and wraps to close? And is in some shade of stone, to complement some beat canvas and leather Hermes bag I’m toting? And don’t I ever get bored always wearing a stack of Love bracelets and a gold President and a pinkie ring on my left hand?

Variety is the spice of life and a bored married man’s pants, not my wardrobe…

Wearing:

I first saw this Helmut Lang merino wool sweater jacket in London, at Harvey Nichols. And I glanced and glossed on — for its price, I could just have another shawl-collar, wrap coat made.

But a week later while I was in New York I popped into Helmut Lang’s Soho boutique to try it on — and the Helmut Lang jersey jacket fit so simply and beautifully. I bought it in black, and I’m hunting for it in seal gray.

Passing over a custom, hand-made in America coat for raw-edged wool jersey pieced together in China? I guess that means the terrorists are winning, but the important thing is that I’m comfortable.

That’s real American spirit…

Wanting:

I saw this Smythson “NOW OR NEVER” wafer notebook in design store and fashion victim mecca Colette in while in Paris a few weeks ago.

While carrying a €100 notepad and an iPhone appeals to neither my cents nor sensibility, a notebook titled “NOW OR NEVER” feels romantic, like the unrealized dreams it could contain: the thoughts of an Albanian heroine of the novel that’s floated through my head for four years, bicycling by bamboo waterwheels while touring Guangxi Zhuangzu, and the beauty of the thousands of things thousands of dollars might do to my face while playing with needles in 90210.

Like, le sigh…

Watching:

There’s something timeless about the simplicity of this song, of this video, of the fact that Brandon Boyd still sings better with his shirt off…

Wearing:

I’ve worn black Francois Pinton “Jacky 2″ sunnies everyday for over four years. While in Paris, I decided it was time for change: after popping into a Francois Pinton boutique and trying on tons of sunnies, I snagged tortoiseshell Francois Pinton “Jacky 2″ sunglasses. The rust-colored lenses dust every scene into dusk, including a dawn bike ride alongside the Seine, and — the Chunnel and a day later — a noon walk through Hyde Park.

As much as I prefer blue-tinted sunglasses, there’s something about life looking like a perpetual sunset. I keep hearing the song, “Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think…”