If you’ve been following me on my IG feed, you’d know that I have a seriousÂaddiction to men’s shoes, particularly the oxfords and the brogues. Brogues were inventions of necessity, introduced to weather the soggyÂterrains of Ireland and Scotland. The perforations in the shoes (known as “broguing”) assisted with the drying of shoes after outdoor use.ÂÂSo from the farms/bogs of the Highlands the brogue serrations and details now find themselves in boardrooms. And on my feet .

AsÂHermès has this habit of turningÂfunctionality into art,Âthe brogue now hasÂmet its new match in the Kelly and Birkin bags. ÂAffectionately called the Kelly Ghillies or Birkin Ghillies after the Irish traditional style of ghillie brogue, these bags have been introduced into our orange vernacular by Pierre Hardy (I love him btw) since 2011. Many purists prefer to not change the original designs, but as soon as I saw the delicate tooling, I was smitten. Perforations, embossings, trompe l’oeils…anythingÂthat augments flat hide to texture is a win in my book. But of course, chasing after a Ghillies Kelly or Birkin is like chasing after a black unicorn; the bar is just raised that much higher. ÂThis press photo from ÂHermès last year only fueled my desire even more, because they would go so well with a Ghillies bag:

Green brogues with a chunky sole–I ask you, can life get any better? Yes, absolutely. If they are in your closet. SoÂafter a worldwide hunt, my “local” store in Belgium finally tracked down the last pair from Berlin and I happily wired the funds when they were sent to Brussels. A few weeks later, the bombings happened in Paris. Then Brussels shut down. Suffice it to say, my shoes are still somewhere on their shelves waiting for me to pick them up. Fast forward a few months and I run across the same shoes in a dark blue at a boutique back in the US:

They are by far the most well made shoes in my closet. They also hurt like hell, but maybe in a couple of years I will have broken them in and will then truly enjoy them. It may also take that long to find the matching bag anyway, said the voice in my head.

But as I’d mentioned in the earlier episodes of this Adoption series, the orange gods like to toy with us mortals. Within two weeks, in two very different cities, I was offered a Ghillies Birkin 35 and a Ghillies Kelly 35. The Birkin literally slipped through my hands due to bad timing (I was flying out of the city on the day it arrived and could not work out the details), and the Kelly was too big. The SA even talked me out of it and told me to wait for the right bag to come along. Of course I kicked myself for weeks after both incidents because I didn’t think lightning could strike three times. And having seen the details with my own eyes, I was certain my next bag would have to be the Ghillies something.

Sometimes if youÂsendÂa thought out into the universe, it materializes. Just like that, this vert foncéÂ(dark green) came into my life yesterday. Funny how things work out when you are in the right place at the right time; I’ll take dumb luck any old day as a life partner. The leather of my Kelly is clemence and the trims are Evercolor (a new leather that I adore). Let’s enjoy the eye candy, shall we?

Yummy.

The tassels are lovely additions to the lock and zipper pull:

So there I go… blew out my shopping budget for the year and it’s only the third week of January. But I bet when I finally get my shoes from Brussels I will be even more ecstatic that this adoption happened. Keep dreaming, dear readers. Some do come true!

She and I literally worked ourselves into a frenzy, then texted our respective peeps to let them know the level of our insanity, and kept waiting. Finally, the Apple team came out with their iPads to tame the restless natives (well, perhaps it was just I who was restless as work emails continued to pop up on my phone while the clock was ticking away) and to direct us inside the store a few at a time. Did I say there was a heavy showing of Hermès bags at this event?

When oh when will the ghillies Kelly show up for me? And did I say that my new BFF in line asked to take photos of the bag I was carrying? People, this is how women bond! We may not have found the solution for world peace that day, but it sure felt like we could have saved the world the way we were talking about the miracle of bringing the house Hermès and Apple together. But I digress… Unfortunately, by the time I made it inside the store, I was told that the styles I wanted were actually not available for sale to anyone that day…but that there were samples for me to preview should I decide to stay. WTH. F@$%#$#XXX$#$#$, I screamed in my head. Sure, I’ll wait, I said out loud. WTH!

So imagine an entire two hours wasted that morning on a very hectic Monday for me, only to be turned away. What exactly is the point of making your loyal customers queue up and not have inventory to sell when the store opened? If I had waltzed in at the end of the day and got rejected I would understand. My bad for not showing up earlier. But if the first person who waited perhaps an hour or more before the store opened couldn’t even get the watch, then I do not know how this could bring goodwill to any brand. Then again, we are talking about Hermès and Apple, possibly the two biggest gorillas out there who could easily toy with our emotions and money on a whim. And we’d let them. For a few days. A week even.

Yes, a week. Each day I would make my round of calls to the various NY locations at 6am to see if any inventory had come in. Then around 9am I would call the stores on the west coast. I’d do the rounds again in the afternoon. Day after day I was told they had either sold out or did not receive any new shipment. No, I had not lost my mind. I was merely following the Apple team’s advice on calling each day because if I called when there was one in stock, they would hold it for me until I could show up to pick it up. Or in the case of NY, until my sister could show up to get it for me.

Let’s just say by Thursday I was talking myself out of the damn watch all together. It stopped being fun. The unicorn was slowly turning into a toad. Except this one photo on my phone kept me beating my head against the door. I’d snapped it when I tried it on on Monday, and it kept haunting me:

Finally, the door cracked a little. Maxfield, a quirky (and obviously super connected) boutique on Melrose gave me my first real shot at this unicorn. They told me that if I showed up and prepaid it, I would be guaranteed one. Whenever it showed up, that is. That was about as good of a guarantee as I could get at that point.  So that Saturday I drove straight to Beverly Hills and since Maxfield wasn’t open until 11, I decided to kill some time at the Hermès boutiqe on Rodeo Drive…

The store had just opened for the morning so there were quite a few (still) peppy sales associates at the door, ready to welcome fresh meat new customers. When I mentioned the watch, I was introduced to an Apple specialist. I tried to remain indifferent but I could swear I heard some of the warts falling off my toad. Then when I specified that I was interested in the double tour in etain or the large cuff in fauve, both the sales associate and the specialist smiled. My toad sprouted a horn.  You are in luck, they almost said in unison. We just received a shipment of the cuffs late last night.  Poof, the toad disappeared. My unicorn had arrived.

This just felt too easy. Redemption, yes. Success, yes. Perhaps not as much of a nail-biter as the delivery at Knokke, but alas, just as exciting! Unicorn hunting is a sickness saved for overly competitive and ridiculously twisted shoppers, but what can I say, I am both competitive and twisted. So that’s one unicorn down, one more to go.

This is the courtyard in front of the Maxfield entrance:

And in front of the main door is where you’d find this enormous statue:

Through that front door I went in to pay for my unicorn and then took delivery of it two weeks later. Let the reveal begin…

My loyal readers know that I have two bags in the etain color and that I went to great lengths to adopt my etain Kelly. So perhaps that explains why I continued the chase as long as I did. Had they not released a strap in etain at all, perhaps I would have sat on the sidelines to see if Hermès would do a round 2 with Apple. Now that my bags have a matching watch, it all (kind of) makes sense.

At least that’s my excuse for the double tour watch. I’m still not sure what my story should be for the cuff…. except that maybe one day I will find a Birkin in the fauve color…

Looks like my next unicorn is a gator.

As it turned out, it was I who was in trouble. “Madame, we have your Kelly.” There are no five other words in the English language that could bring me as much joy. Except maybe: “Madam President, Oprah is here.” Or: “Karl Lagerfeld reads your blog.” But I digress… So off went my funds from my bank to Hermès’s and off I went to Belgium some ten weeks later.

A few train rides ensued…

And then the adrenaline went into overdrive right about here:

I checked my watch, as any expectant parent would, to memorialize the exact time of crossing the threshold to meet my new child …

glanced around me one last time to say au revoir to the life before seeing her…

then sat down here while they brought her out to me:

I should have opted for champagne even if it was early morning–isn’t it 5 o’clock somewhere?–to calm my nerves. But before I knew it, the suspense was over.

Twenty months of gestation were over.

And I couldn’t wait to get my grubby paws all over it.

And there she was, the  Hermès Kelly 28 in etain togo, exactly as her “mom” imagined her all those months ago on a whim of a trip. When the lovely SM who had taken my order came out to greet me, we had a nice chat about my perseverance for the bag. Little did he know that I actually had very low expectations of this delivery, even if he had no doubt. We even discussed my next order. Well, let’s say he was amused by my order choice. I can’t say that there wasn’t doubt in his mind this time about my new order coming to fruition. But dear readers, how many times have I written here that if one dreams, one should always ask for the stars and everything beyond?

After my order was written down and a few other goodies were wrapped up, I took one last look toward the exit as I’m apt to do. Whenever a special event happens, I always look around me to record the visuals of my surroundings to my long term memory bank. In case that’s the last special event to ever happen, I will at least have a full, panoramic memory to recall.

And no, the road to adoption will never get old for me. No matter how challenging it may take to find that bag, I am up for the adventure.

As long as planes, trains, automobiles, and feet are available and schedule permitting, I will get there.

Funnily enough, this sign was above my seat on the train…as well as the seat next to me reserved for my new child:

So that’s the latest stop on my road to adoption. When opportunity knocks, I always answer. Especially if it comes from Knokke.

When I first embarked on this road trip, I had all these fantasies of getting some great fashion shots with nature as my backdrop. And then as reality set in and I found myself living in t-shirts and jeans that could be easily rolled up in my tiny suitcase (not to mention the Madame Frankenstein hair), I realized that fashion pics would be few and far in between.  When dusty shoes and perspiration-friendly tees became a daily uniform, my arm candy and Converse sneakers were the only signs of fashion on the road…

As you can see from the color of the rocks and ground, today we arrived at the aptly named Valley of Fire State Park, located in Nevada, just some 50 miles outside of Vegas.

The brilliant rock formations were shaped by movements and erosion of the local sandstone and sand dunes over a stretch of 150 million years.

Those visuals made me think of the landscape as a blood orange moonscape, and for a nanosecond I felt like a pioneer lost in time…in space…

until signs of civilization showed up:

Just around this picnic area was a steep staircase leading to a preserved petroglyph site. The Valley’s prehistoric residents, the Anasazi,  left traces of  their occupation of this area through this form of rock art. But before I could see the art, I had to, once again, tackle my fear of heights.

My heart was pounding by the time I reached the top, but how else would I get to see all of this…

I guess sometimes you have to see fear as a ticket of admission. But let me tell you, I sure was glad to get back to the ground and begin our hike!

At the end of our hike, my teammates indulged me one fashion shot (after seeing me take pics of my shoes all day, every day for a week now)…

only to point out the fact that they thought they saw a portrait of me on the rocks earlier per this interpretation of the petroglyph symbols:

I suspect their command of the English language has improved since being on this trip.

And then off we went, back to civilization and the bright lights of Vegas. We were starving and there was only one cure for that ailment on our collective minds: Shake Shack.

So let’s take a break from nature and do a recap of my 2015 Spring/Summer haul. If you are my longtime reader, you know that I gave up all other designers a few years ago in order to focus on my Chanel RTW collection. It’s not just for Lent, but for like…forever. Well, until it stops being fun.

And what a fun season it has been! From the spectacular Paris-Dubai resort collection to the wonderfully practical pre-collection to the whimsical “Protest” spring collection, I was overwhelmed by choices. And paralyzed by the sticker shock! But methodically I whittled my wish list down to a somewhat tolerable buy list and proceeded with caution.

The pieces that required a fast decision turned out to be correct, as my size immediately sold out early in the season, and I made those my big splurge for the season. The rest I took a chance during sales and my hunch paid off.

Did I already say that there were some very practical buys this Spring season? I am in pants about 90% of the time, but I have a soft spot for Chanel dresses. Unfortunately for the most part it is an unrequited love affair–I love them, but they are often too short, too fancy, or too short. And too short. So when the right silhouette and tweed and length come together, I allow my inner Imelda Marcos to do her thing…

¡Ay, caramba!

So it may not seem like it, but there is some method to my madness in buying for each season. I think about what’s already in my closet that would layer well or complement the new buy:

Or I visualize the jacket or dress with an existing bag…

and when things work out like a charm, I know my madness is a skill set!

Yes, there were many items that I had to leave behind in rounding out my final list, but sometimes you just have to stop the madness, as my sister would say to me. The next season is around the corner, so it’s time to move on and build that wish list for the winter Chanelapalooza! But until that next review, let me end with a picture of my shoe sale loot. Apparently I do allow myself to dabble in other designers when it comes to footwear !

But we all know where my heart is, right?

Have you ever found yourself halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge and wondered how it got there? I had the exact same question in my head this morning as we drove through yet another mountain range. What did it take to get these roads planned and then constructed? And moreover, how did we get to the point where we just hop in our car and assume that there would be a paved road taking us to our destination?

And yet, here we are…at the Zion National Park, on our way back toward the west. This park offers numerous trails of varying degrees of difficulty and duration.

We choose a quick and easy one so that all four of us could participate. And by easy I mean it was still a hustle up and down inclines in warm weather. At higher elevation than we are all used to, it was a robust walk.

But what a magnificent way to start our morning! My mom always tells me to try meditation to harness some of my restless energy, so I gave it a shot here…

and failed again after a few seconds…

But can you blame me? How can I sit still and meditate when there are so many photo opps like this triptych…

See you in the next stop!

The hardest part about today’s post was selecting the photos you see here, out of the hundreds I took just on this one day we spent at Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.

Yesterday we ran into a couple of Belgian tourists who told us that they’d encountered a lot of snow at Bryce just a few days before, and I’d worried for a second about the lack of appropriate gear both for the car and for ourselves. But except for a tiny drizzle at Red Canyon, the afternoon opened up to a beautiful sunny sky by the time we got to Bryce.

For whatever reason there was no personnel at the main gate, so we drove in and simply followed the road. There were remnants of snow here and there…

but the snow only added to the magic of the landscape…

Speaking of the vista, how does your spirit not soar when your eyes behold this?

I know when climbers see a mountain, they have this urge to scale it. I suspect my fear of height is a big reason why I never get that urge, but when I’m around a couple of experienced hikers like on this particular day, I will set out on foot in the name of photography, no matter how vigorous the trail may be, and in spite of inappropriate footwear!

By the time we got down the first section of the very steep trail, we knew we were in intermediate to difficult territory. It was getting cold, but I refused to be the one to ask to go back!  And I desperately wanted these pics:

We knew that we would not be able to complete the entire path before darkness descended on us, but we wanted to see how much ground we could cover by sunset. I was both secretly excited to catch some dusk lighting as well as fearful out of my night blindness issues. The signage concerning wild life didn’t help with my anxiety either–I would not be able to outrun the two guys in my group should we encounter a grumpy bear–but once you commit to a hike, you have to see it through. The following photos were my rewards for a tough hike:

No bears, no frostbite–just some blisters and a lot of eye candy to last a lifetime. We probably only completed 60% of the entire hike trail after 90 minutes of rapid walking up and down an incline, but we had left another person from our group behind at the car so we were also in a hurry to get back. Next time I’m bringing better shoes and my headlamp (they’re both somewhere in my closet!).

Our last encounter as we exited the park in pitch darkness?

When I first started to travel, there was no Internet. I’ll let your gasps settle. There was also no GPS. Go on, inhale, exhale. No smart phones. Yes, dinosaurs were also roaming around.

Now some 20+ years later, after this great leap into the Internet Age, I barely even bother to research the location before I show up anymore. If there’s a signal, my phone pretty much becomes my personal tour guide, and it can even translate a few choice words in any foreign language should I need to ask a stranger to take a photo of me, or to tell him I am not interested in being a mail-order bride. But that’s another story for another day. Technology has made life extremely easy for recluses, anti-socials, and lone wolves (aka solo travelers like me). It has also made me a lazy traveler.

For example, on this trip, I did some logistics research to plan the itinerary. But I barely looked into any of the actual stops except to skim through some Google images. I’m horrified by my own behavior. What happened to my “always prepared” motto for the road? I used to make lists of places to see, noting historical (or shopping) significances, and mapped them in logical sequence to maximize each hour of daylight. There would also be lists upon lists of dining options, detour side trips in case of roadside changes, transportation options… so many lists. I was my own tour guide before I even set foot in the new city!

Fast forward to this road trip and it was really a case of just winging it on the road. I don’t know if it was false confidence from having three other capable adults in the car with me, or some crazy bravado from the fact that I was in my own country and have mastered the local language. Ultimately, I blame it on my super smart phone. And the aforementioned Google. If I could just swallow a pill and have Google downloaded into my cerebral cortex I could be so much more efficient. And probably 100 times lazier.

I say all this because in writing today’s post and going over my pictures, I see that in failing to research the area, I had completely overlooked Red Canyon, which was on the way to our itinerary destination of Bryce Canyon. I had missed the significance of its vermilion-hued rock formations embraced by the Ponderosa pines, and the fact that Butch Cassidy grew up in this area. Instead, all I got from driving through the main road was how scenic this place was–definitely a different shade of red from yesterday’s Monument Valley. Ugh, what a wasted opportunity. Red Canyon had warranted a full stop and at least a short hike.

So, what’s the moral of today’s story, dear readers? A smart phone does not make a smart user. Laziness is not a virtue. And most of all, there is hardly any phone signal at national parks!

Near the quadripoint–where the borders of 4 states (Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah) meet–called The Four Corners, there is a slice of heaven cutting through the Navajo Nation Reservation aptly named Monument Valley:

It is a cluster of stratified buttes vastly spread across the sandy valley floor, located on the Arizona/Utah side. If I could remember more from my geology class I would be able to rattle off the names of each layer that has earned its place on these rocks over the course of millions of years. Suffice it to say, when you confront Mother Nature in such a humbling way, it just puts you back in your place in this great universe of ours.

There are private tours you can book once you get here, including some by horseback (definitely for my next visit), but most tourists can just leisurely drive along the 17-mile scenic dirt route. We were all quite excited each time we saw a mini sandstorm:

The red/orange/golden hues come from the iron oxide exposed over time in the siltstone, sandstone, and shale found here.

All the markings in the rocks remind me of an old woman’s face; every wrinkle is a sum of events in her life. By the same token these rocks tell the story of each wind and rain that has passed through this valley:

I must have taken a million photos of the trees gilded by the shimmering sand. If you love rose gold as much as I do (and have a thing for rocks)(yes, like diamonds…but I digress), you would understand why my phone is full of pictures like this one:

I imagine that in the summer months this place would take on different colors with less green and cloud cover. The weather was perfectly manageable when we were here at the end of April, but the sun was already quite intense. For every calming photo like this one (one of my favorites out of the 3000 I took on this entire trip)…

there was all this fatigue going on in the background, as captured by one of my friends when I was whining in silence about the heat:

So I was either taking a power nap or looking for water in the rock cracks, who knows! This girl is definitely not made for the outdoors, but the road beckons. And I always heed the call.