Watching hockey is really stressful.. Who knew?
Mind you, I don't watch a lot of hockey but I did catch this game.
Nicely done!
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Arianne St. Claire
Sunday
Canadian Gold
Saturday
Thursday
Chanel Outfits Auctions- Some Dating Back to 1920
By JENNY BARCHFIELD
Associated Press Writer
Images
http://www.apimages.com/
PARIS -- Hundreds of fashionistas, collectors and would-be consumers with a dream jostled for a closer look at some of the more than 800 garments, accessories and shoes by the storied luxury giant Chanel that hit the auction blocks Thursday.
Lots on display included iconic tweed skirt suits, classic chain handbags, 1980s-era ensembles in screaming hues by the label's current designer, Karl Lagerfeld, and vintage haute couture gowns by Mademoiselle Chanel herself.
The organizer, auctioneer Pierre Cornette de San Cyr, said he expected the sale to fetch between euro200,000-euro400,000, though he added there "could be surprises."
Estimates for the lots range from euro20 ($27) for a bunch of buttons emblazoned with the label's hallmark double "C"s to euro10,000 for a 1923 drop-waisted dress in ivory silk - though most of the estimates hover around the couple-hundred-euro mark.
Star lots, which could end up fetching several times their estimates, included a 1935 haute couture sheath gown in fine black lace, its neckline embellished with a black silk bow - estimated at euro3,000-euro3,500 - and a 1929 afternoon dress in verdant leaf print, with a swingy jacket in emerald green - estimated at euro4,000-euro5,000.
While the vintage pieces - displayed on mannequins behind velvet ropes - were off limits to the public, most of the lots could be handled, inspected and even tried on. A hoard of women of all ages - some of them dressed in head-to-toe Chanel in a mark of brand loyalty - swarmed the racks, shimmying into slightly too-small jackets, swimming in oversized trenches, and sometimes, just sometimes, finding that perfect fit.
"This is my first time at an auction," said Francoise Brunet, a 65-year-old Parisian who said her "life's dream" was to own a quilted Chanel handbag. "My kids gave me some money for Christmas, so here I am, to make that dream come true."
The bags she hoped to bid on are estimated at about euro200. New, they go for nearly euro2,000, she said.
It took assessor Francoise Sternbach a year and a half to assemble the 820 lots, which she acquired from more than 120 private sellers. Some of the vintage items were dug out of trunks or rescued from attics where they had languished for decades, she said, adding she hoped those lots would end up going to museums.
With bidders expected from across Europe and telephone bidders calling in from as far afield as Asia and the Americas, the rest of the garments will likely get a chance to come back into fashion in the wardrobes of women from around the world.
"These are dresses which have lived during Mademoiselle Chanel's time, which went to the most famous parties, which were admired and worn by gorgeous women," said auctioneer Cornette de Saint Cyr. "And they will be worn again by gorgeous women. That's what I want: For (the garments) to live again."
Arianne St. Claire
Wednesday
How e-commerce is transforming the oldest profession.
As I was surfing the net I "stumbled" upon this article. It is very interesting to see how the internet has changed since this article was written. It would be of interest (at least to me) to see or read opinions of how the internet has changed the industry now compared to some ten years ago when this article was written.
To look back to online marketing vs the old fashion way of word-of-mouth and taking out ads in the daily newspapers (although both newsprint advertising and word of mouth still and most likely always will always exist) to me seems similar to watching old films, before there was color.The internet has opened our eyes to color, both good and bad I suppose - "innocence" meets a new world so to speak. This new world came upon us so quickly and has moved forward so incredibly fast..
By Scott Shuger
(Slate Magazine)
Original Article Posted Friday, Jan. 28, 2000, at 3:30 AM ET
Illustration by Nina Frenkel
In the 1990 movie Pretty Woman, high roller Richard Gere is able to secure six full days of Julia Roberts' sexual services for $3,000. Nowadays, (at least here in Los Angeles, where the movie was set) a first-class hooker costs considerably more than $500 a night. One big reason is that, like all other businesses, the oldest one is being utterly transformed by the Internet. And it's changing in ways that ought to transform the way we think about it as well.
Recently, I had the experience of escorting "Veronica" through the main dining room of Spago. She is a dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty, and heads turned as she poured across the room, her dress speaking to every man there in the international language of bugle beads. Veronica is apparently no stranger to Spago. She and the maîtresse d'hôtel exchanged knowing smiles as we were seated. And when she's not there, she says, she's often at the Peninsula, the Regent Beverly Wilshire (the Pretty Woman hotel), the Four Seasons, and so on. She lives at the beach. She drives a Mercedes S420. She doesn't ask what you're having before she orders foie gras.
Actually, Veronica was "escorting" me. In her early 30s, Veronica's been an "escort" for four years now but only recently listed herself on the Web. Her ad featured a picture of her more or less in a black pantsuit, along with this text:
Veronica
Professional intelligent and sexy
I'll make a great impression on your behalf
All with the elegance and grace of a true lady
Available for intimate evenings and corporate affairs
Shopping or a round of golf, I also ride and fly
Whatever your pleasure
I'm happy to be by your side
There was no mention of price. A day or so after I e-mailed a query to the address listed, I got back this e-mailed response:
Hi Scott,
Let me remind you that I am an escort, I require a one time introductory fee of $500.00. $500.00 per hour and $2,500.00 for the evening.
If this is acceptable to you we can set up an appointment.
Yours…..Veronica
Within a few days we were at Spago.
(A note on method: Slate paid Veronica's $500 introductory fee in return for an interview, conducted in public, and nothing else. She's a businesswoman who gives men what they want for a price. I wanted an interview. In fact, I was being paid to conduct it. Why should she give it away for free?)
I discovered Veronica's ad on a site called LA Exotics, one of the most active and extensive in the Web's burgeoning Rent-a-Woman world. When you go there, you find, superimposed over a photo of a naked woman getting a hold of herself, an exquisite menu of options: Massage Outcall [they come to you], Massage Incall [you go to them] (Blonde), Massage Incall (Brunette), Daytime Delicacies, After-dark Angels, Escorts (Blonde), Escorts (Brunette), Entertainers/Strippers, Fetish/Alternative, and Personals. (The difference, if any, between a "massage" and an "escort" is beyond the scope of this article—let alone what "personals" could possibly be in contrast to the other offerings.) There is no category for "interviews," but there are separate listings for redheads, women of color ;-), and tantric sex. To reassure wary horn-dogs, many of the clickable thumbnail pictures carry a little badge indicating that the site has verified that the woman in the shot is really the woman you'll meet. (Except for the digitally blurred eyes, Veronica's picture looks almost exactly like her.)
Veronica paid LA Exotics $100 to list her for a month. She says she got more than 250 phone calls off that, which produced three new men who've hired her at least once, and who, she predicts, will be added to her stable of regulars. In business terms, three out of 250, or 1.2 percent, is her "yield." Apparently this industry is like the magazine business, where a low yield from solicitations can nevertheless be profitable, depending on renewals. Veronica claims that the ad produced several other qualified Gentlemen who are now on her waiting list. She says her regulars are all married, all over 35, and all "high-end corporate," except for some NBA players. Of the newbies, she says, one lives in San Francisco; one in Portland, Ore.; and one in New York. If they come to her, they spring for everything, including one of L.A.'s deluxe hotels and her omnipresent clothes and jewelry needs. If she goes to them, it's more of the same, plus a first-class plane ticket for the trip. She says she only works two nights a week. If true, and if she gets her posted rate, that's $200,000 a year for less than half-time work.
Unlike Veronica, Anne Marie (not her real name either), a late-20s 5'9" blonde with cover-girl cheekbones, had never worked pre-Internet. She has only recently taken up the escort game, as a way of supporting her graduate studies at a top Los Angeles university. Anne Marie pays $100 a month to list with another large Los Angeles-based site called Cityvibe. And she pays a Webmaster about $1,000 a year to maintain a Web page of her own. She also has the San Francisco market on an Australian-based Web site called Worldwide-Escort.com, which gets almost all its traffic from Yahoo's "Adult Services" listing. From all this, she figures she gets about 700 cybervisitors a day. She started out charging $4,500 a day, with a two-day minimum, but the response was so good that she has since given herself a raise to $5,800 a day, still with a two-day minimum. When I met her, she was wearing an expensive-looking man-tailored gray suit and occasionally consulted her brand new Sony Vaio.
Like Veronica, Anne Marie markets herself as providing a complete high-end experience. She calls her Web site "educatedescort.com." The pictures of her there are pretty but fully clothed. Her text is well-written and laced with humor. Her FAQ ("Frequently Asked Questions") page includes: "What are your services for the $5,800 per day? I sit and read Thoreau and eat plums and fresh cherries in the hotel."..
Anne Marie gives good stories, some of which may even be true. She says that before she ever met her very first client, a married Australian decamillionaire in Los Angeles for a few days on business, she got a FedEx package from him: $9,000 in cash. And there's the German investment banker who, unbidden, sent her a gift certificate for a Los Angeles day spa while they were still nailing down the logistics for her week-long trip to see him in Europe. She played me a message left on her voice mail from a self-described Silicon Valley geek about to retire, who wanted to know what her annual fee is.
Just as Amazon.com has gotten people buying hardcover books who previously stuck to paperbacks or didn't buy books at all, the Internet is expanding the high end of the escorting market. It has done this in several ways. First, many of the buyers in this market are spending cybermoney. Anne Marie says that it's not unusual for the initial call to her to come from a woman—the executive assistant of some "dot-com baby"—who proceeds to ask her about her bra size and her height as if she was ordering the boss a new hard drive. It turns out that computer zombies with tons of money and zero social skills are a natural clientele.
Second, Internet marketing promotes an aura of quality: It feels so much more "classy" than cruising on Sunset or thumbing through the "adult services" ads in the free weeklies that litter the floors of video stores and 7-Elevens. And men will pay a premium for perceived specialness.
Third, there's what you might call the eBay effect. Before the Internet, there must have been people who wanted to sell Scooby Doo lunch boxes and Star Wars phaser props, and people who wanted to buy them, but how could they connect? Likewise, 10 years ago, even if I'd had the inclination and the $2,500 to spend on vaginal variety, I wouldn't have had the faintest idea where to turn. But now, thanks to the Web, exchanging dead presidents for live girls couldn't be easier. And if, as I tend to believe (don't you?) there are more men who would pay to be "escorted" than gorgeous women willing to provide that service, then the Internet will pull more buyers than sellers into the high-end market, thereby inflating prices...
In the business world, this is called "disintermediation" or, colloquially, "cutting out the middleman." Somewhere between Alex and his girls, the traditional roles of the pimp and madam have disappeared. There is no violent control of the women, and they don't have to fork over most of their profits. The physical security that the traditional pimp used to provide to his girls has been replaced by the physical security provided by high-end hotels, the traceability of e-mail, and by the generally less violence-prone clients to be found toward the top of the economy. Neither Veronica nor Anne Marie has ever been ripped off or hurt by a client. They get regular checkups, always use condoms and, besides, they both point out to me, at these prices they're seeing a lot fewer men than many of their single "amateur" girlfriends. Indeed, both say that more often than you'd think, the "date" is all about companionship...
Full Article
Arianne
Escort Toronto, International Courtesan Blog
Sunday
Life is too short to wake up with regrets.
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Arianne St. Claire
Toronto Escorts Website Updates
Spring is in the air... well not quite but some days it feels as though it is right around the corner. So, with that in mind, I decided to do some spring cleaning of my site. Updates and new photos are now online. Have a look and I do hope you enjoy.
New Photos
Arianne St. Claire
Monday
Give me an hour with him.. I'll give you a new man.
According to Secret Diary of a Call Girl - Season 3, Episode 3 ,
"Ones Reader Does Not Want "Mechanics They Want Sensation....".
hmmm...
I have watched this program since it started. And although, it is yet again another television series, I find it oddly humorous and strangely addictive. Perhaps it is the overly proper dialect of the "English Courtesan named Belle" and those around her... Maybe it has to with its rather witty, campy and ironic originality. I am not sure what it is but for some reason, this character and show intrigues me to the point that at times I feel I can relate to them.
For those of you who have not heard of this series, A Secret Diary of a Call Girl follows Belle through her thoughts, experiences, and challenges of living the life of a London Call Girl ( or, you could call her a prostitute or whore.. "no matter; it’s all semantics" to Belle), a writer and a temp. The series, is based on the works of an anonymous (or rather, a no longer anonymous) Call Girl's writings named Belle de Jour.
A Secret Diary is not necessarily the show for everyone. But then again what is? Some like it, others say it is over-glamorized and unrealistic. The show is a very obvious work of fiction and should be viewed as such, however, there are some really impressive performances from the lead actress, Billie Piper and the rest of the cast. Funny and moving at times, refreshing, raunchy and... addictive.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl
Arianne St. Claire
Friday
Ice Hotel in Quebec City Canada
If you enjoy crisp cold climates, then now is the time to visit the Ice Hotel in Quebec city Canada.
Located just a few minutes outside of the city, the architecturally unique Ice Hotel
is only open from January to April each year
The fully functional hotel is crafted with ice and snow and includes 34 theme rooms, an ice chapel, an absolut bar and the "N'Ice Club.
Take a look at this "sparkling jewel" below.
icehotel-canada.com/index.php
Ebony Escort
Toronto Escort Arianne St. Claire
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