Autumn Winter; The Best Shows To Watch

It’s inevitable that Autumn evenings will begin to settle in over the coming weeks as school recommences + routine begins to take hold again for all of us after the antics of summer. With that unfolds the luxury of longer evenings for those who, like me, lean more toward the tendency for + love of hibernation mode + nights in devouring a good book, movie or TV show you can’t stop watching. As with everything on HAUTE so FABULOUS, I am not about trends or ‘what’s hot’ too much but rather things that last + so with that core viewpoint, I’ve compiled a list of shows I have loved over the years + that stand the test of time. I hope you enjoy + find something new to escape into. Let me know too if there’s anything I’ve missed..

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The HSF Documentary List Part III

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This list is updated regularly

The HSF Documentary List Part II

During these restrictive times it’s important to keep your mind evolving + your imagination occupied. From climate change to fashion, iconic singers to the dark + dangerous underground of the drug world, the contemporary art space to politics, documentaries have quickly become one of the finest means by which to consume incredible, intelligent + eye-opening content.

Here we take a look at some of the top documentaries you cannot miss..

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This list is updated mi-monthly

The HSF Movie List Part II

A life filled with movies is a life well lived. From real-life stories that inspire + change perspectives, to fictional creations that take you away from real-life + of course (my favourite) indie films that leave you in a sense of awe at the creativity involved in producing such a piece of art in motion; in all their forms, movies move us + continuously make life that bit richer. Here, the HSF Movie List Part II is updated bi-monthly to bring you more essential moments of cinematic magic..

Check out Part I of the HSF Movie list here

Edelle Kenny's New York City Hotlist

Edelle Kenny is an Irish, New York City based photographer, videographer and freelance TV producer. She has worked on major global campaigns, shooting top models and influencers, not to mention her work as a producer with the Discovery Channel. Edelle’s work is a beautiful mix of sultry and sexy with a depth of meaning very distinctive to her style. She lives and works in Manhattan.

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Favourite way to spend a day to yourself?

Wake up early. A run along the east river. Then, scoot to Williamsburg and get a take out breakfast and sit in Domino park. Followed by a trip back into Manhattan to spend hours, walking around aimlessly soaking in the ample culture that New York has to offer. with a disposable camera in hand.  Also on a more practical note, I’d probably find an hour to go to Trader Joes and do a food shop mid day while there are no lines. It’s not all dreamy folks. 

Favourite breakfast?

My favourite breakfast is disappointingly oats, in my own apartment. I recently just got my own lease on my first Manhattan apartment, which is a big deal for freelancer, and my kitchen thankfully overlooks not one but two of the beautiful community artists gardens in the East Village. It’s a rare sight of green in the city. 

Favourite brunch?

My Favourite brunch is Cafe Collet in Williamsburg. It’s an aesthetically well thought out cafe with impeccable food. Everything on the menu is delicious and get the dark chocolate toast for the table. 

Favourite dinner?

My favourite dinner is a hard choice! For an intimate group or one on one with a friend I’ve been going Hanoi House on St Marks. At times there’s a wait time of over an hour, but I’ve never been disappointed. 

Favourite cocktail spot?

Apotheke in China town. I’ve been here a few times over the last year and I really like it as a treat. It’s good cocktails, atmosphere and amazing music.

Favourite hotel?

My favourite hotel is the Whyte hotel or the William Vale in Williamsburg. I recently spent the evening in September with a friend and her family who were staying in a water facing room. Wine, the sun setting over manhattan and friends that feel like family is the best feeling. 

Favourite night out?

Honestly, anything and anywhere intimate with my closest friends. a dinner followed by a few drinks and good conversation. 

Favourite hidden gem?

Roosevelt Island is a small island on the east of Manhattan. There’s not a lot going on there, but bring a picnic and a concealed bottle of wine in the summer evenings, sit in the Four Freedoms Park and watch the sunset over Manhattan. It’s also the most amazing place during cherry blossom season. 

Favourite exercise class?

My favourite exercise class is Rumble or GRIT boxing. Sometimes you just got to punch it out. I don’t need to say more.

Favourite weekend escape?

My favourite weekend escape is The Rockaways in Queens. It’s a strip of beach in Queens that seems like a little island of it’s own! It’s about 1.5 hour cycle from the city or you can get a ferry out there. I’ve regularly seen schools of dolphins and whales from the shore. It’s a really quick fix when you need to escape the madness of Manhattan. 

Favourite boutique?

Awoke Vinatge. Without a doubt. My 2019 new years resolution was to be more eco-friendly so Awoke is the perfect match between a little luxury and second hand. 

Favourite artist?

Nadia Lee Cohen and AlexPrager. Neither of them have the same aesthetic style as me but I find both of them captivating. 

Favourite museum?

Museum of Moving Image! Its small and seems specialised but it’s so interesting. I have been to the Jim Henson exhibition twice and if you watched the muppets as a child, it’s a must. 

Image Edelle Kenny

The HSF Movie List

A life filled with movies is a life well lived. From real-life stories that inspire, to fictional creations and (my favourite) indie films that leave you in a sense of awe at the creativity involved in producing such a piece of art in motion; in all their forms, movies move us. Here, the HSF Movie List is updated weekly to bring you more essential moments in cinema..

This list is updated bi-monthly.

What's On Our Bookshelf; September 2018

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The HSF Bookshelf Hotlist; September 2018

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‘MY YEAR OF REST AND RELAXATION’ BY OTTESSA MOSHFEGH

Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong?

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.

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‘THE HATE U GIVE’ BY ANGIE THOMAS

Sixteen-year-old Starr Carter moves between two worlds: the poor neighborhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The uneasy balance between these worlds is shattered when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil at the hands of a police officer. Khalil was unarmed.

Soon afterward, his death is a national headline. Some are calling him a thug, maybe even a drug dealer and a gangbanger. Protesters are taking to the streets in Khalil’s name. Some cops and the local drug lord try to intimidate Starr and her family. What everyone wants to know is: what really went down that night? And the only person alive who can answer that is Starr. 

But what Starr does—or does not—say could upend her community. It could also endanger her life.

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‘NORMAL PEOPLE’ BY SALLY ROONEY

Connell and Marianne grow up in the same small town in rural Ireland. The similarities end there; they are from very different worlds. When they both earn places at Trinity College in Dublin, a connection that has grown between them lasts long into the following years. This is an exquisite love story about how a person can change another person's life - a simple yet profound realisation that unfolds beautifully over the course of the novel. It tells us how difficult it is to talk about how we feel and it tells us - blazingly - about cycles of domination, legitimacy and privilege. Alternating menace with overwhelming tenderness, Sally Rooney's second novel breathes fiction with new life.

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‘THE PISCES; A NOVEL’ BY MELISSA BRODER

Lucy has been writing her dissertation on Sappho for nine years when she and her boyfriend break up in a dramatic flameout. After she bottoms out in Phoenix, her sister in Los Angeles insists Lucy dog-sit for the summer. Annika's home is a gorgeous glass cube on Venice Beach, but Lucy can find little relief from her anxiety — not in the Greek chorus of women in her love addiction therapy group, not in her frequent Tinder excursions, not even in Dominic the foxhound's easy affection. 
 
Everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer while sitting alone on the beach rocks one night. But when Lucy learns the truth about his identity, their relationship, and Lucy’s understanding of what love should look like, take a very unexpected turn. A masterful blend of vivid realism and giddy fantasy, pairing hilarious frankness with pulse-racing eroticism, THE PISCES is a story about falling in obsessive love with a merman: a figure of Sirenic fantasy whose very existence pushes Lucy to question everything she thought she knew about love, lust, and meaning in the one life we have.

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‘EXIT WEST’ BY MOSHIN HAMID

In a country teetering on the brink of civil war, two young people meet—sensual, fiercely independent Nadia and gentle, restrained Saeed. They embark on a furtive love affair, and are soon cloistered in a premature intimacy by the unrest roiling their city. When it explodes, turning familiar streets into a patchwork of checkpoints and bomb blasts, they begin to hear whispers about doors—doors that can whisk people far away, if perilously and for a price. As the violence escalates, Nadia and Saeed decide that they no longer have a choice. Leaving their homeland and their old lives behind, they find a door and step through. . . .

Exit West follows these remarkable characters as they emerge into an alien and uncertain future, struggling to hold on to each other, to their past, to the very sense of who they are. Profoundly intimate and powerfully inventive, it tells an unforgettable story of love, loyalty, and courage that is both completely of our time and for all time.

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‘DV; DIANA VREELAND’ BY DIANA VREELAND

D.V. is the mesmerizing autobiography of one of the 20th century’s greatest fashion icons, Diana Vreeland, the one-time fashion editor of Harper’s Bazaar and editor-in-chief of Vogue, whose incomparable style-sense, genius, and flair helped define the world of haute couture for fifty years. The incomparable D.V. proves herself a brilliant raconteur as she carries the reader along on her whirlwind life—from English palaces to the nightclubs of Paris in the 1930s to the heart of New York high society, hobnobbing with everyone who was anyone, from Queen Mary to Clark Gable to Coco Chanel.

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‘MIND ON FIRE’ BY ARNOLD THOMAS FANNING

Arnold Thomas Fanning had his first experience of depression during adolescence, following the death of his mother. Some ten years later, an up-and-coming playwright, he was overcome by mania and delusions. Thus began a terrible period in which he was often suicidal, increasingly disconnected from family and friends, sometimes in trouble with the law, and homeless in London.

Drawing on his own memories, the recollections of people who knew him when he was at his worst, and medical and police records, Arnold Thomas Fanning has produced a beautifully written, devastatingly intense account of madness - and recovery, to the point where he has not had any serious illness for over a decade and has become an acclaimed playwright. In a remarkably vivid present-tense narrative, Fanning manages to convey the consciousness of a person living with mania, psychosis and severe depression. 

Very few people have gone through what Arnold Thomas Fanning went through and emerged alive, well, and capable of telling the tale with such skill and insight. Mind on Fire is a book anyone who has experienced mental illness, or is close to someone who is mentally ill, or who wishes to understand the workings of the disordered mind.

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Thumbnail Image : Pinterest

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The HSF Documentary List

From climate change to fashion, iconic singers to the dark and dangerous underground of the drug world, the contemporary art space to politics, documentaries have quickly become one of the finest means by which to consume incredible, intelligent and eye-opening content. Here we take a look at some of the top documentaries you cannot miss..

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The HSF Holiday Guide; Beauty Gifts For Your Beauty

To You Beauty, With Love

From the essentials to the luxurious, there is always something fabulous to give the beauty lovers in our lives at Christmas in terms of trending beauty products. This year we've compiled 100 of the hottest from the slickest brands - from classic red lips to the everyday necessities in skin care, here's what we'll be giving (and fingers crossed, receiving) this holiday season..

The HSF Holiday Guide; From Me to Him

From Me to Him, With Love

Finding something wonderful for the men in our lives can be a difficult task at the best times. Whether it's our boyfriends or husbands, sons, brothers or Dads, we all seem to come up against similar problems; they simply don't need or want for much - or at least they don't leave as many hinds as we do (CC your own Santa list wishes from out Gift Guide to Her here). Yet it's that time of year again to come up trumps in terms of what to leave the one you love under the tree this year and in our belief that shopping should be easy and fun, here's our list of what's hot for the men in your life!