She was one of the leading figures of the audacious Dada movement, and she’s the only woman to appear on the Swiss Franc note. How is it that I’ve never heard of Sophie Taeuber-Arp? She and her husband Jean Arp created abstract multi-media art  together. She was a dancer (she danced at Dada soirees at the Cabaret Voltaire) and teacher and she made avant-garde stage set and puppets for the theatre. Google celebrated her 127th birthday last month with a Doodle. “It was Sophie,” said Jean, “who by the example of her work and her life, both of them bathed in clarity, showed me the right way. In her world, the high and the low, the light and the dark, the eternal and the ephemeral, are balanced in perfect equilibrium.”

When I was three or four, our cook Crista made me a fairy-princess castle of a cake, with turrets and a moat, and covered in thick swathes of the pinkest frosting she could whip up. The Kurfürstliches in Germany –– a pink and white confection of a palace –– reminds me of that birthday cake. Perhaps my memories paint it grander than it actually was, but through the eyes of a little girl, it simply was the fanciest thing.

I love a good profile shot;  Cecil Beaton’s photographs of Audrey Hepburn and Barbara Streisand are two of my favourites. But the prize for most stunning profile goes to Jacqueline de Ribes.  In the mid 50s, Diana Vreeland, then editor of Harper’s Bazaar, asked the French aristocrat, socialite and couture muse to be photographed by Richard Avedon. De Ribes agreed, and this is the iconic image that came out of the shoot. Avedon described her as having the “perfect nose” and added, “I feel sorry for near-beauties with small noses.”

I came across this Eisenstaedt photograph for LIFE magazine and it made me want to do a forward roll. And so I did. The good news is I still can. The bad news is that I’m as stiff as an iron rod. I need to join a stretch class, and this one here looks just my speed. Rose Dor Farms was a “reducing” school for women in upstate New York in the 30s. I’m not sure how far these gals got, but I like their sense of occasion.

I love the idea of a signature scent. My grandmother wore First by Van Cleef Arpel for years, and to this day, I feel compelled to engage with any woman wearing it. I don’t come across too many, mind you. It’s a dramatic scent, one that few can pull off. Other than brief flirtations with Anais Anais (age 8) Amarige (age 14) and Cristalle (late teens) I have never had a signature scent. I think for it to be your “signature” you need to have worn it for at least a decade. My mother has worn Carolina Herrera for about that long, and it suits her so beautifully. It’s hard to find a scent that is both familiar and unique. And that’s just what it is.

The work of Italian artist Mario Merz –– a leading figure of the Arte Povera –– is the subject of a retrospective at the Museum of Cycladic Art right now. It was in the late 60s that Merz started constructing his signature igloos out of metal, clay, wax, glass, burlap and branches with political or literary phrases scribbled upon them in neon. The idea of dedicating oneself to a single motif, exploring it to its seams and reinterpreting it a thousands times over, is so fascinating to me.