Welcome back, dear readers, to The Bitch Bench of Bergen Street Style.  This little section — why I like to think of it as my gift back to the community, an ode to my customers.

Lord knows everyone is always admiring Lady Bianca for this and that — my flawless porcelain skin, my voluptuous yet sleek peanut shaped body, the sheen of the hair between my toes…my razor sharp wit…why the list just goes shamelessly on and on!  And though forever appreciative of the constant adoration bestowed upon me by my fans, visitors to my shop, and random passerby on the street, it really does get tiresome, indeed, when I feel I am not getting a chance to be gracious and reciprocate compliments to others.

So it is with great relief that, in this little column, I get to point out and admire the stylistic triumphs of my dear fans and customers and engage them in interview — my attempt to better know the darlings!  This week, I interviewed the etherial and adventurous Francis Lin.  Ms Lin is my kind of gal.

While Frances pulls off this fabulous oversize parka in one of my favorite classic fashion colors (mustard) this is a look that eludes me, due to my heavenly curves.

Frances, what is your occupation?

I’m an emergency medical physician and also a medical toxicologist, however I’m taking a couple of years off to pursue what I’ve always wanted to do which is to write and create, and it’s been a very interesting journey; 2012 was the year of the fire dragon, which I am, as well as an Aries, so fire and fire. But it’s been a great year. A hard year, giving up a lot of job offers to do something that a lot of people were like, “hmmm…”

Change is always a good thing!  Eventually.  Sort of like the week I was so disappointed Fleisher’s ran out of Hot Italian Pork Sausage and I had get the Lamb Merguez.  I nearly had a horrific temper tantrum (my signature move is to fling my body on the floor and bite my paw) right then and there.  But after all that, the Lamb Merguez ended up being a new favorite!

Yes.  The change opened my world and my consciousness, my awareness to my surroundings so much more.

Regarding your current surroundings, what brings you to Bergen Street today?

I just wrote my first book (Whims and Woes), and I’m dropping off a few copies to Bergen Comics and I’m also going to go to Green Light. The book follows a character named Saro, who always finds the whimsical in the woe.

Imagine that!  Why, of course, that’s what Lady Bianca attempts to do in life – find the whim in the woe.  Speaking of whimsical, what did you buy at my dear little shop today?

I just bought this gorgeous dress [by Eva Franco] that has a little pouf and makes me feel like a princess, and it’s a great party dress.  I’d also been dreaming about this Soaked Earth fragrance [by CB I Hate Perfume] for a while, but I hadn’t had time to stop in. It smells like I’ve been digging in the soil for mushrooms, and I just love mushrooms. I guess it’s my Sunday church, going near the woods and digging for mushrooms and going to Central Park and finding mushrooms there too.

I, too, like to forage!  Now that we’re getting all these hurricanes and such here in New York, there has been a huge surge in the numbers, size and types of mushrooms we’re seeing all over the city.  It used to be, I’d only go foraging for mushrooms at my country estate in Connecticut.  I was constantly on the hunt for hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and, of course, chicken poop.  The groundskeeper, not understanding that chicken poop is a delicacy in more highly civilized countries like mine, scolded me after finding me in some remote brush with a mouth full.  The Neanderthal brute!  I’ll have his job for that!  

I found a mushroom as big as your heavenly body, Bianca, and I was carrying it on a stick like a hobo, walking through a book store on Madison Avenue of all places.  But because of that they didn’t forget me, so I’m also selling some books up there.

That description just became an absolutely gorgeous image in my head!  And on the subject of beauty, when do you feel the most beautiful?

When I’m completely alive and aware and engaged with the world, and it doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like; somebody has a connection with you, talking to people and having common interests, that’s when I think the world is beautiful and everybody is beautiful, it’s not about how you look. For a while I was so zombified, not sleeping, and only taking care of other people but not myself, and now that I’m writing I’m doing healing in a different way. I don’t think medicine is the only way to heal.

I think that’s very wise indeed.  Just like, school is only one way to get an education, and money can’t buy happiness…or taste, or style.  Do you have any style icons?

Oh gosh, I’m like worst person to ask this. I don’t know any pop culture, I’m like in my own world with mushrooms. I create my own world and my character is from a different planet that landed on earth, so…

Well for crying out loud — me neither!  But the universe itself, of course, is a heavenly style icon!  I, too, often feel as if I have landed upon this earth from somewhere else…that I am living in some strange space-time continuum.  I’d always attributed that somewhat to my extensive recreational drug use (I found hallucinogenic mushrooms wonderful as they are grown in poop, giving me the best of both worlds!) …or perhaps just to life in New York City.  If you didn’t live in New York City, where would you want to live?
Where wouldn’t I want to live? Actually, I’d want to live on a boat because then I could sail across the world and stop at ports and just live at a bare minimum, using solar energy and wind power to cook. Basically just cut off 99% of it… but I’d still have my Soaked Earth!

One has to have one’s indulgences.  For me I must have my gold leaf and caviar encrusted Kobe beef at least once a week or I become absolutely feeble and can barely speak or move.  If  in your next life you were to return as an animal, which would you want to be? (I dare say it would not be a Tajima cow.)  

I would like to be a phoenix!

Rising from the ashes is always a good look.

…or a dodo bird. They’re extinct now, but they were kind of whimsical and the story behind them is rather interesting. They were from the island of Mauritius, and they’d had no contact with humans so when humans came they had no defense mechanisms. The humans discovered that if they fed the birds rocks they would become really jagged so that they could sharpen their knives on them, but that wasn’t good for the dodo birds. The poor dodo birds!

What an untimely demise. I certainly would not care to ingest any rocks myself.  I tried it once, and my parapsychologist said it did not suit the hue of my aura which is an incredible deep blue, like my blood.  What color is your aura?
Oooh… it depends. Today I think it’s green and red and brown, mixed in with white, because I feel that I’m seeing time interweaving because we had autumn here and the old autumn leaves are mixing with the snow in the air. They are meeting for the first time but they’re not supposed to be meeting!