Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Life Guru

Hello sun! It's been a while and you look very well if I do say so myself. Me on the other hand, I could use your golden rays ALOT, I hate being pale. 


Today, needing a slight pick me up my Sammy introduced me to this amazing guy on the internet who works daily miracles on a website called 1000 Awesome Things. The Toronto Star calls him 'a guru of small joys' and I couldn't put it any more perfectly. Basically Neil Pasricha started counting down awesome things from 1,000 in June 2008 and here we are... almost April 2011 with under 280 to go. Now, you're probably wondering what constitutes an awesome thing? Well they're anything from #973 Sleeping in new bed sheets to #451 Somehow waking up at the right time even though you forgot to set your alarm clock #311 Finding out what song is in that commercial. Some are so simple like #330 Clean baby smell and some are so meaningful like #566 Unforgettable friends, however they're all exceptionally true. You forget that these small things are actually so relevant and it's the greatest feeling reading them and going 'I TOTALLY get that'.


Well the the awesome thing for March 25th was #280 When little kids get really, really excited. SO TRUE! I love when they get so excited they start to not make sense and ramble on and you nod and act super interested even though you don't need to act cause you totally are engaged in this little person's thoughts. Pasricha talks about how his girlfriend is a primary school teacher and how one day she asked what her students wanted to be when they got older. Well one little girl got super excited, and started waving her arms around and when the girlfriend, Leslie, called on her she proudly announced 'I want to be a farm!' This absolutely slayed me and almost instantly cheered me up. Without even knowing it, this little girl has given me a new mantra... 'I want to be a farm, I want to be a farm.' Don't ask me what it's supposed to mean, I just think it's awesome. And though completely irrelevant to my usual ramblings I wanted to share it with you. 


- Life is better now


Listening to: 'New new new' - Bob Sinclar (Avicii remix)
Observations: Starbucks, actually a great place to get work done
Craving: My Raphael midterm back please!!!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Rock the fetish

Think what that money could bring
I'd buy everything 
Clean out Vivienne Westwood 
In my Galliano gown

This verse from Gwen Stefani's tune 'Rich Girl' pretty much sums up our adventure today. But briefly, in these times bringing up Galliano in conversation is pretty frowned upon, yet it's the first time I've brought him up since his drunken, anti-Semitic rant and subsequent dismissal from Christian Dior, which he helmed since 1997. If I may put my two cents into a story that is already making millions, I'm going to miss his vision and it is a sad time in the fashion world to have lost someone as talented as him. However, his behavior was absolutely unacceptable. Period. I've seen the shockingly sad video and I feel like there was some provocation involved and that we've only scratched the surface of the story but for now we'll just have to wait until his trial in May.

After the tangent, we move on:

I'd like to think that one day I'm going to be in a position to wear the kinds of clothes I blog about on a daily basis. I'm imagining opening my future closet, in which labels like: McQueen, Rodarte, Proenza Schouler, Haider Ackermann, Givenchy, Balenciaga and many more hang. For now, I'm only slightly content to be the darkly clad, grunge-y, jean wearing and eau de chlorine smelling student that I am. 

It should come as no surprise that Mary Katrantzou, pulled off another fantastic show for Fall 2011 during London Fashion Week back in February. And if you thought the woman wearing the room idea was cool, well she flipped everything and put the woman in a room of her own.

Well this girl, she's a bit of a connoisseur of all things fabulous and extremely expensive. Kantrantzou's influences for the show were:
Cormandel screens, traditionally carved folding screens made in Northern China that are lacquered and then painted to produce extremely vivid colors and scenes.
Faberge Eggs, the hyper embellished jeweled eggs made by the Russian jewelry house in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. They are usually enamel and covered in jewels, gold and pearls and are synonymous with luxury and aristocratic lifestyles.
Cloisonné enamel, an ancient technique where metal is made into compartments that frame either jewels or enamel or glass so as to create an edging around them. This enamel vase pattern is clearly visible in several of Katrantzou's skirts.
Ming vases, the iconic blue and white porcelain vases painted with traditional Chinese figures like twisting dragons, vines and the ocean. Also can be found in color and if possible they're even more fantastic.

Now if you took all these images and mashed them together you'd probably end up with something like this:


It is Katrantzou's attention to detail that makes her clothes so magical. Her shape innovations - from lampshade skirts to those resembling vases and bowls have now extended to diaphanous sheath gowns that billow in a cloud of beautifully engineered prints. The oriental trend that has been on the rise is uber clear in the Koi fish prints, Japanese village motifs and vase prints and the sheer amount of florals is mind-blowing. Colors have a meaning here too, an abundance of purple - a royal color, gold and silver - to gild prints and rich browns - to ground the wearer. If there is a moment where the eye is not busy flicking from one detail to another then the sheer brilliance of the collection has been lost upon you.
The most standout looks for me are the halter dress in a myriad of blues featuring a Koi fishbowl skirt and the earthy brown jacket and green skirt with three dimensional flowers blooming in pale pink.
And the shoes... well Louboutin had them covered with booties in patent leather and some in silk projected with prints from the show... yet all studded as though to reinforce the luxurious thread of the show. I think that even owning a pair of these shoes by themselves would be a magical experience... they would be the shining beacons in my closet, casting a warm glow over all my other clothes. I can dream, can I not?


It's been a while since I've brought up anything Chanel oriented and I've been having Karl withdrawal so this post was the perfect oppoprtunity
For his Pre-Fall show, he conjured up a magical scene in which models traipsed through a Turkish tea house den wearing designs that were inspired by the Byzantine Empress Theodora.

I was reminded of this collection when I was browsing Katranzou's as they both have a similar luxury though influenced by periods separated by time and space. Katrantzou was more liberal with her adornment whereas Chanel piled on the jewels and beads to dress the clothes up and give them a regal air. Here you can see the extreme detail that borders this collection on couture. 
Can't be Byzantine without mosaic.
Sequins, sequins everywhere.

Go out and getcha some gold.


- Life is good




Listening to: 'Someone Like You' - Adele
Observations: Sunny but cold
Craving: Heavy duty painkillers

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Silver and Gold

Earlier this evening my sister messaged me proudly proclaiming that 'Mary Katrantzou's room collection is on net-a-porter.com. I wanna buy one soooo bad!' I am so proud. Well of course I decided to abandon studying in favor of perusing the fashion megawebsite and I found some fabulous rings that make me wish I was the type of person who wears them.


This YSL ring got me so excited, it's not even funny. Even thinking about it now gets my heart going. After spending two years exploring every crevice and bend of my fingerprints for my IB Art show I finally find a real life example of prints in fashion... AHHHHH! It's gorgeous. I couldn't help throwing in some more workbook pages features many of my print experiments.
 After all that blood, sweat and tears I feel like this would make a fabulous keepsake. Oh so sentimental.

Next there is this fabulous Dominic Jones piece that looks like crocodile claws clasped together so peacefully as if awaiting the chance to envelop your finger. There is something just a tad playful about it, but still something you could be seen sporting when you shake hands with Karl Lagerfeld for the first time. My tangent oriented brain latched on the crocodile idea and sent me down the path of Aboriginal art and the common depiction of alligators (let's not get onto the crocodile/alligator debate) in their works.

 Aurelie Bidermann's woven ring looks like someone has liquefied gold and spun it on a loom to create this unique wire textured effect.
We'd been talking about the advent of the textile industry and the printing press in Art History lately, so I thought it was relevant here. I thought of another jeweler who uses wool and weaves intricate necklaces; Heather Goldberg has a unique style that mixes yarns and crystals to create a very urban, hobo-chic look that I would definitely be caught dead in.

I'll say it again, Alexander McQueen can do no wrong and this bird skull ring is a fresh twist on his normally human skull oriented work. The ring is gigantic and covers both knuckles of the finger like a glorious sheath. Gotta love me some skulls...
 It'd be hard to top Damien Hirst's For the Love of God which caused a huge splash when it was reportedly sold for $100 million...
I can't wait for the first half of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to come out just so I can watch the Three Brothers scene over and over again. It was a magical film moment when the story turned into an animated sequence that ebbed and flowed in such a way that made me wish that the whole story had been written that way. Relevance: the uber scary, skeletal figure of death would make a fabulous ring as well. 



  Another Dominic Jones masterpiece, but this time featuring a wonderfully exotic beetle that any collector would love to showcase. My Egyptian heritage was tickled pink to see this and so...

 The Ancient Egyptians revered the scarab because they compared it's routine of rolling dung across the desert to the sun god, Ra, rolling the sun across the sky. Those turquoise beads can be found everywhere in Cairo and traditionally they have the markings of the craftsman who made them on the back, each had his own individual signature so you could identify them.
Back to Eddie Borgo, whose chain mail, hinged ring makes me think of knights in armor and Medieval wars. No wonder it is sold out online, it's exceptionally avant garde and modern.  
He used the same technology used in armor to allow it to bend and flex so it's utilitarian and not just a cast for your finger... so unfashionable.
 Both Viktor and Rolf and Gareth Pugh have had collections that have looked life armor and you'd be the most bad-ass person around sporting either dress with the ring.

And on that note, good night!

 - Life is good


Listening to: My Renaissance Art prof 
Observations: Anna Wintour's WSJ. Magazine interview which I want to follow up on
Craving: Friday