designer colabs

I love it when worlds collide - which is essentially what happens when two huge but vastly different fashion empires decide to collaborate. Here are three that are all the buzz right now:

Comme des Garcons and Louis Vuitton (Wow.)
That last bag is so great. Apparently Rei K. designed 6ish bags using the LV signature and these will be for sale for a very limited time in a transient boutique set up in Tokyo.

Lanvin and Acne (Say whaaa??)




Alexander McQueen and Target (No way.)


Read more here.

I hope A. Mcqueen ponies up some serious style. That man is pretty f-ing talented, but it's hard to see it translating to the masses. Therefore, I hope he doesn't TRY to translate for the masses and just goes for the gusto. A girl can dream...

{Images from designboom, hauteconcept, acne and nitrolicious}

finsk shoes

Would you like some hot shoes? Here, have some: Finsk.




Loving the suble architectural details. Are they too subtle? As Sea of Shoes would say: are these shoes even relevant?

Russian Vogue Dolls

To celebrate Russian Vogue's tenth anniversary top designers were each asked to design a matrioshka doll. Said dolls will be auctioned off for charity and there will be a huge party, etc., etc. What cute little dolls! And what a change it is to see the designs on a chubby little marshmallow rather than a stick thin model. My favorites are below, see the entire gallery here.

And pop on over to my other blog to see each doll with her model counterpart!

Roberto Cavalli and Prada
Pucci and Antonio Marras
Moschino and Maison Martin Margiela
Marni and Giles
Alena Akhmadullina and YSL

One last thing. In one of my classes I have to do a design project where my "target customer" is a more mature woman, age 30's - 70's, who likes fashion and I need to make her 4 outfits. Give me your suggestions, please! If you fit this demographic, what do you like to wear? Dresses, pants (what kind?)... What is your ideal outfit? Is there a dress in your head that you are looking for but can never find? Is there anything you wish designers would realize? (Like: it would be nice if not ALL dresses were sleeveless, etc.) How do I keep it fashionable but age appropriate?

If you aren't this demographic, who cares? Leave me your thoughts anyways. Thank you, my dear readers!

Alina Akhmadullina

Re: the necklace
Well, the fashion school verdict is undecided as I had both yays and nays and the yays may have just been polite (to see the necklace scroll down to the CSA post) however, i had an unprecedented amount of homeless men flirt with me, although this may be due to the fact that I took a stroll into the tenderloin today and their taste is questionable - very into layers and the grunge look.

These days I'm into taking inspiration and really abstracting and for lack of a better word (although I'm certain there is one) intellectualizing it when you make it into clothing. Ex: If you're inspired by a flower, you might just literally embroider flowers all over your dress, or you might do some weird drapy thing that sort of looks like a wilted tulip if you squint and shake your head at precisely the right frequency. I'm into the wilty-shakey. But here is a designer who utilizes her inspiration quite literally and it totally works for me.




OK. Tricked you. That was Fall08. Here is Spring 09 - and the motif continues:






Don't you just love the crochet skeleton harness thing and the rather large earrings. I do. And I also love the way in this collection, instead of printing feathers, she creates them out of the fabric all 3-D like. Have you checked out my other blog? Not much to see really. There will be soon, though!

New Blog

Well, well, well. What's this all about? Unfortunately, it's just as it sounds. I "opened" a new blog today. It is called SF Styleoscope and it is meant to galvanize the fashion community in San Francisco and hopefully to get people who are not so interested in fashion a little more interested.


San Francisco dresses well, don't get me wrong. But they dress so SAFELY. And they cancelled their fashion week. The blog is still in the beta stage, but hop on over there to see some stylish folks that showed up at H&M today due to the launch of the Comme des Garcons collection.


Those racks were teeming with garments not five minutes ago. But then frenzied shoppers descended on them and ripped all the clothes off in a matter of minutes. It was pretty crazy. But let's start at the beginning:

Having never stood in line for anything, I went to H&M because I am a staunch supporter of Japanese fashion and of fashion in general (as we well know). Stood in line for an hour and a half dodging pigeon crap falling like missiles from the sky and watching the security guard trying vainly to keep people out of the doorways of the other stores. I also amused myself by gawking at the hard-core-ers who had camped out and were now huddled under a blanket with steaming cups of coffee. Starbucks was doing quite a lively trade that morning. Yes, more so than usual.

Perhaps because I looked the most wholesome and approachable, but most likely because I was alone, I was approached on more than one occasion and asked to speak as spokesperson for the crazy-people-in-line. The first time a homeless man approached and asked belligerently if we were in line for a video game. I laughed out loud because, well, because. Video game? Me? Nevah. Before he could kill me with his shiv, I quickly explained we were waiting for the Comme des Garcons collection. But when you say Comme des Garcons to an American, they get confused. They expect names like Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger. Names that are actually names. And pronounceable.

My next encounter was a sweet old couple who thought we were in line for a sale. Ha! These days, you don't line up for sales. They line up for you, thanks to the crashing economy. And once again, when I said Comme des Garcons, the women looked at me gently, like she knew every single designer, and this wasn't one of them, and I had been fooled and was standing in line for nothing. Then they gently wafted away.

When the doors at last opened, people sprinted. I kid you not. So the slow runners, even if they were 41st in line, ended up 103rd in the door. And I don't know how she did it, but a mother got in there with her child in a stroller. Who takes their kid to a mosh pit? People were grabbing and shoving and then scuttling away to corners to sort through their pile. Consequently, a lucky few scavengers were able to snap up the discards. But most people weren't discarding. Oh, no. They were saving for the trading stage.

So the next stage was trading. As the lucky few who had been in the door first stood waiting to pay, everyone else skulked about asking furtively: you got anything to trade? I hadn't, as before I had been made aware of the trading stage, I had given away the skirt I decided I didn't love. So I had nothing left to trade, but that was okay because no one had seen hide or hair of the coat that I really wanted. It was as if it had never existed. So I left empty handed.

But of course, not really, because this made me get my other blog up and running.

CSA's ROCK!

So D and I recently joined a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture [Farm]), despite my skeptisicm towards all things even remotely "hippie" which is pretty ironic considering I live in the hippie capital: Berkeley.


Anyhoo, it turns out CSA's are SO AMAZING!!!
They totally break you out of your veggie rut. For all you fashionistas and -istos reading this, it's like getting a personal shopper (eee!) for your veggies.


Our first week, out of all the veggies we got the only ones I would have purchased for myself were a butternut squash, some onions and salad greens.

We also got: broccoli, broccoli raab, tokyo turnips, bok choy, and a pomegranate.
That's five new things!


D made a yummy casserole out of the broccoli. The raab was fantastic sauteed with toasted pine nuts, parmesan and pasta, it turns out pomegranates are ace for snacking, the bok choy got stir fried, and tonight we're sauteing the turnips.


When you get your box for the week, it's like Christmas! Seriously, consider CSAing it. You'll find yourself (probably) eating a lot more veggies, and discovering lots of new recipes, and if you think you don't have time to be chopping and cooking and all that, take the easy route and fry it up or boil it down, season with lemon, salt, pepper. Never fails.


This is our CSA: Fully Belly Farm

Here's one in ABQ: Los Poblanos

Here's one in Tuscon: Tucson CSA

In other news:

I need your (honest) opinion on this necklace:



and I need you to see this belly dancer, who we saw last Sat. night at the Conscious Fashionistas Fashion Show. She good:





{Figs and pumpkins from the immensely talented Sweet Paul, fuzzy peach from Janoid , chilis from my also immensely talented MOM}

cycle style

Style, my friends, is not just a word. It is what makes you different from the rest of the sheep.

Style is communication - and now, style is also transportation. Behold the velo-liciousness! (did I mention my favorite color (for things other than clothes) is red):




The top bike there is my new obsession. Why? I'll tell you why. It's the eternal designophile's lament. Why do beauty and function seem to be mutually exclusive? I love the retro bikes but they're kind of impractical for the kind of commuting I do. I go over hills and thus need, yes, require, more than just three gears. There are staircases to tote the bike up and down, thus the bike should weigh less than a ton of bricks. I have to dress nice for work so a coat guard and chain guard are necessary, and should also be functional, not just perfunctory touches, just there for looks.
This gorgeous red bike with it's yummy blond tires is lightweight, you can choose 3,5, or 8 speed, and it has the guards. Plus it is so beautiful. The other bike pictured has balloon tires and kind of a hiphop inner city retro-ness to it. And the colors, all stormy-like. Oooh, and then there's the accessories. But that's a whole nother post. Just one tantalizing box bag for you here, available from London Cycle Chic.

Where are these hawt bikes from? Velorbis. Let's have one last look at the bike of the hour:

So yummy!

2-nite:

AT CELLSPACE, SF
Also, love this:
{image from My love for you is a Stampede of Horses}

When Fashion Meets Architecture

For a "brief" (2 yrs) while there, I though I was going to be an architect. It wasn't for me, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate it. Granted, the below photos are more interior design, but still. I thought that in addition to seeing the Marni SS09 collection, it would be fun to see some of the boutiques, all designed by UK based Sybarite.

{Sydney, above.}
{Aoyama, above.}
{Aoyama, above.}
{Aoyama, above.}
{Madrid, above.}
{Madrid, above.}

Marni has got the lock on style, thas for sures.

Happy Friday. Don't play too hard. :)

{Images from Sybarite and style.com}