best blog award

Angie from Wildfire Memories awarded me the Best Blog Award! Go check her out!  This one works a little differently:

Rules upon receiving this award are 
1) Mention and link who passed you the award
2) Answer the following questions
3) Share seven facts about yourself 
4) Award 15 blogs. 

So here goes!

1. What's your favorite color?
That's a little tough, since I love colors now.  But I will always have a special place in my heart for highlighter yellow.  At the moment, I am really loving true orange.
2. What's your favorite song?
"Happy Up Here" by Royksopp.  It's my ringtone, too.  I listen to it on repeat when I work out and imagine my senior thesis collection walking down the runway to it.  Makes running go by a lot faster.
3. What is your favorite dessert?
CHOCOLATE.  But to be more specific, tiramisu has always been my favorite.  Up there with it is anything that combines chocolate with peppermint.
4. What's pissing you off?
Nothing.
5. Black or white?
White.
6. When you're upset you ...
get online and look at recipes for hours.  However I also do this when I'm perfectly happy, bored, or hungry.  Mostly hungry.
7. Biggest fear?
Here goes: spiders, drains, air vents, heaters, pipes, air conditioners, boiler rooms, big machines, clowns.
8. What is perfection?
I don't think perfection exists, but I saw a movie once where the characters were trying to describe the difference between infatuation and love (one character was infatuated with another).  Infatuation was described as thinking that person was perfect.  Love was described as knowing they're not, but finding them so anyway.  I think that is a way of perfection - just being at peace with everything, and still being blissfully happy.  Or if we are talking about a material perfection, knowing when to stop perfecting something and being happy with it regardless.  But it's different for everyone.
9. Guilty pleasure?
If we're talking about food, twinkies.  My neighbor used to slip them to me and my sister as kids and we loved them.  For someone who values natural, local food, I just can't give up a twinkie. 

Seven-facts-about-me time.  I hope I can come up with more!

1. I have always loved banana-flavored things.

2. When I want to spend some quality "me time", I paint my nails.  It's the perfect relaxation activity that's somewhat pampering, but doesn't take up a lot of time.  I do this while I watch the Food Network, almost exclusively, when Giada is on.  All other shows I'm on my laptop during, giving half-attention.  But Giada?  Full attention!  I plan to work my way through her cookbook one day that I got for Christmas.

3. I really want to try veganism but I could never give up cheese.

4. Today I am going to the botanical gardens of Park Slope!  So expect a TON of pictures.  Lately I've been fascinated with gardening (got some new vegetable garden blogs on my watch list - I'll include them below) and I would love to try an apartment garden.  You can get pretty creative with milk crates and wine boxes.  And it just seems so YUMMY.  (I've attached the book that I want below


5. I've been learning a lot about myself here in New York.  With regards to fashion, I've decided I don't want something big.  When describing it to my mom, I found the perfect way: like when Tim Gunn visits the final 3 designers at their homes, and they just work in one room by themselves and produce the samples for a collection.  That's what I want - a tight knit team, and I would love to be the designer (the preliminary research, sketching and swatching is my favorite part of the process.  Especially the research.)  The other thing I have learned is that I wish I could identify with a religion.  I never fully connected to Catholicism because I believe anyone can get married, and I am also not sure on how I believe the creation of the Earth went down - but a more natural process is in my mind (Big Bang Theory).  I took a silly online quiz that was actually quite informative, saying that I have mostly humanistic ideas (natural world, naturally created, actions guided by physics and reason) but I still gravitate towards supernaturalism in some ways (I do think there is something out there, but I just don't know what - if enough people believe they are unhappy, they become so, like an energy that overtakes them.  Maybe enough people just believe that something is guiding them, and an energy is created that buzzes around us and gives us security - but who knows.)  So I've been reading up on religions a lot.  I don't expect to ever find something and practice, but maybe it will help me solidify my own believes.  I have always wanted to take a theology course, I think it would be fascinating.

6. Since that one was so long, here's a short one.  I'm planning on knitting a blanket for real this year (I always say this).

7. My damaged, once-straightened-all-the-time ends are almost completely grown out.  I never thought this day would come.  It's amazing how it makes the entirety of my hair look so healthy now, like it's new.  And my ends are actually soft.  I'm telling you, if you are a slave to the straightener put it down and embrace your natural hair.  It quite seriously changed my life in a way.

My 15 blogs I want to award:

(I'm going to do a bad thing and possibly make this award die out because I've already recommended away EVERY blog I read in the past awards.  So I'll give you a few, bigger ones that I think you would like and maybe haven't seen because they aren't fashion blogs!)

Style Me Pretty - my go-to wedding blog.  The photography is amazing, and because budgets don't seem to be a thing for these couples they have the most incredible locations, clothes, accessories, food ...
Brooklyn Farm - quite simply, a blog from a community farm plot here in Brooklyn.  Beautiful photographs, short-but-sweet descriptions, and it's really fun to follow the farmers as they clean the garden, plant new seeds, and harvest/cook their crops for group dinners (plus Farmer No. 1 and Farmer No. 2 got married).
Local Kitchen - a favorite food blog of mine.  Recipes all include storage information, seasonal information, and just general deliciousness.  You can learn so much from this blog (check out her recipes section for the biggest compilation of amazing preserves you've ever seen).
Naturally Curly - because I mentioned "going natural" with my hair, here's the site from which I learned everything I know today.  If you have curly hair, this is your bible.
Taste Spotting - THE best recipe database, period.  This is where I get almost every recipe I use (Food Network and family recipes are of course the exception) because every recipe has been filtered through a panel and approved before appearing to you.  I apologize in advance for the multitude of hours in your life you will now no longer get back because of the time you will spend on this site.

Enjoy!

lovely blog award!

Shannon from The Stylish Butterfly today awarded me the Lovely Blog Award!  If you haven't checked out her blog already, I highly recommend doing so.

You may remember this from last time, but if not, I am to share 7 things about myself and then pass the award along to 15 other bloggers, both for your own viewing and to spread the love to them as well!  Hopefully I can come up with 7 interesting new things..

1. I go through so many phases in fashion - cutesy girly phases, very minimalistic phases, bridal phases, experimental phases, no-fashion-at-all phases ... right now I'm in an experimental phase.  The McQueen exhibit still hasn't (and probably never will) wear off on me.

2. I am enjoying a new-found love of color at the moment.  In high school I wore a lot of black, and even when I grew out of that I still had a black piece in every outfit, and bright colors were tough for me to adopt.  The addition to highlighter yellow to my "favorite colors" list helped - and just in the past few weeks have I really begun to love color again - to the point where I'd wear (wait for it ...) MORE THAN ONE bright color at a time.  "Back then", that was a no-no for me - jeans were a neutral (so red shirt with jeans was not okay - two colors at once) and there were multiple color combinations that I hated (blue and pink - remember that post I did a bit ago about how I love them together now?) and of course, my infamous hatred for the color green.  Even that is changing now - perhaps it was Prada that did it.

3. When I get a rabbit, his name will be Jonah.

4. I definitely prefer the Brooklyn area (Park Slope in particular - and I am NOT biased because I live there!) better than the Manhattan area.  Especially the garment district.  Of course, I love the bead, fabric and lace selection (and sequin, feather, and fur selection ... ) but the whole super-busy-kinda-dirty-window-unit-water-dripping-on-you aspect just really turned me off from the whole experience.  Plus, I'm not aggressive, at all.  I know it takes a special type of person to make the typical "fashion intern" that is willing to fight for a scrap of fabric at a store so they aren't snapped at later in the day after coffee run #14, but I will always and forever be the person that bumps into someone at a cross walk who says "I'm sorry!" (amazing how rarely this happens downtown) and if someone else gets that fabric first, then they just get it first.  But something about the restaurants, shops and general familial setting (I would need eleven hands to count on my fingers all the babies in stollers down here) is really nice.

5. Herbal things fascinate me - like how natural everything really is.  Aspirin comes from Witch Hazel.  I think that is beyond cool.  And Austrians chew candied ginger on car trips to avoid carsickness, because it helps settle the stomach.  I think it would be really cool to lead a natural herbal life and just drink infused herb water to cure all problems.  Not sure if it would really work, but how cool would your kitchen look with all these glass jars and dried herbs and things everywhere?  And window flower pots.  I can't wait to have a garden.

6. I'm going to try to be better about keeping a sketchbook.  Usually I get all excited, buy a new one, start it, and 20 pages in decide I don't like one of the pages so I need a whole new one.  No.  That's just part of the process.

7. I can't seem to think right now, so I'll just tell you I'm watching Mrs. Doubtfire.


Faded Fashion, Eternal Style
Fashion Neverland
First Impression by AiR
Pearls and Personality
Style After Dark
Sailing to Nowhere
Coconut Wishes
Dress Code: High Fashion
Elasticpantcity
The FACE In
A Fashion Love Affair
HEARTY CHIC
Heidi Hastings' Blog
Hey There Kid
Lily and Karl

park slope, brooklyn, new york

Sorry for the lack of posts - this has been a busy week for me!

Today is my first official full day in New York City.  My family brought me down after a trip to Swarthmore and Philadelphia and we got here yesterday afternoon - explored a little, got my metro pass - and then I met my friends for dinner.  I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunny day, and walked to a cafe for breakfast for an iced soy chai tea latte and a tofu scramble wrap - curried scrambled tofu (to look like eggs but taste way better) with chives, tomatoes and black beans in a whole wheat tortilla.  It was unbelievable - the little cafe also has tons of vegan sandwiches and muffins.  What a Rachel place!  Then some grocery shopping.  I start my internship tomorrow - do you know what my first assignment is?  Visit the McQueen exhibit at the Met!

Which leads me to my big point - from here, my blog is going to take a slightly more personal turn.  Not personal as in about me, per se, but about what I am doing and learning here in New York.  As I won't be in school, I will still be having an amazing learning experience via my internship, learning to live on my own in a big city, cooking, knitting, and drawing (I brought my knitting and watercolor supplies, so those are the things I will work on this summer).  And, those are the things I will be posting about!  I hope to better develop my drawing skills and design skills, find tailoring fabric for my next quarter of school, and knit up a storm in my free time so stay posted for lots of fun blog entries.  I will also be adding more recipes and photos of boutiques and shopping for the next three months, so hopefully everyone likes reading about that! 

Until the adventure begins, here are some photos of my little spot!

 That's all the puppies seem to like to do when I'm the only one here - stare. 

If you know me, then you know I am excited about that kitchen.  I already have a delicious recipe picked out for dinner and I can't wait to get back into cooking!  I will post the recipe tonight with pictures and a review to share.  Have a great lazy Sunday everyone!

100th post!

I thought that for my one-hundredth post I would do something fun - sort of like a "through the years" entry to get to know me a little bit better.  But before that, I would just like to say thank you to everyone that reads what I have to write.  It keeps me motivated!

Now onto the fun stuff.

 When I first began my interest in fashion, I didn't have much grasp on clothing.  I knew what I liked, and as far as I knew designing was more about that.  Those measurements you see above?  I have no idea where they came from - in my head, at the time, they seemed realistic.  Years later I learn in school to draw technical flats on a croquis model designed for the industry.  Flats are made to show perfect proportion in clothing - if you blew it up to life-size, you should be able to measure each cuff and then produce it at that exact size - they are drawn to scale.

My croquis have also changed drastically.  I always drew thin - but maybe a little on the skeletal side.  The feet were so small too!  Faces were not something I had enough confidence to pencil in, so I usually drew a suggested lip and lock of hair.  Proportion was never right - learning the nine-head figure locked in the "fashion model" look.

My favorite designers in high school were Chloe, Burberry and Chanel - mostly because those were big names to me.  The dress on the left was inspired by one in a Chloe ad I had seen in Teen Vogue.  Today, my tastes shift more to designers like Jil Sander, Lanvin, Josh Goot, and Calvin Klein - clean, minimal, interesting geometrics and color concepts - and then Christopher Kane, who fits nowhere in there but I love everything.  However my style hasn't changed too greatly - I will always lean towards femininity in design.  Though the days of lace and petticoats is long gone! 

I started out learning to sew from patterns - the one on the left was vintage.  I made minor modifications like adding buttons, changing the length - that was about it.  But it did give me a head start!  I also, since then, have learned better fashion photography (well, my sister took the photo on the right, but I've still learned!)

And probably most obviously, I have changed a bunch.  I went through a period in high school where I wore skirts and dresses for a year - no pants.  I jokingly blame it on my childhood of no hair and everyone thinking I was a boy subliminally affecting me 15 years later.  Good thing I got over that one.  Though I guess after a pink hair phase, a set of black combat boots, and a spiked dog collar, I wouldn't have arrived at "me" without those things first.  It was, after all, how I got interested in fashion - the stores didn't have what I wanted, so my mom taught me to sew.  Once I tired of being "alternative" in style, I had the unique opportunity to reinvent my wardrobe, and I plowed through runway shows for inspiration.

And the obsession was born.

To another 100 posts! 

an introduction

After four different attempts to come up with the "perfect" first blog post, I've decided to just show you one of my favorite pictures and tell you directly about all of my little obsessions. Rather than write out some long inspirational drawl about why I love fashion and why my opinions are important, or try to indirectly show you all the things I like with pictures I can't seem to format correctly, it looks like the easiest and most straight forward route is to list them off.

I am obsessed with glitter.

Now that we got that out of the way, I think I'll just briefly go over what types of things tend to be in my aesthetic, what sort of things you can expect me to write about, and other nonsense like that.

I am fascinated by the color white. As someone who wants to be a bridal designer, I think the challenge of making something different using the biggest color limitation in the fashion industry is so much fun. Texture is the best way to go about this, in my opinion, or just straight up perfectly clean, architectural lines that know what they are doing.

However, my favorite color is highlighter yellow. While it is a little hard to look at sometimes, I can't help but buy things in that color the moment I see them. It's a no fail formula for me. There's just something about taking a neutral outfit and adding a highlighter yellow (or chartreuse, as J Crew or more sophisticated versions of it seem to end up being) bracelet or belt or heck, a sweatshirt. I own the latter, and every time I wear it to class I get a "How was work at the construction site today?" comment.

Femininity is something I am a little obsessed with. I didn't wear jeans for a whole year in high school because I couldn't manage to feel feminine enough in them. Perhaps this had something to do with the fact that as a child I had no hair until I was three, and strangers still said I was a cute little boy when wearing a pink dress and hat, to cover up the no hair. I guess this still subliminally affects me. I wear pants now, of course, and I am a huge fan of the new menswear-on-women trend, but every time I go to put on an oversized gold watch at the store I think it looks "bad" on me, but I don't think watches can really look bad on anyone. And as much as I would love to try the trouser look (rolled up, with heels) I can't bring myself to do it. Someday I'll figure this out. But for now, it's bows and lace and dresses in my closet, and trousers and watches and blazer pictures in the folders on my laptop.

I absolutely love knitwear, and I am very glad it seems to be coming back in again. I love fat, chunky knits - big sweaters that drip off of your shoulders, oversized pom-pons on hats, loosely knitted tops that allow a tank underneath to be seen, that sort of thing. I do knit, and admit to having other grandma-like hobbies I won't mention at the moment, and I am beyond excited to take a knitwear class next year. I am currently knitting a hat.

One last thing I seem to be partial to at the moment is the general hair accessory. I worked at a costume shop this summer and was allowed to take home a couple flowers and beaded sequined appliques to do with what I may, and they will undoubtedly become hair things. As someone who hates to wear her hair up because it seems too "casual" (yet another thing I need to get over), a giant flower always seems to fix that problem.

But I suppose the most important thing I should mention is how I like to design. My designs exude a very sharp femininity that tends to accentuate the human body, heavily influenced by my few years in ballet and the obsession for it I still seem to have. My favorite focal point has over time proved to be the small of the back or the shoulder - in ballet, my favorite thing to do was always to bend myself back at the waist as far as I could until my upper torso was parallel with the floor. I think that this negative space is beautiful. I love backless designs - possibly also influenced by the fact that I myself haven't much of a chest and love to show off other assets instead, but it also has a lot to do with the fact that the place the muscles in the back meet with the shoulder blade, neck, and arm is a very beautiful place. I tend to design diagonally, and I very much love detail - hand sewing, more specifically, like beading or perfectly invisible hems or pin tucks and things. I love sheer fabrics more than anything, and I find French seams captivating because they feel like a skeleton of the garment when held up to the light.

Well, I promised myself this wouldn't become a blog that is all words because quite frankly, I refuse to read those, so I'll stop now. I hope this is the last time I edit and then delete this first post because it is getting difficult to sound interesting or new. But that is all for now.

R