Color Me A Cupcake

Every week I love to visit Gala Darling at iCiNG to see what she is adoring week to week on “Things I Love Thursday”. Since it happens to be Thursday as we speak, I thought I would join in the fun and share some of my current favorite things with you!

Balenciaga Utility heels, Madonna as Evita and liquid eyeliner

And…

• Scarves! Soon I will be doing a post about the beautiful scarf the father of a friend brought me back from Bangladesh
• Style Mob. If you have never been click here!
• Rice. I know it has nothing at all to do with fashion, but that is the whole point of TILT.
• Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
• fashion coverage on newyorkmag.com. You must go see!

That is what I am enjoying this week. To see Gala’s Thursday favorites, visit iCiNG and get excited for the week to come!

Color Me Grounded

Whenever I turn on the radio to Beyonce singing “Do the Naomi Campbell walk/ Naomi Campbell walk/ Walk across the room like Naomi Campbell…” I cannot help but laugh! Like a local Catholic school naming itself Borgia, I do not understand telling anyone to “walk across the room like Naomi Campbell”, the supermodel famous for falling on the  Vivienne Westwood runway in Paris during the early 90s.

Model falls are somewhat common of an occurrence these days. We all watched Jessica Stam smack her forehead at Chloe last season and cheered for Iekeliene as she took off her shoes at Marc Jacobs. New York Fashion even has an article detailing their five favorite falls here.

I think that a common misconception is that if a model takes a little trip she must not be the brightest crayon in the box. Wrong! Interestingly enough, there are a plethora of factors that contribute to fashion wipe-outs….

…including flipping ninjas who mistakenly chop holes in the runways with their swords.

The next time you happen to be walking a show, remember to watch out for falling ninjas and most importantly, if you fall flat on your face, get up with a smile and keep on walking!

Color Me Articulate!

I spent a good portion of my day off on Monday clicking through scads and scads of spring runway coverage, and as I came across Gareth Pugh’s new collection I wished for the nth time for a product that would be of utmost use to young bloggers and fashionistas who are still learning all there is to know about the industry: a fashion-world pronunciation guide! I’m sure that sounds ridiculous to some of you, but to others it makes perfect sense. Don’t you hate it when you are completely familiar with a designer, his collections, his style, etc., and yet have no idea how to correctly pronounce his name? Take me and dear Gareth, for example. I almost dread the day when I enter into conversation about his current collection with a person who has some standing in the fashion world, lest I mispronounce his name and denounce my slight standing in the fashion world. Now can you see why I long for one of these? It would be so useful, because one of the most embarrassing things I can imagine would be mispronouncing the name of a designer, model, article of clothing, etc. to the face of someone like, oh… Anna Wintour. (Not that she is someone I think I have any chance of holding a conversation with in the near future, but you know what I mean!)  So in light of my current yearning for a book of fashion pronunciations, I have decided to help my dear readers who are in the same predicament with the first of a few installments to follow of the Color Me Articulate fashion pronunciation guide. I hope it helps, and keeps you from getting so hung up on a name that you stop looking at the collection to ponder how it is pronounced!

A few extremely common mispronounced terms and how they should be said are as follows…. 

• Balenciaga.    Bal-ahn-see-AHG-ah. 
• Chanel.          Everyone should know this: SHA-nel, not CHAN-el
• Dior.              DEE-or
• empire (as in the waist).   ahm-PERE 

Even more fun to pronounce, the names of today’s beautiful and bright models could daunt anyone who has not had the opportunity to hear each girl pronounce their names themselves. Here is an article on Fashionista.com on pronunciations for many of them! And if you notice at the bottom all the discussion and angst over the way “Lazareanu” is pronounced, fear not! Visit this post and listen to her say it herself on the video. Enjoy!

Color Me The Artist Formerly Known As P. Diddy

Here we are again to discuss the trials and tribulations of fashion! Today I write with mixed feelings on the designs of a certain P. Diddy because

1. While his recent menswear designs are creative and eye-catching, I have a hard time imagining that any man would willingly integrate glitter, cropped sweaters and giant fur collars into their daily wardrobes.

2. High fashion for men is a fantastic idea, yet reality remains that not very many normal (being non-celebrity) men get excited about fashion and the way their clothes look.

3. P. Diddy is a rapper.

A rapper, a designer? Sure. You have models turned actors, actors turned singers and models turned singers, so why not? The real stumbling stone for me is that as a girl with little appreciation for a genre of music whose hits are consistently about clubs and patrone, it is hard to imagine one of the most recognized proponents of said genre being genuinely creative and innovative when it comes to clothing design.

Whether it be a suit of contrasting prints or the rappers staple white T, Diddy stands out for his personal ensembles and is rarely spotted un-put together. The question is, are his designs well made and innovative? Or is he just another celeb-gone-multi-career? What evidence stands to prove that Diddy can design dandy duds?

Excuse the Dr. Seuss moment.

Exhibit A: the Sean John/Macy’s collaboration

Just as one would expect with a celebrity/mega-store collaboration, Sean Jean boasts graphic t’s, bombers, hoodies, saggy jeans, embellished jeans, and logoslogoslogos.

But Sean John does not end there. It branches out of the norm for mass produced lines with suits, printed hoodies and puffa jackets…albeit, girl-hollister-esque ones.

Exhibit B: the fall 08 Sean John Menswear runway collection

Just like any collection, it had its highs…

its lows…

and the in-between.

Here are my thoughts on these pieces. To begin, each of them really does have an amazing artistic quality. I can totally vision these clothes in spreads in magazines. They truly are well designed, and as far as the pictures tell, well crafted. The highs: I love the cut and shape of these jackets! I adore the cut bodice (if that is the correct term for the middle of a man’s jacket!) of the first coat, and the detail and shape of the second one. However, just because P. Diddy wears a gold suit in his “Been Around the World” video does not mean that many other men are going to be jumping at gold jackets themselves. The lows: the first three of these articles of clothing would look stunning on a girl. The first outfit would be killer on Natalia Vodianova. But…on men? Off the runway, red carpet, pages of a magazine? Not so much. Consider 1) the number of men in your life who would go for that sparkly sweater, how low that number is, and that it would be so much more fun for you to wear 2) your high school dance team varsity performing jacket is exactly like the third coat, only the sequins are a different color. I know mine are. That last piece is the only one in the entire collection that I think would look just as awkward on a girl, and I wonder how many other people it reminds of an animal with matted fur. As far as the in-betweens: again, more pieces that Natalia Vodianova would look killer in. My initial reactions to these items were:

- That would look so much better on one of the lady models.

- What man is going to wear a CROPPED sweater?

- The construction of this jacket is completely admirable, however…if I saw this on a male in, say, Borders, I would either think his zipper had popped off and he tried to fix it himself or that the whole thing was one big accident.

-Good concept, yet it yielded Trekkie on top and Target jr. department drop waist on the bottom.

The conclusion I come to after hours of looking through these pictures and reading as much about this ‘Renaissance man’ as I can is that, ignoring how many of the clothes seem more suited for women or Russian supermodels, I am beginning to think that maybe P. Diddy has a career as a designer after all. With a critical eye, I am no longer completely bewildered at the amount of CFDA awards/honors/nominations he has been given in the last couple years, and am actually slightly curious for what he will design next. If only the title of the collection were “womenswear” as opposed to “menswear”, I would be completely sold.

And really. You have to give props for including Ben Stiller in the video for “Bad Boy 4 Life”. It goes to show that Diddy is not only creative and innovative, but maybe a little humorous as well.

Snaps for Diddy the designer!

Color Me Quoted!

 Someone bet me thirty cents to make Hilary Rhoda laugh on the runway, and I won!

– Coco Rocha

             

thirty cents//Hilary Rhoda//Coco Rocha//Coco and Hillary on the cover of Italian Vogue together

Color Me A Negligent Blogger

Blogworld, I am so sorry for neglecting you yet again! I must apologize, for as much as I would like to spend free moments blogging they are few and in-between with school these days. I can’t say when I’ll be back to my normal blogging self, but since TOTD is now obsolete I’ve decided to post pictures of outfits I encounter day to day that stand out in a highschool ridden with Uggs, hoodies, Hollister and Juicy Coture on a new page (Halls of Style). Check back every so often to see what the rising high school fashion devotees of St. Louis are coming up with!