I wish I could give you a proper logical reason or an inspirational story behind its birth but, quite honestly, I can’t even remember how it all began (if you’ve been following it from the start, maybe you know better than I do). I was recently asked about the title – where I got the idea, if there was any meaning behind it – and I couldn’t answer. “I don’t know” seems like the only possible answer to all the questions surrounding this blog.

Deep down, I believe it was born from pure despair. Suffocation. I had all these words, all these opinions that I was keeping to myself and all these beautiful things that I’d found and wanted to share with the world. Talking wasn’t enough – most of the time people aren’t interested in the same things as you, or you just end up talking too much and making them lose track of the original idea.

All these wonderful things and complicated thoughts were stacking up in my brain like freshly sealed magazines and gift-wrapped books and I was afraid that, inevitably, this treasure chest in my brain would turn into a dusty, mouldy abandoned library. So I thought “heck, why not put them in a nice place”?

This was never intended as a fashion-only blog.

And I am proud of myself for keeping it that way.

The blogosphere of the new decade is 50% street style, 40% look-at-what-I’m-wearing and probably 10% thoughtful, personal pages. The latter is, quite frankly, the only kind of thing I enjoy reading. I was never into the street style craze and I don’t think anyone is interested in seeing what I’m wearing. I like fashion. I like to write. I like art. I like photography. How limiting would it be to start something for only one of those categories? How likely would it be that I would drop it after two, maybe three months of obsessive posting?

It’s personal, but at the same time it’s not.

It’s not a diary. It’s not about my private life. It’s about sharing. It’s about putting things out there that I thoroughly believe other people will like, maybe even fall in love with – whether it be clothes, cosmetics, music, animation, paintings, etc. Sometimes, maybe, I will say something about myself. If I have to, if I think it might be beneficial to someone. Maybe that is the whole spirit – to make people happy. Not just others, but myself. When people ask me what I study, I answer “Fashion Communication”, which is correct, but immediately followed by “Oh, so you run a fashion blog?” which is not correct. I don’t fit into that bubble. I don’t want to fit into that bubble. Heck, if I ever do write about fashion, 9 times out of 10 it’s about menswear – and I can count by my fingers the successful fashion bloggers who write about menswear.

Of course I’ve had blogs before. We all created a blogspot or livejournal in our teen years. Maybe more than one (maybe more than five). I know I did, and I shut them all down after realizing I’d lost my passion for it. It was always either too personal or too limiting. Whenever I was created a new blog I would sit down and think “So what is this one going to be about?” and I think that was my major mistake. When I started studying what I really wanted to study, I realized, for the first time, that I didn’t have to focus on one thing and, most of all, if I did focus on one thing I wasn’t doing it for myself – I was doing it for the visibility.

Ironically, this mess of a place has gotten a lot more visibility than any of my old ‘theme blogs’. Double irony – I enjoy it a lot more. I don’t feel the pressure to stick to some random guideline I imposed upon myself. The only thing I expect from everything I post is decent writing and a certain level of coherence in opinions and style – whether I’m talking about an illustrator’s work or a new limited edition fragrance. I need to be honest and straightforward, because if someone important out there is ever going to come across this thing… well, I can’t spend my whole life pretending to be someone I’m not, can I?

The bottom line is… writing is good for me. It’s practice for what I want to do in the future and it’s therapeutic at the same time. Some people go to the gym, some people knit, some people make collages – I write. Writing makes me happy. Sharing makes me happy. And knowing I might have put a smile on someone else’s face, as well as my own, makes me happier than I thought I could ever be.

These are mine:

And these are some I stole from Ana’s instagram:

P.S. We’re still not done… Follow me and Ana on instagram to keep up with our daily lives and adventures!

For its Spring/Summer 2013 collection, Amsterdam-born Suitsupply decided to unite their sartorial expertise with street style trends – mainly, camo. Always willing to up their game, while finishing last year’s F/W collection, Suitsupply asked their customers via several social networks what they’d like to see on their spring line. Over the course of a few months, they narrowed down the responses to a few key trends that were then incorporated into the collection.

It’s not just any kind of army-inspired threads, though. Those of you aware of Suitsupply’s style will probably have found it odd to see the brand name attached to such a rough-and-tumble trend. Instead of picking it up as a total look (e.g. voluminous, pocket-covered jackets in green camo print), the brand took inspiration from the trench lines and translated it into subtle, wearable, elegant garments.

Definitely not what you’d expect from such a trend, wartime gear inspires a hyper-chic look for the Suitsupply man instead of assaulting you with the traditional jungle camouflage print – been there, done that, bought the t-shirt (literally).

Instead, it’s attention to detail that brings the collection closer to the front lines: textures, colours, neatly folded pocket squares in subdued forest greens and barely-there greys. Trousers with a classic cut for example, are joined by safari-esque blazers, while suits in more formal silhouettes are presented in muted tones of khaki, grey and beige. Camouflage-appropriate colours and neatly cut utility jackets are paired with braided leather belts, plaid or dotted ties and denim shirts, harmoniously united by Suitsupply’s superbly elegant cut.

Part Out of Africa, part Great Gatsby, it’s a Robert Redford street style adaptation for the man about town. For those wishing to go a step further, there’s even some camo shoes; if you’re sticking to the gentleman look, however, grab one of their gorgeous pashminas (the green one is a favourite) and you’re good to go.

(pictures via GQ Online)

The rock star designer is taking another small step towards the end of his social marginalisation. First, it was Kate Moss’s wedding dress; now, the illustrious Parsons The New School for Design (most famous for being the workshop of Project Runway contestants) has announced that Galliano will be teaching a master class to aspiring designers.

Romantically entitled “Show Me Emotion”, the course will be a “dynamic and intimate opportunity” for Parsons students to learn from a talented designer such as Galliano (regardless of past anti-Semitic gaffes). The school added that students would have the opportunity to “engage in a frank conversation with Mr. Galliano about the challenges and complications of leading a design house in the 21st century.”

Hopefully he’ll be giving out advice on how to avoid being completely swallowed by the current crisis while keeping your creative vision intact. Galliano was doing quite well in Dior before the big fiasco.

Parsons has stated that they believe Galliano to have a serious intention to redeem himself; the British designer spent several weeks preparing for Oscar de la Renta’s NYFW show this last February. After being fined by a French court in 2011 due to behaviour he blamed on an addiction to drugs and alcohol, Galliano was fired by Dior and fell into silence until Moss’s unassuming wedding dress appeared in tabloid magazines. The designer said, at the time, that having Moss personally ask him to design her wedding dress had moved him to tears.

Whether John Galliano is a bad person or not, the question is up in the air and subject to opinion; the fact that he is a creative genius, however, is not. If more big names like Parsons, Moss and Oscar de la Renta start building small steps for the designer, he will climb them, and probably find himself at the top again. After all, he’s only 52 – if Uncle Karl is anything to judge by, Galliano has all the time in the world to make a comeback.

Earlier this April, Dove came out with an initiative called Real Beauty Sketches. The idea was to have an artist draw a person without seeing her, based solely on the person’s own description of herself. Then the artist would draw the same person again but based on someone else’s description; in the end, the women are confronted with how they view themselves and how others view them. The difference in the final results is staggering – every woman believes herself to look better in the stranger’s view than her own. The faces in the second sketches are all lighter, fresher, younger, brighter than the ones in the first. The concept of this initiative is that of making us realize, as the video shows in text, that we are more beautiful than we think ourselves to be. The problem is, just how much of that beauty is real beauty?

Women describe themselves as “fat”, “old”, “tired”, “beginning to have crows’ feet”, while the words most used by the strangers are “thin”, “young” and many mention how “pretty” blue eyes are. I commend Dove for trying to promote a boost of self-esteem in women but what women?

If “old” is meant to be a common derogatory term then clearly we are bound to stop having self-esteem by the time we’re 60, or even before that. If “fat” is a bad thing and everyone considers themselves to be “fat” (quotation marks, as the definition of fat is a whole different story for another day), then about 70% of the world’s population is not allowed to think themselves beautiful because they don’t fit into US Size 2 jeans. If being thin, young and having blue eyes is what is meant to make us feel beautiful, then this is not a world I belong in. And I’m betting most of you don’t either.

I’m all for promoting self-esteem. It’s important to love yourself. And more often than not, strangers see us as beautiful people more than we do; I’ve met people who had seen me for a while before talking to me. They’d stared at me for seconds. When I asked what their first impression was, it usually involved only positive words. Once I was told I wasn’t talked to because I looked smart and pretty and that intimidated them into thinking I was, excuse the language, “a bitch”. Well, I’m not a bitch (I think), but I am smart, I am young, and I am beautiful, even though I’m not “thin”, I’m average, and I don’t have blue eyes.

The problem with Dove’s initiative lies in two key points. First, the fact that they (maybe out of ignorance) promote the exact same traditional idea of “beauty” that make most of us lose our self-esteem in the first place. Second, the fact that – and quoting the video – being beautiful and accepting our natural beauty is one of the most important things in our lives and impacts every choice we make and everything we do, including our rapports with others. This is not true – or, rather, shouldn’t be true, as backwards thinking is everywhere. As a woman, you should not be valued based on your beauty. You should not allow your looks to be what gets you where you are, what gets you the favour or kindness of others. It should be you and not your face to impact your decisions and your direction in life.

We do have to change the way we see ourselves. Not only women, but also men are subject to the judgement of others and, even worse, their own opinions of themselves. We all see ourselves in the mirror and, odds, are we can pinpoint all our faults yet are blind to our qualities. This has to change. But the traditional notion of beauty also has to change. You’re beautiful because of what makes you who you are, not because you fit into a standard box. And you know what? A big part of your beauty is what’s inside, not outside. A pretty face is nothing without a good brain or a kind soul behind it. A thin body is nothing without a dynamic attitude or elegant gestures to move it.

Love yourself because you’re smart, strong, kind. Not just because you are beautiful. Change the way you think about yourself as well as the way you look at yourself. We should not be hired for an important position just because we look young and thin and our luscious blonde locks cascade down our backs; we should be hired because we are intelligent, driven, professional individuals. Not Greek statues or classical portrait paintings. Love who you are, freckles, moles and personality included.

When the semi-biographical film of Baroness Karen Blixen came out in late 1985, the world was overwhelmed with sentiment. The tragic love story of the Dutch baroness and Denys Finch Hatton planted a new ideal of romance in the minds of both men and women, who then began dreaming of faraway lands and strange encounters. Out of Africa is, to this day, considered a cinematic masterpiece, having won 7 Oscars in 1986 including one for Best Picture. It is an iconic, if not legendary, personal story bordering on fairy-tale, that paints a picture of the African continent and its plantations unlike any other before seen on the big screen. Africa as the setting of romance and emotional tragedy instead of a violent affair focused on death and discrimination. But the modern idea of “love story” and dreamlike view of Africa weren’t the only innovations brought about by the film; though almost unnoticeable at the time, Out of Africa spawned an entire new era for fashion.

It is needless to say that Donna Karan launched her own brand in 1985, shortly before the release of the film. Since then, not only in 1986 but until now, Donna Karan has been known for the effortless style and practicality of her clothes – much like Meryl Streep’s character in the film. It’s a very subtle, flowing elegance appropriate not for a dinner party but for the lady in charge, a figure of authority who must command but also be compassionate.

More than Donna Karan, however, the designer who has been clearly the most influenced by Out of Africa is, quite obviously, Ralph Lauren – and not just for women. Robert Redford’s mix of hunter and aviator clothing stands behind decades of Ralph Lauren’s menswear aesthetic, though adapted to a more refined environment.  For both men and women, Ralph Lauren relies on classic cuts and an elegant but practical fit, as would be required for Karen Blixen and Finch Hatton. In recent collections there seems to have been a deliberate return to the film for inspiration, as rough fabrics in earthy hues dominate the Ralph Lauren runways, along with long skirts paired with crisp white shirts and the feeling of returning from a safari. The hat, a Karen Blixen must, is permanently present.

The shawl, a piece that Streep wears closer to the end of the film, has been one of the brand’s staple pieces since the early days and the same goes for Donna Karan – it’s a clean, almost humble accessory by itself that can add different attributes, like elegance or comfort, depending on the colour and materials. The shawl and white shirt, along with an acute sense of layering and use of the warm colours of the plantation fields and coarse, almost poor fabrics, were not things usually seen on womenswear collections in the 1980s. They were innovations drawn from a film set long before its release, that came to inspire a style that still lasts. A burlap-looking rough cotton blazer from Ralph Lauren is a must-have in any lady’s wardrobe, as is a Donna Karan oversized wool shawl.

Out of Africa not only inspired both these brands to grow into their own but also, in the process, pushed along the evolution of what we all understand today to be the ‘American style’ – casual, country-proper elegance, for adventuring and tragic love stories on the mountains of Kenya.

Within Vogue, Wintour has managed to almost single-handedly change the course of not just entire collections, but entire season trends; the England-born editor has, in the past decade, shifted the power scales of the fashion world so designers answer to the media and not the other way around. She is responsible for creating Vogue’s “Fashion’s Night Out”, which is now a worldwide event, and is not only a trustee of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art but also has a seat on President Obama’s Committee on Arts and Humanity. 

One would think this would be (more than) enough for 63-year-old Wintour, whose career has never stagnated and even flourished with the recession as she brought a new, more approachable vision to Vogue US in a time when people would be more than ready to give up on the luxury of fashion. But maybe it is exactly because of this that Wintour’s new title came about: the appointment as artistic director for the entire Condé Nast.

It sounds, quite frankly, absolutely insane. But it is not unexpected. At an age when most people with a regular day job would be considering retirement, Wintour keeps racking on the credits, now being named responsible for the artistic direction of Condé Nast’s 18 publications – including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and, one of my personal favourites, GQ. 

Vogue US has recently been receiving some backlash due to its increasingly commercial take on fashion, growing less intellectual and more ‘shopping guide’ each month. Maybe this is Wintour’s final test – she can either strike gold and completely revamp the entire Condé Nast, boosting sales up into surreal values, or she can destroy more cerebral magazines like Vanity Fair by trying to turn them into Vogue US (which is, right now, not much more than a trend report and a catalogue). This might mean the nearing of an end for Wintour and a slow push out of Vogue US… or an absolute stroke of genius and the revival of an entire publishing house, in a way that will allow her to stay for longer than expected, leaving a legend and a legacy behind.

In any case, whether she fails or succeeds, it’s Anna Wintour: she is untouchable and will forever be on a pedestal. Wintour does whatever she wants, and that’s exactly why we still love her.

(pictures after the cut)

Despite the bright colours seen on the runway and this being a traditionally colourful and breezy season, the photographs work wonderfully in black and white. Miuccia herself has said before that she wanted to ‘return to classics and minimalism’ for her collections, which spawned the whole ghetta-sandal and kimono-inspired fashion feast. It’s lovely to have a crisp, black and white fashion campaign that still manages to look quite fresh. It’ll certainly be a rest for the eyes amongst all the neon ads in the next magazines to come.

(Personal opinion: Chanel, take a hint – this is how you pick actors for campaigns. That Brad Pitt ad is probably the most terrible perfume ad I’ve seen in the whole of 2012.)

According to a street photographer in New York City, he was approached by a representative of DKNY who offered him $15,000 to display his pictures in store windows around the world. The story, quoted from the original post, is as follows.

A Brothers Grimm adaptation made by Cat Bruce, shown to be my a good friend.

Something beautiful to sweeten up your Sunday afternoon!