I've never been a great seamstress and I sadly admit I'll probably never be even a decent one, but lately I started to find my own adapted sewing techniques and I made a couple of wearable skirts at least...
So I constantly look at Burda Style for ideas and inspirations. I still didn't understand how patterns work (!) but I look at the pictures dreaming one day I'll be able to sew something similar!!!
These are some of my favorite skirts projects, they're problably not meant for dummies, but if your sewing skills are better than mine I suppose you can easily make one of these beauties
The How To section is another of my favorites on the website ; it is packed with interesting projects, like the one for the Ruffled Party Necklace
and this other one , that shows the really intriguing free hand embroidery with fibers...imagine what you can do on a plain little dress using this amazing technique!
I spent the last five days without internet at home...it was awful! In these days I was able to read just my emails so this morning I found I had 393 blog posts to read on Bloglovin and a million websites to check...I definitely can't live offline anymore!!
By the way, I'm finally back and able to post my favorites from Spring Summer 2009 collections. As I said, there will be time for all the new FW Fashion Weeks: all I want now are Spring looks!
Chloé
Bottega Veneta
Lanvin
Burberry
Marni
Basso&Brooke
Eley Kishimoto
Dries Van Noten (the dress on the left is one of my favorite ever, not to mention the baubles necklaces which I'm trying to translate in a DIY project...)
While everyone is waiting for London, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks, I didn't look so much at NY runways and I don't plan to do it for awhile. I'm still looking at SS09 defilés (next week I'll show you my favs) and I'm completely in the mood for Spring so I really don't need new fall-ish outfits and colors for now!
By the way I'm still open to what happens off the runways and thanks to The Sartorialist and Garance Doré I have a lot of things to love...
As promised in the last post, I'm here with some scans of the Vogue Italia SS2009 Shopping Guide.
It only comes twice a year (with the February and August issue of Vogue Italia) but it really worths the wait...I systematically find myself obsessed with this mag!
Click on the pictures for a better view and enjoy :-)
...Who doesn't want to celebrate Barbie's 50th birthday?
February 14th was the date. Bryant Park tents, the place. And judging by the photos and the video below, the fashion show was a blast. Featuring 50 inspired-by-Barbie designs from the most important American designers (including Alexander Wang, Marchesa, Diane Von Furstenberg, Calvin Klein among others) and the to die for Christian Louboutin shoes in Pantone 219 Pink, made just for the occasion and wore exclusively on the catwalk, it was really one of my most awaited events from the whole NY Fashion Week!
Photos by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images, via Coutorture.
I've always liked Barbie's clothes and wanted them to be available in my size and even if the outfits presented are not for sale they will be on display at Bloomingdale's. I can still dream...
Fear not, this is not another methereopatic post, but despite my skeptical soul it will probably sounds a bit cheesy. Valentine's Day is a bad bad thing, stop reading my blatant digressions while you're still on time!
While we say love is an impalpable feeling, we often forget love stories are made of memories and that these memories are built around objects. The very first time we meet someone that will become important to us, we take a mental picture of the moment and we do the same for every important moment we live together since that first one. In these pictures we include feelings, words and gestures of course, but also a lot of other things like places, clothes we are wearing and every little tangible detail. A book, a photo but even a bus ticket or a candy can be the key to "open" that memory.
A lot of people tend to keep these things like treasures and when our stories reach an end, we find themselves alone but surronded by objects. We then must choose if we want - or better, if we are able - to keep them or we have to get rid of (even if maybe we could regret it later), as we try to go on with our lives.
In the end, is not weird to say that love stories are made of objects.
The first time I've heard the name of Leanne Shapton was when I've read The New Yorkers and saw her illustrations. She is a New York based artist, art director, contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, she runs J&L Books with photographer Jason Fulford and she is author of interesting and quirky books.
Her latest one has probably the longest title you can imagine and if you're a slave to details and think life (and love life...) is all about little things, you will probably love it as much as I'm doing.
Working as a puzzle, Important Artifacts shows the relationship of Leonore and Harold, a columnist for the New York Times and a photographer, from beginning to breakup, through their material belongings that are now up for auction.
The book and the whole idea are very smart and at the same time wonderfully heartbreaking. You have not real informations about the love affair, but you build it, listen to it and spy the characters involved just watching at each photo and reading the description of each "lot" of objects. It's all up to reader, like in real life...
EDIT: though it's not my fault, I'm really sorry for the awful pop-up Google ads in the Leanne Shapton video interview above...
Last night there was a big storm here. I woke up at 3.30 am because of thunders and lightnings...Not so good! Today it rained all day long and this afternoon something that looked like frozen snow fell down too.
Yes, I know, this is another metheropatic post...please forgive me! But if a warm day makes me happy thinking of summer, bad weather makes me crave for spring!
This is what's on my mind this month in terms of fashion...and despite their outrageous international shipping costs I hope Forever21 would ship to Italy too anytime soon.
Supposing I can afford one (!) I'm pretty sure I wouldn't buy an original designer bag. I feel guilty everytime I buy a thing for a fraction of the price of a designer item, I can't imagine what would happen with a real fill-with-the-name-of-your-favorite-designer piece.
On the other hand, I've never bought a fake designer bag as well. Beyond all the legas implications of buying a fake, I really think there are so many good quality, well made unbranded or vintage products at affordable prices that I really don't need to buy a cheapy copy of something a poor child had sewn somewhere just to please a broke I-would-but-I-can't fashionista.
I mean, I can covet a certain design, but in the end...it's only a bag, I can live without it!
Starting from questions like "could I hand crochet a designer bag?" and "would people - in a weird way - believe it is real because it had the logo on it?", in 2006 San Francisco based artist Stephanie Syjuco created the Counterfeit Crochet Project website.
Stephanie had already worked on issues of piracy and bootlegging as they apply to today's globalized economy; the Counterfeit Crochet Project started both as a critique of a political economy and a mere crochet project, with the purpose of solicite crocheters to hand counterfeiting designer handbags. She declares:
It seems to me that ingenuity and inventiveness lays at the heart of those who decide to make things for themselves. Crafting is overlooked, even denigrated as a viable "vernacular" form of expression. I view the impetus to handmake something in an era of mass production a personal and perhaps even political act, a way to give yourself agency to create and produce in an age of standardization and retail.
and again
most of us "ordinary people" can't afford such things, and some even knowingly buy knock-off products to sublimate our desires. If you take the logic one step further, and actually make the item yourself, you are in a sense taking the situation into your own hands without giving a single penny to the company brand. They have excluded you anyway, by keeping their prices astronomically high.
She calls all this "handbag anarchy": the final results are both homages and lumpy mutations made by different people with a different sense of creativity. Definitely something totally different from a classic knock-off product!
