How To BE

I'm about to do something silly. 

Because I took so gaddamn long to cover all this Fashion Week stuff, I can't find my show notes anymore. A-plus work on my part. Instead of BS-ing my way through this review, I'll just work with what I have in terms of information and go from there. And what I have is not very much. The most I could gather from the Internet was that the collection was nautically influenced, but that much one could deduce from the photos alone. 

Maybe this is the Universe's way of telling me it's time to stop trying to explain everything and just let some things be. 

I guess that's my shpiel for today. Here are the pictures from Candela S/S 2014, simply as they are. 

Let me know what you think. How do we feel about less-words-more-pictures? You guys probably won't respond but that's okay I'll figure it out. 

Lucky Charms and joy all around, for everybody!!!

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The Slowdown

[Photo by me.]

It was the first tense I learned in French: the present. Even when it was first taught to me in fifth grade, I had trouble using it. I couldn't quite figure out how to describe things that were currently happening because that wasn't how my mind worked. I could write "je chante," but it's a lie. I am not singing. And if I were, it wouldn't ever occur to me that I should or could talk about it (partly because I can't talk and sing simultaneously, and if you can, then I applaud you). If you think about it, the present tense is quite confusing. I could say that I am typing, which is true. But while I was doing that, I was focusing on the end of the sentence, my goal in the near future. Once I was done with that phrase, it was over. My act of typing became a thing of the past. It works that way for everything. That's why the right-this-moment does not exist for me. I guess you could say that that's very fitting for someone semi-involved in the fashion world, and in theory it is. Designers and stylists and editors are always referencing bygone time periods and thinking about what's next. The past and the future. It all worked very well until the present caught up with me and caused a major traffic jam. The passé-composé-présent-futur-simple all in one. You could never conjugate a verb like that. You can never live a life like that, especially not one in the fashion industry. Before you have time to separate the different phases, everyone else has moved on.

I was always terrified of that. I look at every show on Style.com for every major season so that I'm never far behind. Is it necessary to know what 230 designers did for their fall collection? Not at all. It wouldn't even be obligatory if I worked at a magazine, or if I were a designer myself. We all know that fashion moves quickly. It's in the same category as journalism in that every second is precious, but not because it's happening. It's because each moment could be fodder for a new trend, a new design, a new story. "New" is based around the concept of the future, the same way "old" is based around the past. Fashion likes to combine the two and create what embodies the "now," the present. When the now exists, the past and future cease to. It's like when you complete the equation two plus two is four. Now all you have is four. The twos are gone. The inverse of that operation yields the same results. Cut four in half, and you've got two twos. You can't have all three at once. Fashion focuses on the four, I focus on the twos. It has recently come to my attention that I have to choose one or the other (at least at this juncture of my life). As the saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too. (I've always wondered who gets to eat the cake, though, if I don't get to. Does it just sit around forever and get all moldy and nasty?)

For the past three seasons, I went to as many shows as I could during Fashion Week. It's an exhilarating experience, albeit a highly stressful one. I plan my year around New York Fashion Week. The truth is, before I had begun to attend shows, I still enjoyed fashion. This blog was around for months prior to that first ADAM show on September 10th, 2011. Participating in that seven-day-long whirlwind of awesomeness has changed a lot of things in my life, but I often forget that it's just that: seven days. A mere week out of the fifty-two in a year, which is then only one out of--hopefully--eighty more. It's a tiny, itsy-bitsy, baby-sized piece in the proverbial puzzle.

I've been worrying about the fact that I won't be able to participate in Fashion Week this coming season as much as I'd like to. It feels as though I'll lose my already unstable footholds in the industry if I so much as miss a few shows. Will I disappoint my readers? Will I disappoint myself? Maybe all of those things will happen, or perhaps none of them will. I'm slowly realizing that it's okay to not be at the forefront all the time. It really isn't so terrible to not know what people will be wearing in six months at the same exact moment that everyone else finds out. I won't spontaneously combust if I'm not sitting third row at a show, getting photographs of so-and-so's garments as soon as the model steps onto the runway. Sure, it's absolutely amazing to be able to do that, but sometimes it just can't happen. Every so often I will spontaneously combust if I am right in the thick of things. I suppose it really boils down to whether or not I would like to explode whilst in a huge crowd of fancily-dressed people, or be at home all in one piece.

This February, I'm going to take it slow. Fashion Week is a single week, and I'd like to make it out alive.

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On the Road (Clover Canyon Spring 2013)

I know it doesn't make much sense right now, what with Hurricane Sandy blocking off all mass transit in New York City so that I can't leave my borough, coupled with the fact that the next summer break is eons away, but think about spending hot, adventure-filled days in Southern California. Why, you ask? Because that's what the designers of Clover Canyon wanted us to do when they put out their Spring/Summer 2013 collection that I saw at New York Fashion Week back in September. The collection was called "On the Road," most likely intentionally sharing a name with Jack Kerouac's novel by the same title. If you haven't read the book, it chronicles the author's travels back and forth across the United States over the course of a few years--working on a railroad in California for a few months, hitchhiking to Denver, stopping in New York City for a few weeks, going back out West, over and over and over again. To be honest, it began to feel almost ridiculous how much he backtracked and revisited places, only because I am an extremely systematic person and like to go from point A to point B in a logical manner. But that wasn't the point of me mentioning On the Road. The entire book is about getting up and just leaving in search of a good time. That was basically Jack Kerouac's life (I've been reading a collection of personal letters between him and Allen Ginsberg, a correspondence spanning approximately fifteen years, so I'm getting all the intimate facts about his bumming around in Mexico and sleeping on other people's couches while writing). 

This past summer, the Rookie Mag team did a cross-country road trip, starting in New York and working their way west to California. It's just another example of a group of friends spending time together in a van, eating junk food and driving endlessly for miles and stopping at deserted burger joints off the side of some midwestern interstate that only their car and a few assorted pick-up trucks are traveling on. It's not just about going somewhere just to be on the move and not necessarily having a set destination. It's about freedom. The bright colors and scintillating prints in the Clover Canyon collection emulated the youthfulness and fun of a road trip. The brand's clothing is manually patterned, cut, and sewn on the premises. They refer to it as "old world craftsmanship," an aspect of their company that gives the collection's allusions to "candy-colored muscle cars," "wood-paneled motel rooms," "surf shacks," "disco balls and rodeos," and "cannabis leaves" a whole new meaning. [All of these quotations are taken from Clover Canyon's show notes.] Road trips, above all, are about fun. Even though I'm still just a kid, I know how tough it is as an adult to enjoy yourself the way teenagers do. They have responsibilities and obligations that jobless students do not. In Clover Canyon's collection, the juxtaposition between "boyish soft suiting" and fluid shapes and fabrics realizes the idea of adults trying to let loose and truly act like kids again. 

The show was presented in the form of a box presentation, meaning the models were standing around the room and posing for the photographers. Luckily, I was a photographer, and some of the girls got really into it. I mean, it is their job, but I felt really grateful that they were posing for lil' ol' me, so I smiled at all of them after I lowered my camera, and some returned the grin, but others were slightly taken aback by my act of courtesy. 

You'll see how cool some of these girls were in their super cool clothes. 

[Photos by me.]

Imagine going to work in that suit. 

Way out, dude! 

That was my impression of a surfer. 

That print is pretty intense. 

Am I seeing cars? Am I seeing Aztec buildings? What am I seeing??

The Road. 

This reminds me of a ceramic sculpture I recently made inspired by adobe architecture.

Fun fact of the day.  

Try and tell me it doesn't look like the models are going to be sucked into a black abyss. 

She was smizing up a storm. If you can smize with your body...?

Can you spot the illegal drugs in this photo? 

When you don't have a cool '50s Cadillac to drive around town...wear one on your torso! 

The hair and the print on the jacket are screaming Grease mixed with the "SB-129" episode of Spongebob.

The cutest person ever. 

Don't tell anyone, but she was my favorite. 

Look at them smize. They make it an art form. 

This model even made her feet look all fancy for me. Wasn't that nice? 

That jacket is made of sequins. 

Yeah. 

That just about wraps up New York Fashion Week! Well, actually, it wraps up New York Fashion Week. Straight up. And it only took me, like, two months!

If you guys were seriously affected by that bitch Sandy this weekend...you probably wouldn't be reading this blogpost right now, because you probably wouldn't have power. Luckily I wasn't, as in my apartment didn't lose power and my neighborhood suffered minimal damage, but I know so many people who weren't as fortunate. The subway will be shut down for the next four to five days, which means: a) no school, and b) no going anywhere at all. So it's good but also fairly sucky. Hang in there, guys!

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Romantic Steampunk Drapery (Anna Sui Spring 2013)

I spent a little while yesterday looking through some of the Spring 2013 shows on Style.com (this was the first time I got anywhere near Fashion Week stuff since the week itself), and was frighteningly disappointed in the lack of originality I saw. I only looked through half of the A names, but based on all the excitement around this season's new trends and styles and such, I was dissatisfied. I had seen that stuff before. Few ensembles that I looked at gave me that elating feeling of, "Wow, that is freaking amazing, I want to stare at that forever," if any at all. Then I began the early stages of writing this post, and decided to peruse the official pictures of the Anna Sui runway show, because my shots weren't that great. And that's when my faith in fashion was revived again. Anna Sui sent clothing down the runway that have never been placed before my eyes until this point, but at the same time got my mind scrolling through a mental list of garments I own that could help me emulate the style. No black fishnets...lavender fishnets, though, that could work...Knee-length white lace leggings, that kind of fits the vibe... That's what a good collection does. It gets you thinking about something besides, "Okay, serious déjà vû."

Anna Sui's Spring 2013 collection was inspired by the French interior decorator, Madeleine Castaing, and the London and New York punk worlds. Castaing's work focused on the post-French Revolution, post-Napoleon chaos in the mid-nineteenth century. Anna Sui herself lived and thrived within the underbellies of the punk scene of the 1970s in some of the grungiest cities in the world. The unlikely combination of the two meshes (pun--there's lots o' mesh in this collection) the chaos of each time period together seamlessly. I know that if I try to explain this, it's just going to be confusing, so I'll just leave it to Tim Blanks of Style.com, who reviewed the show: "Her love of vintage casts her as a dyed-in-the-wool romantic, but there are few youth cults as riven by romance as punk, so Sui was simply bringing about a union that was written in rock 'n' roll's stars." 

The brocade and zippers and chintz and pearls and ripped fishnets and multi-colored hair pieces and crazy head adornments all amounted to a nostalgic but refreshing collection. Looking at the clothes and Karlie Kloss (who opened and closed the show)'s moody pout make you feel passionate about what you're seeing--it's that delicate balance between anger and love. I don't even know what trends I could pull out of this collection, which further proves how original these garments are. All I know is that I need some brocade, some cut-off leggings, and a long sleeve mesh t-shirt. 

[Photos by me.]

Metallic sunflowers and pink hair--sign me up. 

This new dress-over-calf-length-leggings-made-of-a-weird-fabric silhouette is really growing on me.

Whoever said platforms are dead was clearly mistaken. 

I can't figure out what it is that I love about this look, but I am diggin' so hard.

A denim jumpsuit over a torn mesh shirt is a genius combination that I never would have thought of.

See, it looks like a crown on her head, but it's more like funky bloated chintz ears in real life.

Vibe I am getting here: unicorn.

It's Aymeline Valade!! I never thought I would be in the same room as her. She is legitimately the sexiest person alive. 

Lindsey Wixson was also there. 

I KNOW.

Another solid look.

Hanne. Gaby. Freaking. Odiele. I had seen her looking distressed in the subway station a few days before--she turned around to face me, looking confused (it had nothing to do with me, just in case that was unclear), and when I realized who she was, my knees went weak. I kind of worship her, as you know. 

Yo you flip that hurr, Aymeline. 

Frida Gustavsson was present, aka one of the new faces of H&M, along with Joan Smalls (who also walked in the show.)

Karlie Kloss, working it like a freaking boss as she saunters down the runway in a pearl-adorned denim dress to close out the show. 

The designer. 

There is some very important news that I did not discuss before. ALEXA CHUNG WAS SITTING FRONT ROW. I WAS IN THE SAME ROOM AS ALEXA CHUNG. Before the show had begun, I had tried to walk up and down the runway to check out the front row as I usually did, and I noticed a huge crowd of people. I squeezed in, peeked under, and jumped over several peoples' arms/cameras--and caught sight of a familiar face. THE FACE OF ALEXA CHUNG. I couldn't get a good shot of her despite my efforts, so I walked away to wait until the clump of people dispersed slightly. That's when someone asked me if I was authorized to be on the runway right now, to which I replied no, and she said that I'm not allowed to be there then and I should go back to my seat, thank you. I was fuming. Too scared to try again (even after texting my mom to find out her verdict on the situation), I tried with all my might to get a photo of Alexa from afar. That is what you are seeing above. She is the one directly to the left of the blond woman with the green floral headpiece. 

Also in the front row: Andrew Bevan of Teen Vogue, Derek Blasberg, and Joanna Hillman of Harper's Bazaar. I talked to Andrew after the show, and he was so so nice. He wrote his email address in my Hogwarts notebook and we joked about how burnt out we were from Fashion Week (it was Wednesday night by this point, and I'd already been to Milly a few hours before, and had to rush to Clover Canyon directly after Anna Sui). 

On a separate note, here's a playlist to entertain you through Hurricane Sandy. That is, if the Internet doesn't go out...waaah wahhhh...

(Keeping with the 70s theme of the collection, there's some 70s music on the playlist.)

Enjoy the day off from school. Do something really, really, really cool.

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