Sunday, March 31, 2013

Birds of a feather

You know when you see some people and you think "That person could be picked up and moved to any major city in the world and they would still be considered fashionable by the local population"
Well even if you haven't, this girl is one of those people. Her style is chic but effortless; put her in New York, London, Seoul or Dubai she'd still impress the foreign fashionistas!



 

Just make sure you put her in a city with warm weather!

 


Saturday, March 30, 2013

We're moving to Jakarta

Here are the rest of our photos from Dian Pelangi's collection (well, the ones that weren't too blurry to post. We might have to work some more on our photography skills...). We were seated next to the designer's husband, who was acing the role of overexcited hubby, trying to both photograph and film the show at the same time, even though he knew there were professionals already on top of it. Seriously, they must have the cutest family albums. He also chatted with us a bit about the collection, explaining a little about Muslim fashion in Indonesia and the importance of accessories and headpiece styling when presenting modest outfits.

All we can say is, it worked. Seriously, culture and religion aside, we want this entire collection in our wardrobes, like now.

So who else is going to go out right now to buy some flowing dresses and pants and twirl their hair up in colorful scarves? And those parasols? Fashion yes please!


Tuesday, March 19, 2013

You make me want to spin, spin

While we attempt to sift through the billions of photos we took at BIFF&BIL in Bangkok, here's a little preview from Dian Pelangi's gorgeous collection, which Julia and I fell so hard for.

how do you make a gif

Monday, March 18, 2013

Flight Style

 Chiang Mai and Bangkok are only an overnight bus or train ride apart, but to save some time and avoid being completely exhausted all weekend (does anyone ever actually sleep on overnight journeys?) we decided to fly to Bangkok this time. I was also more than happy to fly because oh man, I LOVE flying.

There's just something about airports. They are filled with people from all over, who could be going anywhere in the world, but for a few hours everyone is together in one random, not really a country, transit place. And airports are all so similar to each other, too. Like, when people ask me what my favorite country is, I kind of just want to say airports. I mean, I know flying is supposed to be exhausting, stressful, and uncomfortable. So maybe I'm just crazy. Or maybe I'm suffering from a little Pavlovian conditioning, as my family flew a lot while I was growing up, and my mother always bribed good behavior from me with small gifts and/or duty free candy. Thanks, Mamma.

But my mother did always have one strict rule for flying: no sweatpants. I think she had a deep-seated fear that when she got married and had children she would become part of those families who power through airports in matching pastel sweatsuits. A real thing, or just my mother's imagination? Regardless, it had me thinking, how dressed up or down should we be at airports? I mean, the glamorous air travel days of Pan Am and SAS are long gone, so should we just pull on our comfiest pajama bottoms and stumble sleepily to our seats? Well, I checked out the fashion scene at Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport and found a little more going on than sweatpants.

Chic, but are those shoes practical enough for lugging around all that luggage? She's probably a pro on stilettos, though. 
Speaking of pros:
The tallest people I've photographed for the blog by far. Like, when they stood up I actually stumbled backwards in awe and did not even know how to hold my camera to get the shot. 
These kids were rocking the more casual lines of chic, in probably a lot more airport friendly footwear. 
And a dress is basically the same as a nightgown, comfort wise, right? 
But I think these girls really nailed it. Plenty of layers in case the air conditioning on the flight is out of control, non-fussy hairstyles, not too many accessories to remove when going through security, and fashionably practical shoes. Totally stealing one of these outfits for my next flight. 

Thursday, March 14, 2013

BIFF&BIL 2013

What was that I said in the last post? Julia and I are going to Bangkok? Then who is going to be covering all the Chiang Mai street style that will surely be going down this weekend?!?!!

Not to worry, you guys. We're heading down to BKK for the Bangkok International Fashion Fair (BIFF) and Bangkok International Leather Fair (BIL). Plus hopefully a little street scouting to check out how locals wear it in the big city.

So while we're a little quiet over the next few days check out BIFF&BIL's website and learn a little more about fashion in Thailand and ASEAN!


Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Like mother, like daughter

Remember mom jeans? Like, there's supposed to be a thing about making fun of 'mom style,' right? Except my mother is ridiculously beautiful (thanks, dad for giving me ALL of your genes) and has the cutest clothes ever. I want them all, even the stuff I've only coveted through old photo albums. Like the hand-knit sweater vest she rocked through the 1970s? Love it. Her huge glasses in the 1980s? WHY do I have to have perfect vision?? And I'm sorry, but her high waisted jeans in the 1990s were awesome and I have maybe definitely spent the past few months scouring vintage shops for a similar pair. Call me crazy, or just too influenced by Topshop's telling me that mom jeans are back, but I love my mom's style and only hope I can learn to rock textures and patterns half as expertly as she does. 

But for now, I'll just be content admiring other mother-daughter pairs who have aced each other's styles. Adorable, no?


P.S. I'm totally going to be spending this weekend in Bangkok with Julia and her mom, so I'll try my best to take a photo on the sly of the two of them to see how they complement each other. Fingers crossed you guys! xx

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

UF/UF

Boom! There you have it, little Miss Rory Gilmore's alter ego.
I don't know where to start with this girl's outfit; the hat, the hair, the shirts, the purse, the pants, the shoes! Her entire outfit is catwalking the samplesizemodel thin line of uber fashionable and ultimate fiasco: it's an UF/UF outfit. It's the kind of outfit that puts my fashion senses on edge. Kind of like how I feel when I mistaken hipsters for homeless people or homeless people for hipsters. You know when you see an outfit and you think "if the littlest thing in that outfit was out of place, like an undone button or had a speck of lint, it would be a disaster, but since it is free of what should be completely insignificant flaws, it is rocking and raging". It's the feeling you get when you are unsure if the person's style is a result of dernier cri* or la derniere crise**, but decide that it is fashionable none the less.

In this outfit the UF/UF feeling is probably rooted in the combination of patters. The plaid, dots, words and lines are a lot for the fashion senses to handle. But the colour scheme works, like a newspaper it is black, white and re(a)d all over. I think if she had worn red socks it would have put this outfit closer to the UF side than the UF side ;)
No doubt she is pulling it off though. I praise and awe those who walk the UF/UF line. Keep trailblazing!


Let's learn some French because it is totally relevant for a fashion blog in Thailand! Just kidding its not but anyways....
*dernier cri = latest fashion  
**la derniere crise = the last crisis


Monday, March 11, 2013

Oh Hey Miss Gilmore

I don't know why, but this girl totally reminds me of Rory Gilmore (you know, from the favorite show of all nerdy girls in the 2000s)

Of course I'm kidding, we ALL know why she is Rory. She's dressed up ready to go to a party or cute hangout, and she's BRINGING HER BOOK. I think when Rory first explained to her crush that she always brings a book with her to every dance, social gathering, and pretty much place ever, at least half of my friends were shouting at their TV "I DO THAT TOO!!" whereas the other half were like "I NEED TO START DOING THAT!!" Because Rory was the coolest, and books are the best. 
I mean, is there a better fashion accessory? Olympia Le-Tan and Kate Spade agree, while taking pity on fashionistas who don't actually want to be lugging around heavy books by creating their book clutch collections. I want them all. 
Also, Rory wasn't alone. We'll show you her friend's outfit tomorrow! 


Saturday, March 9, 2013

It's tru-man!

"If you can't convince them, confuse them"- Harry Truman
We are just on a roll with these quotes!~
 It seems that clothing companies in non-Anglophone countries have taken Mr Truman's words to heart.  In my travels to foreign  countries I often see clothing with random and weird English phrases. Most of the time they are a bunch of random English words strung together or are phrases that are so close to being real sentences Anglophones would say but still so far away from the linguistic reality. It's as if the clothing companies are telling customers "Hey!! Buy this shirt because it has English words on it, which will convince people you understand English!!!! And if that doesn't work, we randomly chose these words so they don't actually make ANY sense, so your shirt will certainly grab a lot of attention for being so darn confusing!!!

This girl's shirt features I am a good girl with BAD; however, it is bolts up a level in poor English with the sense of intrigue created by the sentence fragment. I wonder if the shirt was more expensive because of the heightened confusion it creates?! She is a good girl with Bad what?! I need to know! What is this dark secret that she is hiding from the Anglophone world?! Bad behavior? Bad breath? Bad grades? I almost want to hunt her down to find out! Now, I don't know this girl's English proficiency and whether she knows the sincere interest her shirt creates, but it is a brilliant example of Harry Truman's words. Her shirt does not convince me one bit that she speaks and understands English but I am so confused I want to find out more. 
On a totally different note, the brilliant matching of denim styled shoes and denim styled pants is a fresh take on the denim on denim trend.You don't need to speak English to understand that.
Cute and fresh horizontal look, which is neither convincing of anything or confusing.
Nail art. It's crazy cool. Will spend the next few days finding more examples to make a full post!






Friday, March 8, 2013

Life, Immitation and Art

To quote Oscar Wilde's 1889 essay The Decay of Lying "Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life" This is precisely true with respect to the gentleman photographed below. Unless his shirt has super magical powers, I am sure it was the man who chose to wear the sunglasses that matched the artful tee-shirt rather than the tee-shirt who chose to wear the same sunglasses as the man. However, don't think that clothing can't change its appearance if it wanted to. Designer Hussein Chalayan is known for his transformer dresses, which can change shape, shade and design. Life may imitate Art, but Art takes on a Life of its own!
Please note that these outfits fall under the Copying Couples Category.
I wonder if they know they are dressed the same (see fashionable friends post)


Saturday, March 2, 2013

Hats

You guys, HATS. 
Okay, I know Julia already did a post on hats, but that's when we thought they were just cute fashion accessories. But oh no, they are so, SO much more. It's regularly been reaching 100 degrees (or 38 according to Julia) in Chiang Mai this past week, which might sound nice and tropical vacationy to most people, but Julia and I are used to Canadian and Norwegian summers "summers." It is so hot here. And everyone is still layering in sweaters and denim jackets? HOW ARE THEY NOT ALWAYS FAINTING?! 
I think it's the hats. About the same time the temperature spiked, I started seeing these large floppy hats everywhere. They must have some sort of magical cooling powers. I am so buying one. 




Also, I totally have those heart flip flops, except mine are bright pink with a white heart. (I thought about uploading a photo, but I did pointe for seven years so you do not want to see a close up of my feet). I bought them here in Chiang Mai in what was kind of a weird inverse of Julia's experience buying gadibas in Burma. 
When I went into the shop the shopkeeper gave me a look like, "oh no sweetie, we do NOT have anything that will fit you here," I guess because I'm pretty tall (a tree by Asian standards). EXCEPT I actually have disproportionately tiny, Asian-sized feet. So I picked out the shoes I wanted and brought them to the shopkeeper to pay, but she was just like, "No. No, too small. No big sizes. No." I tried to explain that I wasn't looking for another size and wanted to buy these shoes and would she PLEASE JUST TAKE MY MONEY, but she would. Not. Have it. So finally I slipped them on my feet to show her that they fit and she just stared at me speechless and quickly took my money like suddenly she was SCARED of my non-enormous feet. Like thanks.