Looks I love - Part 1

There are a lot of looks at New York Fashion Week that can be appreciated from afar but not worn in real life.  However, there are also those looks that just push us a little out of our comfort zone into something slightly bolder, slightly edgier, or slightly brighter than we might normally wear.  This is one of those looks.  She is basically wearing a tank top with cropped sweat pants and booties.  The sweat pants just happen to be sequined and the booties are black patent leather.  It is a comfortable party outfit if I ever saw one.

Fun outfits at New York Fashion Week

I made an effort this season to take less pictures of the outrageous and more pictures of beautiful outfits.  However, the whimsical clothes and accessories always make me smile.  So, I have to show you a few outfits that you would probably never wear but hopefully you can appreciate.

This is Jean and Valerie - the Idiosyncratic Fashionistas.  They are always wearing something interesting and fabulous that could be considered more art than fashion.  Time Out New York  published an interview with them detailing their fashion inspirations and favorite places to shop.  Here they are with Shail Upadhya, a former UN diplomat from Nepal -

He started designing these outrageous, one-of-a-kind suits as a creative outlet and directs their formation by tailors and artists in Bangkok and Manila.  According to the New Yorker, he was told by the UN that he had to choose between the clothes and the UN.  He eventually chose the clothes by taking early retirement.

To me, there was nobody else at Lincoln Center as entertaining as those three characters, but there were many others with their own special flair -

Come back soon.  I have much more to show you...

Fashion Night Out

Last Thursday, my friend Elizabeth and I headed down to the Meatpacking District for Fashion Night Out. 

It is supposed to be a night during which everyone supports their local fashion retailers, but it seems to be a night when people fill the sidewalks and stores to enjoy free drinks, music, and gift bags. 

Celebrities, designers, and models show up at various sites around town to promote themselves and their products -

 

Erin Wasson - model

And people wear cute outfits to see and be seen.

 

 

I had to visit the Target pop-up shop.  New York doesn't have a permanent Target (one of the very few stores they don't have), so they just set one up during Fashion Week.  It was probably a good thing that it was so crowded that I couldn't even get close to the cute clothes that debuted this week, since I am still not buying any.  However, I did enjoy my free Coke.

 

 

 

 

Target was the only place where I saw people actually buying merchandise.  In other stores, I just saw a lot of looking and hanging out.  But overall, it was a nice shopping party.

 

Views from a cab

Before I get to the fashion, let me take you on a little cab ride from the airport into the city - 

 

A little reporting on Fashion Night Out up next...

It's here!

Elaine Cohen in a skirt by Castelbajac

More to come later today...

It's coming...

New York Fashion Week!  I need to go pack.  I'll be back on Monday with photos galore.

Geometric dress

I spent most of Saturday finishing this dress -

Since the print is so geometric, I wanted to do something geometric with it.  But I didn't know what.  I cut out a simple dress with a waistband and soon realized that I had cut the top too small and had run out of fabric.  I needed to add width down the sides.  I happened to have some left-over denim, so the design was forced upon me...and I love it -

In the end, I realized that it would have been much faster to wait on another shipment of fabric from fabric.com to re-cut the top than to add stripes down the sides.  However, the design is much better this way.  I am trying to learn more sewing techniques, so I added a back vent (with the help of this tutorial) and sewed an invisible hem (based on this tutorial).  The vent looks difficult, but was actually really easy.  The invisible hem looks difficult, and is actually very difficult.  But the good thing about the invisible hem is that even your mistakes are invisible. 

I would like to make one more dress before I head off to New York, but my children need a little attention.  So, I think we are going to spend this Labor Day making fashion origami.  However, I am a little obsessed with this fabric (and did end up ordering more just as a back up plan in case the stripes didn't work out), so you may see it again.