An inspiration for the New Year

This being said I wish all my fabulous readers a great

New Year and an even greater New Decade!

See you next year!

Merry Christmas!

A new bike fashion?

As you know I've been living in Holland, the Land of Bikes, for almost 4 months now, but I haven't seen this one coming. Is this what the future of bike fashion will look like? At lest according to Olli Erkkila, a Finnish bicycle designer, it is. This model was his graduation project for the Institute of Design in Lahti. Pretty interesting I'd say, even if it looks as if it has no balance at all! Very fashion-forward, as all things designed in Northern Europe. Can't wait to see it on the streets!

Talking about RED

Well, if we were talking about RED a few days ago, I thought I could continue on that same holiday note. Remember that a few months ago I was talking about a great exhibition about Yves Saint Laurent that I had visited in Paris? Then you'll probably also remember this post about how actual his designs still are, which brings me to today's post: the RED dress from the Evening Collection at ZARA resembles at lot one of his designs from the late 1950s... Which one? Go see :) Great inspiration!

Red lipstick

"Red is the colour of life"

Christian Dior

Have you ever wondered what you could do to spice up your look for a party, give a new shine to that old LBD of yours or maybe how to bring colour into your life during an icy winter day? My answer is of course: wear RED lipstick! What better way to show off your lips? It's guaranteed to be a show stopper, even more when Christmas and New Year are on the way! I've been thinking of buying a red lipstick for months, but I didn't find enough courage until a few days ago. I read a lot of articles about how to choose the right red lipstick, but it all seemed too complicated. When I finally decided, I wondered around the cosmetic shelves looking at every shade of red lipstick, until I found the one:

"A deep, intense and voluptuous red, the quintessence

of floral sensuality blossoming on the lips"

Zinnia Red

Zinnia Red is from the new Rouge Dior Collection that just came out in September. This collection has 32 new shades of lipstick, each one inspired inspired from a special Haute Couture Dress and it runs under the motto "From Haute Couture to Haute Couleur". On the left you can see the dress that inspired my shade of red.

As for you who have not yet picked your red lipstick yet, you may think that once you've decided to let your fears aside and wear it, the hard end of the deal is over... you might have to think again, as even more difficult than convincing yourself that you CAN wear red lipstick is to find the right shade, the one that makes your lips pop, the one that complements your skin tone.

The first thing to do is to find out if your complexion is cool or warm-toned. The easiest way to do that is to look at your skin against golden and silver jewelry - if your skin looks better against silver then you're cool-toned, otherwise it's warm-toned. Cool-toned complexion looks better with red shades with blue or pink undertones and warm-toned complexion with brown or orange undertones. After you've figured that out, just go to your favourite store, skim through the shelves, try all the shades on your hands until you've got no inch of bare skin to spare, and finally find a nice shop assistant who will tell you in 2 seconds what the best shade for you is and make all your previous research superfluous! Guaranteed! I should know :) Enjoy your lipstick shopping!

Natalia Vodianova for Harper's Bazaar

The gorgeous Russian model is the cover of Harper's Bazaar latest issue. She features in the Women of the Year category under "Inspiration of the year" and she certainly deserves this title! Michelangelo di Battista succeeded in creating amazing scenes, the photoshoot mixing glamour, femininity and strength on an industrial backdrop is simply breathtaking.

Bleu de Chanel

This is one of my favourite ads for a perfume in the last months. French actor Gaspard Ulliel and Canadian model Ingrid Schram were the lead actors in this short film directed by Martin Scorsese for the new Chanel fragrance.

Lanvin for H&M

What would you answer if I said Tuesday the 23rd of November? That's exactly what I was expecting you to say, LANVIN FOR H&M DAY! What could possibly be more exciting than the launch of this collection?! Well... maybe just the struggle to actually get your hands on one of the pieces in that collection!

In the Netherlands, where I'm currently living, the collection was only available in 4 stores, none of them near to where I live, so I had to (try) to buy it online. The online store opened at 8 AM and of course I was already staring at the screen way before that! When the clock struck 8, it was probably one of the wildest minutes in H&M website history, as it immediately popped an overload sign... I spent my next half an hour clicking continuously on the refresh button, hoping it would work. It finally did and I only had 20 minutes at my disposal before they disconnected me and gave the chance to someone else. That was obviously not a problem for me, as I had been stalking that collection for weeks and I even knew by heart in which order and at what second every piece of clothing appeared in the ad... Ah, what one would do for fashion...

Where was I? Oh, right, I had finally gotten access to the online store! I picked my clothes in less than 30 seconds I think, but there was one thing I hadn't thought of doing before 8 AM... log in to my H&M account... I had my clothes in the shopping bag, but I could not register, "unknown error". I tried changing my password - nothing, I tried setting up a new account - nothing, always the same error message. 9 AM found me in front of my computer, screaming towards the screen urging it to load, and what do you think happened next?

That's right, another message popped onto the screen - technical failure, we're trying to fix this as soon as we can, the website will be working by 9.45. I couldn't believe it. Of course I didn't trust them and I kept clicking the refresh button over and over again, until my luck changed at 9.30 - the website was up and running and I even managed to log in the first time! What happened next you ask... from the 3 items I had selected, 2 of them were somehow already sold out... I rushed and bought the remaining article of course and then decided on the spur of the moment what else to get! Next week I'll be expecting my little bundle of designer joy right at my front door.

I spent more than two weeks deciding which dress I should buy and all the alternatives I had thought of were sold out in a matter of minutes. Never plan too much ahead, as you never know what can go wrong, live the moment and enjoy the adrenaline rush of the unknown!

This is what I finally got:

(the T-shirt)

(the dress on the right)

Can you guess what else I may have wanted, but was sold out? What are your favorite pieces? Did you get any of them? Here's some more eye-candy to help you decide if the two videos didn't help that much. I know it's a tough choice ;)

(Anna dello Russo in the gorgeous pink dress)

Train ride at sunset

I love trains! They are my favourite means of transportation because you can get a glimpse of the real  world you're traveling through and you can better understand the places you see. I took these pictures during the last days of August somewhere between the hungarian border and Budapest on a crazy old train, running at full speed that was rocking in all possible directions.

When was the last time you went for a ride on a train? 

"Tendance Chocolat" Fashion Show @ Paris

One of the most "delicious" events is taking place right now in Paris between the 28th of October and the 1st of November at Porte de Versailles - the Salon du Chocolat. It's a huge event dedicated entirely to chocolate and it even organizes fashion shows! This year's show was put under the influence of social responsibility, fair trade and green products. It was organized with the collaboration of Ethical Fashion Show who are dedicated to ethical and responsible fashion. Under the motto "Ethic et Choc, all the clothes were made out of chocolate provided by many very well known chocolate manufacturers, such as Lindt, Max Havelaar, Baileys or Jacques Bellanger. The fashion show starts at 5 pm every day, so if you're quick enough you can still make it today or tomorrow! Here's what you can see:

The Alfa Romeo Commercial for Giulietta

I've been obsessing lately with commercials. I don't know what happened, but I think that a lot of the new commercials are becoming more and more interesting and complex. They begin to tell mysterious stories which are very alluring. I wanted to share with you one of the best ones I saw lately. This commercial was made by Leo Burnett for the new Giulietta car from Alfa Romeo and stars a fabulously looking Uma Thurman.

The motto "We are such stuff as dreams are made of" quoted from Shakespeare's works is perfectly chosen and Uma Thurman does a great job embodying the 5 different personalities that blend to make Giulietta what it is. I think it's the perfect way of showing the new direction Alfa Romeo wants to take with this car.

Enough teasing with the photos! Here's the commercial:

The possimpible just happened

I just went through a major emotional crisis about two hours ago... I went at this party organized by my university and on my way out I found out that someone had stolen my jacket from the cloak room... My perfect ZARA knitwear military jacket that I had bought just a month ago and that was sold out in every store within my reach... My ZARA jacket that perfectly encompassed this fall's military and knitwear trend. How can that even be possible?

I went to get my jacket and instead of that I found the scarf that I had tucked in inside the sleeve of the jacket. So clearly someone just wanted to steal it, you don't just trip and accidentally fall into a jacket that's not yours, remove the scarf, put it on the rack where the jacket was and then leave with something that doesn't belong to you. I don't understand this country. I've travelled through so many cities around Europe and some small parts of Africa and Asia and I didn't get mugged once and it happens to me here, in a developed country, a country way over the standard of life of many other countries. Plus, I had to bike home without my warm jacket and it was really cold outside...

There is a good part in all this though - it helped me realize how much I appreciate some of the small things in life, like a great warm jacket on a cold autumn night. Great thing is that I found in one of the few ZARA online stores, so I'll have it back in about 10 days!

Has something like that ever happened to you? Feel free to share your story with me, so I can feel less stupid about it!

Paul Smith at LFW

As it's fashion week time, I'm going to focus on that in the next few days. Today it's all about the Paul Smith fashion show in London last week. He returned to what made him famous - menswear for women and it was great! The designer himself described his collection as looking "like you borrowed your boyfriend's shirt, your boyfriend's jacket, your boyfriend's trousers". 

The colour palette is really beautiful, mixing tones of orange, purple and grey for the most part. The choice of styling for the girls was a mohawk, to set them on the same page with the menswear-inspired looks. Polka dots and the men's shoes seem to be a recurring detail that unifies the entire collection. As interesting details I would cite the polka dot cuffs on a pair of pants, the neon men's shoes, the juxtaposition of belts and of course and of course the cardigan wore the other way around. And guess what, one of the girls in the show is a Romanian model, Diana Moldovan. She's the one wearing the stunning purple polka dot dress and the neon shoes.

Enjoy!