Picks of the week: Something a little different

When I initially started the "Picks of the week" tag, I intended for it to be a weekly posting, but to be honest, I don't come across that many things that are that different week to week and even more honestly, some of the very exciting blogs that I've just started read aren't fashion-related and wouldn't quite be on-topic or everybody's cup of tea.

Lately, however, I've found a few clothes-y blogs that are different in some ways and I wanted to share them with you guys! 

1)  What's in your bag Flickr

Picture from http://www.flickr.com/photos/74668633@N00/6058847728/in/pool-52241283780@N01/

If you're like me and love looking at what various people carry in their purses, then one page of some celebrity's purse at the back of a magazine won't quite do it for you. 

Check out this Flickr instead, which has literally thousands of pictures of what's in people's purses (or backpacks, or totes).  I can spend hours browsing it and looking slowly through what both men and women carry - it provides a really interesting glimpse into what real people carry, not what some celebrity needs to promote at any given moment. 

I'm always particularly interested in what notebooks/stationery they pack, what they're reading, and what they've got for a snack!

2)  Quirky Explosion

Picture from http://quirkyexplosion.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-08-12T09%3A14%3A00-07%3A00&max-results=3

I just love Lexy's blog - it's not quite like anything I've ever seen before.  She wears the craziest things and makes them all work - none of this mild "stripes and spots" pattern mixing here!  I remember her saying in one blog post that people sometimes see bold things and say "I wish I could carry that off", to which her response was "You totally can.  Just wear it."  

I completely agree, and the wild abandon with which she enjoys clothing makes this, for me, a real joy to read.  

3)  The Snugbug

Picture from http://pattythesnugbug.com/2011/the-july-dress-hung-jury-colette-macaron-with-knit-yoke/

If you want something servicey and interesting, Patty's blog, The Snug Bug, is a beautiful collection of tips, sewing and pictures that really makes me wish I were more handy with a needle.

Check out some of her posts like this one on how to sew a zippered pouch, and maybe you'll end up being far more threadtastic than I am.  I can't sew to save my life, but I sure enjoy looking at other people do it!

4) College Fashion 
 
I wish, wish, wish that I had found this blog in my undergraduate days.  This e-zine is full of really helpful tips for building a trendy wardrobe around a student budget, decorating your dorm room and many more college-related things. 

For example, here's a handy post on how to look cute and comfy on moving in day.  And here's another great one on 3 stylish ways to wear hoodie, including those ugly school logo hoodies that I dislike intensely, but that they make look great!  Especially good for students, it's also handy for anybody on a budget as all their picks are relatively afforable.

5)  Corporette

At the other end of the spectrum from College Fashion, here's a blog for those going the high flying route with their degrees.  Apart from boasting lots of great but still conservative designer picks for those who work in business or law, it has some really helpful advice.

For example, how to deal with awkward Ramadan questions if you're fasting on the job (not such a big problem in Asia, but perhaps more so in other places) or how to look great on very little sleep after a big project.

6)  Thrifty Business

Picture from http://verythriftybusiness.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2011-08-14T22%3A03%3A00-04%3A00&max-results=5

Want to know how to achieve this designer necklace look for $15?  Then head on over to Thrifty Business where Anna puts together affordable and professional looking ensembles based on more expensive designer picks.  She shares my philosophy on why buy something extortionate when you can get a much more affordable likeness?   


I hope you've enjoyed this round of picks, and I hope to find more interesting and different sites to share in the near future.  And if you've seen other sites worth sharing, go ahead and let me know in the comments!  Tattybye!

Picks of the Week

It's been a really long time since I did a Pick of the Week post, but in reality, I have been reading lots of new fashion blogs that I have really enjoyed so far and I thought I would share some of them because they are all so different but all so lovely.

I love reading other people's personal style blogs (not actually "fashion blogs" because they are so much more and really show personal style and personality) and my favourite kind is where a healthy dose of the person comes through and they put together looks that they are passionate and confident about.

Not all blogs are able to do this well. 

I don't want to name names, but lots of bloggers succumb to being paid and soon, each post is about each (sponsored) event they attended, how lovely the (sponsored) product was and then a tiny bit about what they chose to wear to the event.

I've even read hosts of blogs where they all attend the same events and say exactly the same things promoting the same products.  That may be okay for some people, but I want to read about personal style, not someone's bland advertising shtick. 

My personal stance on this is that I wouldn't want to accept free products and advertorial offers (not that I am popular enough to receive them at all!) because I feel they would tint the way I wrote this blog, because there is so much of me in it, but I think it's perfectly fine for others to do so. 

However, it's a skill to run the blog like a business and still make it personal and homey and relatable and make it something people want to come back to.

1)   My first pick, Cupcakes and Cashmere, manages to do just that.  It's written by this adorable girl called Emily who is now a full-time blogger (which I take to mean she makes some form of income from it), but all her posts are personal and homey and sound like they really come from the heart.  Someone once wrote in the comments that she had created a "lovely space for herself" and I think her blog looks like just that.

For starters, it's clear that she loves to cook and eat, and she regularly makes delightful-looking recipes, such as this recent vanilla bean ice-cream.

All images from http://cupcakesandcashmere.com/

Also, she puts together helpful diagrams of products (like the one above) to help people with their shopping and hello, the girl is gorgeous!  What's not to love?

2)  The second blog is one I've only been reading very recently, called Second Skin.  I stumbled upon it while blog hopping and just loved the simple, straightforward tone and the beautiful settings in the photos.  Every single photos seems to be taken under the most wonderful, honeyed afternoon sun and the author's style is kind of bohemian in a way that suits her but also very practical.

All images from http://secondskinstyle.blogspot.com/

Just look, how beautiful!

3)  The third pick is something close to my heart.  I know there must be many Asian personal style blogs out there, I read a few, but I never seem to come across them quite as regularly as those from the United States, United Kingdom or various other Scandinavian countries.

I don't even know of as many style blogs in Singapore, though it might be short-sightedness on my part.  What was interesting was that I used to read one that was a great aggregator, called Fashion Nation, and which was run by two local girls, but which has since been closed down because of personal differences.  I feel very sorry about that because it was a good blog with plenty of interesting things on it and it had a list of local links in the sidebar.  Interestingly enough, many of those links were defunct by the time I had stumbled upon Fashion Nation.

Which is why this blog by two girls in the Philippines, A Plus B in the Sea, really makes me take heart.  The writing is snappy and funny, the first time I read it I found myself laughing out loud.  The outfits are also relatable, particularly for our tropical weather.  I mean it's great looking at beautiful blogs from coldest Poland or Norway, but I feel cheated by layers and layers of jackets and scarves I will never be able to wear here.

 

All images from http://aplusbinthesea.blogspot.com/

The clothes are cute, practical and completely unpretentious, and the posts are written like in an adventuring storybook, which is charming!

I hope you've enjoyed the picks this week, and I would like to ask:

Do you have any favourite personal style blogs that you could point me in the direction of?  I would love to read any recommendations, particularly those from around the Asian regions!

Changing it up

Lately, I've been on a kick to try and rejuvenate the older things in my closet by "remixing" them, as The Clothes Horse says. 

(I love her blog, it is poetic and romantic and all her clothing choices are both pretty and practical, something I am trying to accomplish.  She wears the cutest vintage dresses and accessories and is inclined to look at the world through whimsical eyes.  Is there anything more fitting than her quoting Emily Dickinson's "To venerate the simple days..." in a photo spread about quietly enjoying the summer in pale colours?  I think not.)

I've had this dress for about two years and I love the art nouveau print and rich teal colours, but I usually just throw it on lazily with my flat loafers.  Yesterday, I teamed it with diamond patterned stockings and brogues instead.

I kind of like the look, Greek and gothic vaudevillian, if you will.  Plus the diamonds look kind of cute going up the skirt.

Printed dress - Robinsons.  Patterned tights - Topshop.

Bird earrings - Accessorize.  Brogued heels - Paris. 

Giant black rose ring from Diva - Worn but not seen.

Photos by Mavis

Poiple, people!

Dhany and I were playing around in the garden when he came over the other day.  I was wearing a flowy new pair of shorts I'd recently bought, to which he said: "Can you stand in a way that actually shows people they're shorts?"

Shirt - H&M.  Purple shorts - Topshop.

Shoes - Herman Monster.  Bow necklace - Far East Plaza

 Leading to this ridiculous pose.

 Cap - Coal.  Shirt - Obey.  Shorts - Altamont.

Slippers - Teva.  Rap 'tude - father's side of the family, we think.

He was also wearing relaxed clothes.  We ended up just chilling around the house and practising for a gig that we've got coming up. 

This week's pick is a blog I've been reading forever and ever!  It's not exactly a fashion blog, more like a mish mash of anything and everything that the author, Karen Cheng, wants to write about.  She's a mother of three young kids, which means the blog could be a little precious, but it's thankfully not, saved by her laidback attitude and her varied interests. 

She talks about fashion and food and family and little adventures around Australia, and her blog is clean and pretty, a wonderful palate-cleanser, if you will.  

Screengrab from http://www.karencheng.com.au/

What really made me want to put it up though, was this post in which Karen talks about this really really fancy and expensive restaurant she went to with her husband, where they saw a life-size statue of a horse, with a lamp on its head, supposed to be some kind of modern, artistic statement.  She talks about how she could look up the horse's arse because of the position it's tail was in, which is funny in itself, but here's what takes the cake.

I went to view a condominium showflat on one of the jobs I was on and they had the exact.  Same.  Horse! 

And it really is life-sized.  Alph stood next to it as proof. 

And it totally cracked me up!

I guess bad taste is universal, no matter where you are.

Picks of the week: Nylon and Karl Lagerfeld’s Guide to Life

For a long time, I read the usual women’s magazines like Her World and Female, but there’s only so much you can take of stories like “My husband dumped me after having sex with our family dog” or whatever, before you yearn for something more sincere.

This is why I like reading Seventeen despite the fact that I’m way out of that age range – the magazine is bright and happy and the clothes are cute but perfectly affordable.

This is also why I love reading Nylon (from founder of Raygun, Marvin Scott Jarrett).  Unlike many other magazines available to us here, Nylon feels like it’s more into actual fashion and art than trashy stories and sex advice.  It also treads a nice line between mainstream and out of left field (the most recent cover girls were Portia Doubleday, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Greene but the pages always give consideration to different types of design and look fresh).

I love how some of the letters people send in are actual collages and physical letters, just like they used to on MTV until everything became so darn electronic.

I also like the quirky taglines for things – this one reads “Lagoons are salty and shallow and you’re not – but great colours, no?” which you wouldn’t usually see in your run of the mill women’s weekly.

The only thing that bothers me, and I suspect will continue to bother me about many magazines for eons, to come is are pages like this with cute sketched shoes and luxury socks that you can buy for hundreds of dollars. 

Excuse me, the $9.50 I pay for the magazine is already a bit of a stretch.  I don’t think I would ever be able to drop a couple hundred on socks that would cost me $3 at a roadside kiosk and I doubt most readers would be able to either. 

Available at Borders, Wheelock Place.

If you’re into something more snarky and cheaper (READ: free), then Karl Lagerfeld’s Guide to Life is it.  Written by someone called “Fake Karl”, the guide is a witty and satirical look at the fashion world and the people who inhabit it. 

For a taste, take this most recent post about photographer Terry Richardson, who has been accused of sexually assaulting his models:

“The subject at hand is Terry Richardson: A terrible photographer and sexual predator. I loathe this man's photography, because it has all the intelligence of a four year old and the sexual sophistication of a donkey. It is as thick as a whole omelette, and it's as dirty as a dungbeatle who has lost interest in his career and really let itself go...”

And further down:

“The point, Mr. Zahm, is that Richardson most likely had non-consensual sex with these girls. That's rather a big deal, no? With my models, I'm very protective of them- they're like my children, but very tall and sometimes mistaken for trees. I have a lot of affection for trees. Some of my favourite conversations have been with trees. Anyway- the quote made me lose a lot of respect for Mr. Zahm, who I didn't always agree with before, but I didn't dislike either. He will not be coming to any more tea parties.”

Fabulous, dahlings!

Pick of the week: Not Exactly Rocket Science

A quick pick of the week: Ed Yong is one of my favourite science writers on the web because his blog, Not Exactly Rocket Science because he does exactly what it says - takes complicated scientific principles or new experiments and findings and makes them easy and interesting to understand. (Boy, if that wasn't a sentence full of misplaced punctuation!)

I love his simple, personable writing tone, and also the photos he sometimes takes himself like when he's on a safari.


Copyright http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/


Some of my favourite posts are those that revolved around animal behaviour - how birds flying shows the order of their leadership, how animals are better at certain tasks than humans because we over think things. There was even a fascinating set of slow motion videos on duck ejaculation which will never make you see Donald Duck the same way again.

Here's an excerpt from one of his latest posts:

"Three years ago, a nine-year-old girl was admitted to La Merced hospital in Peru with a headache that had lasted for two weeks and a strange “sliding sensation” in her nose. Her parents quickly discovered the source of the problem – a sizeable black worm lodged up her right nostril. They quickly sought medical help and it came in the form of Dr Renzo Arauco-Brown, who “with some effort” removed a seven-centimetre leech from the girl’s nose."

Um, I know that wasn't exactly the most savoury thing to read, but I promise this is about the grossest it gets on there and the rest of his posts are interesting, highly educational and will keep up you abreast with happenings in the science world without all the jargon.

Enjoy!

Pick of the week: Delightfully Tacky

So I was thinking that I should be doing something else instead of just rambling on randomly about myself... I mean, I could tell you a whole lot of stuff about today, like how I'm going to watch Lamb of God tomorrow (provided my work doesn't swamp and kill me first) or how I watched the most awesome documentary last night in which a guy called Nick Baker went on a dive in search of the Indonesian mimic octopus.

(If you've never seen a mimic octopus, I urge you to check out this clip - this isn't from that particular show, but it's amazing all the same. The mimic octopus is one that can swim or colour itself in such a way that it looks like all kinds of other creatures from snakes to flounders to ward off predators.




The cooler part of the show (I thought) was all the stuff that Nick Baker saw on the way to actually finding the mimic octopus, for example, the box fish, which looked like a tiny neon swimming box of chinese takeout, or the wonderpus octopus. The wonderpus (I kid you not) looks almost exactly like the mimic octopus, according to Baker, because the wonderpus is poisonous and the mimicry is part of the mimic's defence.

He actually watched in his scuba gear as the wonderpus floated over to a crustecean and ate it in the most amazing way possible. It stretched out its arms, flared the membranes between them and actually inflated itself like a translucent dome-shaped canvas tent which mantled over the fish and promptly snapped it up with its beak. It. Was. Incredible)

SO. I could tell you all that, but I figured that I would add to the non-existent links in my sidebar instead, with blogs that I love to read for whatever reason each week. Each morning before I can do anything functional, I'm paralysed until I'm done reading a certain set of blogs, so I thought I would share them with anyone out there who is reading this (all two of you) because they inspire me, make me think or make me smile, and maybe they'll do the same for you.

Copyright http://www.delightfully-tacky.com

One of the blogs I like very much is this one - Delightfully Tacky - which is written by a girl who lives in Alaska - the backdrop to some of the stunning photos. I love it because even though it's a fashion blog (and god knows there are a million out there) she not only has adorable style, she's one of the spunkiest girls I read.

Copyright http://www.delightfully-tacky.com

She wrote one post about all the other aspects to her life even though most people only know her as a blogger and it was both surprising and wonderfully inspiring to find out that she also plays ice hockey, rides horses, exhibits muscle cars and actually worked on a fishing boat in the middle of the icy ocean for months (ala Deadliest Catch) and I thought it was incredible.

As are some of the things she writes:

" I hate the fashion magazines telling me to wear this or that. I hate the pages full of trends. I hate the shopping suggestions telling me to buy $700 shoes and a $2000 bag. I hate the aristocracy. I hate Anna Wintour. Once she walked by me in Bryant Park and I was paralyzed by her presence. But now all I can think is that she is one arbitrary voice in a sea of voices and why does hers matter more than mine? Because she’s been doing it for decades? Because she’s the editor of Vogue? Damn Vogue. I don’t give a shit what Vogue says. I’ll look at their pictures and fawn over the beauty of their editorials, but really, there are photos that are just as magnificent on flickr done by people like you and me."

Copyright http://www.delightfully-tacky.com

And I love that even though she's small-sized and has self-professed "big hair", she's comfortable and at peace with herself which is more than I can say for myself or the people I know sometimes.

For me, her personal status sums it up: "Life is too short to not be who you want to be." And why the hell not? Who's to stop us from being punks or nerds or any cool or strange thing that we chose?

If we could all reach that height of personal zen, we should only be so proud.