Velveteen

Velvet. It's a tricky business, isn't it? One minute you love it, the next it's stifling. Well, in this moment, I'M LOVING IT. IN ALL ITS FORMS. I love the coats and the pants and the dresses. It's so snuggly and wintery. Too comfy. For your viewing pleasure:

Ralph Lauren

Leyendecker

Prada

Proenza Schouler

Givenchy

Vince

Kelly Wearstler

Photos courtesy of style.com

These Shoes!

We women have a particular fascination with shoes. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's because they can change the whole look of our outfit (or body--hi there, posture)--, or that they keep our toes warm, or because we're attracted to shiny things, or but they can be rather consuming. Which ones to get, (how to pay for them), which color, what to wear them with--these all are part of a woman's shoe shopping experience.

Shoes can be many things. There's the shoe of the moment that EVERYONE is talking about:

Miu Miu

There is the androgynous shoe:

Aperlai

There is the shoe as art installation:

Aperlai

But in this particular moment, I'm loving this shoe:

Alexander Wang

I'm loving the minimalist lines and the way it elongates the leg. Love love love. A little different look than this sucker, ain't it?:

Now I understand that you East Coasters or people who live in places where it gets colder than 60 degrees, might think, "welp, that's an impractical winter shoe...". And you would be right. This is not appropriate for you. In lieu of that (and spring's arrival), here is this shoe:

Alexander Wang

Equally sexy with the added benefit of not getting hypothermia. Win win.

All photos courtesy of style.com and the particular designers, except the second to last one which is courtesy of nastygal.com.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I don't know about you, but this is one of my favorite holidays. I hope you're lucky enough to be with whoever you call family, eating delicious homemade (or home-delivered, if cooking's not in your bag of tricks) food, and laughing louder than the rest of them. Happy Holidays!

Here's to A Better Life

I had the good fortune of attending a screening of A Better Life tonight with a Q & A afterwards with the movie's director: Chris Weitz (director of American Pie and About a Boy, and producer of A Single Man). 

Here is the trailer:

And while the movie was good and really socially relevant--especially in California and other border states--I found the discussion afterwards to be most interesting. I love hearing from directors about their process and their interaction with actors. Mostly I just love hearing from successful people how they got to be so successful. And from careful listening, I've discovered the secret: BLIND OPTIMISM. These people may not have known entirely what they were doing or how they were doing it, but they prepared themselves for the task at hand and worked hard to convince other people that they could be counted on.

So, it's time to no-holds-barred convince yourself and those around you that you are the most fantastic version of whatever it is you'd like to be. Let's inject a little naivete, optimism, and stubbornness into our everyday lives and see where it takes us. Hopefully, just as far as we expected.

Book of the Foreseeable Future: Bright Shiny Morning

 

It's been a while since there's been an installation of "Book of the Foreseeable Future" (insert booming announcer man's voice here). This is mainly due to the fact that the latest book I picked for this article was hella long. Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey (yes, that James Frey) is 501 pages of teeny tiny font. This man makes you work for it, that's for sure. Bright Shiny Morning is about Los Angeles, primarily, and the people lucky or unlucky enough to be living here. It follows a rich and famous movie star with more than a few problems, a Mexican-American girl's romantic journey, a young couple brave enough to go there with nothing, and a homeless man trying to do good. Each story is at once heartwarming and tragic. There are definitely moments in the book that I almost cried because of the beauty of it and moments that made me sick. It's really got it all. So if you simultaneously want to be terrified of and thrilled to move/travel/visit LA, this is the book for you.

Lauren's Rating: 7.7 bottles of Chablis out of 10 golf course weddings

Yellow Diamonds

It's music video time. We're exploring pop culture today. This Thursday we're looking at Rihanna's new video "We Found Love". Rihanna's videos can verge into a little darkness...and this one's no different. This video first made me wish it was summer again so I could wear cut-offs and little shirts, and by the end made me never want to try drugs. (Side note: I need her America bikini.) Its whole vibe reminds me of NastyGal and Urban Outfitters and Coachella all rolled together. Let me know what you think of it.

we found love--Rihanna

"It's like screaming. And no one can hear."

Forrested

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm really excited about this post. I don't like to favor one post over another, but I do. (They're not my children, after all.) So it is with conviction that I can say this one is a topper. This shoot for Flare is so beautiful, I can't not love it more than the rest.

This is, by far, one of the coolest editorials I've seen in a while. Every picture is gorgeous! I almost regret putting them all in one post because each picture needs to be savored. Expect me to use these photos more than once...I won't be able to help myself. The images are just too striking. And a nice offshoot--it makes me excited for winter to come!

Hyoni Kang by Chris Nicholls for Flare December 2011