passion is in fashion

Why does she wear sunglasses indoors?

They are seriously useful. I can sit in a show and if I am bored out of my mind, nobody will notice… At this point, they have become, really, armor.

- From Morley Safer’s 60 Minutes interview

I had a set of Disney Snow White sheets when I was little. They were white and purple and had a bunch of pictures of snow white dancing with the seven dwarves on them. But this is so much better.

New favorite fashion blog.  what chuck wore

I love them.  Had them for the first time at the Sanya Banyan Tree, which is kind of a funny because they are so completely unrepresentative of southern China.  Three of them came with the turn-down service.  Honey and I ate them all.  We planned on not telling our villa-mate Teddy about them having ever existed, but the failed when we started giggling as he saw the empty plate.

Except for the part where she dissed China.  While I agree the prevailing nouveau riche fashion of Wenzhou is of questionable taste, the entire Qing dynasty is not easily forgotten.  Carine Roitfeld in an interview with Acne Paper Managzine. Via The Cut.

Jeans are for assistants.

I only wear jeans and flat shoes when I am on holiday, never for work. Jeans suit me very well but it’s not for me anymore. It’s horrible to say but it has something to do with age. I have good legs, so I prefer my skirt lengths and my high heels. It’s like my uniform. I never wear jeans. Jeans are for my assistants… I wore knee-length jeans skirts. I never wear miniskirts because they make me look older.

She thinks she doesn’t look like she has anything special on.

If people ask me to describe my look I always say: quite classic with an edge. Look at my dress. It doesn’t look like I have on anything special, it’s more the way you mix the clothes and how you move, how you open your bag, how you cross your legs – just little things that make a difference. With French women you first see the woman and then you see the clothes. Imagine other countries like Russia or China, even Eastern Europe. They don’t have the culture of clothes so they want to show that they can afford to buy a Dolce & Gabbana bag, they want to show labels. In France you cannot see what labels we are wearing. It is very snobby.

Every woman over 35 in France isn’t addicted to Botox.

We have the sort of beautiful older woman here in Paris. People like Loulou de la Falaise and Betty Catroux, all these beautiful looking women over 60… So there is culture here in France that even if you are older you can stay beautiful. Some people do surgery but it’s subtle and the teeth are less white. I think it’s less common in France that a man at the age of 50 buys a Porsche and gets a young girlfriend.

The French are not into gyms.

Oh, there are some overweight women here but it’s not like in America. Going to the gym is not like in New York where you have these huge places where hundreds of people are running together. This doesn’t exist in France. We don’t have the space and it’s really not in the French mentality.

She does not weigh her staffers, but it’s not like she needs to.

In France we drink wine and eat cheese and bread and finally we stay slim. I am skinny, and all my girls are skinny. People think I weigh my girls in the office but I do not. We have a scale in the office because we travel a lot and sometimes you can’t bring more than 25 kilos a case. It’s just to weigh my luggage, not to weigh my editors. Still, you know it’s easier to look great in a dress when you are skinny. But I like a bit of curves and I like to do stories with different kinds of women because I see beauty in everyone.

Carine may have something to do with how you shave down there.

When I started doing all the Gucci campaigns with Tom Ford and Mario Testino we pushed so much and after that everyone copied it. Everyone tried to be this Gucci girl that we created. So I am sure we were part of this tendency. It was good at the time because we were the first ones to do these kinds of images to sell a product and after that everyone kept on doing it. I think now it’s too much. It’s no fun. It’s not chic. We always had a chic eye on everything, even when we shaved the G on the girl. A lot of girls started shaving their pussy in different ways after that so it really became a trend

One night I decided to stay in. Honey decided to stay in. We decided to upload Facebook photos. She decided to comment on my photos. She decided to email me about something. Seeing that I was online, she decided to Google Talk me to share some gossip. When she couldn’t type fast enough to keep up with her excitement, she decided to call me to dish.

And so within five minutes, I was contacted via a thousand different technological channels. The Future, (dramatic pause), is here. Today, the way one uses technology instantly defines one as of a certain generation.

Take the provider personal of email addresses, for example. Most of the time, people fall into the Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, or Netvigator camps. These are extremely telling. Gmail became popular around 2005, where J was the first person I knew with a Gmail address. His brother bid on an invite for him on Ebay. Then Gmail invites became prevalent through massive college friend distributions. Basically, anybody from the graduating classes of ’05 onwards set themselves up with a Gmail address upon abandoning their .edu’s.

Hotmail is and interesting dichotomy. It could mean they were the first batch of internet surfer when they were *the* provider of free accounts before everyone else. It could also mean they are just an international person who like to use MSN for chatting and conveniently also use Hotmail (especially popular in Asia). Yahoo is undoubtedly the parental email address. My mom has one. Everyone around her age has one. Once Hotmail because too cutesy and confusing to use and Yahoo came out offering larger mailboxes, they switched over the Yahoo. Lastly, along with Netvigator, I’ll throw in the AOLs and any email address that came along with the person’s internet service provider. These are just so *unhip*.

Now let’s move onto another manifestation of generational gap: the level of mastery of prevalent forms of expression. I’ll stick with two examples: 1) The Facebook Wall, and 2) Twitter.

By this time, most have figured out the purpose of the Facebook wall. It is mostly for posting things that are 1) inconsequential and funny (e.g. miss u xoxo~! keke) or 2) getting in touch with people that one is not good enough friends with to personally email. Every once in a while, I see a wall post that goes something like a well-crafted typewritten cover letter. “Dear xxx, How are you? I will be in town for a few days was wondering if you are available. I forward to hearing from you. Regards, xxx” — I instantly think: what period is this dinosaur from?!?

The next new thing is of course Twitter – spontaneous broadcasts to undefined audiences. Just like the way Dior’s New Look was representative of the post-war society’s need to find something spectacular, Twitter is a reflection of today’s ME generation – who think everything they say is so witty and worthy of everyone’s attention. (What?! Of course it is.)

When I first started using Twitter, it was hard to wrap my head around the concept. I had no idea who (or if anyone) was reading my Tweets, and did not know how to contain my thoughts within 140 characters and still be interesting. As I read more and more Tweets, and silently judged who is worth following and who is not, I have to say the 140 character limit is brilliant. As one professor so concisely explained the length of a good paper: “Just like girls’ skirts, it should be long enough to cover the topic, but short enough to keep things interesting.” Some examples of good Tweets, where I LOL-ed:

• Got room service, utensils fell on floor. Either I’m really tired from the redeye or my silverware just tried to commit suicide
• At a friend’s house and when I walked by a cactus it poked me. Personally, I find that unnecessary and a bit immature
• In elevator, wanted to know cell phone carrier girl used b/c she said she had beautiful reception. She meant wedding reception

- By Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh

Now onto some examples of bad Tweets: “Going to sleep”, “Doing laundry”, “Eating dinner”, “Feeling lonely”. They are just not that news-worthy or entertaining. Yes, we *all* do that at some point. It is really not what you are doing or what you are thinking, but how you express it (in 140 characters or less.)

My favorite college roomie, whom during finals time I am guaranteed to find sprawled out on the futon writing her paper (which was due 10 hours ago) while nursing a massive amount of coffee.

I guess the funniest times were during her art history days, where I not only I found her in various states of alertness at 4am, but also buried among a bunch of painting flash cards. Keke.

I guess Wednesdays are the best for ex-lover drive-bys. Mondays and Tuesdays feel like schooldays, and I usually like to go out on Thursdays and can’t be bothered with thinking about ex-lovers.  Weekends are obvi out of the question cuz they’re for new lovers.

Maybe only suitable for hotels and kind of weird for the home, but I find this one fun and reminiscent of castles!