Fighting For Filipino Beauty
By: Bianca Valerio
Modeling anywhere in the world is a cutthroat industry. America’s Next Top Model can certainly help many understand what goes on in the industry, albeit in a glamorous way. Turning our attention to Asia, it is deeply saddening that local models are struggling for work, due to the high demand for foreign faces. It’s not a battle of the right body type or good genes, but the "right" skin colour and ethnicity.
Tongue in Chictopia
By: Yu Shan
That’s right. Fashion-crazy the world over has been playing with the online vogue toy for some time now, and we thought it would be a good opportunity to entice more of our readers to join because not only is it super fun but also, really inspiring!
The Sweetest Taste of Sin
By: Eleanor Ng
It’s that moment when your skin touches, when you feel one another, when you gently trace the creases of each other’s features, when you can’t help but memorize every whisper of words unspoken… when you fall in love...
The Truth About Obesity
By: Eleanor Ng
picture taken from www.flicker.com/stefantushaus
So you’re having a bad day. So the workload is piling up. So life is one big f*cking hell. So what? You lay out your remedy options: chocolate, liquor, or that pair of multi-toned Nine West pin-thin heels that remains the reason why you’re stuck in hell to begin with; 490 reasons in Ringgit to be precise. Screw that, you need to feel better.
You splurge on two pairs of the same design in different shades of blue.
A Pinch Of Broke
By: Eleanor Ng
As beggars forego a casual dinner, the middle-class consumes caviar in an awkward demeanor. There is an obvious cultural shift in society, and luxury has lost its price.
While the world economy vehemently reaches a new low, our growing demands have established a new, drug-free high. Years ago, luxury brands were carelessly owned by the Cher Horowitz’s of our generation, and unrequitedly loved by the eagerly emerging Tai’s in all of us. Today, the need for a fashionable status has taken over common sense, and credit card limits are blown to designer proportions just to achieve elitism. Today, the age has blurred between one fashion conscious figure to another, and kids are seen running around with copyrighted monograms splitting their personalities from head to toe. Today, luxury is without a reason, and reasons without definition.
Today, we are broke.
Ugly Better
By: Yu Shan
Admittedly, the hot ABC prime time television series Ugly Betty does not have the most alluring name. Neither does its main character, Betty Suarez, inspire legions of fashion-loving fans in the manner of Gossip Girl‘s Serena and Blair, which have style sites breathlessly documenting their every outfit change, be it on set or daily life. The IMBD site’s Ugly Betty taglines sum it all up, a particularly saucy one directed towards its main character being “Not Everyone Is Ugly On The Inside”. Ouch.
Foreplay and Ovations
By: Eleanor Ng
“My name is Eleanor, and I’m a fashion designer.”
Unlike the welcoming chants of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, the response triggered by such an introduction fails to inspire. Between being called a DBKL worker to an alley side tailor, designers worldwide are mentally jumping off the Eiffel Tower, gaudy and overrated as it may be. Fashion designer, hah. In a world of lawyers and doctors and politicians, who are we to demand any respect? After all, fashion designers only exist to pollute the streets of the daunting public with faulty trends to make amends.
Few choose to know the faces behind the public image. So how important is it for us to have an understanding of the characters that creates the ensembles we love and adore so much? How much is it about the clothes as opposed to the personality behind the catwalk? Would Betsey Johnson be as famous for her over-the-top outfits if not for her loud and boisterous facade?
Gravity is Calling
By: Eleanor Ng
Here is a question for the masses; is the Internet as deadly to fashion as MTV is to music?
Amateur online shopping websites and blogs are popping out like pesky weeds. From locals to internationals, from personals to experimental(s), possibilities of an easy shopping experience is sweeter than a casual drive towards your shopping wish list. But to what extent does online shopping satisfy a consumer? Do we really enjoy the lack of communications between buyers and sellers? Have we succumbed to laziness as a form of personal expression?
picture credited to www.blogshopr.com
With sites linking to one another, the curiosity that lays the next link ahead is too strong for most of us to fight. Therefore, we spend hours smudging the linear of the mouse [...]
Riding Coattails
They say that the apple does not fall far from its tree. But sometimes the apple gets bruised in nature’s process; critics are a harsh bunch. When talent makes itself known, ignorant minds tend to make excuses for their own lack of progress in life by judging those who succeed. We applaud the stories of success which include struggle, starvation and third world knowledge, but we spit and spite the stories which began with success. Donald and Ivanka Trump, Roald and Sophie Dahl, Ralph and Dylan Lauren… the list of famous surnames and their splitting images goes on. But are they really in the game just because they can? Did they achieve success by name-dropping? Or do they really deserve more credibility than a famed surname?
Losing My Religion
By: Eleanor Ng
With the pending law against Muslim headscarves in Denmark, questions about the fate of religion and conflicting cultures in fashion have emerged, and with it, questions of identity.
For as long as its appearance, the clothing line cleverly dubbed Imitation of Christ has been a personal favorite, if only by a titled perspective. The idea of God being a greatly ambiguous force benefits faith; God is whoever you want him/her to be, and it is that choice in belief that beckons us into religion, the power to create beyond our imagination. Tara Subkhoff’s first show in New York was a presentation of political error. As male models walked down the catwalk in a mix of military uniforms and Arab tunics, footage from the Iraq war played on the backdrop. American flags waved as a child recited the Pledge of Allegiance, a George Bush impersonator watching as this parody performs its fashion statement… enough said.
Threading Heavy
picture taken from www.alexramon.com Along a street of infringed names and neon lit boutiques, a forlorn sign that hangs vaguely lopsided is timidly watching the days go by. It feels a draft of displacement in progress, holding on to faint strings of cobwebs and a famed past slowly forgotten. Every so often, a passing shadow breezes past to clear the cobwebs away, if only long enough for a glance of its presence. However, the cobwebs fall into place as hastily as the callous youths walking by in a fast pace… The sign continues to watch the days go by.
Back to Basics
The intellectuals believe in themselves, and the idiots believe in psychics. Predicting the future is as precarious as it is far-fetched, yet this is all we do as fashion designers; we predict the future. We also like to run around in naked irony, but that little trait shall be analyzed on
Read Me a Story…
Her legs tremble against the delicate straps; love is as harsh as it has always been. The words recite themselves, the errors repeat themselves, and her aching heart condones itself. He watches her ritual in silent gratitude, her poignant emotions and coordinated colors becoming his weakening crutch. As a wave of apathy rushes past the two inclined, her legs tremble against the delicate straps; they fall into the wind…
Asia, Interrupted
Some of us style, and some of us design. Some of us speak, and some of us write. Some of us love, and some of us lust. At the end of the day, all of us find the need to feel something for the fundamental of life that is beauty.
So what is beauty? Is it the suede couch that you obsessively adorn with embroidered pillows found along Chinatown, or the Indian-inspired tattoo signed against your broken back? Is it in the simple pleasure of watching fabric in motion, or in the sweat and tears rusting the pair of earrings you stole from a blind lady selling…well, earrings? Whatever your definition of beauty, the world revolves around judging your preferences of it.
From Heel to Toe
A woman is as fickle as her wardrobe envisages her to be. Whenever one takes a cautious peek into a woman’s closet, they are flooded by a rush of disoriented styles, from bad choices to spectacular pieces to those best used to create a fabricated noose. But if one knew where to look, there is a predictable sanctuary of personal taste amid the messy chaos; the shoe rack.
Our body shapes may alter according to our designer coffee and/or chocolate intake, but our shoe size remains the same. While this is as common a knowledge as scripted conversations, most of us forget it when it is needed. Peeking into a woman’s shoe rack may not be as strenuous a task as rummaging through her wardrobe; however, this space is proof of an intimate affair. Here, pairs organize us, shapes and heels define us, and mud stains along aging soles tell on us. Our clothes may characterize us on the outside, but it is our shoes that tell the E! True Hollywood story, stench and all.
