Fashion... i.e. My Life

Rocking Neons at the MPHC Climbing Gym

2012-01-23T23:09:00.004-05:00

I'm a member of the MPHC Climbing Gym and I try to go to the gym a couple of times a week. One of the things that has kept me going there as opposed to one of the other gyms in the cities is the staff -- they are always friendly and helpful. So when I asked Bill, the director, if I could do a photo shoot there, he not only said yes, but he said he would open the gym for us a couple of hours before opening so we'd have the gym to ourselves.

So a couple of weekends ago, George, Rachel and I went to the gym to shoot some of the clothes from my surf-inspired collection. I've been seeing neons everywhere lately, and the tape and holds on the walls matched the clothes, so I thought visually it would all work together well Also, I had taken Rachel climbing several times, and she is a trained dancer, so I knew she'd be up to the task.

The photos came out really great, as you can see below. We coaxed George up on one of the ropes. Eli, the MPHC staff member who graciously came in an extra couple of hours early, belayed Rachel and I belayed George, who was perhaps appropriately terrified, especially when I shifted a bit to fix something on Rachel and he dropped a foot without warning. However, the shots he got from up there were pretty spectacular. I had sent Rachel beauty inspiration images, and she did her own hair and makeup. Rachel brought the hot pink stripper heels (she claims they're actually comfortable!) and I made the various plastic brightly colored jewelry she's wearing -- I went on a shopping spree at Michael's craft store and bought glow in the dark beads and neon lanyard.

It was only our second shoot working together, the three of us, but I'd say we make a pretty great team.

Photos: George Evan Andreadis

Model: Rachel Geiman/MC2

Silent Shows presents The Stationary Set

2012-01-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

My friend Erica has made another silent show, featuring our friends The Stationary Set. I helped with sound and sweet-talked the laundromat owners on our block into letting us use the space (they love me because I'm Asian).

Enjoy!

Painting with light

2011-12-30T11:00:00.018-05:00

A while ago I was borrowing Doug's camera, and I asked George to come over and teach me how to paint with light. He said he saw a photo of Picasso painting with light, like the one below, when he was younger and figured out how to do it.

Basically, you set the camera on a long exposure, and start drawing shapes with some sort of light. The pink colored light is the light on the back of my Diana mini flash, the blue is George's black light flashlight, and the white is my iPhone LED light. I used the latter. When you see one or more of us (in addition to the lines created by the light, it's because George would make the flash go off, illuminating us. The rest of the time, the room was dark, so that the light we were painting with would show more vividly.

This image is double exposed; the painting that you see on the right is actually on the other side of the apartment.

In this image, he tried to get it so half of each of our faces lined up. This entailed me sitting on the couch and him making the flash go off, and then we switched seats and he made the flash go off again, so that the image double exposed.

He wasn't thrilled with how they came out, but I thought they looked pretty cool, so I decided to post.

Stella in Chanel Pre-Fall 2012

2011-12-25T11:00:00.002-05:00

I <3 her.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-24T23:10:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas! It doesn't feel like Christmas, given the weather we've been having in New York, but it's already here.

Below are two cards I made -- one for my brother, one for my parents. Guess who got which card!

Doug by George

2011-12-22T12:30:00.017-05:00

George took some photos of Doug last week in his apartment building, mostly in clothes that I picked out for him in the shopping trips to Barneys and Bloomies we've taken over the years. Here are some of my favorite shots:

The first designer suit, a dark navy Dior Homme.

Worn with Burberry trench and my Burberry scarf.

Oliver Peoples' aviators

I want my scarf back, Doug!

Armani linen jacket that he actually picked out for himself.

Poolside in an Armani linen suit.

Same suit, with a matching tie.

John Varvatos leather jacket, hoodie, henley, boots, and Seven jeans.

Unfortunately I don't have a head-to-toe shot of the following look, which is the most recent purchase. It's a grey wool suit, and I picked out the entire outfit head to toe. I thought browns would set off the suit nicely, so we got a brown tie, belt, and shoes. Even the manager of the John Varvatos store in SoHo where we got it was impressed with my styling. :-)

Doug's new "rolly"

To see more, check out George's blog.

Embroidered wedding portrait by my friend Lindy

2011-12-21T23:01:00.000-05:00

My friend Lindy, a gifted writer who has a pop culture blog, also happens to like doing embroidery as a hobby. She decided to do a portrait of her brother and sister-in-law, and enlisted my help to do a line drawing.

Here's the original photo:

I printed the photo out, and took out tracing paper and did this tracing:

She took the tracing and MacGyver'ed a lightbox to transfer the line drawing onto the fabric, and the final product was this:

It came out so pretty! I'm sure they will be thrilled.

Beautiful video of my dress!

2011-12-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

I've been working on my portfolio over the past few months, and decided to enter a fashion competition using some of the designs. I won't say which just yet, but the deadline is next week.

On Sunday, we shot one of the looks in Central Park and George did an amazing job. I'll post some of the photos and sketches at some point, but for now, I wanted to share a video he shot on the Lomokino, which is a hand-cranked video camera that uses regular 35mm camera film. It came out really beautifully. I am really excited about how the photos came out, but want to wait a bit before I release them. I'm still trying to decide on what I'm going to do with the designs.

NEW MEN'S TEES ON KICKSTARTER - ORDER NOW, GET IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS!

2011-11-25T11:46:00.000-05:00

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! I'm excited to announce that after a long hiatus, I have come out with new men's tees! Instead of producing them first and selling (i.e. push manufacturing), I've decided to create a Kickstarter project wherein I present the tees and ask people to order them (i.e. pull manufacturing). If enough people order and I reach my goal amount, then I will produce the tees. If not, I will not produce the tees.

Below is the video, outlining the project:

Here is the link to the actual project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1497919620/your-new-favorite-t-shirts-await-you

I have designed three tees, and two of my friends each designed a tee. Here they are:

sacred heart tee, silver + gold on a grey tee

A firefly whose tail glows in the dark:

Glow in the dark Abraham Lincoln:

A lioness tee:

And a medals tee:

Please check it out!

Our STYLYT contest is now live!

2011-11-21T16:24:00.000-05:00

Check it out or sign up to be a member at stylyt.com!

Lauren Bush (Lauren)'s Ralph Lauren wedding dress

2011-11-21T14:15:00.003-05:00

Beautiful.

Poladroid

2011-11-17T10:25:00.000-05:00

I was looking around the other day for a quick and dirty way to change my digital photos to look like Polaroids, and I discovered Poladroid!

It's a free application, available for both Mac and Windows platforms. You download it, open it up, and then drag and drop a photo onto it. It makes a sound like a Polaroid camera, and then you wait for a couple minutes while it "develops" the photo, like a real Polaroid. Then when it's done it makes this happy noise.

Apparently even Justin Timberlake is a fan:

Music at Coney Island

2011-11-15T11:00:00.001-05:00

Early in October, my friends and I went to Coney Island to shoot a music video for my song, "Drive," which you can listen to and download here. My friend Erica, who shot this video for me, and makes these cool live performance videos of indie musicians, came and shot it on her Canon 7D.

While we were shooting on the boardwalk, a nice man named Bruce came and took photos of me and Shawn, which are what you see below.

This is Shawn. He and I played a couple of shows a couple of years ago, and he is back in New York from Australia, and we're playing another show this Saturday at 11PM at Sidewalk Cafe. You can see the details here. You can check his music out here.

The video is forthcoming, but neither Erica nor I have had a chance to sit down and edit it yet. I am hoping to get to it by the new year.

Graey x STYLYT

2011-11-14T22:16:00.000-05:00

Graey x STYLYT kicks off on Wednesday! Sign up at www.stylyt.com if you haven't gotten your invite yet! This is your chance to design your own Graey piece!

Introducing STYLYT

2011-11-11T11:00:00.003-05:00

This summer, my friend Joon introduced me to Nina and Jenny, his friends from Wharton, who were working on a new fashion website called STYLYT. STYLYT lets users customize the designs of featured designers. Currently, the featured designer on their site is Althea Harper, who was a finalist on Project Runway a few seasons ago.

I'm happy to announce that Graey will be the next brand featured, and our contest will launch in a few days. The site is currently in its Beta version, but you can sign up for an invite by visiting the site here.

Here are some screenshots to show how it works. First, you choose the item you'd like to customize.

Then you customize each section by pointing to it, and then selecting a swatch on the left side.

People can then vote on their favorites, and then I believe the designer helps pick the winner.

I'm interested to see what sort of things people come up with -- so sign up!

How to look like a Native American

2011-11-09T11:00:00.001-05:00

photo by George Evan

I've been mildly obsessed with Native Americans for some time. I think it started in third grade, when we first started learning about Native American culture (specifically the Iroquois), and for a project I built a longhouse diorama. I'm not sure what it is -- probably part of it is the tragic nature of the history. I admire how they created everything they needed from what was around them. Maybe it was the theory that the Native Americans had crossed over to North America from Asia, and so I felt somehow related to them. In any case, I've always wanted to dress up as a Native American, and Halloween is the one time of year where it would not be construed as bizarre if I showed up in Native American wear.

However, when I told my friend who lives on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota about my plan, he balked, saying that the natives found it offensive that people would dress up like that for Halloween. In any case, I hope that no one is offended that I really really wanted to dress up like a Native American. To that end, I tried my best to be as authentic as possible.

A while ago, I convinced my friend Pooja to come with me to an exhibit of Native American clothing at the National Museum of the American Indian, located in the financial district. It was really cool to see the variations, and it reminded me that there were many different tribes and cultures that could be considered Native American. I hunted around the Internet to find a dress to replicate. I ended up using the following:

I had actually planned to create the costume last year, when my hair was quite long, but with my grandmother's sudden passing, I didn't get the opportunity. Unfortunately, this year, my hair was short and blonde, so I had to buy a wig. Luckily, Ricky's sold a "Sexy Indian Wig."

I watched a couple of video tutorials on how to make an Indian dress and followed them loosely. I bought 3 yards of faux suede, and folded it in half to form a rectangle that was the width of the fabric x 1.5 yards. Then I cut a neck hole in the center.

Then I put my head through the hole, and draped the fabric on myself, and placed pins where my wrist, waist, and hips would be. Then I removed the fabric, and pinned a rough curved line connecting those points, to form the side seam.

Once I had pinned both side seams, I put the fabric back on, and made some adjustments (enlarged the waist and hips so they were more comfortable). Then I sewed along the pinned lines.

Next it was time to cut the fringe. This took a long time to do, and I didn't even cut the fringe very thin.

I left about a half inch between the tip of the cut and the sewn seam, and cut basically all along the sides below the sleeve, and the hem of the dress. When the fringe was cut, I started painting a design along the chest. I started off using fabric marker, but ended up whipping out some acrylic paint for the white and the red, to make it more vibrant. For the tiny beads along the purple curve, I used a cool fabric paint that I found at the craft store, which hardens and rounds out to look like beads.

One of the dresses I was using as the reference had these tassels with pony tails, so I fashioned my own, adding a feather and plastic pony beads I found at the craft store, and sewed them under the painted design.

The completed costume, before I put it on, with a shell necklace I got in Hawaii.

I got my friend Jodi to take this photo of me before we went to a Halloween party. This is the original headband that came with the wig (yes it's a wig!), which I managed to lose (and then a new friend of ours found it). I'm including this photo because it was taken before the wig got blown all over the place by the wind -- there was a big storm in the area that weekend. In addition to the shell necklace, I'm wearing beaded earrings that my friend Pooja bought for me in South Africa.

I made a new headband, using some of my faux suede, feathers (they are actually a bunch of feathers glued together), and the beads in a bottle fabric paint. Below is a photo of me pretending to be Sacagawea with Clark, at the Lomography store in Gramercy.

with my friend Ryan.

with Ferris.

with Rachel.

Can you tell how obsessed I am with my costume??? This is a full body shot (see how the wig is pretty wonky). In addition to contributing earrings, Pooja also bought me the little bag I'm holding, in Mexico, I believe.

This is a picture I took with George, who took the first photo in this post, and the awesome ones below -- he tried to make them look as authentic as possible, and processed the images to look like daguerrotypes.

It was Halloween when he took these photos, and we ran into Mickey Mouse on the street...

This is George in the costume I "designed" for him. Can you guess what he is supposed to be?

You can check out more of George's photos on his website and blog.

This is not the last you'll see of this costume. I'm hoping to embellish it further and wear it again when my hair is long and black again...

Sarah Burton (Alexander McQueen Creative Director) chats with Cathy Horyn about Spring 2012

2011-11-05T11:00:00.000-04:00

Really cool video with detail shots of the beautiful garments and accessories, and Horyn's and Burton's insight on how young people view the industry today.

Diving for McQueen on Nowness.com.

The summary from Nowness.com:

Diving for McQueen

Fashion Critic Cathy Horyn Enters the Folds of Sarah Burton's Spring 2012 McQueen Collection

The New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn meets Alexander McQueen Creative Director Sarah Burton at the label’s Paris atelier to explore the house’s intricate, marine-inspired Spring/Summer 2012 collection in Dustin Lynn’s stunning portrait film. Displaying a love and knowledge of fashion far beyond the catwalk, Horyn’s notorious studio visits define her style as a journalist, producing lyrical portraits of designers truly dedicated to the rigor of cutting and creating clothes. Before becoming head of the fashion house, Burton worked as McQueen’s right hand for 14 years. “With Sarah, it has a lot to do with the training she has had at McQueen, and just knowing what the McQueen studio had been like under Lee,” says Horyn of Burton’s qualification for the job. “It was always a place where it was about the technique and craft.” After the turmoil following McQueen's tragic suicide last year, the provocative label has returned stronger than ever with sumptuously beautiful collections, the record-breaking Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute attracting over 650,000 visitors, and Burton designing the Duchess of Cambridge’s much-lauded gown for the royal wedding.

I'm obsessed with her

2011-11-04T14:20:00.000-04:00

From StyleSight

Ferri Roberts Day Off

2011-11-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

My friend Graham, besides being a skilled and talented graphics editor for the New York Times, is an extremely talented musician. He's currently in a band called Murder Mystery, and we became friends through music. Well, music and Science Olympiad, but that's a whole other story.

In addition to playing piano (he would play Chopin at the end of Orchestra class in middle school), and guitar (which he plays in Murder Mystery), he also played cello. So we were in Dorchestra (dorkestra, get it??) together, and a string quartet. At the end of high school we were also in a band together, and in college, he formed a band which went through a few iterations -- Spoontangle (which had a certain special word in the middle), The Classifieds, and then finally, The Glorious Ninth. I was their #1 fan and was pretty sad when they broke up.

Anyway, he recently started a music project with his very talented girlfriend, Jessica, and their first recording is a cover of Johnny Cash's "Long Black Veil." Check it!

Inspired...

2011-11-02T00:24:00.000-04:00

Today I visited the gallery where my friend Nicole works. It's called Galerie Zurcher and is located on Bleecker Street next to the Zero Maria Cornejo store. The show is officially over but was still up - work by a young artist, Matt Bollinger. There were some drawings but what was really fantastic were these painted collages. Here is one of them:

It's hard to tell but what the artist did was paint pieces of paper, cut them up, and glue them to form this image. So any time you see a shift in color, it's a different piece of painted paper, cut up. The lines separating the lockers aren't painted, they're strips of painted paper, glued on. It's really amazing to see close up -- the three dimensionality is striking, and you can't help but be impressed by how much time it must have taken to create the piece. This piece was sold, and Nicole said it could have sold 7 times over. Not bad for a painting that cost several thousand dollars.

Here are a couple of others -- these pieces made me nostalgic for my childhood. The controller in this one was dead on.

As was the logo on this Trapper Keeper painting:

It's not often I find contemporary paintings that are inspiring, but this was definitely one time. You can view more of his work on his website.

Spring 2012 Roundup - C

2011-11-01T11:00:00.000-04:00

There were a lot of C designers. This roundup might take me longer than I expected.

I thought this was a cool neckline detail.

Cushnie et Ochs

I liked the mixing of prints and lace.

Clements Ribeiro

Scottish design prodigy Christopher Kane is one of my faves.

Christopher Kane

This is a cool skirt, especially if you have a nice ass.

Christian Dior

I've become a fan of Christian Cota. I love the colors and delicacy of this print.

Christian Cota

Nice colorblocking.

Chloe

Chanel isn't my favorite, but it's always pretty.

Chanel

Color!

Chalayan

Phoebe Philo is pretty rad.

Celine

Cute top.

Camilla and Marc

Remembering.

2011-10-31T23:42:00.000-04:00

One year ago, my grandmother passed away.

Looking at photos of myself with my short blonde hair, I realized I resemble her, or what she looked like when her hair was completely white. Here's a photo from several years ago of me with my grandmother:

And a photo of my blonde hair from a couple of weeks ago:

It wasn't very often that I saw her, and rarely for very long, and since she had problems speaking because of her strokes for as long as I knew her, I never really felt like I was able to develop a deep relationship with her. However, I experienced her love, and even more, this aching longing to see her son, my father. I'm not sure I can say that I miss her but I do feel a sense of loss, and I dread the day that I bury my own parents, or really, any other loved one. At any rate, rest in peace.

The Fashion Truck

2011-10-26T08:58:00.000-04:00

My friend Emily started The Fashion Truck last year, and was in New York for an event with Racked.com yesterday, so I finally got to check it out. It's basically what the name implies -- a retail outlet on wheels.

There is a more extensive post with pictures of the interior on my friend Michelle's Untapped blog -- check it out!

Spring 2012 Roundup - A through B

2011-10-20T11:00:00.002-04:00

It used to be that Style.com only featured a select few designers on their site, but now their list of designers is quite extensive. As a result, this is the first season in a while where I can say that I've viewed nearly all the shows posted on the site, so I've decided to post some of my favorite looks. For some reason, Blogger adds photos to the top of your post instead of the end, so these are in reverse alphabetical order.

I love the way the black bra peeks out. And Joan Smalls is smoking.

Bottega Veneta

I can't say this collection got my panties in a twist, but I love these pants (though not the color).

Bibhu Mohaptra

I'm ordinarily not that into BCBG, but they nailed the colorblocking this season.

BCBG Max Azria

I'm liking what Olivier Rousteling is doing at Balmain. I love the baroque top with the rock and roll leather pants.

Balmain

Ah, Balenciaga. How I love you so. This was probably one of the most commercial looks in the collection.

Balenciaga

Not super wearable, but beautiful details on the bodice.

Anthony Vaccarello

Thought this maxi skirt was really cool, along with how the super skinny belt goes under the flaps.

Ann-Sofie Back Atelje

Loved the print on these pants.

Anne Valerie Hash

Sheer skirts -- might not be practical but looks cool.

Ann Demeulemeester

I liked how he mixed prints. Joseph, I just thought you were a pretty face but I'm picking up what you're putting down.

Altuzarra

Lim's clothes often bore me in their super-wearability, but these colors are so gorgeous.

3.1 Phillip Lim

Apparently I'm equally right and left brained...

2011-10-19T08:08:00.002-04:00

Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz
The higher of these two numbers below indicates which side of your brain has dominance in your life. Realising your right brain/left brain tendancy will help you interact with and to understand others.
Left Brain Dominance:	(10)
Right Brain Dominance:	(10)
Right Brain/ Left Brain Quiz