High-Waist Pants and Cropped Top

When I fly up to New York, I usually take Jet Blue, mostly because I have one of their credit cards and get lots of points for free miles that I still have yet to use. However, their times between NYC and Austin are awful: a 7am flight there, and one that arrives at midnight on the way back. Since the snooze button is my morning regular BFF, I decided not to risk a missed flight this time and flew Delta instead.

Let me tell you, flying Jet Blue seems like first-class in comparison to the horrors of a Delta plane. My 120-pound frame felt like it would have been squished to death had me or my neighbors actually been the average size of an American adult (a.k.a. overweight). They do not let you pick your seats, which meant that on the way there I could neither rest my head against the window nor use the bathroom without disturbing a sleeping individual. There is no TV or Radio, so if you did not happen to bring entertainment sources, you'll be looking at the Skyline Malls catalog for 4 hours straight. Stale peanuts for snacks made me want to cry as I though of the Terra Blue chips I could have been eating instead had I remained loyal to my airline. And worst of all, I had to pay $25 for a checked bag!!!

So the point of all this (besides giving you a valuable lesson in airline choices) is that the one good thing about Delta was that their flights have wireless. Of course, it is way to expensive to actually pay for, but they do have two sites you can use for free: Gilt and Ebay. The ex-Ebay-Addict in me was finally allowed to roam free again for a few hours, as I placed bids here and there for impossibly cheap things that I did not need (I had barely managed to shut my suitcase with all the New York purchases I was lugging back). Fortunately, I only ended up winning two: a $25 rabbit fur jacket from Hong Kong and these Elizabeth and James pants for $10. Could have been much, much worse!

Cropped Top: TopShop

Pants: Elizabeth and James

Faustine Steinmetz's Slow Fashion

High street fashion thrives off of taking the exclusivity of exclusive brands, cheapening them through cheap and rapid manufacturing, and making them accessible to the masses for incredibly cheap prices. In order to maintain their high-price appeal, fashion houses have to keep inventing new designs that are impossible to produce on a cheap, mass scale: laser-cutting, hand-stitched detailing, bouffant shapes, silk ruffles, exclusive silk prints, and the rest. As soon as someone figures out how to recreate these trends for a fraction of the price tag, a new trend frenzy is born and every fashion-obsessed teenager is speeding to the mall to add it to her season's wardrobe.

Faustine Steinmetz decided to talk the opposite route. Taking inspiration from common street wear-jeans, tracksuit jackets, backpacks and watches, she's introduced a slow-fashion creation process that brings an intricate process into garments that are now almost exclusively mass-manufactured. The resulting trompe l'oeil pieces have become quite popular, and will soon be stocked at East London boutique Hostem.

Realizing that she didn't want to create luxury in couture houses her whole life, the young designer got her own loom and set to work, creating the fabric from scratch, and sourcing her materials from locals in England. With the help of a few interns, the vision soon turned to reality, rolling out hand-woven, hand-dyed jeans, T-shirts, backpacks and even accessories. The process is extremely labor-intensive, requiring up to 40 hours for a single garment! But this, according to her, is the whole point: creating something that has a story, tells something both about the person wearing it while reflecting the vision of its creators.

Who knows, perhaps in a few years slow fashion will become just as popular as the slow food movement is today. While creating your own hand-woven jeans is much harder than canning your own tomato sauce, these beautiful creations suggest that perhaps all the hard work may be worth it. 

Landscape Dress and Lace Vest

Spring has been really belated here, hasn't it? First a freezing April, and then never-ending showers in May! Although i can't complain-I much prefer this to the 100-degree heat that might otherwise already be beginning to show it's ugly colors. The only problem I have with rain is that it gives me the worst headaches and makes me terribly drowsy. Even coffee and chocolate, my usual cures, seem to barely help! Added to that, it's just been a terrible past week for me personally, so I've been turning to lots of wine instead. 

And this is why I love this dress-it instantly reminds me of spring and fresh new beginnings. It features a beautiful mirrored landscape that I would love to visit someday. I'm not sure where the picture that inspired it is from, but I imagine some Scandinavian country (maybe that's also because it's my dream to move to Sweden someday).  Inspiring enough to spend my Friday inside, safe from thunderstorms, making plans for better things once everything is cleared up!

Dress: Anthropologie

Lace Vest: Vintage

Heels: Clarks

Meshu: personalized foursquare jewelry

While tailored clothes have all but disappeared from the mainstream in the past few decades, individualism seems to be on the comeback. The popularity of DIY shows how much we all yearn to have our individual imprint on what we wear for the world to see. The places we've been, and the spots we frequent on a regular basis all leave a lasting imprint on us, determining our friends, moods, lifestyle, and the choices we make. 

Foursquare, the app that lets you brag to friends about what cool restaurant you're eating at, was also a way to imprint these memories in a hard drive without taking up any physical real estate. A decade later, we can scroll through the places we frequented in our 20s and reminisce about what went on in each of them.

Fortunately, Meshu (pronounced like "Mesh You", get it?) has found a genius way to mesh individualization with our need to remember the places that formed us. Sha Hwang and Rachel Bix, both data visualizers, have found a way to use the data of your foursquare account to create jewelry that is a reflection of the places you believe are important to your life, whether the cities you hit up on a road trip, the eateries your frequented in your town over a year, or everywhere your boyfriend took you for friday night dates.  Unless you have a stalker, no two jewelry pieces will be alike, and each piece includes a poastcard with a map that shows how the places mesh with the lines of the jewelry.

 The pieces also each featured a unique URL, allowing you to leave a digital trace of the inspiration behind your next pair of earrings or a necklace. Beyond being a perfect way to keep your memories alive, this concept showcases how technology and fashion are allowing us to wear pieces are a direct product of each individuals' life story.

The life of a game piece

Last week, while visiting my parents in New York, we decided to take a day trip to Philadelphia. Apparently, it has the largest collection of public art in the nation, so there are random statues all over the place! I think the street art is pretty abundant too, but unfortunately there wasn't enough time to explore this time around. I did make it to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which had a great collection of art from every period, and barely anyone was even there. A totally different experience from the Metropolitan Museum only a few hours away in New York!

Dress: The Loft

Sneakers: Buffalo Exchange

Sunglasses: Buffalo Exchange

The Best Free Events at Austin Fashion Week!

Photo by DeusXFlorida

For those of you in Austin, you should get ready for Austin Fashion Week this weekend!! While a lot of the events require a (expensive) ticket, many of them are free and open to the public, just like SXSW! I've compiled a guide of what looks like the best things to check out:

Friday, May 3rd

3 PM: Langford Market Presents: SMS Jewelry Designs' Retail Showcase

If your boss is kind enough to let you go home early on Friday, go check out the local jewelry designs at this showcase. Free Tito's vodka and bites from Cantina's will make the browsing even more enjoyable!

6 PM: AFW Kickoff Party at ESTILO

This one will have a fashion show by Estilo and Rare Trends, which creates couture for women who want to wear art, not clothes, with prices far below what we thing of when we think "couture".  Their past collections focus on wearable, but avant-gardish clothing that's perfect for someone who wants to look unique without looking crazy. I can't wait to see what they have in store this season. There will also be a jewelry trunk show by Taylor Moseley and Deep Eddy Vodka cocktails!

6 PM: League of Rebels

If your man needs a (formal) style makeover, or just wants to try some Great Bourbon, head on over to this event!

Sunday, May 5th

12:30 PM: Hill Country Galleria Runway Shows & Marketplace

Personally, I'm not sure that this should be considered an "Austin" Fashion Week event since I don't consider Hill Country to be in Austin, but whatever. There's going to be six designers showing their wares on the runways, the models will be local high schoolers, and a DJ named Manolo Black will be spinning. I don't see any mention of free drinks, however. 

6PM: Millie & Mox's Fashionista Champagne & High Tea Evening

So this is all children's clothing, but I still think it looks really cool. Their shop has stuff for kids, from clothing to toys and books, from all over the world, and it looks really really cute. Plus they'll be handing out champagne, international deserts, and fine teas! If you don't have kids, you can always scout out future presents for your nieces, nephews, grandchildren and friends' kids. Only the first 150 people to RSVP get in though, so hurry up!

6:30 PM: AFW Fashion Fiesta

Jewelry showcase from BonBon by Micah Yancey, which has jewelry good enough to eat, along with Vodka, Tex Mex and really good gelato!

Monday, May 6th

6 PM: An Evening with Daniel Esquivel

Daniel Esquivel, from this season's Project Runway, will be at the Austin School of Fashion Design! There will also be bubblies, and local designers and fabric stores.

Tuesday, May 7th

5 PM: I want candy!

There's going to be fashion by Amber Perley of Pearl Southern Couture, whose designs don't look that interesting to me, but there's nothing else going on, and there will be free booze and eats!

Saturday, May 11th

1PM: Faith by Jessica Runway Show

Faith by Jessica features glamorous attire for glamorous women, which I'm sure is an accurate description of all my readers. It's at Central Market, so of course there will be yummy food and drinks :)

There you go....more events can be found here, but I wanted to give you guys a filtered version of those that were actually free, were more than a retail event, provided drinks, and/or whose designers looked like they might be worth checking out.

A history of denim

Photos from Topshop Tumblr, Denim Therapy, lolobu 

Walk out on the street in almost any part of the world and at least half of the people you see will be wearing something made out of denim, most likely jeans. Crazy!!! The comfort of denim, as well as its resistance to wrinkles, wear and dirt, make it the perfect choice for a generation that is used to putting comfort ahead of everything else in their clothing choices.

Denim is also seen as a democratizer-the unique qualities of the material give a tailored fit with no tailoring required, giving us all the opportunity to wear form-fitting clothes without an aristocrat's budget. And there is more....denim is also incredibly long-lasting, which is why spending a couple hundred bucks on a pair of good jeans may be the best fashion investment you can make. Back in the day, a miner named Homer Campbell wrote a letter to Levi's in 1920 complaining about the fact that after three years of wearing his Levi's every single day, the jeans were starting to come apart. Apparently his previous Levi's had lasted much longer!

Before World War II, jeans were primarily restricted to the West: limited to cowboys, farm workers, and dude ranch visitors. However, when people saw Marlon Brando and James Dean sporting jeans onscreen, they immediately wanted to look just as cool, and a new fervor was born amongst American teens. Jeans were soon banned from schools, but denim continued to gain rapid popularity. Soldiers wore them abroad as a symbol of home, while college students in the 60s sported them to show solidarity with the working class. Since then, denim has become a staple of the closet of every strata of society, from rebellious punks to Fifth Avenue princesses.

Of course, the form in which denim is presented has changed drastically through the years: from traditional jeans, it has shifted into skirts, jackets, shirts, and even car seats. The dye has been altered too: denim can now be produced in any hue, not to mention the prints and waxed versions that are popular nowadays. The "wear", once a sign of supreme dedication to one piece of clothing for years, is now readily available with pre-washed and pre-torn varieties. With so many possibilities, it is no wonder that denim now considered an essential part of anyone's wardrobe, whether just someone just too lazy to care for how to look, or editors getting dressed for the cameras snapping them at fashion week.

Check out other posts about Denim at the IFB Roundup!