Wednesday, April 30, 2008

SS08: Marc by Marc Jacobs

For the last few seasons (ever since they got into the "grunge" look), I have not been too impressed with the Marc by Marc Jacobs collection. This season though I am delightfully surprised! The collection is preppy and retro-chic. My style but with a refreshing twist!
This collection makes me WANT to buy something orange, and that is a difficult feat. I absolutely detest orange. But I am willing to break the rules for these two dresses. I just LOVE the orange dress with the fancy bow tie (though I cannot quite imagine what occasion that would be appropriate for) and the shirt dress is casual and chic.
I don't even mind being obviously Marc by Marc Jacobs. Many would recognize this very distinct geometric shirt dress (left) as Marc by MJ by now (along with the orange bow-tie dress above) but I still like it. I am really impressed that the color seems so "old" and yet, the whole look is still so young!
At first glance I thought this blue printed dress (right) was really cute. But if you look closer, can you tell that it actually has Marc Jacobs written all over it? I thought it was pretty cool that I couldn't tell at first. But now that I can, I think that kind of ruins the dress. Shame.
The definition of retro chic. I love how they mixed the flirty print and color with such a "proper" design. It is both refreshing and stunning. Though it is a bit too much for me. I prefer the more subtle purple dress (right). I absolutely absolutely adore this dress. It is simple, vibrant, youthful and fun. I've tried it on actually, but the fit of the bodice is a bit off. Maybe if I got it tailored.........
More fun casual dresses. I love the block print (right). Its so off and cute at the same time. And the cut of the heart leaf pinafore dress is just adorable!
The neckline and the prints are awesome. I especially love the neckline of the blue shirt (left: it is very ladylike, but the print makes it fun!) and the subtle pinstripes on the yellow shirt (right).
These two are my favourites of the collection, because I think they are great investments. I'm a great believer in outerwear and these two cardigans are perfect to carry around with you this summer- just in case of freezing a/c temperatures! I waaaaant the white one (right)! It is very Chanel-esque with a youthful touch.
A cute jacket is ALWAYS a good buy. You get the most mileage out of them cause you can just throw it over any outfit- and this one is so chic and stylish! (Though it may be a bit too heavy for the summer). And this pinstripe shirt with the ruffles is just darling!

Now if only I can win a free shopping trip for Marc by Marc Jacobs this season!

Image Source: Net-A-Porter

Hey Gringo!


Holy Shit, Nikko Hurtado!

Mike does Gil


Mike DeVries does a wonderful Gil Elvgren pin-up

Feelin' Blue


Hannah Aitchison can make even the undead look hot.

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Skunk-ina-Rip

This tat stinks ! (Now I'm the one using bad puns)

Skull, Snake and a Sword

This happens when you want to have a radical, bad-ass tattoo a little bit too much.

Three Drunk Frogs

His only friends.

You Don't Know Jack

Almost a pun. Jack Sparrow looks like a Smurf ...

Spring/Summer Nail Varnish!

Just when I found the perfect winter nail shade (just in case you were wondering, it is the Essie Sole Mate. It is the perfect rich deep dark purple, with just a hint of red!) , spring comes around. Not that I'm complaining, I can't wait for the weather to get warmer and the sun to shine. Although now it means my nail colors will have to change along with it- to get into the spring mode you know. But I am kind of tired of the pale white pinks that I usually favor for warmer weathers. As classic as they are, it does get a bit monotonous after a while. AND it is super hard to apply properly (this might also be due to my lack of nail varnish applications skills- though I'd like to point out that I have no trouble with the darker colors! Odd, I know).
So I started to consider other colors suitable for spring. Flicking through the Essie advertisements (Yes, I have a preference for Essie!) bright pink crossed my mind (left: Secret Stash). As much as I wanted to try something new though, bright pink does seem a bit too much. I AM 21 now. Not quite Barbie. Then I considered pale purple (right: Looking for Love). It is subtle but still quite different from pale pink. But then I quickly rejected the idea- that is just TOO weird. Its just not a color one would relate to nail color! Kind of like how it is odd for people to put pale blue/purple lipstick on their lips!
After much consideration, I finally found the perfect color, Ball-timore (left). It is the perfect coral pink, with the sharpness of a super bright pink but toned down by orange/coral tones. I simply LOVE LOVE LOVE it. It is youthful and fun with a hint of sophistication. The other color I bought is Hard to Get (right). A more intense version of my usual pale pink hues, I thought this would just be fun and girly to play around with.I also wanted to get a nude color, like this (above: bags to riches). This one is the definition of sophistication and simplicity. But alas, it was getting rather expensive (they hiked the price up in the place I usually go to!!!).

Image Source: Essie

The worst of the worst (NSFW reader submission)

This tattoo is so bad and so NSFW that I can’t show it above the jump.
Alex wrote to me, and said “the bet was high card draw best 2 out of 3 winner got to pick, but had to pay for the losers tattoo.”
Click to find out what the winner picked for him, but remember, it’s graphic.

My Hoots Not In It


Unknown

Phat Neck


More lovely work from Tim Hendricks, especially the spiderweb detail.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Are Eco-Friendly Bags Worth It?

In my head, eco-friendly bags usuallt mean low-priced, off-white bags with some kind of save-the-earth type of message printed on it. Obviously, I've got Anya Hindmarch's "I'm not a plastic bag" bag -the first famous eco-friendly bag imprinted in my head. Back then, they were sold for 5 pounds each in the UK. (The whole craze for the bag is another story.) But clearly with over-demand, many other designers have tried to come up with smart slogans to put on suppsedly eco-friendly bags. I've managed to ignore that trend up until two weeks ago, I found this (literally) happy-looking bag in my mum's paper shopping bag.

No, my mum didn't buy it. She bought a jacket and the bag was a gift for shopping at Seibu, a department store in Hong Kong. We didn't think anything of it until we got home and discovered a HK$500 price tag on it. Wait, $500?! Yup, that was our reaction. We were kind of confused with why this bag would cost $500 in the first place and why the department store gave it away as a gift. I mean sure, the green smiling tree is sort of cute and it does have Moschino printed on it, (-as we all know, anything with a brand name printed on it allows it to be priced above what we think it ought to be worth,) but is it really worth 500hkd? (-500hkd is around 64usd or 30 pounds.) My point is not that I'm complaining about wasting my money on it because it was free, but that who would pay that much for it in the first place? And what you may not be able to tell from the photo is, this bag is small! It is probably the most impractical eco-friendly bag I have ever seen. Even the "I'm not a plastic bag" bag is more practical since it was wide (making up for it's lack of depth.) Plus, there was no message tag attached and the saleslady didn't even explain the point of the bag. Perhaps the proceeds of the bag goes to an unmentioned charity?

Anyway moving onto the Feed Bag. BG blogged about the first style last April. Recently, Lauren Bush released Feed 2 Bag. I have to admit the reason I looked it up was because I was surprised by the 50pound price tag when I saw it in Tatler magazine. But after reading the Harrods website, I am actually convinced it is worth it -According to Harrods' website, "each Feed 2 Bag sold will provide a year's worth of lunch meals in school for two children in need" for the UN World Food Programme's school feeding program. As for the design, it is reversible and made of 100% organic fair-trade material. OK, I can't claim to fully appreciate how 'green' the material is, but the cause actually sounds solid and worth it. I'm assuming people use these eco-friendly bags as their grocery-shopping bags, not to replace their Chanels, so even though it's not supremely stylish, it looks fit for the job, (although I would much prefer one that didn't have "Harrods" imprinted on it.)
What do you think of the whole eco-friendly bags trend in general? Do you use them for grocery shopping? Have you bought any?

Image Credits: http://www.harrods.com/

The Hoot Is Deceitful Above All Things


Kirk Sheppard

Be Still My Beating Hoot


Maximo Lutz

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Bad Angel

Just because it's your back it does not mean that you can hire someone who should have finished his / hers art career at etch-a-sketch. And what's with the head ? Half a brain ?

Saturday, April 26, 2008

The Nokia 7900 Crystal Prism on eBay

Hey people, you know the pretty purple Nokia phone that I blogged about a few days ago and some of you have been wanting to buy it? Well you can now! Since we are the kind of girls who want practical phones with classic, silver designs, (largely because we travel between countries a lot and Hong Kong is one of those places where phones are not attached to phone plans, unlike the UK or US,) we have decided to follow in Style Bubble's footstep and put this Prism up for auction on Ebay (UK). If you are a fun girly girl who wants this phone before it gets released, place a bid here!

Uniqlo UT Project 08

Two weeks ago, the new Uniqlo ad in Grazia (a UK glossy tabloid) featuring Chloe Sevigny really caught my eye. I'm not a fan of Chloe's style, (actually I wonder why people love her style so much,) but I really liked how the black tank top fits her here. Doesn't Chloe look very casual rock chic? And the other big attraction? The fact that the ad is by Uniqlo means that the shirt is actaully affordable!
Uniqlo's collaborations with designers to produce capsole collections are usually much talked of on the Internet. But UT Project seems much more accessible to me. UT Project is basically where Uniqlo collaborates with a bunch of artists and designers to make printed T-shirts. Depending on the designer, not only are the print designs different, but even the fitting of the t-shirts is different. You can probably tell from the few pictures of Chloe modelling them.
The most popular (and publicised) t-shirts seem to be the Basquiat t-shirts (-they're the ones Chloe is wearing in the first two pictures.) I bought the tank top on the left and I love how it's really long, and it's got a slit on one side so you can tie it together the way as shown in the ad. It's going to be one of my lazy-day shirts this summer!
I think the Osamu Tezuka t-shirts are kind of cute. Don't they look so easy to throw on? I imagine wearing them to hang out at a friend's house.
But I'm really not a fan of the surfing-looking t-shirts like the one on the right. (A bunch of people back in high school used to wear surfing t-shirts to school everyday and I think I've been scarred by them.) And I really don't know how to appreciate art because the print on the left t-shirt just looks ugly to me.
The long blue shirt on the right is one of the more special designs. And as for the shirt on the left, it didn't look so pretty to me until I saw it modelled on Uniqlo's Japanese website. Those blobs of green look just like the blobs of colours I'm trying to add to my wardrobe!
We all know celebrities and ads always make things cooler, so if you want some idea how how to dress-up these ordinary T-shirts from 'normal' people, take a look at the images on the Japanese UT website. (Speaking of which, why is the Japanese Uniqlo site so much better and complete than the US and US Uniqlo sites?) It has many girls posing in the tees, giving the tees many different styles -from hipster to cutsy to rock chick to boringly ordinary. Actually, even if you're not a fan of Uniqlo, you should take a look at how they styled the girls for inspiration!

Image Credits: http://www.uniqlo.co.uk/, http://ut.uniqlo.com/

Friday, April 25, 2008

Kingdom Hoots


Rich Wren

Take Me To Your Hoot


Dave Bryant

Shot Through The Hoot


Artist unknown

Electra-fying!


I love Carmen Electra (especially when she got snotted on by King Kong in the extras of Scary Movie 3*) so naturally I adore this perfect Mike De Vries portrait.

*Yes, I've seen the extras of Scary Movie 3. What of it?

Nice backpiece!


Simple but classy Dave Bryant pin-up.

Thursday, April 24, 2008

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

This ones for Lauren

Hey woman, how about a trip to the tattoo shop? You know you wanna. :-)

(For more dog tats check out http://thebark.typepad.com/ )

Clip on Bangs

For a while now, I've wondered what I'd look like with straight bangs. When I found out that my friend managed to avoid the whole "awkward" growing out stage when she got tired of her straight bangs by getting extensions, I seriously considered getting them.I mean, doesn't Alexis Bledel look sooo cute and pretty with straight bangs? Of course, I know that what works for Alexis might not work for me, but I figured that since I have a long face and already have side bangs anyway, I can't go too wrong with straight bangs. I am kind of want to get a new look anyway. Alas, the the prospect of regular maintenance, the fear that it won't suit me after I've cut it and my upcoming graduation (and therefore I don't want to do anything to screw up my hair), stopped me from getting straight bangs.
The other day, flicking through my cousin's teen magazines, I saw the most interesting thing: clip on bangs. How smart! How come I didn't think of that before? So, the next time I went to get my hair done, I consulted my hairstylist, Roy, on the use of clip on bangs. He said that he sometimes used them when they are on location and don't have that much time to style hair properly and that they used it for hair product ads (I was very disappointed to find out that the long, shiny, silky locks models have in hair product ads are fake). He told us that they actually sold them a few blocks away from the salon. At that, HG and I immediately headed over there to get one each. I even brought it back to the hair salon, so Roy can give my clip on bangs a trim. He actually made me go back to return them, because the ones I got were too short. He advised me to get longer clip on bangs. That way I can clip it further back on my head, so that I can cover up the obvious line where it clips on, with my layers. For the shorter bangs, you'd need to wear a headband or something to cover it up.

Excited I immediately went home to try it on. While the concept of clipping your own fringe back, clipping on the fake fringe at the side (I've pointed out the clips with the blue arrow above) and then covering it with your layers sounds very simple, it turns out to be a very difficult task. Trust me, I've given it many many tries over the last 2 weeks and have still to master it. I am tempted to blame it on my inability to use a bobby pin, but I'm beginning to suspect that they are just impossible to put on properly. First it is very hard to clip it onto your hair, because it needs to grasp onto some hair first (difficult to explain properly, but the point is, its hard!). Then, when you DO get it clipped on, it is NOT STRAIGHT. And you cannot have straight bangs that are not straight. If you DO manage to get it half straight and your real bangs are not falling out at this point, you face the problem of color. Apparently, there are many shades of black. I thought that my hair would be fine, since I already dye it an artificial blue black and the clip on bangs were an artificial black as well. But NO. I took it out for a quick 15 minute test drive this weekend (once I FINALLY got it on half way decently) and took a picture. EWW. Not only was the color a bit off, but I totally looked like I had a MOP on my head. Maybe I just don't know how to get it on right? Anyone tried them?

So yes, my awesome clip on bangs idea turned out not to be such a good idea after all.

Image Source: Yahoo TV

Hoot Of Darkness




Uncle Allan.

Hootless


Marija Asanovski
 

Cenat Cenut Blog