Tagged: Fashion
The Story of…Costume Jewellery
Your trusty fashion accessories play no small part in dressing up your outfit. In fact, I think many girls can agree with me when I say that the easiest way to add some pizzazz to your wardrobe is through costume jewellery. Now a days, finding something to complement your outfit is easy and affordable. In New York, I am blessed with street vendors (though, some can be rather …dodge-y), little markets with talented local accessories designers, and fast fashion retailers a-plenty. We may take it for granted, but costume jewellery actually became popularized less than a century ago! Before that? Wearing necklaces, rings, bracelets… anything that cost you less than an arm and a leg was much less common (I am only half joking).
So what exactly is costume jewellery? The term ‘costume’ is really what we refer now to as an outfit! Costume jewellery can be synonymous with junk jewellery, fake jewellery, trinkets, or more pleasantly known as fashion jewellery. Originally made from inexpensive materials like simulated gemstones, semi-precious stones, metals, plastics, woods, costume jewellery has come far in the variety and the quality that is available. ‘Real’ jewellery are ones that are generally more pricey, or made from rarer materials are known as ‘fine jewellery’. Baublebar is a fantastic place to find your latest fashion jewellery, as opposed to a place like Harrods, which would be a lovely place to turn to for a stunning selection of fine jewellery brands.
Those of us familiar with fashion icon Coco Chanel may have heard that she popularized the use of costume jewellery with her adamant love of faux pearl and gold, but did you know that costume jewellery has actually been around for well over 300 years? In its beginning, affordable jewellery was made accessible because it was largely made from inexpensive glass. The demand for it grew over time because common people could afford to indulge in this bit of vanity. The happy days for costume jewellery really came with the industrial revolution in the early 20th century, when production abilities were able to satisfy the demands of the new and arising middle class. Now, owning costume jewellery that looks like fine jewellery is easy fun that even I could partake in. And that’s coming from a poor college student! Hooray!!
Now that I’ve shared a bit of back story for costume jewellery (I’m sure I’m not the only person sick of reading the word jewellery over and over and over again…), let me share with you some of my absolute favourite pieces at the moment (there are actually quite a few , haha).
I completely realise that I look like a silly monkey in most of these, but… eh, it’s a lot less boring that looking at the camera, hoping that it turns out to be a good shot, yenno. Anyway, I will tentatively be back soon!
Thanks for reading.
Much love,
Vi
Blushing Lace
This past weekend, I was thrilled to prance around a suburb in the outskirts of Chicago in one of my favourite all lace dress. I see lace as the quintessential touch of femininity that adds to any wardrobe. Lace is something that will enjoy longevity in the market simply because it can be very versatile. Walk into any retail, and I promise that you will find something that has some lace on it. This is old news. What is up and coming is blush.
Powerhouse fashion forecasters like Trend Council and Fashion Snoops are already on it, naming variations of blush to be something to look out for on the runways this fall.
http://trendcouncil.wordpress.com/
Why not indulge in these lovely tones today? The beginning of summer is the perfect time to add vibrant colours to your pastel pieces! Here’s how I wore it down below.
My colour palette was very neutral for the day to keep the look clean, but I would love to see how you would wear your blush!
Thanks for reading!
Much love,
Vi
What Not To Wear Wednesday – Camo
The title says it all, WNTWW or What To Wear Wednesday (trust me, this is going to be hashtag worthy one day) is going to be my new feature, based on my opinion of certain fads/trends/clothes/pieces. Sometimes, some of them just need to go
Currently, I am working with an online retailer by the name of neonsis.com . I am their North American consultant and buyer, so it’s pretty vital for me to keep up with what the new trends are, and how people will receive it. Now, I am not going to be ripping you off with a simple, “I HATE THIS”, I will try to justify my humble opinion.
So for my first WNTWW, I have chosen the fad camo print. For those of you unfamiliar with the camo print, here it is: .png)
I have seen some seriously fashionable people taking on this print. I recoiled at the sight, because that made me re-live the year when I was 8 years old, and camo came in all colours and forms. I think something that prevents this print from enjoying the same longevity that various animal prints have is the fact that it borders boisterous. Perhaps it’s the hint of “anti-fashion” laced in it that rubs me the wrong way. I’m glad to see that it is coming off from its popularity that it had late last summer.
No.
No!
Honestly, I think that this is fantastic as a uniform , but when you’re in a big city, you don’t need to be running around like the poster child for an army advert. Unless you’re hunting for squirrels in Central Park, this fad is a pass.
Thanks for reading!
Much love,
Vi
Throwback the outfits, because more content is coming!
I haven’t really taken too many outfit photo’s since being in the city, but I will definitely work on that! I will be updating new blog content soon, so this update is to get some of the old stuff out of the way. I have actually been using both Blogspot AND wordpress, and it’s been tough choosing which platform I like better. I think I will just keep up with updating both blogs for now. If you want to read a bit more about what I was wearing on those days, please just go to -> Styleenvi.blogspot.com
Thanks for reading!
All my love,
Vi
A Diamond in the Rough
Hello!
It has been a very, very long time since I’ve posted…I went on a hiatus before even making much progress, haha. Let’s hope that I have more discipline this time ;p! Anyway, I have decided that rather than posting pictures of myself and my own outfits (because my dear photographer/camera is very far from me at the moment 😦 ), I would post inspirations instead.
Throwback Thursday : Wrapped in Illusion
I’ve been feeling particularly reminiscent as of late, so I thought a throwback Thursday post would be the most appropriate outlet.
In a recent interview, I was asked what my biggest challenge back in my styling days was. It wasn’t hard to tell the interviewers that it was making an impromptu dress on set… In my previous blog, I titled the post “Recipe for a dress”. 2 hours, 1 pair of chopsticks, 1 meter of fabric and 456323 (not literally) safety pins later, I completed the dress. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to prepare for it but I couldn’t really.
The shoot was actually for a photographer who wanted pay homage to a W magazine editorial featuring Anne Hathaway. I was given very specific idea as to what the photographer had wanted to see on the model. She wanted to see this dress.
She had given me one image to work from, and admittedly, it was a bit difficult to derive something from a dress that looks like a white bed sheet tied miraculously into a standing, graceful bow. I knew that this wasn’t going to be a dress that I could find in a store or pull from a rack – this was going to be my time to shine! As my knowledge of sewing is non-existent (save for sewing like a pro in straight lines), I thought that I was going to take a stab at draping and safety pinning the dress – which I did end up doing.
This piece of fabric was what I had chosen in the end…My apologies for the wrinkles , but this was taken after the shoot, after I had painstakingly retrieved all the safety pins from it. I knew the shoot was going to be monochrome, and so grey was the colour to go ; the more important factor was the sheen of the fabric and how well it reflected light. I spent a good hour in the fabric store comparing and touching fabric rolls before I found this.
Here we are, the work in progress, before I had finished tweaking the bow. I’ll have you know that the two chopsticks behind the bow were still dignified and not broken into several pieces to make this bow so perky. I’m not ashamed to say that my dear model Hailey went through quite a bit of hurting for this dress (much love to this beautiful girl).
Photographer: Willow Nova @ Willownova.com
Make-up Artist : Joyce Yeh
The finished result…It took two hours of sweat, blood and self pricking, but I was able to wrap our model in the illusion that is this “dress”. Homage paid and creativity birthed, this shot was a witness to one of the greatest challenges that I’ve faced on set.
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this throwback…It certainly made me miss my photo shooting days!
Much love,
Vi
Art || Motion
Welcome to my humble blog.
I’m not quite sure how to go about this, so bear with me as I fumble along.
I started this blog in hopes of documenting my steps into the fashion industry and all that it entails.
The idea behind my title, and subsequently, the essence of my blog : Art || Motion is to draw a comparison to what I think Fashion is… a parallel between Art and Motion.
When people think of Fashion, they often think of glamour, luxury, creativity … and of course, vanity. Fashion elicits many reactions; gasps of awe or exclamations of shock…That’s a wonderful part of the industry that I appreciate. Yet despite that , there are some people who would berate Fashion – think little to nothing of it, or even slander it and those who indulge in it.
A fine example of such would be when people comment on how a absurd certain things they see on the run way is. They might ask, in shock, “Who would wear that?!”
Christian Dior Fall 2005 Couture (I personally think this is quite pretty…)
Alexander McQueen Spring 2010 Ready to Wear
Christian Dior Spring 2004 Couture
And last but not least, the infamous :
The Lady Gaga Meat dress : )
All of the above may conventionally be considered as weird. And to answer the question of who would actually wear these weird garments? Well , save for a selected few people, no one. Some garments and pieces were made to satisfy a fantasy; often made to satisfy the creative callings and break through the every day mundane. I think it’s been said very well before by Vivienne Westwood :
“It’s just a matter of adjusting the eyes. It’s only perverse because it’s unexpected.”
Fashion is not just found in clothing.
Fashion is the wavelength of the now.
Sometimes , especially on run ways, it may be taken to the extreme – but generally, designers create based on what they feel is prevalent in the world now. Current world events, nature, history, cultures all inspire and influence fashion; it is organic; it is art. Art in motion.
What you do with art – that is style.
Here’s to my exploration of style.
Much love, Vi
Style En Vi 