independent fashion bloggers dress-up soirée

on monday night, i attended the independent fashion bloggers’ dress up soirée held downtown, in conjunction with mercedes-benz fashion week. i had gone to the first dress-up soirée that was held earlier this year and had tons of fun, so i knew that even though i could not attend many shows because of my school schedule, i was happy that i could make it to the ifb meet since i have no classes on monday night.

during the last meet, i was on some blog hiatus because my work and life at parsons got too crazy, but i did upload a couple of pictures of my outfit, which some of you might remember.

my theme that night, was, for no particular reason, “turquoise”. why? well it’s one of my favourite colours. (and i’m aware that that isn’t much of a reason but there was nothing profoundly deep to it! ha!) i just picked out some turquoise things i had in my closet and put them on in about 10 minutes without much planning. i wore my favourite kimono, one i wish i could wear more often, and a completely crazy constable hat. (i loved the constable hat so much, i bought another one, painted it gold and used it in my ziggy collection!)

since i never really blogged about the last ifb meet, i thought it might be a good idea to upload some photos that i took back then.

vintage girl’s kimono (check it out – we all had to stick name-tags on ourselves!)
striped tshirt from tokyo
plastic laser-cut “gilda” nameplate necklace
$20 corset belt from some store on broadway
crinoline from screaming mimi’s
tights from tokyo
canvas wooden clogs by mercibeaucoup;
pink leather bag with constable hat stuffed in it by tricot for comme des garcons

so you see, i have a problem with the word “dress-up”. i have a very very big problem with that word, which you will realize when you see the pictures of what i wore to the 2nd ifb meet. when people tell me to dress up for something, in my head, it means i get to wear what i won’t usually wear on a regular day.

the problem with that, is that what i wear on a regular day, is what people won’t even want to wear when they have a chance to dress-up.

am i confusing you?

if you are wondering why i love susie bubble, queen michelle, tavi and belle so much, it’s because although they each have very different and distinctive personal styles, there’s something there that i can connect with. we tend to dress in a way people would call “over-the-top”; some will love it, some will glare and give us the up-down disapproving look and say to their friends, “check out that retard.”

when i got to the first ifb meet, i remember thinking, “oh fuck. i am the only one in this room who looks like a rainbow vomited on her. everyone else is looking so new york… so chic and grown up. fuck fuck fuck. why did i wear this!?”

apparently, while i thought that “dress-up” meant i could go crazy, to most people, it meant putting on their prettiest dress. and mind you, some of those dresses were really pretty. i would have loved to have worn a pretty dress, but i only have 2 nice ones that could be worn to expensive dinners in my closet. see? i am really from some other planet.

so the timid part of me kept my constable hat in my bag for most of the night, because adding that hat to my already over-the-top outfit would just be, i don’t know, calling more attention than need be to my already introvert self.

when last monday rolled around and i left school and went home to get ready for the second ifb meet, i was not in a great mood. it’s been only about 3 weeks since parsons has started, and already i am stressed and have a ton of work to do, and it was showing up all over my skin. i eat when i’m stressed, by the way. food makes me happy. this is how i’ve put my weight on, especially after i moved to new york. i can look at old pictures of myself back when i was a medal-winning field hockey player and captain of my school and club team, and feel like crying. or rather, ask myself why the hell i let myself go.

feeling particularly bloated and with a new crop of zits creeping all over my face, i basically, to put it simply, felt like shit. there’s just no other way to describe it. i don’t get blackheads and stuff, no. i get the good ol’ huge bumps under the skin, the ones i used to get when i had full-blown acne at the age of 19, the ones that destroyed my self-confidence.

i was so mad, i probably overturned my entire closet and tried on just about everything. if i were an anime character, i might have had a really red face and steam coming out of my ears because i was so mad. how can i be a fashion designer and have nothing to wear? why didn’t i like how all my clothes looked on me that day? how the fuck did i put on so much weight? why the hell do i have to deal with all these bumps and redness on my face?!

i got home from school at about 6:30. the meet started at 7:30, with an amazing panel line-up that i really wanted to listen to. unfortunately, i was so upset with myself that i just lay in bed, on top and in between a huge mountain of clothes, and just stared at the lace on my ceiling for what seemed like eons. or about an hour.

i contemplated just closing my eyes and going to bed, so that i could forget about going out and not having to deal with looking at myself in the mirror, so that i could just wake up the next day and go to school and be in the comfort of my friends, having a laugh with them and just concentrating on my senior thesis.

but i decided i was better than that. there was a time when my acne was really bad, i couldn’t get over my dog’s death and i was going through a rough time at home with constant quarrels over the family business, and i was probably the most depressed that i’d ever been in my life. i haven’t forgotten about it, or how it used to feel. when i think back to that time, it still makes me cry. they say time will heal all wounds, but they obviously haven’t had hard enough times. all time did, was to draw me further into my shell. over time, i’ve gotten more numb to the pain, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t there, and worse, it has made me forget how to socialize because i’ve built such a wall around myself.

i didn’t want to lie in bed and wallow in more self-pity, and let my heart beat faster than it already was with how angry i was feeling. so i forced myself to get up, and i instinctively reached out and grabbed my sequined leggings. hey. a girl needs sequins in her life to make her feel better. i also knew i wanted to wear my ginormous voodoo necklace, and the foil bunny ears that i had made to wear to the latex ball with my friends at the house of field.

i mean, to put it simply, if i wore something really loud and huge, i was hoping people would notice it instead of the grossness that is my face! so i wore something on my head to take the attention upwards… and something huge around my neck to draw the eye down. either way, you’d look at that instead of my face. (take note of this style trick, ladies. you don’t have to go as over-the-top as i did, but you’d never know if you might need this tip one day.)

i didn’t know what to wear with it, so i just grabbed this polka-dot dress that was sitting on top of the mountain of clothes on my bed, and fished around the pile for a matching tshirt to go put over it.

studded foil killer bunny ears
“who killed anna wintour?” tee. bought from a store in the lower east side, then ripped apart, dyed and sewn all over by me.
polka-dot tsumori chisato dress worn underneath
ginormous voodoo necklace from RÊVASSEUR by gilda
sequined leggings from RÊVASSEUR by gilda
cheap belt from… the cheap marc jacobs line
tabi boots by maison martin margiela
smorkin’ labbit, unstuffed and used as a clutch and so i had something to hug
armour ring by vivienne westwood, a gift from moto at patricia field’s

i didn’t really realize this until i’d left my apartment, but i was wearing killer bunny ears with a labbit that i had killed and a tshirt that asked “who killed anna wintour?”. haha! i thought it was a little funny.

the ifb meet was amazingly packed when i got there at 9pm. i was a little shocked. there were so many people, and at least 3 or 4 times the number that was at the first ifb meet just a few months ago, definitely a sign that jennine was doing an amazing job and ifb was such a success!! i was really happy for her!

but i’d gone to the meet alone, and when i saw the number of people, i was honestly very overwhelmed. i tried to look for familiar faces but it was dark and i could hardly recognize anyone. the panel was still going on and it was so crowded, i could hardly hear what was happening. also, i was sweating like a pig because of the lack of available air. eeks.

this girl came up to me and pointing to my tshirt, asked if i had watched the september issue, a documentary-type movie about the making of the most important september issue of american vogue. i replied that i did want to see it, but i had not. she proceeded to tell me how amazing anna wintour is and basically that my teeshirt was quite blasphemous and that anna wintour is like a god to fashion. i raised my eyebrows because every single one of my fashion friends who had watched the movie, told me that grace coddington, creative director of vogue, is the one who really does all the hard work and basically creates the whole magazine, and anna wintour just approves or disapproves of it.

but that girl was like, “no, anna is simply amazing and you really need to watch that movie.”

uhm, ok, whatever. i do want to watch the september issue, but i am not an anna wintour fan. i saw her at the tents and didn’t even raise my camera that was in my hands to take a photo although i should have. yeah, so she’s the fashion editor at vogue and one day i might have to kiss her feet and even suck her toes just to try and get onto the pages of her magazine. but seriously, no one i know even bothers with american vogue. the only reason i buy it is because i get it for literally about 1 or 2 bucks per issue through my subscription, and i usually glance at it for a full 5 minutes, tear out the 1 or 2 pages of editorials that seem interesting, and then dump it in my recycling bin. compare this to me spending up to $15 for a foreign magazine that takes me 2 to 3 hours to go through and absorb all its details on each and every page.

if i’d seen the other anna, anna piaggi from italian vogue, i might die of excitement and vomit in my mouth. but anna wintour? whatevs, yo, whatevs. american vogue is a boring old cow.

and so i did not appreciate this girl telling me that i should not have worn that teeshirt.

ok, even if i was a wintour fan, i would have worn it anyway. hello?? what happened to having a sense of humour?! anyone else that night who had realized what was written on my teeshirt, had said, “oh my god that’s hilarious!” which was the same reaction i had when i first bought it. geez.

anyway, by the grace of god, i managed to find some people i recognized! woohooooo! in a room full of strangers, i know the adult side of me should have been mixing around, socializing and making friends. but in reality, i wasn’t feeling great, and really wanted to hide in a corner. so i walked around and pretended i belonged (which might have looked like i was really stuck-up, oh well.) until i found people i knew.

i came home to realize that i’d only taken a miserable 5 photographs, which is some real evidence of how much i really didn’t feel great about myself that night. most of what i uploaded here were pictures taken by other bloggers!

i just want to say a big thank you to jennine for organizing this great event, and a bigger thank you to all the lovely bloggers who came up to talk to me and complimented me on my hat and necklace, especially since i was feeling quite small and had no guts that night to start any conversations.

it’s times like this when i’m thankful that i’m a fashion designer/stylist. i was glad that i knew some basic makeup skills to cover up the spots, and that i also knew how to draw the attention away from this bloody face i have.

seriously. i’ve been talking about skin transplants for the longest time now. when is the advancement of sciences and technology going to allow me to do that, so i can once and for all, look at the mirror without sighing?

Tagged as: design, gilda, life, new york fashion week, style, today's get-up