I think Lady Gaga's newest song is pretty good despite it sounding like all her other hit songs. Or should I say that I like her Bad Romance's official video? Which subsequently made me like the song more.

And if she wasn't actually famous, I would've called her a fashionista. As it is, a famous fashionista is also more widely known as a celebrity. Hurrah.

I've finally applied my VISA to Australia! I almost didn't cause I didn't know we had to apply for a VISA. My blur partner in crime had always gone through travel agents before and never bothered with VISAs. This is his first time going via... booking online.

It was very fortunate that a fellow colleague of mine is going to Perth this weekend and she suddenly (out of the blue) told me that she hadn't applied for VISA. In a panic, we both quickly googled "visa australia". Wahahaha.

I really can't wait for a break. I suspect that I'm going to be uber stressed before the holiday though, due to work. Talking about work, I watched The September Issue yesterday and the Vogue crew took five months to publish Vogue's September issue. I guess we are really inefficient? Cause I counted and we are taking... more than three months for a twenty-eight pages catalogue. Of course, if I hadn't other duties to tend to it would have been a whole lot easier. The documentary is delightful. Definitely worth a watch.

On a different issue, I've been extremely disillusioned by "marriage". Sure, I've considered the fact that I may never get to that stage of my life but I've heard... stuff about it that makes me even more reluctant to go there.

I was talking to Friend X regarding Friend R's (good thing about having mutually exclusive friends is that you can talk about one to another safely...) relationship. Friend X mentioned something to me that stuck, "many people don't marry who they want to in life, I was one of the lucky few who did." And then he went on to tell me of this guy who married his current wife because she was... the next best option. His previous girlfriend had dumped him.

Out of curiosity, I went around asking people (or asking people who knew other people) if they married who they wanted to marry and the answers were alarming. Friend X was the only guy I knew who married the person he wanted to marry. The others were married for other reasons like, "next best option" or "she/ he was really good to me" or "he's husband material" or yada yada, you get what I mean. Which makes me come to a point where I thought wtf is the point of getting married if the other person isn't who you really want to spend the rest of your life with?!

On the other hand, I may not have covered all bases and my statistics are screwed up but being the pessimistic person that I am, I really do think that marriage isn't all that's cracked up to be, unless you're talking about legalities and protection.

I am surrounded by three sorts of people (pardon me if I offend):
(1) People who are attached and considering marriage ;
(2) People who are actively searching for a mate (and eventually marriage I suppose) ;
(3) People who either don't think much of marriage/ haven't considered anything like marriage/ just don't want to get married.

Which begs the question of why we girls want to get married... Is it because of family and societal pressure? Afraid of being the only one left on the shelf? A want of kids (pukes)? Good factors for consideration but I really believe that that isn't the way to go. I haven't found the perfect answer and probably will never find it, but perhaps when I do find the person whom I want to settle down with, I'll let you in on the secret that has baffled me my entire life.

Oh, this is going to be one of a kind you know. The REAL DEAL.

If you like the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, you'll definitely like this documentary. After all, Meryl Streep's character in the film is based on Anna Wintour, editor of American Vogue. I wonder when this will premiere in Singapore?!


And just for kicks, Anna Wintour's appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.

I've been rather lazy in updating LJ these days. Firstly, I've been feeling fatigue since stock take ended and don't have the mood to write anything.

I feel like I'm falling sick, for an entire week already. I can't stand those people who go around coughing and sniffing in buses and trains and cinemas. For god's sake people, if you're sick, STAY HOME.

Enjoyed an entire week without seeing the big boss, so the office was relatively carefree. Until big boss came into office this morning and asked me if I had checked the counter's dvd display. Which of course I did. It certainly didn't help that he said, "Really? Are you sure? Anyways, I'm OFF today so I won't say anything. I will say it on Monday.".

Great. Now I am left to stew over the entire weekend over what I've done wrong to warrant such a statement from him. Wtf.

On a different note, people sure do judge you differently on the way you dress. Almost every Saturday afternoon, I would buy wanton noodles from the void deck kopitiam. As I was on a working Saturday today, I was in this pretty frilly top and jeans when I went to buy lunch instead of turning up very unglam looking in my shorts and baggy t-shirt and without makeup. I think the hawkers don't even recognise me. =.= 

So, usually, the hawkers would totally ignore and not communicate with me (I had to take the initiative to order my food), today, the hawkers immediately asked me what I wanted and even joked with me. Wtf the second time today. So I guess one should never think that dressing up is pointless, because apparently, even hawkers service you faster and more efficiently when you look pretty.

I finally managed to go to the National Museum over the weekend. Main aim was to see the Christian Lacroix exhibition but we ended up buying a package that included the Panton exhibition as well. At the point of purchase, I had really no idea who Panton was (is?) and just went along for the ride. It's only an extra $2 anyways. The ticket for Lacroix is only $8 and it was a total of $10 for the package. Cheap huh.

Dear Jun as usual, she plans ahead and we manage to reach the entrance at the right time for a guided tour. Basically, the tour guides are volunteers, so if you guys are interested in that kind of thing you can look it up. I had briefly considered it when I heard about it too. But... stage fright told me it was a bad idea. Hahaha.

I going to add some of the nicer pictures I'd taken in the museum. These aren't the only displays but I don't see a point in uploading everything, for one, it already took me half a day to upload these. Oh, I forgot to mention that I used my great G10 for these which was really lucky because if I'd taken my consumer Canon camera, the images who have been blur and dim. The place had minimal lighting and almost every display was covered with a translucent black netting to prevent people from touching the clothes.

Hopefully, my memory retention is good enough to recount the history of the costumes. If nothing else, at least I have the free catalog to guide me along. Heh heh heh.

The first exhibit was of the costumes Lacroix designed for the opera, Eliogabalo. Eliogabalo recounts one of the most immoral Roman emperors - Heliogabalus. A dictator and a playboy, he used seduction and violence to conquer his women. He had created a senate made entirely of women and eventually turned it into his harem. Unfortunately, the photos I took here were blur. I was adjusting the camera and wasn't very used to handling it yet, so the two pictures I took of it came out blur! >.<

Next, Cosi fan tutte was about a wager Don Alphonso made with two officers on the fickleness of women. He bet that if they were to pretend to go to war and return in disguise to woo each other's fiancees, that these women will fall in love with them.



These are the costumes worn by the two sisters and two officers. The one with pants and a frilly lace skirt is supposed to indicate a woman in disguise. You can't tell from here but the first dress and the fourth dress from the left included some ingenius traditional method of heating two layers of cloth with something in between them to create that embossed look. 

There is Carmen after that of which I'm not loading up any pictures because I seriously didn't like the flamengo dance costumes with the exception of the bull-fighting like dress that she was murdered in.

Phedre was perhaps my favourite exhibit there. Not surprisingly, Lacroix won his first Moliere award for best costumier.

( Visual Treat )

I can't believe we had spent three hours here. I headed for the next destination - Panton. I eventually found out that this dude was a furniture designer and he had designed many gorgeous furniture and interior designs that we see today. For example, do you remember this chair? This is called the tivioli chair and he designed in 1957! I'm pretty sure we've seen the old foggies sitting on these chairs very long time ago. So long ago that it surpasses retrodom...



( Other more contemporary designs )
There are some other retro designs as well. I mean, superbly retro man...

The Christian Lacroix exhibition ends 7 June so you may want to hurry down there soon. After all, how often do we get to see a world famous fashion designers work on display in Singapore?

To the comic fans, you guys may already know this but if you don't, you may want to head down to the Book Launch Liquid City Comic Anthology at Orchard Kinokuniya this Saturday. Local comic artists will be there to make some speeches about their works and other stuff, like the difficulties of selling their work in Singapore and regionally.

Book Launch Liquid City Comic Anthology
Date: 29 November, Saturday
Time: 2p.m. to 4p.m.

Demonstration on Manga-styled Caricature Drawing by L'escalier
Date: 29 November, Saturday
Time: 4.30p.m. to 5.30p.m.

I've seen some of the art work and it's pretty neat. So if you support the local comic scene make sure you go!

Aspiring writers and illustrators take note! It's meant more for children's books but ah well... since I know some of you who aspire to write "professionally", thought I should let you guys know.

*Closing date is 27 February 2009.* For more information, check out http://www.bookcouncil.sg  

It has been a while since I last browsed through a copy of URBAN (The Straits Times) so when I picked up today's newspaper, I noticed a number of changes.

Firstly, under the HEY GOODLOOKING section where they post up street photography, there is a remarkable difference in type of people featured. When they used to have ordinary people in street casual (whom don't look like they deserve to be on the page), they now feature more mature and formally dressed characters. I really believe this is due to Vogueite's critical comments on what they did before. LOL Even with the marked improvement, I still think they don't get it. I feel that people with an interesting individualistic sense of style is better than expensive, follower of trends style. But ah well, that's just my opinion. 

The sections on Spring/Summer 09 trends (pages 10 to 15) seems like a severe rip off from popular local fashion bloggers like Vogueite and Fashion Nation which makes me think that maybe bloggers can do a better job than these bloody journalists. I'm not eating sour grapes, I swear.

However, I thought the write up Pretty In Pose and the interview with Nina Garcia was good. Why can't we have more of those?

Oh yeah, I need someone's Kinokuniya card because I want to buy Garcia's new book The One Hundred.

I'd wanted to post something about our local papers, Urban for the longest time now but it seems like Vogueite beat me to it! In any case, he did make some good observations and opinions (and definitely a better job than I can).

Go forth and read And I said no, no, no

For those who know me, dark eye circles have been a chronic problem for me all my life. I have since been resigned to the fact that dark eye circles can't be treated with eye gels but that didn't stop me from buying them and trying them out anyways. Even if the gels don't lighten the darkness, they do reduce the puffiness and lines somewhat.

What incited me to write about this?

I've never been a fan of Charles and Keith. I admit that they have some nice designs but the brand strikes me as the type that doesn't have good quality shoes. Good quality shoes to me means having a design that lasts "forever" and is highly comfortable to wear. 

Two fashion bloggers' opinions on Charles and Keith : Fashion Nation and Surrealist Love Scene's Fashion Distortion and her reply to Sophie.

Whoah. Reminds me of the time a friend and I had a blog war...

Have you ever wondered if music has its influences on fashion? Or is it the other way round? I tend to believe the former. Does the type of music you listen to affect the way you dress?


Gareth Pugh Fall 2008 Ready to Wear

This range looked like it came out of Star Wars.



Of course, with a heavy tint of goth and metal flavor to it.

Vivienne Westwood became so popular when she emulated the style of London punks.  When the Rolling Stones earned their fame, the leather studded gear reminiscent of their style was copied by all. Anna Sui has her own rock and roll influences, after all she had indicated in an interview that her next ambition was to be a rock and roll star if she didn't become a designer.

Gareth Pugh is just one of those designers. I can actually understand where he is going with his designs.