McQueen

On a Sunday morning, I've decided to spend (not waste) a few minutes to declare my love for McQueen. His label is the only label I consistently keep up with because I don't think his products are exclusively about fashion. In fact, McQueen strikes me as much more insightful about life and the various routes that lead to ideas/products/conclusions. To me, his work represents the merging of three veins of process: philosophy, artistry, and femininity. Philosophy is a process based on rationality; artistry is founded on visual creativity; and femininity.... well its a deconstruction/reconstruction/abstraction/production of my gender. Of course, the last one is hard to define and I don't think I ever could give it a proper description as it spans lots of levels of process that are both internal and external to my body (i.e. politics, sex, social constructs etc.).   Regardless of their complexity, my point is that McQueen art is the trinity of these three processes and I am always comforted when there is verbal or visual confirmation of my thoughts. Recently I ran into a video that totally re-affirmed what I feel when I see McQueen. Here it is for your blogosphere consumption: Diving-For-Mcqueen

My favorite quotes from Sarah:
 "Tiny circles, small circles stitched all around; it's actually quite mathematical"
"A McQueen Woman, has to feel powerful, she's never a girly-girl...she's always A Woman"

And here are a few images of McQueen's work over the years.
A butterfly?

 Can I show up to work in this one day?

 Michelle looks awesome in a McQueen suit.

Although, the creator Alexander is gone, his work and his process definitely live on.
And there it is.A short-and-sweet entry.

De Colores

I was recently privilidged with the opportunity to sit in a room full of Rothkos (Wikipedia-him). It was a small quaint room where I could sit quietly and let Rothko romantically seduce me to concepts about color. Yes, Rothko your green is complex, bluish, translucent, bottomless, seductive and ethereal; your pink is whimsical, powerful, open, infinitely spiral, sparkling and…oh my goodness was that my heart skipping a beat from all the jazzy hues? What can I say, color has an effect on me and that’s why I sighed and sat there with a smile for a few minutes. And then, when I was done ruminating through the other halls, I went back for one last moment of blissful colors before exiting the museum.

In the fashion world, color is a yo-yo concept that goes in and out of “style”; in the process, the concept  is edited, formatted, and narrated by the industry to be “re-invented” every few years as something new to try, complete with mixed messages. First, they tell you black is slimming and you should wear it to feel good about yourself. Simultaneously, they make you inherently afraid of color because it will make you feel the opposite: fat, unattractive and abnormally visible. And with that framework, they occasionally send you a message that this season “do not be afraid of color”. So if you DO wear it when they tell you to “embrace” it, you are bold, powerful and OMG, such a “fashionista”.

Well, I’m not afraid of it. I haven’t been ever since I started actually experimenting with styling myself. And I hope I never feel afraid of it; that I wear across the seasons, in all its various elements; and that it remains a tool in my arsenal of happiness. It’s not just me who feels this way. Color is a part of many cultures around the world and it was actually very prominent in pre-historic culture. Further, color is so common in the natural world that it’s even used to signal gender and sex by some animals including many species of birds. Of course, not everyone loves color, for not everyone has my reaction to Rothko. Check out this Youtube video of a Mad Men episode which hilariously portrays the opposite effects that Rothko has on people. http://youtu.be/CrxxmuspoJM

So, what I’m saying is, I personally love color in my style; but there’s people who naturally dislike it or interpret it differently. And that’s okay. But I just beg you to analyze why you don’t like it. Is it because they are telling you not to wear it to look skinny or that it’s out of “style”? If that’s your reason, I think you should go stare at Rothkos a bit and see if it changes your mind about the power of color.
I leave you with a song I used to sing as a kid…

De colores, De colores se visten los campos en la primavera
De colores, De colores son los pajarillos que vienen de afuera
De colores, De colores es el arco iris que vemos lucir

Y por eso los grandes amores
De muchos colores me gustan a mi
Y por eso los grandes amores
De muchos colores me gustan a mi

La Religion Stylistically Codified.

So I had a dream recently. One night I was feeling a rush of panic about my future, the past and the overall effervescent nature of our lives. One minute there is absolute certainty; the world is clear and still like a lake on a windless summer day. The next minute there’s a bubble rising and you’re not really sure how big it’s going to get; whether it’s going to take you somewhere; or whether it’s just simply going to disappear. I started rubbing Budai’s belly (a Chinese representation of Buddha laughing) and slowly began to feel a comfort, small but distinct, that calmly and gently reduced me to a warm feeling of peace and hope.

Somehow I felt connected, both to myself and this religious representation of the “awakened one”. I began reading about what it means to “rub the Buddha’s belly”. It’s interesting that Budai actually doesn’t look like Buddha – Buddha fasted for almost 50 days and he probably would never look like that… anyway. So yes, I became obsessed with Buddha. [lately, that’s what I do with a lot of things; I’m in a state of discovery]. I did what any obsessed person would do with internet access: I ate up the Wikipedia article on everything Buddha-ist-ing-ed. Feeling “enlightened”, I rubbed his belly again… and I went to sleep.

This is where my dream began. I dreamed that I was a Buddhist monk of sorts, sitting with a group of monks eating vegetarian food. I was dressed in a robe looking calm and peaceful but interestingly, I was wearing earrings and my hair was still intact and its natural state (loose, wavy, and a little frizzy). I don’t remember much else from this dream. I woke up grudgingly, sleepy and not ready to go to work for an early shift in data collection.

As I later reflected on my dream, I felt myself relieved that even though I was dreaming and deep in the subconscious of my brain, I could see who I was. In case you don’t know, as a Buddhist monk you have to give up identity (in some way). Thus, it was interesting that in my dream I could recognize myself. I had indeed transformed into something I will likely never be and have never really strived to be. I mean I know what Buddhism is, and indeed I have tried to meditate, but the fact that I held on to my hair and my earrings is very symbolic of the things I do not want to give up. We all wonder who we really are, and there are several age “crisis” that are permanent fixtures in our everyday chats about life: “Teenage years”, “Quarter-life Crisis”, “Mid-life Crisis” and of course the timeless “finding myself” condition. But maybe at some point, we know some fundamentals, even if a sudden life change alters your surroundings.

So I kept my earrings and hair, but I was still wearing a robe, and I was eating tofu, walking through a garden, away from civilization, high above the mountains. What I was wearing in the dream, led me to some reflections on religious coding.

It’s interesting that even though Buddhist strive for the simplest clothing, the cleanest hair-do (bald), and the simplest of shoes, if you saw one walking on the street, you would know their identity and what they represent in our codified world of social identities. They are religious subjects of the Buddhist religion. Similarly a nun, who again strives for the simplest of clothes, and the most basic of colors, is easily identified as a religious devotee in the Christian faith. To be absolutely clear, I am not saying that the world that they represent is simple. On the contrary, it is supremely complex, full of mind-blowing juxtapositions, and out-of-body experiences that I can’t even begin to understand or presume to know.  But how they dress is a signal to us and a transformation to them. Their robes allow them to fully be who they are and want to be. At the same time, it’s a signal to us, to allow them to be who they want to be. Of course, this is not always respected and ignorance unfortunately breaches the code of religious style.

This simple code does not necessarily apply to the rest of us, who are a little bit of this and a little bit of that. This is fortunate for some, but unfortunate for others. It’s a FORTUNATE condition [at least for me it is] because it means that you can experiment, you can change, and you can codify and re-program. Yes, we all wear our suits during work time, but I hope most people go home and change. Last night, I was talking to someone in finance, and I would have never guessed that this was his trade. And I came home happy that humanity existed, even in the most unlikely places of the world [to me finance seems sooo…. ^/^ well you know]. It is an UNFORTUNATE condition because it just makes life very complicated. You don’t really know who someone is, or represents based on the robes that they are wearing. I came home and put on my infinity shirt and went to bed. I am an engineer, and I’m not scared of numbers, or the idea of infinity. I embrace infinity, divinity, continuity… haha getting really close to the axis but never getting there!! Of course, there’s a lot more to who I am. Right now I’m writing.

Family Style.

There are days when life with the family is great, and I had a pretty good one yesterday as I said goodbye for the summer. However, I will declare before anything, that while I had a great day yesterday, family IS family. It’s a series of deep connections between unique human beings, trying to simultaneously maintain individuality and cohesion. It’s not always pleasant but yesterday was indeed a lovely day with the fam. I wanted to start my blog up again with this as the preface for a very important paradox in fashion: trying to be an individual and still feel like you belong amongst a multitude of complicated individuals, with unique stories, all loading a train or jamming the freeway at rush hour.  

My family has a very similar style, and yet, uniqueness abounds. I clearly remember when we were all children, and now, as I start what feels like a new stage in my life, all but one are at least teenagers. All but one know what sex is, and all of us are individuals. I wanted to post these pictures up of my family. And I’m going to point out some things about their style that I love and says something about who they are as individuals and who we are as a family. 

First up is my mother:

 Check out her chic shirt, classic earrings, and blond long hair? Did I mention she's had 9 kids?

Next is my daddy:

He's getting ready for work. Even though he's wearing a white t-shirt and black pants, its quite deceiving. He's actually a blue collar worker, getting ready for the night shift as a cab-driver. I often joke with him, that transportation is a family business.

Next is My sister.

 Of course, my sista. Casual clothing, fantastic hair-do? I think you'll notice soon, that we all do things with our hair. Did I mention she's the family hairstylist?

Here come the boys.

Here is my brother with his emo-japanese anime inspired hairstyle.

Then there's the baby and the oldest. The baby is a baby, and still developing!  The oldest is a responsible adult who's lived longer (worn-out-raidiohead t-shirt), but knows how to make kids laugh.

And two young adults (19- and 21-year olds), chilling, in the process of finding themselves, but chilling. Clean cut hair-dos.

And that's that. Lots of cotton t-shirts, hair-dos, and no gangstas.  There's more family members around, but I didn't get to photograph them yesterday. I managed to get smiles out of most. We watched the LOTR Two Towers before I left for LAX.

Weatherizing ME!

I am so excited about RAIN! I know, you may think I'm crazy, but I'm not, I swear. While it's easy to complain about the rain, and how it prevents you from doing this and that, and it makes everyone bad drivers, and there's extra delay, and the bus gets stuffy, and I get wet, and its gross, and [insert], and [insert], let's not be so pessimistic, that's not our style.

Empesamos con a shot-out to the Weather Channel: Thanks to wonderful innovation, excellent deployment of technology and information, and some big wig somewhere in that organization rolling out these efforts, we now have the ability to predict weather down to the hour. YES, we can! And so I know that around the time I'll be leaving my employment site, there's a 40% chance of rain, and it goes up 10% each hour I delay my departure. Now, I wouldn't be blogging about this if I had not had some success in utilizing this tool to optimize my wardrobe. Here is the criteria for my wardrobe based on the predicted conditions:

1. As a pedestrian, I am concerned about my feet (wet socks are gross).
2. As a student my primary concern is protecting paper (wet paper is just no bueno).
3. As a artistic, stylistic, blossoming subject I care about presentation.

So I built a model based on the predicted rain, and this is what I came up with.

I know, it's cute right? and MIXING PRINTS! Also,  I live in the Bay Area and Timbaktu has chanced me with a good ultra-water resistant bag that secures the longevity of my books.

Ladies (and Gentlemen?) we must take rain as an opportunity. First, its my opportunity for beginning my critique on the fashion industry for not designing more items that represent real world conditions, ignoring pedestrians, bicyclists and commuters! Second, its an opportunity to create something new.

OPPORTUNITY people, opportunity!

"Rain Drops keep falling on my head
But that doesn't mean my eyes will soon be turnin' red
Cryin's not for me..."

My first Off-Topic Post

It's been a while, I know, but I'm going to disappoint you all, and drift from the topics I designated for this blog. Mostly because recently something else has been occupying my mind... and that's music. Yes, I'm going from superficial, to highly theoretical, abstract, and indescribable. What can I say, at the end of a tough week I can shave my legs and put on a dress, but during the week music takes over as my primary companion and solace for phrases that repulse me such as “this should make intuitive sense to you”. F-U.… Now on to my need to brag about what I’ve found.

I have found...the most intriguing artifacts in my ipod collection: classical music. I don’t know about you, but I used to find that classical music never quite fit the mold for me. It’s old, its complicated, word-less and seems rather outdated. What would a modern gal have in common with Beethoven and Chopin? I have no idea, but it must be something, for as of the last couple of weeks I’ve slowly cracked under their spell. And maybe this has some learning lesson in fashion: No matter how modern and chic you want to be, you CANNOT ignore the classics.

First it was Schubert. Mind you,  I was introduced to him in college and I've always liked him. But I had never cried to Schubert. A couple of weeks ago though, I was hysterical. It was kinda like one of those movie scenes, when a guy is begging the girl to forgive, and the girl finally cracks and says "Yes, Yes I love you!" A few days later, I was at work listening to Tchaikovsky’s  Rose Adagio, and I had to get up and take breather because the music I was so casually listening to was way too intense for me.

Classical music used to be a way for me to just simply bring a quiet, word-less, rhythm to my day, and all of a sudden it was making me emotional? I feel as if I’ve discovered the next element, or a new planet. And I can’t even really describe it! Yes I know what’s an E flat or A sharp, but I don’t know what’s going on in this music. Andante? I feel like Jodie Foster in Contact, when she goes out into space, she says, "its so beautiful, I can't even describe it! A poet, they should have sent a poet!" ALL that I Know, is that its tremendous and it’s somehow explaining something so universal to me in a completely different language. Its madness.

Now I’m hooked and I can’t get out. My latest joy is Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1. I can’t stop my face from contorting into strange shapes. I love it, I love it, I love him. In fact, I have to hide my face if I’m at a coffee shop.  While mathematicians may argue that math is the universal language, I’d like to challenge that. It's Music! Music is the universal language! In the least, it’s the language of emotion. I'm feelin’ it.

My favorite three right now:

Beethoven: Largo Piano Concerto No. 1 in C
Beethoven: Violin Romance No. 2 in F
Hoffstetter: Andante cantabile (String Quartet in F, Op. 3 no. 5)

Fashion Week pt 1: El Dominicano

I will begin my contemplations on fashion week with one name: Oscar de la Renta. Es dominicano si si si. Holler at my dominicanos!

And in honor of the success of this man, I quote from the In the Heights Musical, because his collection reminded me of a renewed faith in the" pursuit of happiness":
"We came to work and to live and we got a lot in common,
DR, PR, we are not stoppin.
In the heights, every day, paciencia y fe. "

I hope this quote makes sense to you; it makes sense to me because I've heard it a million times, and I have the beat down. But essentially, the quote exemplifies the immigrant struggle in the pursuit of a dream, whatever that dream may be. It can be as simple as life, and it can be as dreamy as an amazing collection at the NY Fall Fashion week of 2010. Today I chose to carefully romanticize Oscar's adventure in becoming a fashion icon. After a decade of dressing the likes of Laura Bush, he still has it. Coño! he really does.

It's a strange time in our country. The anti-immigrant sentiment has risen to levels that make me feel depressed, confused, and subliminally isolated. Granted, there are other things in my life that make me feel more "unique" than my immigrant background (i.e. I am a chicana doing a transportation engineering degree). Further, as one who holds an American citizenship, I am safe here; unless Ron Paul Jr. manages to change the constitution and takes away my birth right. The point is, I am not in the shadows, and I am supposed to be free.

But these times do question my memory, the validity of my experience, and the direction that I am going. I am supposed to be upwardly mobile. Am I? I'm supposed to be free to decide my destiny and legacy. Am I? I spent 10 years of my life speaking mostly spanish. I learned to read, multiply, and the names of the planets in our solar system in spanish (including el Pluton). But there's an ever present national narrative that is constantly at work here, erasing this possibility. I feel like Alice when that dog erases the path behind her and in front of her while lost in Wonderland. But luckily, every so often, I experience something  that puts me at ease of where I am going, by reminding me of where I am coming from.

This week it was Oscar de La Renta's Collection. While I have yet to complete my review of the week's collections (very, very busy week) I took minor breaks from studying last night to see Oscar's. I instantly felt renewed! El arte de Oscar is fresh, de colores, and I love it. One day, when I have a little money, I'm going to buy a piece by OLR (along with a pair of Manolos). Yes, I love my bf Omar, but I would love Oscar de la Renta on me =)! The weight of his collection gets magnified when I think about the struggle behind it all.  The man  was born in the DR with a hybrid PR/DR experience. Then after studying art and falling into fashion, he came to New York (that concrete jungle, where dreams are made of), and started his own line, and then, wabam, el immigrante took the fashion industry by storm. He is now an icon.

(One of his Dresses, soooooo pretty)

While NY Fashion Week is full of glamour and things way beyond my price range, there are stories to be told there. Although Oscar de La Renta has reached iconic status, we all remember the shock last January when Michelle Obama chose Jason Wu's dress, another immigrant from Taiwan. While OLR shows what has been done, Jason Wu has renewed our promise.The immigrant push to renew America's creative expression and re-invent the American story is ever present. Their collections make me excited and provide a visual representation of what immigrants achieve in making America better, even if its just clothes. I have still to see immigrant Designers in the Paris Fashion Week achieve the same level of success as Designers like OLR, Carolina Herrera, Narcizco Rodriguez, Jason Wu, Alexander Wang, etc. etc. etc.. This is American Fashion.

Here is the link to their collections:
 http://nymag.com/fashion/fashionshows/
I'll try to post more pictures on my next post, but now, I'm off to the museum.

To be continued....