Fashion for everyone

Caged pearl rings

Last week, Jules Kim presented her latest addition to the Bijules collection, "The Seize Kind," a group of incredibly sensual, pearl-based baubles that are meant to celebrate the sea's precious harvest, as well as the feminine organism that shapes it. Jules always knows how to put on a good show, and the delicate gems were passed around the rooftop of The Gramercy Park Hotel by Big Gunz, an underground boxing club that's members happen to be male models. One of the hunky presenters described the club as "a cross between Zoolander and Fight Club," and if that doesn't pique your interest enough, I suggest you read this article from the latest issue of New York Magazine. Working their way through the throngs wearing a single 18k gold and pearl teardrop adhered to their faces, the boxers stirred up quite a frenzy, and it was difficult to edge out other members of the gawking audience for a peek at the beautiful jewels. Luckily I work with Jules doing her wholesale sales, so I will get plenty of closer looks on my own, but here are a few shots I took at the show, and today at Capsule. If you are in New York, and would like to see the new collection yourself, you should stop by Boutique. Eat. Shop. (559 w. 22nd St) from 7-10 tomorrow, where Bijules will be having a sale, and where pieces from The Seize Kind will be available for pre-order!

One of the cute models-by-day-boxers-by-night from Big Gunz

Stackable pearl ring

Precious metal teardrops with caged pearls, meant to be worn on the face

The classic Bijules bar ring with the glacons bar ring and the new pearl bar ring

Caged pearl whip bracelet

The very elegant caged pearl bar ring

Christina, Astrid of Upstate, Becca of Chromat, and myself. All photos courtesy of Becca!

On Thursday night, we teamed up with our friends from LES shop and showroom International Playground to throw a party for two of their designers, Upstate and Chromat. Music was provided by our favorite friends from Paper Magazine, Drew Elliott and Alexis Swerdloff, who might be newly-minted DJs, but are total pros at getting rowdy on the dancefloor. It was also Christina Via's birthday, and old-school party staples like Michael Musto came out to dance alongside all of the Chromat-wearing caged revelers. However, the real scenestealers were Astrid of Upstate, and Becca and Emily of Chromat, who represented by wearing their own outlandish designs; Becca even wore a florescent light-up caged crown powered by a battery pack hidden in her ponytail! Unfortunately, one of the Upstate designers, Kalen, got sick and couldn't make it to the party, so we'll just have to have another one next season! Make sure to check out more party snaps on Stylecaster, taken by my favorite blog-girl-about-town Susie G!

Christina and I wore matching cages of course! I wore mine with my T by Alexander Wang cape, Thakoon x Target cardigan, H&M dress, leggings c/o YC: Ying Chu, and Barneys New York fur hat. Christina wore hers over her Count Aapo tee.

The caged-out Chromat girls, Becca and Emily. You can't tell from the photograph, but Becca's crown lit up the entire night, and was charged via a battery pack hidden inside her ponytail!


Cage match


Even some boys got in on the action


Astrid and Becca with Virginia and Johnny from International Playground, one of our favorite shops and showrooms!


Astrid and Becca snacking on tarts from the massive tart/cupcake tree that were in place to celebrate Christina Via's birthday.

I know I've been talking about it for a while now, and now it's almost upon us--The Chromat and Upstate party at Anchor Bar (310 Spring St.) this Thursday! Two of our favorite friends from Paper Magazine, Alexis Swerdloff and Drew Elliott, will be practicing their recently acquired DJ skills (it's not a bad night job!), and our friends from International Playground will guest host. I hope you can stop by, I promise you there will be plenty of cagey-madness, cuckoo-outfits, and Grey Goose galore!

Vintage shearling coat courtesy of What Goes Around Comes Around, Coven dress, Topshop Unique cardigan, Jameson sweater leggings, Hunter boots, YSL belt, We Are Owls scarf that Ashley gave me for Christmas, Peter Pilotto x Kipling backpack, Arms and Armory necklace, Devaki hat.

In case you haven't heard, this winter has gone down as the snowiest so far in New York's history. My husband is simultaneously loving the three snow days he's gotten thus far while openly mocking our American inability to cope with extreme weather. In Stockholm they deal with this on a very regular basis, and he's relayed frightening stories about using the half-mile frozen lake near his apartment as a drunken shortcut in the middle of the night. Anyway, while he enjoyed his day off, I still had to go to work with Christina, which was a trecherous, yet beautiful 20 minute walk. Luckily, I just got this vintage shearling coat from What Goes Around Comes Around, which is so thick and warm, I don't even need to layer anything under it. Paired with my Hunter boots and sweater leggings which I basically haven't removed for the past month (don't worry, I've at least laundered them), and I was decently set for the elements. Here are some photos I took of the snow on my way to work!


I grabbed a sandwich at Defonte's to warm me up

The park on 17th St. looked so pretty, but all of those snow-laden tree branches are pretty much death from above. I can't tell you how much mini snow-avalanches I saw falling from trees and buildings.

These people in Stuyvesant town were in the midst of building the biggest snowman ever

Vintage faux-fur coat, headpiece, and fur boots, all from Screaming Mimi's.

Halloween is around the corner, and it always involves two of my favorite things: dressing up, and eating a ton of sweets. Yesterday night I stopped by Screaming Mimi's to hang out with all my favorite girls, and to celebrate their biggest season with a little dress-up party. If you have no clue what you want to be for Halloween yet, I suggest you stop by the store ASAP for some instant costume inspiration. You'll be overwhelmed with ideas, and as an added bonus, one of the gorgeous Mimi's girls will help you complete your outfit.

When I walked in the store I immediately fell in love with the gigantic fur Viking helmets that were on display, and decided to go for a prehistoric ice-woman look, partially inspired by the Chanel Fall 2010 show. I grabbed the largest, hairiest faux-fur coat on hand, and Nicollette found me a pair of vintage fur boots to complete the outfit. I had to take off the hat after a few minutes, cause it's ridiculously warm, but I stuck around to see everyone else's outfits--you can see them all on the Screaming Mimi's blog.

Dozens of different masks that are available at Mimi's

The best of the headdresses, including the furry one I'm wearing

Alice, taking a turn in the headdress

An alternative version with raccoon tails

At the end of the night, Laura gave me the sweetest trick-or-treat bag filled with Jacques Torres chocolates!

As if my week couldn't get any sweeter, I also stopped by The Little Cupcake Bakeshop, which just opened on 30 Prince Street, for a tasting of some of their new cupcake flavors. My friend Jonathan and I worked our way through four different flavors: Cotton Candy, Tiramisu, Blue Velvet, and Pumpkin Spice, paired with giant Illy cappuccinos. All were exceedingly moist and we were both surprised by which flavors we ended up liking. I'm not much of a fan of tiramisu as a dessert because of its strange texture, but I actually found it quite tasty in cupcake form. I think we both decided that the fall-appropriate pumpkin cupcake was our favorite, even though we were both in sugar shock by the time we tasted it. The shop is the first carbon neutral bakery in New York, and is family-run in the truest sense--both shops are owned and operated by the four LoBuglio brothers, who also get help from their large extended family. I will definitely be back, as soon as I've fully recovered from the copious amount of sweets I've consumed this month.

John and Jimmy reunited at last. When he got back, we had a big party for him at Emily's apartment.

I'm really backlogged in posting from from Fashion Week, but I need a tiny breather from all the Rachel Zoe talk. Here are some unfashionable iPhone photos from the last month, which has been awesome, albeit a bit stressful. John and Jacob came back to town for a ten day break between The Drums nonstop tour schedule, Christina and my niece Emma both celebrated their birthdays, and Life Curated finally opened in Williamsburg. Oh, and we finally shot our lookbook, with the wonderful Mallory June and our friend Dom (real photos to come). Here are the not-very-good photos documenting it all. And make sure to watch the new Drums video for "Down By the Water" below, which was inspired by an old Shangri-las video.

After John's party, we went to Cameo in Williamsburg to see Eric from the Tough Alliance DJ. It's a really cute little place hidden in the back of Lovin' Cup, and I would probably go there all the time if I hung out in Brooklyn.

For Christina's birthday, I bought her Chikalicious cupcakes, and Adam bought her a tub of Hanna beads from Ikea. We spent half the night doing kids crafts before going to Morrissey night at Sway. Adam made the Pacman ghost, and I made the Pacman, the Comme des Garcons heart, and the rainbow heart.

My niece Emma also celebrated her fifth birthday with a Hello Kitty themed birthday party (i.e., the party of my dreams). Here she is, about to bash in the face of her Hello Kitty pinata.

We finally got around to shooting our Triskaidekaphobia lookbook! Mallory June was such an amazing model, and Dom is always so great to work with.

Life: Curated opened. They have an incredible rope installation running across their entire ceiling.



The Drums video for "Down by the Water"

The three looks I styled for DKNY's Something NY campaign! 
 

Do you ever have those moments where you start to wonder if you have the reverse-Midas touch? As in, those moments when everything around you suddenly turns to s**t in rapid succession? Well I had one of those moments this past Friday, in case you were wondering where I've been. First my iPhone service went out. Then my wireless cable box died and had to be replaced. A couple hours later, the laptop which I had just inherited from my brother a week ago (to replace my dead desktop) crashed. And did I mention that my email server has been acting up too? I must be emitting some terrible technological karma, cause believe it or not, none of these situations were at all related to one another. Nonetheless, most of these problems have since been remedied by professionals (my laptop is still at the Apple store having its hard drive replaced).

Anyway, this is a very long way of saying that the pictures I started taking of the Chromat goodies that Becca kindly lent me mostly disappeared, and I had to recreate/re-shoot them. I've been wearing the spring collection, Cities and Cages, all around the city for the past week. Here's my little diary of where I went and how I wore it...

Day 1: I decided that the asymmetrical body cage dress needed to be worn someplace fun, so I took it out on Tuesday night to meet Nicollette at Le Bain, where our friend Greg K was DJing. Le Bain, which has a large diamond-shaped hot tub, is probably the only place where it's socially acceptable to wear a bathing suit as an outfit, so I decided to take advantage of the fact that the dress worked perfectly with my VPL swimsuit. If you think I'm dressed rather scandalously, you should know that there were plenty of girls frolicking around the tub topless (I can hear my friends alternatively howling in disgust or whooping with delight at their respective office desks), so I was still one of the more modest looking patrons.

Chromat dress, VPL bathing suit, Chloe heels, Gerard Yosca necklace.



Day 2: This cage corset is one of my favorite pieces because it's so versatile. You can throw it on top of any tee or top for instant cagey-ness, but it isn't ostentatious enough to attract unwanted attention. I've been wearing it out quite a bit--even to the Alexander Wang sample sale on Thursday.

Chromat cage corset, tee courtesy of Them Atelier, Risto skirt, Topshop Unique heels, Gerard Yosca cuff, necklace from the district.



Day 3: I wore the ribcage dress on Friday to see Yacht and Black Devil Disco Club play at South Street Seaport. Apparently, everyone I know was there, but I didn't see them cause it was so crowded. Afterwards, I met up with Becca at Webster Hall (where Yacht was also DJing), and she and her friends came wearing her designs, so we had a full Chromat party!

Chromat ribcage dress, H&M jersey dress, Collina Strada bag courtesy of Urban Outfitters, Alexander Wang sunglasses, DIY marbled sneakers courtesy of Keds, Triskaidekaphobia wrap bracelet and ring.