LIPSTiCK TrACeZ

There is one window in NY that always hits the mark.
That window is Hermes, at 60th and Madison.

My first job working in retail was at the Roosevelt Field Mall out on Long Island. It was at the UNITED COLORS OF BENNETON SHOP right to the right of the escalator below the food court. I remember it like it was yesterday.  Saving my pennies to buy, I don't know, something cheap. Those were days. Young and innocent. 

I was working as a sales associate when I had my first Terry Richardson experience.  We were unpacking our new window supplements when all of the sudden my manager (nice lady- mother of two) started to get red in the face. She not only looked red in the face- but she looked terrified. Like someone was raping a lamb or something. I was like, "what? what's wrong?"...This is what was staring her in the face........

 

The truth about the hundreds:
- it looks a lot bigger on the blog than it does in real life.

The power of blogs is the ability to create your own hype. You can make something seem so big, so happening, so legit just by taking the right photo, at the right time, posting it, and then talking about it. You can create your image, a certain lifestyle through being selective of certain content. You chose how the people who read your blog see you.

Even though I bet the hundreds are just as successful in the independent label world as they describe themselves through images, interviews, and product i just had to laugh because I literally thought that THE HUNDREDS was HUGE. Like, physically big.

By seeing the shop for the first time I was able to realize what Bobbyhundreds talks about when referring to THE HUNDREDS as something one-of-a-kind because being no bigger than a Manhattan studio apartment, and blogging daily it sparked the Alife, Diamond, and other plethora of shops to open posts that didn't exist in the Fairfax / Melrose neighborhood before THE HUNDREDS. Word got out, something was going on in East LA.....

TH are relevant to the blogculture because their blog is crucial to their brand's development. Showing the lifestyle everyday. Showing their world play by play. Their blog is just as strong as the product and is just as important to who they are. It is the whole picture- with the blog included. To date, I don't know of any other brand like them.

Thus proving, no space is too small, no hype is too large. THE HUNDREDS IS (kind of) HUGE. Or, however huge they want to be. 

I have been going to Canter's Deli since I was a kid.  My grandmother has been going to Canter's since she was a teenager working across the street from its original location in east LA on Brooklyn Ave.

Now on Fairfax, Canter's holds its own on the block.  According to my waiter, they are hustling to stay strong. Not only the gas breaks the bank around there.  The bread, the milk, the yeast...its all adding up and my menu proved it.  When my grandmother used to go there she would pay $3 for a sandwich and a cup of coffee cost a dime.  Now that same sandwich costs $11. (??!!). Things change and time is the best testament.  A place like Canter's is the best way to follow the times.  Seriously, I love watching the local scene like that.  No matter what is going on in the economy it is the mom-n-pop delis, grocery stores, restaurants, laundry mats..... they reflect the times we are living in.  Not the McDonalds, not the Taco Bells.  The entrepreneur always has to flex the most to stay on top.

Canter's, I ain't mad at you for the $11 pastrami sandwich. Just keep it tasty.......

SHOWstudio.com 

No, this isn't another video of Naomi planting a Cocoa tree in Africa or throwing a cell phone at her (new / newest) assistant.  This video actually has some truth to it.  Watch it, appreciate the beautiful Rodarte dresses, then read below.

What's crazy is when Knight says how he has been denied by certain brands when he asked to bring in black models.  What's even crazier is the thought that by selecting certain images that get used in advertisements and magazines cause a silent division and alienation amongst people- I say- especially women( the whole, "I'm not pretty because I don't look like the girl on the billboard" thing).

Naomi Campbell stands up to the plate every time to fill the role of (I hate the fact that I have to type this next phrase) "the beautiful black model." but the truth is there are tons of other "Naomi's" out there, tons of other Knight's who suggested newbies like Joy Bryant, or Jourdan to be the faces of LV, Miu Miu, or Prada.

What's the hold up?  Why the veto?

Yves Saint Laurent said it best, "a good model can change fashion by ten years," and I say the rest, well the rest is just irrelevant...

Jeff Koons is laughing at us.  Or at least I'd like to think he is. 

In an attempt to bring to life his fascination with everyday objects, much like what Marcel Duchamp did with his ready mades, Koons has taken something so insignificant like a balloon dog and blown it up 500 times its normal size and created such a hoopla around it that Whitewall junkies don't know what do with themselves.  I'd like to call his art highly significant in the sense that it comments on something highly philosophical and profound. Like truth, life, death, or happiness. Only it is highly significant for reasons all the opposite, because yet it is another example of how the "art world" creates art. Koons- by perching his shiny toys on the roof and having old women, hipsters, and tourists from Middle American swooning over his creations has generated such an aura of awe around something that he probably got inspired to create while passing by a parade. Here I am now, reading into him, and trying to dissect him and trying to place all these pieces together about him that seem kind of random.

Genius. 

Jeff Koons, you win.

but you don't know love like how Pablo Neruda knows love.
I was put onto poet Pablo Neruda today by my friend, sweet Julia. Overall, poetry can be kinda tricky, but Pablo Neruda is not like that.
He's sexual, romantic, and emotionally charged. Your not human if you haven't been through emotions like that! One of his best works, "Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada" (Twenty Poems and songs of Despair) shows not his love for all women, but his love for one woman. He digs into the mysteriousness of the crush, then the chase, then the allure, then the bliss, then the longing and in the finale- the sadness- of what loving someone can bring.
Gotta love those South American men.