Power House Books Opening

These are some pictures from the Power House books new location opening in D.U.M.B.O. last Nov. 14th

IT Bags

Bags have a strange effect on women.

Although they were made just to carry our things outside the house, we can't help it throwing in them more than necesary including our hopes and dreams.

The bag industry have always been benevolent with us producing wonderful items to feed our desires.



New York is one of those cities where you could, and can find almost everything, and when "almost" wasn't enough, you could always order the pieces to Paris and soon you would have them here.

The Museum of the City of New York is showing part of its collection of bags dated from mid 17th Century to nowadays, with items from Schiaparelly to Cartier.

The show is very small, very, very small, but if you don't get dissapointed by the size.- size doesn't matter, you will enjoy this little collection of masterpieces.

A nice selection of Peticules (the French "Ridicules"), Pouch Bags, Evening Bags, Clutch Bags, Black Bags (among them one original Chanel), Beaded Bags... from other times .

It is, as i said, tiny, but very impressive. Reminding us the Ladie's Mile Distric times in New York with Edith Warton and friends and the original Tiffany & co. location in Union Square.

Knitting Fever part. 2

As I mentioned in my Warm Regards post, knitting or all things handmade -cross-stitching, patchwork, rag dolls... are a real passion in NYC and the last years have seen many stores dedicated to this crafts growning all over the city.

These stores use to be very cute and the decoration very warm and home-loving. The finished products exposed use to be made by the owners themselves in order to promote the classes and workshops they teach to show what to do with all the merchandise around.

So it is very dificult to choose a favourite one as almost all of them are very well equiped and cute. But, still, there is this little shop located in Red Hook called Brooklyn General Store that it's probably my favourite one so far.

As it always happens with the best findings, i knew this place just by chance as its entrance is nothing but just a faded sign which reads Brooklyn General Store and it looks like a grocerie rather than a knitting store. But thankfully i like old groceries and just entered to take a lot and eventually some pictures.
















It really hooked me with its selection of vintage fabrics, buttons, plastics, ribbons, quilts... i'm a real vintage fabric passionate so i just couldn't believe the good quality of the ones they had. Unfortunately the store is not very close to the city as it's located in Red Hook, but i hope that's not a problem for them to grow.

Amonstro Chocante

Sometimes the mix between fashion and art is genious. Sometimes is silly, others is lame, sometimes is funny and others is fun!

The fun case is what happened with the collaboration between Brasilian fashion label Amonstro with Barcelona street-art artist Zosen from ONG Crew.

The both artists collaborated for the Spring/Summer 2007 collection in the last Sao Pulo Fashion Week in which Zosen designed the patterns and drawings for the fabrics used.

It seems it was a real success as the people from Made in Brazil posted in their blog.

Zosen is a very well known street-art artist in Spain. He is famous for his actions in the street where he and his crew mix up art, performance, political statments, murals and parties.

It is always a pleasure for me to see this kind of collaborations from people whose backgrounds and countries are different or opposite, although this was not the case, but still.

Btw, the girls make-up is really killer!

Mexico Lindo y Querido

Being as I am a magazine consumer and addict, I can't stop myself from entering in every single newsstand that crosses in my way.- I've been late many times just because the right cover was looking at me from a window in my way to a date...

I was going to the PowerHouse new store opening in D.U.M.B.O. today when i saw some strange magazine left randomly in a newsstand. I say strange because i've never seen it before, and I think of myself as a well educated when it comes to magazines. I entered in the store to take a look.

The name of such magazine was Baby, Baby, Baby, how sweet of a name!, and it is bilingual, half English half Spanish. Awesome.- Although I live in NYC I'm a Madrid native so my mother language is Spanish.

I flipped through some pages and i couldn't stop myself anymore...

Although it's new for me, it seems it's not a new magazine being this their 5th issue.
It is a Mexican based publication, and it has a very girlie spirit like Lula or Amelia's but a little more daring, a little more home-made-ish and fun. It takes certain risks at featuring fashion editorials with just one item in the whole shoot or with items whose designers are not credited; this makes me think the clothing was not taken from showrooms but from the people making the photo-shoot's wardrobe... viva la libertad!

Unfortunately their website doesn't work http://babybabybaby.com.mx
I tried a couple of times but nothing came up.
If you find the magazine randomly staring at you in a news stand, do not hesitate to buy it because it's really (really) worth it.

[Image scanned from baby baby baby primavera-verano 2006 cover]

CHANEL Cruise 2007 Preview

On May 2006 Karl Lagerfeld presented the Chanel Cruise collection 2006-07 in Grand Central Terminal in NYC.

Now the collection arrives in stores and the preview will head the Bergdorf Goodman shelves tomorrow Wednesday and Thrusday from 11am to 4pm.

If you missed the show this is a good ocasion to check out the Ready-to-Wear, Accesories and Shoes that you couln't that day.

Warm Regards

[I took the pictures above in the New York subway]

Many of us thought knitting was doomed to be forgotten. Then you started to see knitting shops here and there and you realized how wrong you were... Fortunatelly!

The last years, the demand of knitting pieces and mostly, the demand of knitting workshops, classes and materials has incresed like bobbles. A "new" industry has grown surprisingly and now we can find information about it in all the blogs, stores, bookstores and academies that have opened since then.

U.S. Postal Service pays hommage to such an art featuring the work of American illustrator Nancy Stahl for a very special four stamps for this Christmas Holidays under the name of 2007 Holiday Knits.

Nancy found inspiration in the traditional Norwegian sweaters and knitted Christmas stockings.

There's nothing more Christmas-ish than a warm sweaters knitted by grandma, isn't it?

Anglomania

If ever I come a second time on Earth, I will pray God
to make me be born in England, the Land of Liberty.
- Voltaire



I have a soft spot for British Fashion.
I love Paris and I do love New York but when it comes to rockin' out, British is my true woo-hoo love.
So what was my delightful sorprise when the MET in New York prepared the exhibition called Anglomania; Tradition and Transgretion in British Fashion.

I found it by chance when this summer my friend S. and i entered in the Museum to use the loo... we were wondering around when we saw this interesting entrance watched over by two gentleman manequin, one dressed by McLaren and Westwood and the other by a man in a sartorial panel circa 1660-88... it really looked interesting... let's take a look...

It has been one of the most thrilled fashion shows ever seen.
I know I shouldn't but i took some pictures... it was such a wonderful place that i absolutely wanted to have a souvenir. Forgive me the bad lighting and the bad compositions but i just took the pictures without looking at the screen at all!

Hussein Chalayan at The English Garden room.


The Punks at The Gentlemen's Club


The show featured the history of British Fashion through 9 very British topics; John Bull, The English Garden (the so-called english love for Gardens), Upstairs/Downstairs (class divisions), the Death Bed (English pageantry), Empire and Monarchy, Francomania (British loves France too), The Gentlemen's Club (gentlemen are so British!), The Hunt (do you remember the fox hunting scene in Mary Poppins?) and The Hunt Ball (let's celebrate the hunting throwing a big party!).

Unfortunately this post arrives a little late as the show ended on September 4th 2006, but it worthed it to remember. Enjoy the pics! and take a good listening to punk legend John Rotten speaking about it here

Love & War

The F.I.T. Museum located at 7th Ave. at 27th St. always features the most interesting fashion exhibitions in town besides The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The only "but" i can say about them is the size of such exhibitions, but as our dearest Coco Chanel once said Less is More.

Now on view "Love & War.- The Weaponized Woman" an exhibition about the influence of armor and military style clothing in fashion.

But do not expect camouflage or chain mall all over the place. The show is more than that and features wonderfully constructed dresses, warrior-like pieces by designers like Boudicca (top), Christian Francis Roth (below) or Junya Watanabe for Comme des Garçons (far below).

Metal Magazine

Yolanda Muelas, responsable de la que fuera primera revista gratuita de tendencias en España, A Barna, posteriormente conocida como AB, acaba de sacar a la luz una nueva revista, Metal, con la ayuda del diseñador grafico y amigo Albert Folch.

AB fue todo un boom en los años 90 gracias a su originalidad y al tipo de temas que trataba, pero ante todo por como lo hacia. Nunca antes se habia sido tan "irreverente" y con ganas de pasarlo bien. Fue la mejor publicacion indi que tuvimos en España y por este motivo Yolanda ha sido siempre un referente dentro del entorno independiente. Gracias a ella, revistas como Neo2 o Vanidad encontraron un público y un mercado al que dirigirse sin problema.

Cuando mi amiga Ángela me regalo el primer número de la revista Metal mi primera impresion fue buena, muy buena yo diria, hasta que empece a pasar pagina... Me ha decepcionado que una persona como Yolanda haya copiado tan descaradamente a Purple

Metal utiliza la misma tipografia que Purple, Courier AFS.
Metal, como Purple, esta a la venta cinco veces al año, 4 estaciones y un especial.
Ambas mezclan tipos de papel y ambas mezclan moda con otros temas, aunque basicamente es "una revista de moda donde puedes leer sobre musica, literatura, arte etc tambien".

Es Purple nada mas que en español. Lo cual no es malo tampoco, es que es solo una copia mas. Vivan los 90!.

African Patterns for American Baseball Hats

Mas o menos en Mayo de este año empezaron a aparecer por las calles de New York unas gorras de baseball algo especiales... no tenian los tipicos logos de super marcas como Nike o Adidas o de algun deportista de pro, si no que estaban fabricadas con telas africanas llenas de colores y motivos geometricos.

Por aquel entonces podias ver alguna de vez en cuando, hasta que llego el verano y las podias ver por doquier.

With this I don't mean it became a "too-worn" piece but a distinctive mark among the Latin and Black comunity. They always wear the more colorful and bold clothing and I envy them for that; if i try some of those patterns i won't look cool as they do but rather ridiculous. Anyway, these African pattern hats have been around and you can buy them at the street vendors in Downtown Broadway. My friend S. used to work around and she used to tell me how amazing was to look the kids shooping those hats; it was a non-stop buying.

Once i tried to take a picture of those vendors tables because the colors all together looked absolutely amazing. But the guy in charge didn't allow me to do so and actually he was pretty rude with me telling me if i would push the button of my camera he would broke it in little pieces no matter if the police come right away... so let's just enjoy the colors over the people heads.

The Big Irina

This video has been around quite a bit.
Irina is nowadays probably one of the biggest names in the model's world with both a little help from her friends Pete Doherty and Kate Moss, and a big help of her own talent.

WGSN is hiring

WGSN the market-leading trends information company, is now hiring people (assistant editor, market senior editor among others).
If you are trying to acces to their web probably you are having some problems. To do so you need to subscribe to the site after paying big money.
The big names in fashion and the big companies pay the fare and owe the password because the information inside really worth it; street-style pictures from all over the world, latest news in the fashion bussiness, trends one year in advance, the best pictures from all the fashion shows, trend analysis...
Visit their website index and click "careers" to find out the positions they're looking for.

V&R in H&M New York

Booble Bee woke up very early in the morning to go and fly around the H&M located on 34th street at 7th Ave in New York City. Nov. 09 2006.
The atmosphere was the same as in any other city; crowds of girls fighting for a piece of clothing, chaos, loud music, secutiry guards, big lines in the changing room, high prices and low quality. I must say though that the mood of the people was splendid like having a party.
Bobble Bee eyes went nuts with the style around. Again, Kate Moss is the main and only Inspiration Queen.
Our dearest Sussie Bubble covered the event in London and edited a video that worths a look.

B. Bee [heart] Snejana Onopka

Hussein Chalayan Does It Again