Bloggers Wardrobe

It should be apt that my quest to be listed among the top bloggers at www.bloggerswardrobe.com should begin with my lucky outfit.
I have worn this outfit to Elle Singapore's Fashion Style Search during one of their events and won the top prize of $250 worth of Pacific Plaza shopping vouchers (which are still lying untouched in its envelope).
I have worn this outfit to Paris Haute Couture Week, where I was photographed by Walldress.com, a famous french style site much like Lookbook.nu, Glamour Italia, and 2 other streetstyle bloggers.
But this outfit was originally photographed by my girlfriend, Kristie.

I'm actually wearing a leopard dress which I bought in Beijing, together with The Scarlet Room's faux leather skirt and a thrifted chiffon black cape, with my New Look wedges. I love A line dresses because they can easily be converted into both a top or a bottom. You can easy pull a ripped black knit sweater over this leopard print dress to convert it into a miniskirt. Well, a poor fashion-obsessed girl always have her means to creating as much mileage for the clothes in her wardrobe as possible - squeeze out every single penny which you have paid for the dress baby.

You may not have heard of Bloggers Wardrobe, but that's because they haven't officially launched yet. Another but - they have already gathered the support of the top bloggers in the world, including my fave reads Park & Cube, Lust for Life, The Stylish Wanderer and Froufrouu. Together, this group of power bloggers will be able to work with the top brands in the world to try on clothes, gadgets and other products for free. More than the material, Bloggers Wardrobe will also hold workshops to help fellow bloggers attract more followers and form a strong community of fashion bloggers. It would be the ultimate bridge between bloggers and brands. So when I received an email from Bloggers Wardrobe asking me to join them, it felt extremely surreal (Is this a scam?) to then extremely excited (OMG YES!), to then self-doubt (Whoa me?). Emotional rollercoaster rides are not exactly very fun you know.

I deserve to be part of Bloggers Wardrobe because I am a combination of both East & West fashion pizzazz (born in China raised in Singapore). My superpowers include gold-digging from flea markets and thrift bins for the most fashionable finds, mixing up different styles and whispering intimately to my readers. Oh, and I’m Pneumonia White certified. It’s funny because she sent me an email barely a month into starting her blog saying that she loves my blog. She introduced herself as Anya, a trigger happy girl living in sunny LA, but turns out that she’s an extremely mysterious society girl living in a house her dead grandma left her in Bel Air with a friend called Black who has no fear and a teddy bear called Aloysius that has as much attitude as his name. She narrates about her life and her dreams so well, reading her blog is like reading a mystery thriller novel with 2 extremely fashionable girls caught in the middle of the mystery. Her photography of her outfits is always in grainy black and white, never sharp, always in between, just like her blog. A delicate mixture between reality and fantasy, she makes fashion intriguing again. So good, even John Januzzi of Textbook says you should check her out.

I AMsterdam

I thought it would be good to go off topic and share with you some travel photography from my one-day road trip from Paris to Amsterdam.

They all say Amsterdam is a postcard city with canals running through the entire city joint by bridges and dotted with whimsical boats. You'll see the iconic windmills and tulips, not to mention the many well-decorated bicycles parked along the streets with small art deco-like apartments squeezed like lego blocks. Well, part of that are all true, but to my eyes, no city in the world beats Paris on historical architecture and cultural sights. I enjoyed Amsterdam all the same, despite the main attractions all within walking distance of each other. Despite being the capital of the Netherlands, Amsterdam felt like a rather small town, especially seeing how the locals ride bikes everywhere they go, and the small apartments dotting the streets.

Old church at the end of the canal

Tulip chairs outside a cafe

I bet nearly every family owns a small rowboat

Shakespeare & Company Bookstore

Never did I expect to find a bookstore in Paris selling mostly English books and having all the staff at the counter speak perfect English (French people have one of the most horrible accents for English and they hate speaking it. Speak English to some of the older crowd and you will get a haughty look from them and then be subsequently ignored.) I came across Shakespeare & Co. when I was visiting Notre Dame de Paris the other day. That's the thing I like about traveling on foot aimlessly - you never know what you'll find. And when you do find something really good like this, it's such a pleasant surprise that you feel like telling the huge tourist crowds outside Notre Dame that the good things are yet to be seen.

Shakespeare & Co was founded in 1919 by Sylvia Beach, who was an American expatriate originally at Rue de L'Odeon and have since then became a gathering spot for famous writers and poets such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. However, since the store closed down during WWII, it never reopened at its original spot by its original owner. Instead, the current store is owned by George Whitman, another American expatriate, who acquired a small apartment opposite Notre Dame, which he then converted into today's bookstore in 1951. It was renamed soon after as Shakespeare & Co. to commemorate the original bookstore.

Shopfront

Some books from the fashion section. i-D SOUL is one amazing thick book of the people i-D has interviewed through the years and the things that they value most in life.

The ground floor is filled with various fiction and non-fiction books, including politics, globalization & culture, novels, poetry, art, architecture, fashion and even cooking! They also have a special section on films, especially film history in France, and also a large collection of Shakespearean works. The only thing which you can't find in this tiny intimate space are mainstream best-sellers. But instead you get the feeling that the books are quite well curated and reflective of its owner's taste.

And yes, the bookstore is actually really small, or maybe its just the fact that the owner has tried to optimize every space there is on the wall by filling it up with shelves and shelves of books. In squeezing across the tiny walkways and always have to say "excuse me, sorry" past the other visitors browsing, it was actually quite a nice experience. It was as though I had walked into a cave.

Everything is decorated very whimsically & every wall is covered w books up to the ceiling

Staircase up to the 2nd floor!

Children's section with a bed where parents can read together with their kids!

Original typewriter for anyone's use

Out the window is a small terrace like space typical of old Parisian apartments

The library!

The second floor comprises of a children's section full of English picture books and a wonderful small canopy bed where parents can seat and read with their kids. A large part of the space is a library full of books from George Whitman's personal collection. Visitors can just select any book, seat and read for the whole day. The library section also frequently holds events such as talks by other writers, workshops and readings. On the day that I was there, there was a performance poetry reading by a group of hippies outside the bookstore, hence the woman leaning over the window still in the last photo. The poetry reading was accompanied with music on guitar and the style of reading was almost lyrical like without the usual nuances of daily conversation. Judging from the claps and cheers coming through the window, the response was really enthusiastic.
I left the bookstore with a secondhand book Fashion and its relation with culture, politics and society, written by a professor from Central St Martins, and also Diana Vreeland, a thick biography volume published after she had passed away.

I wish Singapore had such a bookstore where it's more than just a bookstore. It's a small intimate space where people fascinated by literature can gather to discuss about the books they've read, share the things they wrote and discover both new and old books from one of the thousands books in the store up on the shelf. There's not enough space so some of the books are even squeezed horizontally near the top of the ceiling, or in the small nooks along the stairwell in an almost haphazard manner, which makes it all the more fun to climb up a ladder to reach for a book that you've never seen before.
It is also very interesting to read some of the notes and photos that people have left behind and pasted up on the walls of the bookstore. I read a very heartwarming note written in the unsteady handwriting of a little boy of 6 which said that since his mommy brought him to the bookstore, he now understands that reading is fun and writing is beautiful. And so he writes everyday now.

That's what a real bookstore should be like. A place with a heart that is big enough to welcome all of its readers to cultivate a reading culture, support new writers and establish a platform for new talents and book enthusiasts. Singapore, please come up with something like that soon.

You can visit the interesting website of Shakespeare & Co here.

Jardin des Tuileries - My fav Parisian Park

Jardin des Tuileries is seriously the best jardin (garden) ever out of all the parks in Paris such as Jardin des Plantes, Jardin des Luxembourg and the smaller jardins. It has two great giant fountains that makes it an extremely good place to cool down and people watch, not to mention the fact that it houses an entire amusement park and is so near Le Louvre and Rue Rivoli, Rue Saint-Honore and Place Vendome. That area is an expensive neighbourhood filled with amazing tearooms, high end designer labels like Carolina Herrera, Givenchy and YSL and also Colette, the super hippie cool multilabel boutique.

I arrived at Assemble Nationale metro station and wandered around for a good one and half hours before finally finding Jardin des Tuileries. Silly me mistook Palais Royale for Musee d'Orsay originally and wandered around for a good 1 hour before finding the way to Jardin des Tuileries.

The prettiest bridge in Paris!

Place de la Concorde

Inside Jardin desTuileries

Children playing boats in one of the two fountains in the Jardin

Les Arts Decoratifs

Carrousel

A complete mini amusement park right within the Jardin, very popular and filled with children especially during the holiday period when I visited. They have lots of very nice food like churros (a kind of fried potato fries), fruit punch of every colour, candy floss (they call it "bearde de papa" aka Papa's beard) and all kinds of bonbons (candy) there. They also have a small Flume Ride, Haunted House, small rollercoasters, trampolines, bungee jumps and a lovely ferris wheel.

A mini Arc de Triomphe on sorts just in front of the amazing Louvre museum

Chez Angelina
Just on Rue de Rivoli outside Jardin des Tuileries, you can find Angelina, a wonderful tea salon with lots of amazing cakes and pastries. They are very famous for their hot chocolate, despite it being slightly expensive. But for macarons, please please visit Laduree, they really have the best macarons ever and despite it being 1,65euros for just a small piece, it is really worth a taste.

I chose a Mont Blanc - cream wrapped with a chestnut layer to taste and happily ate it in the Jardin next to the fountain. Ooh c'est la vie (:

Macarons!

 

The one I ate



The lovely tearoom

 If you're ever in Paris, please visit the Jardin des Tuileries, and while you're at it, you can also drop by the following museums that are in walking distance:
Les Arts Decoratifs
Le Louvre
Musee d'Orsay (for Impressionism)
Musee d'Orange Tuileries (for Claude Monet's long paintings that wrap around an oval room, absolutely amazing)

And also:
Angelina
Palais Royale
Petit Palais
Place de la Concorde

PFW Day 3 - Valentino couture show

Day 3

Weather: Cold, windy with a slight drizzle
Mood: Initially apprehensive

Day 3 of Paris haute couture week and I arrived at Valentino cold as hell having been whipped in the wind and rain. Thank god Paris' rains only lasts for less than 30 minutes! When I got there, there were already a huge crowd of people standing outside the show area and thankfully it has stopped raining.

First person I shot - Hanneli!

I saw this skirt on Shini Park of Park&Cube before, still loving it here

The beautiful Olivia Palermo

My other fav editor next to ADR. I have to find out where she works.

Putting this up only bcos of Tommy Ton's expression in the background!

Lovely Anna

Giovanna Battaglia & her friend

I need her to teach me how she does her hair like that

Freja Beha Ecrissen

And that concludes my Paris haute couture street looks coverage.

They always say you have to experience it to know it and oh boy,what a ride it was. It was really adrenaline pumping when I see all those venerated famous fashion editors and icons that I read about and see so much on the internet. And then there was all those models post-show, the crazy photographers grappling and fighting for photos, the yells and shouts of "Mademoiselle s'il vous plait!"...it all adds together in the experience.

Yes, fashion is usually made exclusive and especially for haute couture shows, but then outside on the sidewalk, everyone can be photographed irregardless of whether you're famous or not. For day 2, I was wearing my winning leopard dress/leather skirt and black chiffon cape ensemble and I got photographed by around 5 people, one of which was Glamour online and the other was a French streetstyle site. For day 3, I got photographed twice, once by a Korean journalist and her photographer.

I feel that in fashion, people appreciate someone with good style and good taste. They would not discriminate as long as you have it. Even with all the big names looming such as Valentino, Chanel and Armani, Paris fashion shows outside (and I bet the other big 3 as well) is just as exciting. I've been told by my new friends living in Paris that sometimes they were allowed a standing space inside the show venue even when the space is packed, unlike Singapore's Audi Fashion Festival that only allows those in the guestlist to get in, despite sometimes half of the guests are just people of status and not even in the slightest stylish.

I can't promise that I'll be back soon again next year, but this was certainly an eye-opening experience and I'm sure I'll experience it again. (Shoutout to my girl Sofia from Morroco - thanks for making fashion week more fun! And you're so lucky Paris is only a few hours away by flight and to be able to come to fashion week so often!!)

Guess who?