MILAN FASHION WEEK

Spring Fashion Week usually tends to be very uninteresting to me. Bright colors, pastels, and prints are so blasé. Despite the differences in taste, I'm still keeping up with the collections. Fashion Week is such an exciting glimpse into the future, I just can't help it! I was very bored with what New York had to offer but I knew Milan would have at least one collection I'd fall in love with. And I did fall in love, not with one, but with two great collections.
Salvatore Ferragamo consistently produces beautiful collections. As I was looking through designers' latest works, there'd be a few pieces that I liked here and there, but I wasn't enjoying any collections as a whole. Ferragamo never seems to disappoint! I'm one of those people who wear black all year round so I'm thrilled by the use of a minimal color palette. I hope that come springtime people will be clad in more blacks and neutrals. It'll be so much easier on the eyes. The details in Ferragamo's garments are always superb. I enjoy the subtle prints and the repeated use of eyelets. This collection has strayed away from the typical spring prints and florals, and I really applaud that.

Dolce & Gabbana is the epitome of over the top fashion. Despite being completely ridiculous, D&G is always so well executed. There are quite obvious inspirations from Frida Kahlo in this collection and personally, I would have loved to see the models sporting unibrows! Even with that aside, her persona clearly shines through. Another thing that I was ecstatic about was the shoes. Not the big heels, but the tiny kitten heels and flats! Sky high heels are all the rage at the moment, so it was a breath of fresh air to see just the opposite. Don't get me wrong, I love a great pair of heels, but I can get tired of seeing something so many times.

I can always rely on Milan Fashion Week to tickle my fancy, but now I'm looking forward to what Paris has to bring! If you've been following me for a while, you should know who I'm looking forward to seeing ;) Out of curiosity, what collections have been your favorite so far and which ones are you excited to see?

LOSE MY WAY

TOY's debut self-titled album dropped last week and this is definitely one of the best things to come out this year. Their sound reminds me of some kind of combination of Sonic Youth and the Horrors; it's those guitars! If you're into either of those bands, I'd give this a listen. I really liked the video for Lose My Way. I feel like lately a lot of artists have been releasing videos that are over the top, all over the place, and distracts from the music. This is the complete opposite of that - the video and song work together, yet it's very simplistic and well done. You can preview the album on last.fm. Enjoy!

PARTY POLAROIDS

Last night my friend Emma had a cheeseburger themed get-together for her birthday! I bought her that necklace that she's sporting from ModCloth and she was absolutely ecstatic. I was worried about giving it to her because it turned out to be of poor quality and I wasn't allowed to return it. Good thing she liked it though! I love giving my friends gifts. If I were extremely rich, I'd shower my loved ones with gifts all the time because, quite frankly, they deserve it.

Unfortunately, these are probably going to be the last photos I take with my Polaroid. The film is just so ridiculously expensive. Even the price of the Polaroid Impossible film is outrageous and you only get eight exposures. Not cool. More than likely, I'll be purchasing a Fujifilm Instax camera in the near future. Instant cameras are so much fun to shoot with; the whole experience of shooting an image and watching it develop right before your eyes is magical. It's something I never want to have to give up.

ART IS HARD

Trying to learn any new skill that you've never had much contact with can be challenging and frustrating. This semester I'm taking an introductory drawing class at my university. I was most excited for this course as summer came closer and closer to an end. When we received a list of supplies on the first day, I immediately went out and bought everything needed. We began drawing on the next meeting period and I was instantly overwhelmed. Our professor had us starting out with gesture drawings. They were really boring still life arrangements of boxes and vases, but we had to draw everything so quickly. "Don't worry if it's not perfect, just get all the items onto your paper!" she would say to us as she gave us less than a minute to draw. I'm a perfectionist and telling me not to worry about making things as perfect as possible is like telling me to go jump off a building. It's not gonna happen.

There was a day in class where I became so agitated that I couldn't draw this stupid set of boxes just right. I wanted to walk out and cry. None of it was making any sense to me. The fact that we had begun to use Mondrian lines wasn't helping at all and confused me even more. I know I needed listen to the advice my professor was giving despite the fact that she wears platform flip flops and a toe ring, which makes me really uncomfortable, but I felt like something just wasn't clicking in my brain. Yesterday was when I finally had that "I got it!" moment. We were presented with how to use triangulation in terms of an object's spatial relation to another. I found it much simpler to shift my drawing and make changes as needed that way.

Here's what I ended up with yesterday (that funny thing in the bottom left is the table). Some of the angle lines didn't get onto paper because I was using a measuring stick, but some of them are there. This certainly isn't the greatest drawing but it's such an improvement from last week. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of myself. I'm glad that I was able to overcome feeling lost every time I'd stand at an easel. Now I cannot wait to get back to class to see what we'll be doing next!

FINGERS NEVER BLEED

Yeasayer's back with a brand new album Fragrant World. If someone were to ask me what genre this band was, I'd have no idea what to say. They're so many styles mixed together that they form their own sound that is uniquely theirs. If you've never listened to them before, I'd suggest you do so now and see what you think or what you'd try to classify them as. This track is one of my favorites of the new ones but I've been listening to this CD in my car for the last few weeks and I'm really diggin' all of them, honestly. Check it out!

FISHEYE 5

A pretty bad picture of Beach House. They, however, were amazing.So much of this roll of film was pictures of basement dance parties. My friends and I are just cool like that. The last five were from my friend Brittany's birthday get-together. Everyone that was there was so friendly and a pleasure to be around. We all meshed together really well and I'm so excited to hang out with them all again next weekend for my friend Emma's birthday! Anytime I get my fisheye camera out around someone who's never seen it, they think it's the next best thing. Without fail, they'll me to take a whole bunch of pictures of them or others, and I honestly love doing it. This little camera is the perfect addition to parties and gatherings. I think documenting all those fun moments with friends is kind of amazing. Photos are memories in and of themselves, and they can also spark a whole series of other memories to go along with it. I feel privileged whenever someone asks me to take their picture, even if it is just a silly picture from a party.

GENESIS

Big weapons, big shoes, and big snakes. Grimes has finally put out a video for her single Genesis. Personally, I would have rather her put out a video for another song off the new album that isn't already getting a ton of radio play. Perhaps Vowels = Space and Time? Overall, I think this video was just okay; I didn't really care too much for what was going on in the video but I love the styling of this though! What are you guys' thoughts?