Cathetine Malandrino… sighhhhh!!!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Catherine Malandrino’s clothes.I first heard of her when Blair Waldorf wore the marroon dress in Gossip Girl, and I checked out CM’s website for gorgeous clothes.

I chanced upon the store in Meat market, and fell in love with absolutely everything. This is what you call design and fashion. Gorgeous use of pleats, fabrics, and vision. While I loved everything, I found three to be very interesting. I had seen them online but these clothes you have to see in person and touch and feel the fabrics to get complete pleasure of fashion. The first one is of using hands on her dresses. The hands feature on the shoulder and one side of the waist. In one case it looks as if someone is grabbing the breast, but it is done so tastefully that it comes across as more elegant than sleazy. The second is of an eagle. The eagle’s wings are across both shoulders that meet just above the waist and join to form the head, which extends to the waist. The eagle was used on another dress where the wings formed the sides of each waist and met majestically at the back of the waist. The third was of a face… the face was on the side of one waist with pleats coming out of the lips. I had the vision of water springing out of the lips and going in all directions which is where the pleats went.

The clothing had really experimented with ruffles and pleats, forming ringlets, rossettes, and ruffles in all areas of the dress. A lot of sheer fabric was also used as a top layer. I thought DVF dresses were good, but CM is MUCH MUCH better than DVF. This is what you call design, unlike DVF where the prints and fit do the job which has more to do with use of fabrics rather than design. Unfortunately most of CM’s clothing were sizes 2 and 4, which I could NEVER fit ever. Damn. I am sure she has more sizes online, probably just not in stores. I will go back to the store again, just to relive the fun and pleasure I had in just seeing the gorgeous designs come to life.

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Theory

Theory is a clothing (men & women), handbags, and shoes brand sold through department stores and its own stores. The brand is VERY pricey. Its USP is that its clothing is made of a lycra-like material that makes it stretchy and comfortable; the clothes last quite long. I wonder, will customers pay $150-$200 for clothing that is so basic when they can get something cheaper? Will the brand last in this economy? Its collection in Bloomingdale’s was better than the one in their store in Meat market. Good collection, I have eyed their clothing for a while but never purchased any. Most people buy the brand on sale. Its parent compeny is a Japanese company. I do wonder about its being a healthy going concern. If I had $300 to spend, I would spend it on  Caltherine Malandrino dress… also, Theory’s collection features suiting and wear to work, meaning people don’t buy it as frequently. However, I have heard that the brand has a cult-following, and I so did like their denim pants in Bloomies. I have not seen that color used often. I also liked their ruffle plaid dress which had a sheer black overlay and looked cute.

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Back to books

In school I loved to read. I read during all my free time, and I could not have enough of books. I read at least one book every 2 days. A few of us competed to read the most books, and I tried to read as many as fast as possible. Then came the Internet and I lost interest in reading. Each time I tried to get into it with newspaper subscriptions, Business Week, literature classics, etc., I could not complete them. I decided to ease into it. I have tons of books in front of me but find it hard to read them. Then I read about one book on Amazon by V.S. Naipaul, my favorite writer. He won the Nobel prize for literature and I loved his books. I decided to pick something I knew I liked and start there.

A House for Mr. Biswas. A very simple book about Indians in Trinidad. Its a book from the perspective of a man, Mr. Biswas. A simple man, unemotional, silly (like all men haha), sarcastic. He wants to buy a house, but doesn’t have the money or a high-paying job. Its a journey from his birth to death. It starts with his death, and the rest is flashback. There is no lingering on emotions during funerals; even when his father passed away the book did not focus on the negative emotions. It focused on dry humor and society. Some things I could relate to having seen in my own LARGE maternal family. I love the simplicity with which Naipaul weaves storylines, the dry humor in between lines, the eccentricities of life, the awkwardness the relationships bring with them… I have not yet completed the book and am much slower than usual, but I am going to finish this book and pick up another. I am happy to start reading again.

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Stuck in the middle

What do you do when your two family members are not talking to each other? One person asks you about the other because whether one likes it or now she worries about the other. And you try to keep in touch with the other indirectly, and soon that manner of staying in touch is going to go away, and there is NO OTHER way to stay in touch? And you cannot stay in touch directly because somehow you two don’t correspond as well? How do you make sure that the person is okay? How do you know if she needs you? I guess if she needs you she will reach out to you, right? Whats the point of having an ego? You have ONE life, and you throw away precious years because of ego? What a shame and a waste. On ones deathbed ego does not factor, you only think of your loved ones and how you are going to miss them… what is the point of ego and stubbornness with family?

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Google Chrome

Google is by far my favorite site and company, and I would not consider any other search ever. I used to like Firefox a lot, but of late it keeps crashing and takes a lot of space, which slows down video streaming significantly. AM got me to use Google Chrome. At first I was not too crazy, but it is an excellent browser. It performs better than Firefox and has all the bells and whistles. The only problem I have is that Firefox displays the entire history for any single word in the URL, but Chrome does not show the entire history. For example, when I type “wo” for wordpress, it does not show me “fadshion.wordpress” till I type “word”. Firefox shows the entire browser history with just “wo”. This is annoying when I watch my favorite TV show Taarak Mehta. I type “taarak” and the URL shows up for a specific video instead of the forum with links to different dates for that video. I always have to find my way through that video back to the forum with the entire list of Taarak videos. Firefox does not do that. But knowing Google I am sure it will catch up. Am hanging in there…

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Confusion galore…

Yesterday I went to a designer friend’s home to seek ideas for my renovation. Her place is gorgeous! She put so much thought into every small detail… and it shows. I realized that there is so much more out there that I have not considered. She used a Japanese theme throughout her apartment, with wood lines throughout, black furniture, Japanese style doors, and natural influences. Every item was gorgeous, well thought out, and expensive! While I don’t intend to spend even half as much, I found her tips useful: have a theme for your apartment, everything should have a flow and connect, etc. Till now I was thinking of everything separately – kitchen, bathroom, master bedroom, etc. I did not think of it all as one whole that should connect in some way. So complicated. There are so many choices that I cannot make a single decision. Last week I decided on tiles, but now am not so convinced.

I thought that maybe I should consider natural because the friend’s home was calm because of it, but that is not my aesthetic taste. I like contemporary, and no matter how many pictures I see online of natural stuff, I really like the contemporary stuff even though its “fake”. BTW she is not really a friend – she is AM’s boss’ wife… she lived in one of those high-fy Park Avenue apartments, and moved to Central Park West two years back and renovated the place. I mean, she replaced a Wolf cooktop ($$$) with a Gagganeau one because she did not like the look of it. Ahhh the luxury. Her view is of the central park boathouse and you can see the boats, river, semi-nude people sun-bathing, people cycling, and feel the cool breeze… The view was so awesome and breathtaking.

I am going to make my designer work overtime. She has not helped me at all, and its very frustrating. One more chance, and if she is not helpful, I will replace her. She doesn’t make good recommendations. I asked her about window blinds, and she recommended $1,000 worth per blind per window. Is she crazy? Like I have bags of money under my mattress or something. The first time she came over to my apartment she brought two people to take measurements, and she brought her kid with her. How unprofessional is that? And I pay her per hour!!! The measurements were completely wrong, and now my contractor has to take them again before construction starts. I have not heard one good thing about any architect and designer that friends have used. Not one good thing. I am so confused right now. Contruction will start in 3-4 weeks, and I don’t have everything ready yet. Hopefully everything will fall in place.

Its like people who work cannot get a renovation done, because stores are hardly open on weekends. They open from 9-5, and weekends some are closed and some are 9-4. How the hell are you supposed to get things done? In this economy, you would think they would want to make some money…

Sometimes I think I have two jobs. Obviously AM is aesthetically challenged, so I have to make all decisions, and I want to make sure that everything is perfect. He keeps telling me that its okay to make mistakes, but I feel so strongly about getting everything right. Today I was excitedly going about checking out tiles, etc., and AM sat on the couch in the store and played with his Blackberry. Sigh… men!!!

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