Screen Actors Guild Awards 2006 Fashion

So many awards all at once. All the dresses are starting to overwhelm me! I wasn't going to write about the fashion from the Screen Actors Guild Awards since I just wrote about the Golden Globes last week, but there were a few dresses I loved so much I can't possibly not ooh and ahh over here.

I LOVE love love this dress!! Ziyi Zhang looks absolutely amazing and just so so pretty! Another excellent fashion choice.

Hmm, I'm not so sure this YSL dress suits Reese Witherspoon really well, but she looks mega adorbale. Her smile is seriously the only genuine-looking one out of all the red carpet stars. But then again, she is the one who won the Best Actress Award and has a cute husband.

This is another dress I like. It's so simple, but the cutting is gorgeous. And as usual, Hilary Swank fits well in it, (although maybe she should cut out too much arm toning exercises.)

Sandra Oh... I love her as an actress. If any of you have watched her in Grey's Anatomy, then you'll know she's an amazing actress. This Versace dress looks really unique and suprisingly not slutty-looking! Sandra pulls it off well. And she must have got instructions how to pose because these photos are way better than the Golden Globes' ones!

Speaking of Sandra Oh, we must take a look at Ellen Pompeo. Her dress is well, sort of boring but the color suits her.

And finally, we have the cast of Desperate Housewives:

Aww... so sweet. Doesn't Andrea Bowen remind you of prom?

Teri Hatcher looks great in that dress. The shape of the dress is so interesting and definitely not everyone can pull it off.

Individually speaking, Felicity Huffman's Nicole Miller dress is sort of boring; Eva Longoria's dress color is NOT her best color; Marcia Cross looks gorgeous as usual; and Nicollette Sheridan's horrific green totally clashes with her blonde. And finally for once, their colors don't match -their stylists must have forgot to consult each other!

Mobile Phone Charms

We all love our mobiles. Who in this day and age can live without one? But it wasn't until recently I realised the charm of mobile phone charms.

Here's the story, I have a friend who just got the new Motorola Moto PEBL U6 (which is a gorgeous phone btw.) Her birthday was last month and by coincidence, one of her best friends sent her a Tiffany's mobile phone charm all the way from Shanghai, (such a great friend!) Viola! It was a brilliant match. The first time I saw the phone and charm together I was so excited, see here:

Isn't it sooo gorgeous? Maybe it's the sleekness of the Motorola phone, or maybe it's the brilliance of the Tiffany star, but ever since seeing them together, I've been paying a lot more attention to mobile phone charms around me.

Last year, one of my mum's friend got me a Swarovski charm. It's not for sale anymore, but Swarovski does make superb charms, so check them out. Here's one of my favs, which is for sale in store. Isn't it so pretty? If you look carefully at each of the crystals, they're all slightly different in color and texture. The last one is the Swarovski swan (you have to stare at it quite carefully to notice it!)

The State of Fashion Union - Harrods Girl's PoV

Barneys Girl and I decided that we cannot miss out on this week's Carnivale of Couture: The State of Fashion Union, hosted by Almost Girl and Fashion Tribes. The questions are:
What fashion means to you.
Why fashion is important (or not.)

So after a lot and a lot of thinking by us, who constrast to popular belief do have a life out of the fashion blogosphere, both Barneys Girl and I came to a similar conclusions.

So you'll hear my take first. I don't think it is possible for me to just pour my heart here over what fashion means to me because when something means something to someone, it's probably more important than just 'it means this to me.' If you've been reading this blog long enough, then you'll probably already know intuitively how much fashion means to me. On a superficial, simple level, fashion is to me: an interest, beauty, art, reflection of personality and status (the superficial realities of the world,) and of course, blogging three times a week!

On a deeper level, well, that's private and indescribable. While there is definitely a deeper meaning to fashion, of which is different to all of us, I don't like to ponder over these 'deeper meanings' and dissect them so much that they don't even mean anything anymore. And frankly, I've never been one to act overly concerned about issues and causes (things such as PETA or humanity topics.) Even more so, I detest people who pretend they care.

And yes, of course fashion is important. We all know fashion is a huge industry, with other related industries such as print media, advertising, entertainment etc. attached to it. Gosh, so many people are financially supported by it. Also a lot of people are mentally supported by it -I remember during my GCSEs, (that's a UK public exam for 16 yr old students for those who don't know,) I was motivated to study by staring at this cute bag I just bought and my dinner dance dress.

Two summers ago, my dad gave me a very significant fatherly advice: See, if you want to be wearing your Pradas and Guccis when you grow up, then you better work hard and work for a good/ big company. Because apart from the fact you will need loads of money to buy all these clothes, to wear these nice clothes, you must be working in a serious business district (like Central in Hong Kong,) and only these important companies are located there. Of couse, I've figured all this out since young, but it didn't hurt to hear it from my dad.

The Beauty and the Geek: Thais and Tyson

Ok. So I watch this show. And according to their quiz, I'm "pretty geeky." But deep down anyone with a bit of intelligence is a little geeky-besides, no one ever said that one cannot be fashionably geeky right? I know I am like 3 days late, but its hard to be up to date on tv shows without a tv. Anyway, I just wanted to express my sorrow for the elimination of Thais and Tyson.

Well. . I don't feel too much for Thai (she should've studied more) but Tyson-he was the sweetest geek on the show!!! He was really trying, he studied really hard, he knew his stuff (if only Thais had studied, she would know that the main memory storage in a computer is called a harddrive!), he was funny, he said stuf like "$250 000 is nice, but I think I'm only to leave here with a friend. And I think ultimately that's my big prize" and "there aren't many girls in my life, so if I can do something nice for a girl, then its always a pleasure," and of course, he's awesome with the rubix cube. He can solve it without looking in 3 minutes! So disappointing. Now I don't know who to vouch for!

And they lost to Tristan and Chris, who frankly, is not everyone's favourite couple. Tristan cries all the time, but generally not too annoying. But CHRIS is a complete jerk. He is egotistic, up himself and generally just ugh! There's this other really annoying and cocky girl, Cher, from another group. She and Chris would've made the perfect team.

For those of you who don't know. This show basically pairs up beauties with geeks and see who can change the other the most. Quite hilarious. Here's a funny one:

What would you do to prevent pollution?

eat less gaseous food, so we won't be farting alot-thats a form of air pollution.

Haute Couture SS06 II

Ahh, haute couture, such beautiful, beautiful creations. This season, the creations showed influences from recent trends such as lots of neutral colors, and cuttings from other designers, such as last season's Roland Mouret designs.
Chanel
LOVED it! Usually I think Chanel is lovely and classic but not quite for young people. But this collection was just too pretty! The show was dominated by whites and some blacks. And it oddly didn't feature a lot of the typical Chanel tweed suits.
A Karl-evolutionised Chanel suit completed with the biker pants thing Lagerfeld is so fond of.

My top two picks from this collection. Sooo gorgeous.
If you look through the collection, you would notice that most of the skirts and dresses are above-knee-length, which is very modern of Karl Lagerfeld, but admittingly sort of weird for a brand known for classical beauty. Maybe it's this willingness to push foward that makes Chanel continue to be such a classic darling.

Christian Lacroix
Lacroix is usually one of my much anticipated haute couture shows, but I didn't find this collection special at all. This collection as usual, featured lots of strong colors and a variety of shapes. But honestly, only a few outfits were outstanding:

Despite the typical collection, the last few dresses were incredible:

There's that Lacroix empresses wearing wedding dresses theme.

Jean Paul Gaultier
Another one of my favourite collections this haute season. The theme was very rich, Parisian lady with a hint of Greek influence. Just looking at the collection makes me feel like I'm sitting in a Parisian hotel watching all these wealthy, worldly (and possibly rude) women walk by.

The collection exuded a feeling of strong, sexy and Paris-style-femininity. It's amazing Gaultier did all this not with boring suits or colors, but with sensible creativity.

The great thing about the Gaultier collection is that you can actually understand the theme and fall into that atmosphere by admiring the whole collection. Every piece of couture featured made sense and felt like it belonged there. LOVE love love this collection!

Haute Couture SS06 I

Wow the haute couture shows are upon us again! Looking at the new batch of beautiful creations, I have found more motivation to slave away studying for that funny pointy shape with a line across it like a canoe head known fondly to students as a "A."

Armani Prive

The Armani show was.. . very Armani. Like you just glance at the picture and immediately tell its Armani. Sleek, feminine, sophisticated. . what more do I need to say?

When I become the high power business woman that I am grooming to be, this will be part of my business wardrobe.

And aren't these two gorgeous? The black one is interesting, sexy but not trashy. And the white one is just oh-so-classical. There's something like this on the red carpet every year. I wonder who we will be seeing in this one?

And I like the starry midnight theme this one has going for it. But that pointy thing at the hips just looks really weird and uncomfortable. . .

Valentino
Unlike the Armani, the Valentino show wasn't quite as Valentino as one would expect. Lines were softer, more flowy but still very elegant.

And while we're ordering my future power woman wardrobe, please throw in these two for variety. I love how the collars are different and the whole outfit looks so comfortable (esp the beige one) as if she'd been wearing it all day.

And of course Valentino's evening wear is as elegant and gorgeous as ever. I adore the ballerina styled one, cause it looks so much fun. And the long white one is just the epitome of Valentino.

This red one is just somehow not very flattering.

Christian Dior

I like to think that when it comes to the appreciation of fashion/art, I have an open eye. But however way I look at this collection, I cannot comprehend it. Admittedly the craftmanship put into this collection is nothing short of genius. But frankly, I'm just scared. Please do not let me see any of this in real life-especially in the dark!

We are the scary masked cult out to get you. . .

Not even the symbol of the church will save you from getting your head dislocated by us.

Another night's work well done. Time to go back to the headquarters to show off my bloody cloak.

BOO!

Cosmetic Bags

Argh, jetsetting is not as fun as it looks. I just came back from a short trip to SF (yes I do seem to be going there a lot these days) and it is tiring. Although I DO so love good food, shopping and the mind numbingness of getting away. Anyway, while packing, I realised that somehow in the last few years, my repertoire of cosmetics has increased significantly. So much that it no longer all fit into my average sized narrow cosmetic bags and its getting hard to actually locate anything without pouring it all out first. Obviously this is the sign for me to get a new more spacious and easy to access cosmetics bag.

I first considered Le Sportsac. But the normal cosmetic bags they offer are just too small and doesn't have enough compartments in it for me to get organised with.

The next obvious place to look was of course, Sephora. Disappointingly, their choices were bulky and frankly, not that cute. Although this printed one I found on their site is not half bad. Will have to see it in real life to determine whether its good or not.

Sephora was also promoting this set from Bare Escentuals. It actually looks quite perfect and I def wouldn't mind trying out their products-I hear they're quite good. Except I saw this one real life and its very shallow, so not spacious. . .

I know that one should really be economical and just use the make-up bags that cosmetic brands give out when you buy a huge amount of products. But sometimes, they're just not quite perfect and none quite as cute as these ones from Bloom. The one of the right is actually bigger, but I haven't seen the inside of it to decide if its quite as perfect. But they both look very adorable.

In the end, I bought this (on top) cosmetic bag from Stila. It is just the right size to fit everything and looks oh-so-stylish. Too bad I didn't see the one on the below though. It is actually bigger with more compartments to get organised with AND it leaves more space for the further expansion of my cosmetics collection.

Stripes II: Nautical

Nautical stripes have always sort of been around, on and off, especially with all those cruise collections going on. But walking in the stores this season, one cannot help but notice a significantly larger amount of clothes devoted to the nautical theme, nautical stripes are hard to miss!

Traditionally these classic nautical striped shirts are signature looks that can be seen on the catwalk in any season of say.. Tommy Hilfiger. But this season, these classic shirts have made it onto the much more exciting runways of Emporio Armani and LAMB! I'm loving what they're doing at Emporio Armani, mixing the nautical tee with satin pants.

And the wonderful thing is that one can easily get the same shirt at a much lower cost in high street stores that are already catching on, like this one from Anthropologie.

If you're not too hot about going all out nautical like above, one can always take a page out of the King of the nautical's, Ralph Lauren's, book and wear it more subtly like above-inside matched with a very plain outer layer.

A good one would be these two from Trina Turk and Anthropologie respectively. I simply adore how Anthropologie used a blend of two stripes, it really gives the shirt more style and emphasizes the neckline.

Another gorgeous take on the nautical stripes. On cardigans, the sailor stripes are both ladylike and bold-esp the navy blue one above from Anthropologie. And they are oh-so-wearable too judging from the outfit on the left from Marc by Marc Jacobs. Perfect for keeping us warm in spring/summer from the occasional chilly wind and a/c.

And then there is the much more exciting and artistic twist to the nautical stripes from none other then Marc by Marc Jacobs again. And now. . I feel like I should say, aiye aiya sailor!