Thursday, April 30, 2009

why i love lookbook


I've decided to start a new series on my blog called "why i love..." Not sure how often these will roll out. The last time I did one of these was on Kid Robot. But, with no further delay...

Why I love LookBook.nu

I recently decorated a tri-fold as a piece to introduce myself, the parts of culture that I love as well as a trivia game on those parts of culture. As it goes with tri-folds, it was for a science fair, of sorts, in which myself and my fellow students were the experiments on display. It was the annual Brandcenter recruiter fair and I was the nerd with the tri-fold.

One of the areas of culture that I hit on was fashion and as my board said "Fashion trends in the near future will not be determined by high-end designers, but by your 18 year-old neighbor with an armful of cloth and a camera."

Living, photographic proof of that is Lookbook.nu. LookBook calls itself the "collective fashion consciousness." It's a collection of photographs, submitted by members, of people in different outfits they have assembled.

Lookbook is truly brilliant because...

1. It scrolls down endlessly. You never hit the bottom of the page while scrolling through "looks," which means you could peruse it non-stop for 40 minutes (no, seriously).

2. "Hyping" looks - A quick and painless (i.e. it won't send you to another window, just takes a click) way to show your love for a certain look.

3. Exclusivity. You have to be invited to be a member in order to "hype" looks. And exclusivity makes people feel as though they belong to something elite, special. Something to be proud of and write long blogposts about.

4. Not only does it take the creativity of putting pieces together, but an acumen of photography to really earn a lot of "hypes." So in other words, this site combines two parts of culture that I love.

5. It showcases the best of young design trend navigators. Some of the members on here are 15 and posting a maturity of style that would have knocked the 15 year-old pig-tail laden me into a locker.

6. Global.

7. Look descriptions - "Looks" are posted along with the title of look, name, age, location and general description of the person. Some examples:



And that is why I love LookBook.nu. Let me show you some looks and who knows, maybe you'll love LookBook too.


Sunday, April 12, 2009

silence the stain

Just watched "Funniest Office Commercials" on TBS. The #1 spot was...

Sunday, April 5, 2009

love. actually.

I've never had a lot of trouble letting go. I've moved quite a bit in my life and met a lot of people (I have more than 1300 facebook friends and only about 5 of them are strangers that friended me and I wasn't sure if I knew them.)

But I am becoming increasingly aware as graduation nears, that the Brandcenter is going to be the hardest thing i've ever had to let go of.

I guess the real reason why I've never had trouble letting go is because I never believed that anything was permanent from the beginning. I start phases of my life with a clear understanding that it has an ending. And although I knew the Brandcenter was a 2 year program, I am realizing that the friendships that I have made here will be ones I hold onto indefinitely. These people will be constantly coming in and out of my life because 1. it's a small industry and 2. in the U.S. there are basically 4 big cities we'll be concentrated in. L.A., San Fran, Chicago and NYC.

New york being the biggest for our industry and because I know I'll always have friends there and because I lived there last summer, it's the one I feel most comfortable moving to. I love new york. Really. It surprised me, but it happened, I fell in love.

I guess that's my problem in general, love. Falling in love with the Brandcenter, it's people and the drive it gives me. Falling in love with the inspiration that I get from NYC. Love is a problem because it's hard to shrug off and move past.