I’ve been really down lately. I’ve had a lot of changes in
my life, and with change comes unwanted stress. Sometimes I wish I were a really simple
person. Like… really simple. I wish I wasn’t this complicated individual who
wants so much out of life to the point in which I enjoy absolutely nothing. I’m
always wishing I were somewhere else, with someone else, and doing something
else. I can’t enjoy anything. If I’m
having a good time, I’m thinking about when it’ll be over, which ends up
ruining everything.
It wasn’t much, and it wasn’t super significant, but I feel
like I underwent some sort of cleansing today. I took a long jog across town
and it somewhat put things into perspective.
Too much of my time has been spent inside.
Get in the car. Catch a bus. Go to class. To the office. To the store. Stay inside. Repeat.
The outdoors are just the gaps between our destinations and
that isn’t healthy. While on my journey
across town, I remembered how revitalizing the fresh air can be. My mom always
reminds me to take a deep breath, and as I took in the sweet smell of the
eucalyptus trees, my soul opened up and I understood the meaning behind those
deep cleansing breaths.
Growing up on a farm put me in tune with nature from an
early age, and the outdoors are instilled within my being. No matter how much
glitter I throw around the room, I will always have ranch blood in my veins,
and I shouldn’t try to suppress that because it’s part of who I truly am.
Stress, struggling, and changes are hard, but I’ve come to appreciate
the character hard times can build. For every hardship, I feel as if I’ve come
out stronger in the end and undergoing these soul shaping changes is one of the
most beautiful part about being alive.
It shouldn't come as a surprise that last weekend was beyond amazing for me. I (finally) went to the Jean Paul Gaultier Exhibition at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and to say the least, I was blown away. When I first heard about it back in March, I knew it was something I had to experience. I’m naturally drawn to eccentricities,androgyny, and female empowerment, and Jean Paul embodies all those things. His ability to create is remarkable, and I'm still trying to comprehend the works of art that were right in front of my face. Just the fact that I was in the same room as pieces that have been on the catwalk makes my heart spin. It’s one thing to see pictures of his fashion, but to have them right in front of you-- sharing your air and making their way into your bloodstream, bring them to life.
I can't tress enough how amazing it was to witness Gaultier's world of fashion. His talent and ability to fully execute his vision is incredible. He’s an innovator, and has made me fall in love with fashion allover again. For the past few years, I have wholeheartedly devoted myself to high end fashion-- learning, living, and breathing in as much as I possibly could. It’s something I love and I want nothing more than to constantly deepen the love I have for all things fashion, art, and the fantasy that surrounds it.
High end fashion has always been this fantasy world that I never thought I’d be able to experience. But after the exhibition, the fantasy is now real. It’s no longer an illusion, it’s reality; my reality. And after experiencing his world of fashion, my world seems a little brighter. If you’re a creative soul/lover of the arts, PLEASE get yourself to the de Young museum for a glimpse into the beautiful & innovative mind of Jean Paul Gaultier. Even if you’re not particularly interested in fashion, the beauty of human capability, talent, and passion, is something everyone should experience.
All week long I intended to write something meaningful but
now I feel a peculiar loss as to what this post is going to be about. I have
ideas, inspiration, and rainbows swirling around in my head but I’m not sure
how to express them in a way that will make any sort of sense. But things don’t
have to make sense. Just the mere idea of existence doesn’t make sense to me. I
often think that life is just an illusion. It’s all a fantasy and I do my best
to seek out the magic that comes with each day. The enchantment is all in my
head, and I’m beginning to realize that I view life in a way that not many
other people do. I see magic in
everything, and I will often view the world objectively as if I’m looking down
on the planet while I’m floating around in space somewhere.
We’re only here for
a short amount of time, and I fail to comprehend the idea of giving into
certain social normalcies and following a path that’s constructed by others. If
I want to walk around in vibrant wigs, glitter glossing my eyelids, and orange
lipstick, I shall. There is no reason as to why we can’t express ourselves
however we choose. We’re all so
conditioned to play by the rules, which make me feel trapped. It’s easy for me
to say that I’ll do whatever I want, but it terms of execution, succeeding can
be tough. I just want to be free, and the freedom I’ve found in writing and
fashion are the only senses of freedom I know.
If either of the two were taken away from me, I would actually die.
There would be no point of living anymore and I’m certain that my heart would
shatter into cold little pieces.
In the past few years, I’ve noticed the voice in me that is
constantly shouting. Constantly. It’s always been there, but I’m only now
realizing its power. It controls my life, and if that makes me completely
crazy, so be it. It doesn’t go away until I write and the thoughts are
expressed. The thing with writing is that I don’t even know what I’m going to
write until it happens. It’s almost as if my soul instructs my fingers to type
and I’m just sitting here anxious to see what’s going to be said.
I’m not sure what I intend to do with writing and fashion in
terms of relating them to a career. Neither of the two will ever leave me,
regardless of whether or not I’m professionally involved in them. In a way, I’m
afraid to peruse them in fear that they’ll shift away from interest and I’ll
merely just label them as work.
I've just been really confused about the direction of my life, so take my mind off things I've been obsessively organizing my Pinterest boards (i am normal). And to leave you with some visual appeals, here are some of my favorite Pinterest photos this week:
It’s been far too long since I’ve written and I
wholeheartedly apologize! I do, however,
think of this blog often. I find myself logging on and pointlessly checking the
stats as if there’s going to be a spontaneous increase in viewings despite the
lack of updates. I’ve had a lot going on
in the last few months and feel like my soul has been searching for what it is
I truly desire in life. I still feel as if I haven’t found my niche in this
world, but I’m totally ok with that. I’m ok with the chaos of my being, and in
a weird way, I don’t ever want to accomplish my dreams in fear that I’ll have
nothing left to dream about. Sometimes the magic and mystery of fantasyland
should never come fourth into reality because it just doesn’t compare to the
standard in my head. For example, this summer I’m interning in San Francisco.
All my life, I’ve wanted nothing more than to immerse myself in The City. I remember when I was in first grade, I wrote
in my journal that San Francisco is where I wanted to be when I grew up, and
that desire only got stronger over the years. Going into the city as a kid was
always such a surreal experience. It’s so different from life on the farm and I
thought I liked it so much more. I believe it’s human nature to want to live in
an environment the complete opposite of your own, and that’s exactly what I’ve
always wanted.
But now I’m realizing that accomplishing the desire to be
somewhere else doesn’t fulfill my soul in the way I expected it to. I’ve gotten into a routine of normalcy in San
Francisco, and just like everything else, a sense of normalcy can greatly
diminish the magic. The city’s no longer a utopia of mystery. As I get more and more used to different
areas, the mystery will vanish even further and I’ll be comfortable in my
surroundings. Comfort is strange. I both love it and hate it. I want to be comfortable where I am, but I
also find that comfort zones suck the excitement out of my life. Perhaps I’ll
become a traveling gypsy? I’ll wander the world. I’ll seek the strange & unusual,
but get up and go once a comfort zone has been established. But now I don’t even know what I want. I want
to live in 5000 different places at once doing 7000 different things, but I
really just need to suppress the chaos in my mind and narrow things down. Ugh. Part of me misses school. It was an ever
changing comfort zone. Once I got sick of the normalcy, the semester was over and
it was time to move on to the new phase of academics. But now it’s time to move
on to other things. It’s strange to start new phases of life. I'm only 21 and can feel the years adding. I can't even imagine how strange it must feel to be 40! I'm halfway there, and can already sense a major mid-life crisis coming up. Oh joy.
But to end on a better note, I just try and remember that life is like fashion. Both my style and my life are constantly changing, and that I shouldn't be afraid of this glorious evolution.
I promise to post regularly from now on. I’ve put way too
much time and effort into this blog and refuse to let it sit in the corner of
the internet, unused and collecting dust.
My grandma and I before my graduation ceremony. My dress is actually a nightgown. I just added a leather belt,and no one had a clue that I was walking around on this momentous occasion in sleep attire.
Because I haven't updated in so long, I failed to show you my graduation cap.
It wouldn't have been any other way.
I analyze my life in the strangest of ways, making me completely unaware as to how others may perceive me. What movies, music, or even fashion would others
associate with my character? My
interests are the most eclectic cluster of madness, but that’s what makes me
who I am. Given the wide variety of inspirations and interests in my life, I think it’s time to pay homage to
one of the greatest film of all time. One that fits my personality better than any other film on the planet, and one that makes me understand more about my own life. Although
there are many films out there in which I love, none of them can compare to the
pure perfection I find in the movie Zoolander.
Zoolander is a 2001 film starring Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson,
Will Ferrell, and Christine Taylor. Main character, Derek Zoolander (Stiller), is the world’s top male fashion model, famous for his signature look “Blue
Steel”. However, his status is quickly downgraded when newcomer and arch
nemesis, Hansel (Wilson), takes over the modeling scene, beating Zoolander for the
prestigious Male Model of the Year Award. The shame of losing the award leads
him to announce his retirement while at the funeral of his three best friends
who died tragically in a “freak gasoline fight accident”. Fashion Mogul and villain of the movie, Mugatu
(Ferrell), sees Zoolander’s naivety and vulnerability as an evil opportunity. Mugatu
convinces Zoolander to walk the runway for his new fashion line “Derelicte”, with
the plan of brainwashing him into killing the Prime Minister of Malaysia during
the show. Weeks before the show, Zoolander is taken to Mugatu’s headquarters
and conditioned to perform the assassination through hypnosis, with the song
“Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood being the trigger. With the help of his
nemesis turned friend Hansel and reporter Matilda (Taylor), Zoolander must
prevent this disastrous act from happening on the catwalk before it’s too late.
Now that we’re all on the same page, let me explain to you
the history of my life in correlation to Zoolander. I was around eleven the
first time I saw the film. I was intrigued by the commercials promoting
it, so I asked my mom if she would rent it for me. A few days later, she
brought home the VHS and I was more excited than ever to finally watch the film
and hoped that it lived up to my expectations. At the time, I had a small TV in
my room, equipped with a build-in VHS player. I had ventured off to my room
later that evening, put the tape in, and began to watch the film I had been
anxious to see.
When it was over, my mind was blown. Since I was only
eleven, I’m not sure I even understood everything about the movie or why I
liked it so much. I just knew that I loved it, and it was as if everything I
had seen up until that moment didn’t matter. For the next few weeks, I watched
nothing but Zoolander. My parents still don’t know about this, but while
everyone else in the house was asleep, I would sit up in my bed and watch it
over and over until the early hours of the morning and my young brain was completely fried by the sassiness of Derek Zoolander.“I can’t go to sleep until
I see the walk-off one more time!” I was hypnotized. If I had to choose a
moment in my life in which I made the crossover into the land of crazy, the
great Zoolander phase of 2002 would be it. The late fees must’ve been epic by
the time my mom had returned the tape (and I’m pretty sure it was broken from
the number of times I repeatedly watched and rewound it). Soon after, she
bought me my own copy because I was miserable without it.
I was completely oblivious to it at the time, but Zoolander
possessed everything I would grow to love later in life; really really ridiculously good looking men with pale skin and dark hair, David Bowie, trashy fashion
inspired by crack whores, and dry humor (the only kind I understand). There’s
also wide speculation that Will Ferrell’s character was based off of fashion
designer John Galliano (who is the official owner of my fashion soul). It
catered to my future interests, and perhaps that’s why I loved right away. The
film contained everything I loved before I fully understood what I loved, and
watching it was almost like a subconscious glimpse into the future of where I
would one day harbor happiness.
Over ten years later and Zoolander continues to be one of the
only aspects of life that has the power to make me forget about everything else
and just enjoy the moment-- something I have a really hard time doing. Humor is
one of the most important aspects of life, and it takes an awful lot for me to
genuinely be amused. The humor in Zoolander is intricately woven within the
sassiness of fashion, which is the only kind of comedy I truly connect with. My
bizarre obsession with this film may seem a bit strange, but I’m no stranger
strange. It seems to be a theme throughout my odd little life, and I am
eternally grateful for the existence of this more than perfect movie. If you haven't seen it, please do so. Watch it multiple times, until you're at the same level of crazy as me, and I'll be more than happy to gush about it with you.
“Let me show you Derelicte. It is a fashion, a way of life inspired by the very homeless, the vagrants, the crack whores that make this wonderful city so unique.”
For the past few weeks, I’ve felt a lack of
inspiration in my life. School seems to have taken every bit of life out of me,
which has resulted in putting the magic of my mind aside to make room for the
brain power needed in completing intense academic tasks (such as the fifteen
page Media Law exam that I’m still trying to recover from). For those of you
who have been reading my blog, I apologize for the lack of updates and will try
to get back in to the flow of consistently updating.
Fortunately, my inspiration returned last Monday
night. I had been listening to classical
music for hours before I finally decided to go to sleep. It was around 1am and
I was so tired that I honestly thought something was wrong with me. “What is
this strange sensation that has come over me? Why do my eyelids want to keep
closing? Am I sick? Am I experiencing the odd effects of allergies again? Am I
having some sort of supernatural experience? Have I gone Mad?” After a few
minutes of debating with my delusional self, I remembered the whole idea of
sleeping and concluded that sleep is what I needed. I crawled into my more than uncomfortable bed
(equipped with springs on the verge of popping out cutting me while I sleep),
but was able to drift off into a deep and interesting slumber.
When I had awoken the next morning, I felt as if the
dead batteries in my body had been charged and I was finally back to my strange
and unusual self. Although physically I
was in my bed that night, my soul was in an entirely different realm of
existence. That night I returned to a place I have visited frequently, yet have
never been. A place I consider another home, yet have no connections or roots.
If you guessed anyplace other than Russia, you obviously don’t know me very
well. That night I was in Russia, a
place in which many of my dreams seem to take place. I’ve always had a
fascination with Russian culture, and that fascination has only increased as
the years progress and the dreams seem to happen more frequently.
This dream took place in Moscow, to be specific. I
was overlooking the Moscow skyline through the window of an apartment. I wanted
desperately to go into the city, but my mom said no. I would continually check
the view out the window and think about how wonderful it would be to wander
around the city. But when night had fallen, the entire city disappeared. The
disappearance of the city wasn’t replaced by the darkness of the night; instead
the view was of pure nothingness-- A view that could only be seen and accepted
in dreamland. At that point, I felt the world around me getting much bigger.
Perhaps I shrunk a few inches? I’m not sure. I had a feeling of determination,
so I did what any girl would do; I put on a blue wig, ate candy, and told ghost
stories with the children in my Russian neighborhood. Just as things started getting interesting, I
woke up to the sound of my radio alarm clock yelling at me.
Angelina Jolie looking perfect in Moscow, Russia
Like all dreams, this one is open for
interpretation. Instead of analyzing it myself,
I give you permission to draw your own conclusions. Regardless of the deeper
meaning, that morning I woke up in a cloud of inspiration. Whenever I feel like
I’m slipping into a hole of mundane normalcy, Russia is always there to pull me
out. I’m not sure why Russia has chosen to blissfully invade my dreams? Maybe
I’m actually a Russian spy and the tactics have become so secretive that the
only way I’m able to receive and communicate information is through the
alternate world of dreams? Or maybe Italy, my soul mate and homeland, has decided
to share me with the rest of Europe and I’m still in the Russian stage? But the
theory that makes the most sense is glamour. Although I’ve never physically
been to Russia, I’ve always pictured it as a being a glamorous utopia in which
women wear heels, lipstick, and fierce coats every day of the week. Awhile
back, I stumbled upon a news segment about Russian women and their devotion to
glamour. The segment was only a few minutes long, but it gave me a glimpse into
the glam culture of Russian women, forcing me to realize why I’ve always been
inspired by this magical far-away land.
Maybe Russia’s trying to convince me to visit in order to discover a deeper sense of glamour, or maybe the series of dreams are simply meaningless and I need to stop overanalyzing everything. But if there’s anything I’ve learned from my 21 years, 4 months, and 25 days on this planet, it’s that my soul encompasses strong feelings of wanderlust and strong feelings of glamour. Traveling to every corner of the world in order to experience the beauty of different cultures is one of the most authentic and glamorous things one could do, and my desire to embark on such glamorous adventures is something in which I will never lose sight of.
View from the pier in my hometown; Point Arena, Ca.
I spent my spring break in one of the most beautiful places on earth; at home on the Mendocino Coast. Living in Wine Country is nice and all, but as someone who grew up right on the edge of the western world, I will forever have a hard time living in an area where the sea foam does not touch. The lack of coastline in Rohnert Park takes a toll on my soul, making me feel like a fish out of water (literally). The Pacific Ocean runs through the veins of those who have grown up alongside it and has become a necessary force to my very existence. My parents always talk about the time they took me to the beach right after I learned how to walk. My mom was holding me, and the minute she put me down, I sprinted towards the waves as my Dad chased after me because they knew I had no fear of actually going in the ocean. I seem to always run towards the dangers of nature, but that’s only because I thrive on the exhilarating aspects of our planet.
Living in a landlocked environment over these past four years has made it difficult for me to adjust to my surroundings. Like Madison in the film Splash when she gets in the bathtub to nourish her mermaid tail, I find myself in the bathtub each night; nourishing my salt water soul. In a strange way, the bathwater is a way to cope with the fact that I don’t have the sea by my side.
My time off last week allowed me to re-establish my bond with one of my true loves of the world; the ocean. I can sense the emptiness in my heart whenever I’m away from it for too long. As I walked along the pier in my hometown, I felt my soul recharging and was slowly becoming whole again. With each breath, I was inhaling a magical amount of energy, inspiration, and serenity, thus taking my entire being to the next level of creativity. I began to think about fashion (naturally), and how my intrigue of the waves is similar to my lust for fashion. My desire to surround myself in glamour is the same as my desire to surround myself in the atmosphere of the sea. I consider the entirety of the ocean a necessity in my world of glamour. The water has shaped me in all walks of life, and fashion is definitely no exception.
"Dead mermaids"
The ocean played a part in raising me, as it indirectly fed my passion for glamour. I remember going to the beach as a child and thinking that the washed up pieces of seaweed were dead mermaids. Their shiny dead bodies were thrown ashore by the forceful waves and onto the freshly dampened sand for the strange little children of the land (like myself) to admire. I thought it was such a morbid kind of glamorous, and one of nature’s most primitive acts of fashion. From an early age, I was lucky enough to be surrounded by the highest sense of beauty the world had to offer. The natural wonder of the ocean gave me an appreciation for the true glamour of the world, which set the tone for the rest of my life. I was in awe of the ocean, as it was a haven for all that inspired me in life.
The mystique of the ocean is beyond anything else in the world. It’s the ultimate sense of glamour; the ultimate beauty queen. How can something so perfect be real? Its beauty is not created with makeup or clothes, but a planetary creation that bears the enchantment of what our world is capable of. The ocean emits a pure and authentic feeling of glamour, as it accomplishes the essence of glam without any assistance or enhancements. In a way, the ocean is a fashion icon. It’s beautiful in more ways than just looks-- its beauty is a feeling. It radiates magic, captivating all those in its presence. The ocean is what personal style should be about. It’s the most vulnerable organ of the Earth, and it’s not afraid to powerfully express that vulnerability. We should all feel free with our fashion choices—as free as the sea. Style is something we all have within us, and it’s just a matter of pulling it out and possessing the confidence to be free with it.
We can all learn from the rhythm of the waves by finding our own rhythm of style. Fashion inspiration and liberation is all around us, we just have to take the time to let it into our lives.
In honor of the ocean and fashion, here are some beach themed pictures of fierce women:
