It's Christmas Time In The City

Rather than plead for your forgiveness for my lack of blogging this week, I offer these photos from my spectacular trip into New York City today as penance, done in somewhat of a picture-or-two-or-three-an-hour fashion.

8:00 AM - Luke and I arrive at Grand Central Terminal, all prettily decked out for the holidays.

9:00 AM - We make a much needed stop at Starbucks before delving into our shopping adventures. The first store on our agenda? H&M, where I purchase several fantastic items that you will surely see soon. Luke gets a few things too.

10:00 AM - Next is J. Crew, where Luke buys khakis and a gorgeous deep red sweater. I am wearing my beautiful new black wool Banana Republic pea coat (well, sort of new, I found it at the thrift shop).

11:00 AM - Our final shopping locale is Forever 21, where I make four heavily laden trips to the dressing room and leave the store with a brimming bag. I almost literally screamed with delight when I found these Missoni Fall 2009 lookalike leggings. And I should mention that I purchased four pairs of leggings today. Craziness.

12:00 PM - In dire need of sustenance, we stumble into a cozy and beautifully decorated Irish pub near Herald Square for lunch. I have the yummiest crock of French onion soup and some of the best chicken fingers of my life. During lunch I flip through the Forever 21 magazine and see some of my favorite bloggers featured!

1:00 PM - Luke and I take the subway up to Bryant Park, where it starts to snow. I had never been before and it's quite a sweet little area, sort of a much less frenzied version of Rockefeller Center. There we meet up with Sylvia (who is wearing her magnificent Christmas sweater) and our friend Chris!

2:00 PM - The four of us trek through flurries and blustering wind back to Grand Central, where we buy our last coffees and snacks and head back home.

This was the first time I had properly shopped at real stores since the summer, and it was so much fun. I think I spent more money at once than I ever have, which felt slightly revolting but also pretty appropriate. It's the holiday season!

After being insanely busy this past week, I now have only two and a half days of school left until winter break. I already feel like a huge load is being lifted off my shoulder, and I will definitely not be taking any more six-day breaks from the blog. I missed it very much.

Fashion's Night Out

The last you heard from me, I was desperately trying to figure out some way to get to Fashion's Night Out. After quite a bit of frustration and endless hours of strategizing... we got there! And let me tell you, it was one of the craziest and most fantastic nights I have ever had. Emmy and Sylvia took all the photos seeing as my camera was being rather temperamental.

Our first successful stop was Prada. The wolf heads, which I recognized from the Little Red Riding Hood spread in the September Vogue, were brilliant!

YES, THAT IS GRACE CODDINGTON STANDING NEXT TO US IN PRADA WEARING HER SIGNATURE BLACK WITH A FASHION'S NIGHT OUT TEE TIED AROUND HER NECK. MY GOD SHE IS SO COOL. I was literally speechless.

And of course Sasha Pivovarova just happened to be hanging around with Grace... so of course we stopped her for pictures. My lord, she looked so amazing even without a trace of makeup, and I loved how she styled her Fashion's Night Out tee! We each snapped a photo with her but Sylvia's definitely came out the best.

Outside Prada. And, for some outfit details: I wore everything vintage with borrowed tights from Sylvia, Emmy wore a selfmade skeleton tee and vintage boots, and Sylvia wore a Forever 21 bodysuit and vintage skirt.

Live models in the Escada windows! They were absolutely gorgeous.

After Prada we hit up Bergdorf Goodman, where we spotted Manolo Blahnik, Milo Ventimiglia, and Gail Simmons. And we all bought Fashion's Night Out shirts!

At Saks Fifth Avenue I got my makeup done at the MAC counter. Major shoutout to Nadia for giving me the most gorgeous eyeshadow job! We also sampled heavenly treats from Maison du Chocolat and sniffed some incredible Tom Ford perfume samples.

We stopped into Tiffany & Co. for free iced coffee and yummy little petit fours! The atmosphere in there was so nice, very unpretentious and fun. I edited this photo quite a bit and think it came out quite cool.

Looking foxy with our freebies, of course!

Live model in the Versace window. It was so hard to believe she was a real person!

This was undoubtedly the highlight of Sylvia's night. As she was snapping photos of the live models, Emmy and I recognized the ever-fabulous and ever-dramatic Jade from cycle six of America's Next Top Model strutting down the sidewalk. Sylvia literally ran after her and flagged her down for a picture! Which, obviously, was completely worth it. And, as we were toward our train, we passed Benny Ninja wearing rhinestone lipstick and a tutu around his neck. It was brilliant.

Scott Schuman's window in Barney's! That was definitely one of the places to be last night, with Alexander Wang giving runway lessons and Mary-Kate and Ashley tending bar upstairs. And then, of course...

WELL HELLO THERE KATE MULLEAVY. And I adore her friend with the fabulous feathered hat.

AMAZING. I DIE.

A few floors down from Kate, Modelinia was sponsoring this groovy thing where you danced in front of a camera for about thirty seconds and then they printed out a flipbook of you dancing! Though we had to dash for our train and therefore didn't stick around to grab our flipbook, you can tell we had a ridiculous amount of fun dancing up a storm for the camera.

On the train home: exhausted and triumphant.

And, of course, the three of us could not resist getting together today for a little photoshoot in our Fashion's Night Out shirts...










I hope some of you made it there! It was such an amazing experience to see all of New York City gathering in the name of fashion.

Urban Ventures Part II

Today, well I guess technically yesterday, my bestie and I ventured into New York City to have pretty much the best day ever.

What I wore: Necessary Objects dress, vintage lace shirt, random belt, Gap bag, boots from some store in London, jeweled ring on a gifted chain, Mom's sunglasses.

Photography was prohibited in the exhibition, and I would have snapped some illicit photos but I really didn't want to risk getting kicked out!
But anyway, it was amazing. I salivated over a Swarovski crystal covered Versace jumpsuit and about ten original dresses from the collection John Galliano designed to celebrate Christian Dior's one hundredth birthday.
I wish clothes were still how they used to be in the thirties and forties: simple, elegant, architectural, classic. The whole idea of conceptualization and making ugly things pretty didn't exist then; fashion was just about making gorgeous things. Nothing was trendy or unusual, but it was all beautiful.
Same thing with the models. The exhibition does a really excellent job of showing how the concept of the ideal model has changed so drastically in the past eighty years or so.
Get yourself to the exhibition if you can! It was stellar.

After we saw the exhibition we wandered around the museum for a while. Both of us especially liked this painting by Joan Miró.

Luke being studious with the Paul Klee paintings, which I love.

The sculpture garden had really excellent light.

I take awkward pictures.

We wandered down Madison Avenue and found Sant Ambroeus, a perfect little European style restaurant. Both of us ordered the Il Marinaio from the "afternoon tea" menu: crab, shrimp, avocado, and mayonnaise. It was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten. And I had peach juice, which was surprisingly yummy.

I had hazelnut gelato there that was as amazing as any that I ate in Italy. It was perfection.
We took our desserts to Central Park.

I think Central Park is my favorite place to take pictures. Ever.

This croissant was so good.
The park was gloriously sunny and pretty. Luke kept telling me to stop using the word glorious, but everything about the day was.


By some twist of fate, we ended up right near the Alice in Wonderland statue! It was so cool, but there were little kids climbing all over it.
There were plaques in the ground circling the statue with quotes from the book.

Madison Avenue is such a treat to walk down. This was in the window of Giuseppe Zanotti, I was practically crying.

We walked about a zillion blocks because Luke wanted to get a new shirt.
I fell in love with this sequined vest but restrained myself from buying it.
I tried on a grey dress too, which was amazingly comfy and loose and perfect. And Luke bought it for me! He is the sweetest.

I made him pose for this. Isn't his new shirt totally snazzy? He looks sharp in purple.
What he wore: Old Navy linen shorts, first a Target shirt and then an H&M one, Rainbow sandals, Ray-Ban sunglasses, Guess watch.

We overheard the cashiers in H&M talking about a street fair, so we tracked it down. We shared an arepa, which was so delicious, and he dragged me to every stall that sold knockoff sunglasses.

Oooh, artsy.

We pretty much had a perfect day. I love New York City so much. It's one of my favorite places to be with my friends, and with Luke especially. We always have a good time. Where do you like to visit with your friends?

Stay tuned, I have a stunningly fabulous DIY project to show you very soon.