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.

Garage Antics

Sylvia and I at it again! We have deemed our tradition of snapping outfit shots, scarfing down pasta, and scurrying off to rehearsal Photoshoot Monday.

My mom snagged this coat for me at the thrift store. I am so in love with the color, it's the perfect vibrant shade of pumpkin orange. So right for fall! Now I match all the lovely trees.

This shapeless silk dress has surprisingly proved one of the most versatile pieces in my wardrobe. With the help of one measly safety pin, it becomes the most chic blousy top imaginable. I got lots of compliments on it today, but it was relatively embarrassing changing for gym when I had to unpin the thing and pull off my potato sack dress in front of everyone. Ahem. The process of putting together a complex outfit should definitely remain behind closed doors!

Finally, a pair of high-waisted pants! These are so comfortable and fit perfectly, and rolling them up gives them the most retro fifties feel. I love the volume of the top juxtaposed with the slim cut of the bottoms. As you have probably discerned, I love balancing silhouettes like this.

Normally when we take outfit pictures together, Sylvia and I never match. Not only that, but we usually clash horrifically. By some sartorial twist of fate, our colors complemented each other flawlessly today - at least we thought so! This is just a little sneak peak of her outfit, but hopefully she will blog further about it soon!

Vintage wool coat, Forever 21 cardigan, vintage silk dress worn as top, vintage Ralph Lauren pants, Converse sneakers, Urban Outfitters necklace

I wish I had gotten a chance to blog this weekend, but I was insanely swamped with a U.S. history project that counts for twenty-five percent of my first quarter grade. Yikes! I literally spent twelve straight hours on it yesterday, and I think it turned out alright.

Tell me, what are you all dressing up as for Halloween? Dressing up any other day of the year never gives me problems, but when it comes to Halloween I am always disturbingly uncreative!

P.S. I had a delightful time looking at all the inspirational blogs you guys mentioned! I really love knowing what inspires everyone.

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.

Vineyarding

As you might recall, I kicked off my summer with a short trip to Martha's Vineyard, accompanied by one of my favorite people on the planet. I showed you some pictures from my favorite night, and here are a few more photos from that fantabulous week that, in a whirlwind of Paris preparations, I never got around to posting...

The stellar summer playlist we listened to all week.

This is the Vineyard Sound, the male a cappella group that returns to the island every summer. Their lineup always changes from year to year, but it always comprises college age guys from the East Coast. They occasionally troll the streets to promote their shows, and we were lucky enough to catch them in the act! If you ever come to visit, you must see them as they are fantastically talented and completely adorable.


Our daily ritual: get iced coffee and sit on a dock somewhere in one of the three harbor towns. It was pretty overcast most of the trip, so we did little beaching and a lot of window shopping.



I stole... I mean, borrowed these jeans from Tucker for about half our trip. They are incredibly comfortable and soft, definitely need to get myself a pair.


So many pretty flowers everywhere. I think this place has the most immaculately groomed houses I have ever seen.

Everything is so cute and colonial! I loved that little lemonade stand.


My favorite coffee spot.


We spent a lot of time sitting and watching the ocean. It was very relaxing and nice.

I have not been feeling terribly inspired the past few days, mostly because I miss my friends and being home. I miss Paris so much too, and how much freedom I had there to virtually go anywhere at any time.

On the bright side, I ate brownies tonight and got my junior year schedule! AP English, AP Calculus, AP U.S. History, French, Honors Physics, Select Chorus... everything looks pretty good. Believe it or not, I am psyched for school to start again.