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Valentines Day, circa 2014. #adoreandendure

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is this prada's answer to chanel's choupette? is this officially the Year of the Cat (a la NYTimes)? is this what fetishes are made of?! 

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play the hand you were dealt.

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you know the feeling when you introduce two people who are so perfect for each other for the first time? that's how giddy i am about thom browne & taylor tomasi hill at last night's met gala. TB+TT 4ever.

now, can we talk about that drama-tastic dress?

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taro by alt-j. 

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mary katrantzou, rtw fall winter 2013. as someone on whom the appeal of tank tops is entirely lost, i cannot wait until fall rolls around again. there is a certain richness and versatility in fall dressing. this fall marks my last term of school -- likely, for the rest of my life -- so the transformative magic that comes with the season will not be lost on me. 

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the temple-dappled landscape of myanmar. the cascading fog. the pervasive spirituality. (destination summer 2013?)

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be of love (a little) more careful than of everything. guard her perhaps only a trifle less (merely beyond how very) closely than nothing. remember love by frequent anguish (imagine her least never with most memory) give entirely each forever its freedom (dare until a flower, understanding sizelessly sunlight open what thousandth why and discover laughing)

it is said that jackie kennedy transcribed her favorite poems and arranged them in a collection for her children. my personal anthology would begin with this poem by e e cummings. 

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i bid you adieu, nicholas kirkwood x erdem spring 2012.

until next year!

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valentino haute couture fall-winter 2012

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arm-par-ty [ahrm-pahr-tee] 

noun

an excessive amount of decorative items stacked together on one's arm. decorative items include, but are not limited, to: chains, links, watches, bracelets, bangles, trinkets, ribbons, torn pieces of fabric, etc.

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dries in action. walk in the park. best friend doing what best friends do. 

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it doesn't take a stint at a textile museum (textile museum of canada in the case of yours truly) to appreciate the narrative potentiality of a fashion. simply, every garment tells a story. 

one of my favourite pieces this summer hails from dries van noten's spring 2012 collection in paris. it's everything that i desire in a dress: functional, sharply cut and, this season, with vibrant hues. i've always aspired to be a driesian: quirky, cerebral yet seductive. the antwerp six, which comprises dries van noten, ann demeulemeester and others, is renowned for their avant garde aesthetic, made possible by their masterful cuts. 

dries, in my opinion, is a man of illusion. he creates silhouettes that harken back to the days of cristóbal balenciaga -- at the height of spanish haute couture in the 1950s. and what better illusion than the illusion of grandeur of haute couture?

yet, his dresses are distinctly modern. his spring 2012 collection was peppered with abstract prints, which were created by james reeve, a young british photographer whom dries van noten met years ago. their collaboration grounds dries' old world glamour in something other worldly, which is paradoxically presented in a tangible, visceral way: among other things, dries adds real stones on one skirt to bring to life -- literally -- the reflective lights on reeve's image of marseille at night.

(photos courtesy of style.com.)

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of course, it would help if we all looked like gisele. 

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freckles. love? hate? for most of my life, a bit of the former and a lot of the latter. 

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labour day long weekend may mark the end of summer, but don't toss out your sunscreen just yet! 

one of my first assignments as an intern at elle magazine was to research sunscreens and to write a brief piece about how to decipher sunscreen labels. it is not a numbers game; SPF 50 is not necessarily better than SPF 30. sunscreen needs to offer broad spectrum protection, targeting both UVA and UVB rays. look for ingredients like titanium dioxide. and remember that, even during the bleakest winter, the sun's rays can penetrate your skin. 

in addition to being the number one (!) cause of pre-mature aging, sun exposure is the number one (!!!) cause of cancer among the 20-something set. what's more, young people are more likely to get the deadliest form of skin cancer, malignant melanoma. 

so, hold on to that banana boat (or coppetone or whatever you prefer). as for me, i use josie maran's argan-oil based moisturizer everyday on my face. it not only packs an SPF of 40 (the lowest threshold for me), but it is also natural, not-too-sticky and smells heavenly.

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yup.