Too Late...

YAY!!!! I got home from my holiday in Amsterdam and my newest gadget was waiting for me freshly arrived from Italy!!! The TOO LATE watches are the newest rage in Milan, and they don't sell outside of Italy just yet, but you can find them on their official site. They exist in the brightest colours, from my fav baby doll pink to lucious red. However I picked the white one to begin with... white on a tanned skin always looks good! But... no reason not to buy some more colours as they are cheap as hell, 20euros! And not to forget they're unisex, and waterproof... So you and your loved one could even go for a midnight swim together without losing track of time, although maybe that's just what you want don't you?!!

ps: i looove my new buddha bracelet as well... my best friend got it for me from Shanghai and I'm keeping that one until it falls off....

Magical Fashionista all Grown up!

Harry Potter Fashionable?

Ok I know, Harry Potter is not what you would call super duper cool and fashionable, but I just can't help it: I'm addicted to the little boy with his lightning scar and tiny round glasses, which he has outgrown big time.

It all started around 6 years ago when I was dating this lovely skinny french boy Thomas. He was totally into the whole HP rage, and I just refused to go with it. I thought Harry was for kids, and seen my 17 years old, I surely wasn't a kid. But he stood foot, and placed me in front of the tv and made me watch HP and the philospher's stone the movie. Two hours later I was hooked. I bought the second, third and fourth book the next day. Four books were already published, imagine how far behind I was. But two small months later I was up to date. I read like a madwoman, sometimes until 4 in the morning. Harry Potter for kids? Heck if that meant I was a kid, who cares!! I was totally turned around, and my boyfriend regretted introducing me to the magical world of Hogwarts.

Ever since I was on waiting lists for every book that was published and I sat in the cinema as soon as the next movie was out. My ultimate favourite was the fourth book and movie, Harry Potter and the goblet of Fire. Amazing the way JK Rowling let her imagination go on that one.

But the last movie: HP and the Half-Blood Prince! Just one word: BRAVO!! Really well done, and even though some parts of the book were left out, it's amazingly done. I just love the way they have all grown up and how they're starting to have love lives and so on. And one character has especially evolved big time: Hermione Granger. Wow. In realy life as well... To think that she has become the new face of Burberry.

So in the end, Harry just is plain fashionable, and there's no shame in saying you read or rather devour the books and movies... :D few, what a relief!

On the Rise in Amsterdam: Ann Bogaerts

See my dear people, I wasn't talking all balloony stories. The Amsterdam International Fashion Week is not the little sister of the big fashion cities anymore. It has proven to produce cool and significant upcoming designers. Go Dutchies!!!

www.style.com - July 27th 2009 - Mark Smith

"Amsterdam International Fashion Week lived up to its name this year by selecting a 22-year-old Belgian fashion student as its breakout star. Ann Boogaerts, a graduate of Holland’s prestigious ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, Arnhem, was chosen by a panel of 100 industry insiders (among them Wendy Dagworthy, originator of London fashion week) as the winner of the €10,000 Lichting cash prize. For her brightly hued capsule collection, Boogaerts drew her inspiration from Spanish-born Queen Fabiola of Belgium, who reigned from 1960 to 1993, imagining what might’ve happened if the young Fabiola had taken a Dutch lover instead of her eventual royal suitor, Baudouin of Belgium: “My show starts to the soundtrack of the Belgian national anthem and morphs into the Dutch one. I wanted to make light of the little fashion stereotypes and preconceptions that exist between the Dutch and the Belgians. The Dutch think the Belgians are bourgeois. The Belgians think that all Dutch people wear bright red pants.” Whether or not they understood the sartorial and political significance of this excursion, the Lichting jurors were charmed by the whimsy of Boogaert’s designs. Dagworthy, for one, was royally impressed: “It’s been such a difficult decision,” she said of her duties on the panel. “I’ve seen degree collections here that are innovative and experimental, with fantastic cutting, color, and fabric choices. This bodes very well for Dutch design.”

Baby Blues

Global warming.... definitely present! We are the 27th of July and the past week and a half have been unpredictably predictable with rain, storms, sunshine, wind, heat, cold... and so on! The only predictability of the weather in Brussels so far has been the storms every night/morning at 6 am! And this is supposed to be my summer?!

No wonder there's a little bit of the blues in the air. Where I felt extremely positive and energetic this weekend, and therefore managed to do loads, today is just the opposite. Drained of energy and creativity, I feel that I just want to curl up on the couch and watch movies all day. Or again, is it just the rain that makes me feel like that?

To cure the baby blues, I've started downloading a bunch of french 'ballades' ... picking a bunch of movies to watch tonight, and making myself a cup of jasmin green tea for with my new favourite book: Petite Anglaise!

Lipstick Jungle

No "Lipstick Jungle" is not about the marvelous series of Candace Buschnell, who also wrote Sex and the City, but it's about my own personal "Lipstick Jungle".... I have discovered that with a little tan, my lips tend to fall on the background, and well aren't your lips exactly that, what boys love to ... indeed: KISS!!! And then not to forget, the fact that lipstick is sooo 2009!

The question is:

• Rouge Scarlett
• Rouge D'Amour
• Pink Baby Doll
• Rose So Lovely
• Beige Plaisir
• Bedtime Plum...

Gosh too many deliciously sounding colours, which you'd rather want to eat than put on your lips. They're actually a handful of the new line of Nivea by Chantal Thomass. I've tried the Pink Baby Doll, which is more of a fluorescent kind of bright pink than the sweet and soft pinks I usually use in my make-up, but it looked amazing and stayed on even after having jogged and taken a shower!!!! And in these economical dark times, and grey and black tones in fashion a splash of pink might just be the thing the world can use. So I could go for the Pink Baby Doll right...? Wrong... cos I love to put scarlett reds on my finger and toe nails, and I don't own a Pink Baby Doll nailpolish yet. Unfortunately it doesn't exist either, which definitely does not make my life any easier at the moment. Well it does exist, but not in the Nivea by Chantal Thomass line, but by NUBAR, with another lucious name as HOT PINK! My luck again, they don't ship abroad...

So basically my dilemmas are:
1. which of the lucious colours to choose to start my lipstick grown up life?
2. where am I going to find: Pink Baby Doll, Hot Pinkish nailpolish??!! (it has to be really fluorescent!!!)

*SIGH*

Amsterdam International Fashion Week

The Amsterdam International Fashion Week Spring Summer 2010 has just started. From the 22nd to the 26th of July, Amsterdam is covered in fashion!!! Exactly the way we love it.

Besides the fashion shows of the upcoming designers, there's the exceptional downtown programme. This programme is designed for the public, meaning that everyone is allowed to join in on the AIFW. I think this programma is amazing, especially for us fashionistas dying to be part of fashion weeks in general. Amsterdam is until now, the only city that has such a programme and others can learn from the upcoming fashiontown of the cheese peeps. Living in Milan I have praid the gods many times for them to initiate with such a programme.... Maybe it's time for me to take forces into own hands and start such a programme abroad. But HOW??!!! :)

Anyways, I have been following the fashion week day by day... and in stead of the usual big names which tend to rule the fashion scene, the upcoming designers get a chance to shine during the AIFW. This is another lovely aspect about this unusual fashion week compared to the big ones.

Picture will come soon, as they're not yet available to the public and can't seem to get them from the official site. But if you're so curious and can't wait another day, check out www.aifw.nl and join me in following the official Amsterdam International Fashion Week. It's worth it, trust me!