DIY Embellished Tights Project Update
Here is an update on the progress of the DIY project I started a couple of weeks ago.
Of course, I started by gathering all of the necessary materials: Tights, needle and thread, and sequins.
Then, I separated the sequins, because I couldn’t use all of what was in the bag. I decided on the stars.
Sewing wasn’t bad, but it seemed like every time I got in the groove, the thread would run out. Tip 1: use a piece of cardboard, or the like, to give the tights some structure while sewing. The cardboard also prevents the needle from going through the other side of the tights, therefore sewing them together.
Ta-daaah! So far good, but I do want to add a few more stars and some beads. Tip 2: take some time in the beginning to figure out a color combination. In retrospect, I think I would have chosen to go with fewer colors on the stars.
Free People has some sequin-embellished tights here for $88. Mine cost a total of about $20, not including labor. I will definitely post the final project.
The 20% Rule
I shop online almost exclusively. My email box is stuffed with messages about this sale, and that one. Bloomingdales has 25-40% off cold weather essentials (ends today, so hurry) and Alexander McQueen is at Gilt this week…
But, even if there were physical retail stores here in town, the same rule would apply: NEVER PAY FULL PRICE!
Because:
1) we’re in a recession; and
2) I don’t like the idea of paying for shipping (I think it should be free), so if I get it on sale, I feel like at least I’m not paying for shipping;
3) If I wait long enough, I always get a coupon for the store (I just have to fight the urge to have it NOW);
4) Don’t worry, they won’t run out while you are waiting for the coupon (See #1); finally
5) 20% off is usually cheaper than free shipping.
And that folks, is how I got this:
It’s perfect! I LOVE IT!
Besides waiting for those magic words to appear in my inbox (it took a week and a half. The bag was supposed to be for my birthday.), I have gone through more than anyone would believe to find the perfect bag. Before now, I have mostly carried my ma’s gently used hand-me-downs. So, the decision on how to spend a small fortune was never mine. BUT, since it was my decision this time around it had to be THE right bag. Besides that, I am the type that once my stuff is in the bag, I carry it until the handles fall off. Which means that it has to go with EVERYTHING. Coincidentally (or not), all of my ma’s bags have.
What makes this bag perfect is that it’s very narrow, so things don’t have room to get lost; I can’t carry much other than the essentials (wallet, camera, planner, gum, lip gloss, eyeglass case, comb and iphone). Besides being extremely functional, IT’S GORGEOUS! Look at it again. The leather is so soft and the color goes with EVERYTHING! Picture it with burgundy, purple, turquoise, teal, mint, mustard, salmon, royal blue, and of course, brown, black and grey.
You’re jealous.
Remember the rule!
The IC Soul Series has Set the Stage
Last month, some friends and I arranged for a couple of artists out of Chicago to perform here in the city.
Pictured from left to right: Yaw, Khari Lemuel, and the IC Soul Series Event Coordinators. The performance/event was amazing! Yaw (www.myspace/yawsmusic), who has a heart-warming, soulful sound, shared the stage with Khari Lemuel (http://lemuelism.com/about), also know as the “Soul Healer” and who has been said to ”paint with sound”. Khari was on the cello, and the duo provided a sensual, poetic melody for the candle-lit lounge atmosphere.
The always beautiful and fabulous Ingrid made a surprise visit to IC from NY.
This month’s artist is Ms. Philly, “the Queen of Chicago’s Real Music Movement”. Also based out of Chicago, this songstress, who has been described as “a vocal powerhouse” and “a staple in the Chicago music scene” will perform alongside the band Verzatile. Ms. Philly recently appeared in the Verizon Wireless commercial for the ”How Sweet the Sound” Gospel Experience. Check it out here.
Saturday 9/26/09 @ The Industry (211 Iowa Ave, Iowa City 52240)
Barbie Coming to a Theatre Near You
Barbie (Barbara Millicent Roberts) is celebrating her 50th anniversary this year as one of the top toy brands in the world.
After months of negotiations with Mattel, Universal has acquired the right to make Barbie into a live-action feature movie. The iconic Mattel toy has never been adapted into a live-action film before (Mattel has granted rights to a straight-to-home animated Barbie movie, which Universal currently distributes), though not for Hollywood’s lack of trying. Mattel has been extremely protective of the brand, wanting nothing to tarnish the polished image.
The plot is yet to be determined. Of course, it won’t be anything scandalous. The film will be marketed toward tween girls. I think Barbie should be a philanthropist, demonstrating her caring spirit and fulfilling her social responsibility giving free shopping and styling services to the less fortunate.
What do you think the plot should be?
Who should they get to play Barbie? Ken?
Haute Off The Press: Libras are Natural-Born Stars
I really would like for my readers to get to know more about me. I am a Libra, which is an air sign and is represented by the scales (representing a quest to maintain a perfect balance in life). While I don’t necessarily believe in astrology, I will admit to owning a book on zodiac signs and referring to it often after meeting someone new, to get to know them before I get to know them…or decide whether I want to get to know them, ya know? And I will refer back to it after a display certain behaviors to see if I should have seen it coming.
I am (perhaps only coincidentally) the quintessential Libra and the book describes my personality exactly. I found a similar description here, and I have inserted it below (with tad bit of editing). It says:
The Libra female is VIBRANT, vivacious and thoroughly captivating. Others cannot help to be drawn to her happy smile and are immediately conscious of her sex appeal. Although this is a FLIRTACIOUS woman, she always remains the very epitome of DIPLOMACY and tact. Thus, she is trusted by her friends.
While blessed with taste and a sense of refinement fashion, the female governed by this Sign does have a tendency to love the good life, which can lead to laziness and selfishness jet setting and shopping sprees. Far from “fluffy” in her thinking, the Libra woman can prove to be a great asset to the career of any partner. She is never anything less than attractive in her appearance, mixes well with others, gets along with almost everybody and in addition to being tactful, is also shrewd.
This is a female who looks for an adventurous and intelligentpartner and if that partner be fairly well off, so much the better. However, she is not adverse to lending a hand in helping any mate to accumulate the good things of life. When young, this woman is often likened to a beautiful flower…essentially lovely to look at…but, with advancing years, she often finds that life has educated her to a high degree and she becomes WISE, witty, entertaining, tolerant, AmUsINg and in essence, a wonderfully rewarding person to know.
By nature refined, gentle and kindhearted, women governed by Libra are also amiable, being fond of entertainment and social gaiety. This female sometimes has grand illusions high expectations about many things and can become despondent when matters are not as she imagined or expected them to be. Still, this is a generous and lovable soul, whose ARTISTIC SIDE CRAVES BEAUTY AND HARMONY IN HER SURROUNDINGS.
Librans are easy to fall in love with and tend to be “in love with being in love,” rather than with any particular person. Here, there is an intense desire for sympathy, LOVE, understanding and COMPANIONSHIP…but Libra is a most idealistic Sign and those who fall under its jurisdiction are frequently very difficult to satisfy. Beneath the apparent open affection, there is a streak of selfishness and sometimes shallowness associated with the Libra woman. In some instances, this can be traced to a lack of attention from one or both of this female’s parents being an only child.
The Libra woman is an impeccable hostess, but one who is at her best when she has plenty of servants to do the actual work. While infinitely capable, this female frequently dislikes manual laborlikes to go get her toes done, particularly if it means getting dirty messing up her fingernails (and if you’re along for the ride, you’ll be pampered too). In essence, she prefers to snuggle back into a luxurious pile of cushions and summon assistance.
Generally speaking, the physical side of a relationship is not necessarily important to this woman, but she certainly will enjoy playing one admirer against another. There is a tendency for this female to acquiesce to the desires of her parents when it comes to the choice of a mate. Thus, it is not unusual for women ruled by Libra to form a long-lasting relationship with someone who displays great potential rather than someone they truly love. ANYONE CONSIDERING THIS WOMAN AS A PARTNER SHOULD NOT BECOME INVOLVED WITH HER UNLESS SERIOUS AND COMMITTED ABOUT DOING SO. She certainly needs affection but above all, she must believe in any potential mate…particularly in the area of character. This is NOT a female who deals well with compromise and she will quickly exit any relationship once she discovers she has betrayed herself.
Willing to sacrifice their own health and comfort for those they love, women governed by Libra will cheerfully endure any hardship. However, their extreme solicitude in this respect can make them apprehensive for fear that ill fortune lurks on the horizon. Hence, these females sometimes worry and fret FREAK OUT (!) without legitimate cause or reason. Eventually, this habit can exhaust their vitality, resulting in a peevish and melancholy nature that will react unfavorably upon the physical condition and nerves cause them to age without grace and have a nervous breakdown. There is also a tendency here to be careless with personal belongings and a bent toward being impatient and restless.
Above all else, the Libra female desires true affection, sympathy and interest…forever seeking the ideal companion. As a girlfriend, she is irresistible…as a wife she is intriguing, fun to be with and essentially feminine. As a mother, she is not one to necessarily concentrate unduly on her children, but she is nonetheless devoted and does radiate an affection and warmth that will spell security to any offspring she might have.
Other Libras: Amber Rose, Dita Von Tesse, Victoria Beckham, Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren
Surprised? What’s your sign and what does it say about you?
Street Lights and Rompers
They say that New York is the city that never sleeps, but one night Times Square was completely empty…
After prancing around the CITY for a week, I have a lot of work to catch up on!
Tyra Mail! This is UnBeWeaveable.
Tyra Banks is will reveal her natural hair, ditching her weaves for the season 5 premiere of her CW talk show, airing Sept. 8.
This season on The Tyra Show we’re taking it to the next level and getting more real than ever before by encouraging women everywhere to own and rock what they’ve got and be proud!” she says in a press release. “For the season 5 premiere, I will be doing just that – no fake hair, I’m rocking my REAL hair. This will all be going down on September 8, 2009, which we’re declaring National Real Hair Day! We welcome everyone to go natural with me! -Source
On Twitter she wrote:
Guess What! I’m rockin’ my REAL hair on my talk show September 8th. No fake hair at all! Will be the hair coming out of my scalp! 4 all 2 C!
Then, she took it to the streets with her Flash Mob, stripping down to flesh-colored bodysuits and tossing away their weave in NYC’s Union Square.
Who does Tyra think she’s kidding?! This is all about ratings, folks. DO NOT take your hair off for National Real Hair Day. Take it off because you want to, when you want to. What does she mean, “getting more real”? Nonesense. At a point in history, Black women were said to wear weaves because they wanted to be white; they were denying who they “really” were. But, not anymore. A lot of Black women are proud of their hair and wear it natural and others are proud of their hair, but choose to wear a weave. It really comes down to convenience and choice. It takes a lot of work to maintain natural locks. And frankly, one day a woman might want volumous, textured hair, and the next day, long straight hair. And that is why (in my opinion) people, including myself, wear weaves. Convenience and versatility. And for those very same reasons women of all colors have adopted wearing weaves. It’s just another form of expression. “THIS is how I feel today.” Just like changing your nail polish or choosing which shoes to wear in the morning. Basically, “what do I want to present to the world today?”
There are still some ugly and mean spirited people out there, though. If you dare, check out some of the comments made by justjared.buzznet.com readers on the issue. I refuse to quote them here, but the readers implicitly and explicitly assert that Black women’s hair is inferior. Spread love people.
Tyra’s good at spreading love. And I hope she has a good explanation for all of this on September, 8. Cause really, Tyra, “I’m taking off my hair. Stay tuned.”?
Am I missing something? Is there really an issue with wearing a weave?
When Fashion and the Law Collide: Salacious Obscenities
One visit to the American Apparel website, and it’s clear that they aren’t just selling T-shirts (that I so adore). Adolescent-looking models, with dear caught in headlights expressions, in “come hither” poses, are like, well, the retailers trademark. And nipples are often exposed.
Attitudes regarding nudity in Western cultures are often more critical than attitudes in non-western cultures. For example, in the U.S., exposure of female nipples is a criminal offense in many states and are not allowed in public at all, while in the U.K., nudity may not be used to “harass, alarm or distress” according to the Public Order Act of 1986.
However, it was a British advertising watchdog that recently criticized the clothing company for the ad pictured below, after a reader complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) that the ad, which originally ran on the back cover of Vicemagazine in the U.K., but with a series of six images — instead of three — in which the model further disrobes from her flex fleece and where her nipple was partially exposed in one shot, was “offensive and inappropriate because the model appeared young and it could be seen to sexualize a child.” Reuters reports:
American Apparel said that it did not think the partial nudity in the advertisement would cause widespread offense. It said that the model was 23 years old and did not look under 16, nor was she portrayed as a sex object. (because you look naturally sexy wearing a hoodie, right?)
The ASA disagreed, calling the images “provocative,” and adding,
“Because the ad could be seen to sexualize a model who appeared to be a child under the age of 16 years, we concluded that it was inappropriate and could cause serious offense to some readers.”
Sexual materials range between erotic art (which usually includes “classic nude forms” such as Michelangelo’s David statue) and the generally less respected commercial pornography. The differentiation between sexual materials is a particularly difficult one and a contentious First Amendment issue that has not fully been settled. Many cultures have produced laws to define what is considered to be “obscene”, and censorship is often used to try to suppress or control materials that are obscene under these definitions. The definition differs from culture to culture, between communities within a single culture, and also between individuals within those communities.
In the United States, the 1973 ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in Miller v. California established a three-tiered test to determine what was obscene – and thus not protected, versus what was merely erotic and thus protected by the First Amendment.
Delivering the opinion of the court, Chief Justice Warren Burger wrote,
The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.
The legal distinction between artistic nudity, and permitted commercial pornography (which includes sexual penetration) that are deemed as “protected forms of speech” versus “obscene acts”, which are illegal acts and separate from those permitted areas, are usually separated by the predominant culture appreciation regarding such. In fact, federal obscenity law in the U.S. is highly unusual in that—not only is there no uniform national standard, but rather, there is an explicit legal precedent that all but guarantees that something that is legally “obscene” in one jurisdiction may not be in another. In effect, the First Amendment protections of free speech vary by location within the U.S., and over time.
However, “mere nudity” was upheld in the Supreme Court case Jenkins v. Georgia , 418 U.S. 153 (1974) and deemed not to be obscene under the constitutional standards announced by Miller. As declared by the judge at trial “… nudity alone does not render material obscene under Miller’s standards.” In the U.S., the word “obscenity” is usually limited to content that directly refers to explicit sexual acts that are publicly accessible, though it has at times encompassed other subject matters, such as spoken and written language that can be publicly transmitted and received by the general public.
With the advent of Internet distribution of potentially obscene material, this question of jurisdiction and “community standards” has created significant controversy in the legal community. So, while the nude content was offensive to some in the U.K. community and it has been banned from distribution through print publication (so that no one else will happen to glance over at the doctor’s office or on public transit to be incited with disgust), the online community isn’t as easily offended by nudity, perhaps, and hasn’t spoken out. So, if you’re in the U.K., and want to see bare nipples, then you’ll have to go to American Apparel’s website, where nipples run free, although, I couldn’t find the other three photos on the website either, only the ones pictured above (there are plenty others, however).
What do you think of the racy advertisements? Offensive? Not offensive?
Kity Fierce
Kity Fierce is my alter ego. She was born out of coincidence. I had an interview one day and my mom said that it was absolutely out of the question for me to wear my hair the way it was if I wanted that job. So, I bought a wig. The style was named Kity. I felt differently when I wore Kity, like mysterious and a little more confident. I had a different swag. I think it’s probably like what editrix Anna Wintour feels like behind her blunt cut bangs and huge sunglasses.
After the interview (I didn’t get the job), I would wear the wig around the house and when hanging out with friends, just for fun. They would call me Kity. I did that for a while, then finally laid the wig to rest. But, the feelings didn’t go away. The courage and swag remained. I’m talking higher heels and plunging necklines. Truthfully, I don’t know what it was, whether it was the new year, age, or the wig that brought about the change. But I feel like it was a transformation from a kitten to a tiger. ROAR!
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