Un Nuit Au Maroc

Thursday last week, Amanda Agnes and Sari Lazaro organized a fashion show for their production class. It was one night of fashion in Morocco. Designer students from our school, LaSalle College International, showed their stuff: Athena Tandoc, Finela Gregorio, Engie Garcia, Marge Regala, Kristine Bautista, Miki Hahn, Sari Lazaro and me. It was a great show, thanks to Amanda and Sari.

The location nearly ruined everything but it still was a great show, thanks to Amanda and Sari, everyone who helped and the designers. The place, and I mention this only once, was Warehouse 135. It was such a bad experience I shall never come back there again of my own accord, but the YoU Magazine launch this Saturday (in which I will be showing some punk rock clothes) will be held there so that will be the last time. First, they had to be told to turn the a/c on while we were setting everything up. And there was no help or any kind of assistance from them at all. When we arrived there late afternoon, the place, looking all dilapidated under the unforgiving lights was dirty, with cigarettes butts everywhere, probably from whatever went on the night before. The toilet had a lot of cockroaches. The backstage was upstairs and I was always scared to leave our things without someone we know because this dodgy crook-like man was always hovering nearby. He won’t even fetch water for my friend who needed to take some medicine. And while the models were undressing, the crook-guy and another goon were stealing looks! Athena had to tell him to give us a bit of privacy and he took one step back. We had to compensate and hide from them when they should be helping make things better. While the show is on-going, I was watching from the balcony backstage, waiting for my turn, and one guy came up to me and had the gall to tell me to tell everyone else to not nudge the stupid tables because the club’s power breaker thingy whatever will explode. What?! That totally doesn’t make sense. And it isn’t even my problem if they have some hacked-up electrical wiring that could cause major accidents with a single nudge of a table. It’s their problem and they either fix it or someone ought to investigate that. They were really gross and rude and unprofessional. I don’t know where the people who work there come from or how they were trained (if there was any training at all) but since they represent that “club,” everything about it was revealed to me in very poor, but clear light.

So next time you think about going there, don’t be fooled by the sparkling lights that hide all the ugly reality and stay near the exits because someone just might nudge a table and cause an explosion: you are in a warehouse that declares the fact in cheap tarp in front and that’s all it really is.

Thanks to:
stylebible.ph
Flip TV
Konrad Ong
LCI photography students
everyone who made it a nice event.

Possessed Legs

Although honestly, I think I was more bothered about the silly watering can.

Fashion Victim

Everyone knows not to make these fashion mistakes…but everyday someone does. Your next challenge is to design an outfit that is based around a fashion faux pas that I will assign to you. These things rarely work on people, and it’s your job to make them work.

I was assigned “a humongous weekend bag” and I got Willemina as my model again. So I designed a huge striped canvas weekend bag with leather trimmings.. big enough to fold and stuff Willemina in.

The story is this: Willemina is going to spend the weekend with some friends at a beach resort. This is what she’ll be wearing while travelling to the resort.

A drop sleeved , very loose, silk knit jersey top knotted at the back. The red bikini top worn underneath has hooked straps that can be attached to the back of the blue top to hold the loose top in place. There are places along the edges and inside that blue top that you can attach the bikini top’s hooks to. Then she’s wearing charcoal stretch drainpipes with cutout details. The cutouts are the same stretch demin fabric that the drainpipes are made of turned inside out.. that’s why they’re darker. The look is finished with gold bangles and bracelets, long necklace with yellow stones, gold-strapped wedge sandals and two-toned sunglasses.

Her hair is blown out for volume in the style of the big wind-blown beach hair associated with glamorous Italian women walking down the streets of places like the French Riviera and St. Tropez.

The design:

New reality show to premier tonight: On the Lot, Star Movies 9-10pm. Should be fun to watch. If the show will air for only an hour at most each episode, I wonder how long the movies made by the contestants will be- or if there will be movie clips to be made.

Speaking of new shows, I wonder when the Gossip Girl TV series will be aired here. Here’s a little preview:

White Party

The most recent challenge for Project Designer is to design an outfit that can be worn to P. Diddy’s annual white party. It must all be white, including the accessories and must be inspired by our model’s nationality. I got Willemina and since she’s of English descent, I got inspiration from the boned corsets of the 1800’s and Scottish luxury cloths. I made everything out of traditional Harris tweed. It’s a corset top pencil cut dress- slashed very high up on one side. It has two strips of leather running down the front and back. The leather serves as straps and that part is lined with white velvet underneath. Willemina is also wearing pumps and carrying a wrist bag made of the same tweed as the dress. The only jewellery she’s wearing is an antique cameo neck piece. Here’s the drawing:

The procrastinator in me made me rush this last night. It was due May 8th 5pm central and I was up until 4am finishing this and submitting it. Lol.

Anyway, yesterday I was looking for a new pair of glasses. And I think I realy really love this pair from Bebe:

What do you guys think? I really love the how it’s slightly angled toward the middle. It looked nice on me when I tried them on. If I don’t find anything I like better, I’m getting a pair next week. We always get our eyeglasses and contact lenses and some sunglasses (my whole family) from George Optical. We’re the only ones they give discounts to every time we buy because we’ve been patronising them for so long.. lol.

Oh yes, this is my other drawing from the other challenge.. I didn’t like it at all, though.. So I wasn’t all that happy about it. I made a mistake in choosing which outfit to deconstruct and base my new outfit on. (Click on it for the a larger view and the full description.)

I’ve been baking like a mad pastry chef this past few days.. weeks. After almost half a dozen batches of cupcakes, I believe I have perfected The Cupcake. I like my cupcakes moist inside and topped with fun, surprisingly flavoured toppings with cream cheese and butter cream bases. Other than that, I’ve baked a French Apple Crumble (dad’s request- it’s a variation of an apple pie), a flourless chocolate cake and will be baking brownie-like cookies later. Lol. Pictures coming soon.

I am working on a ton of projects which I hope will all turn out for the best. I’ll give you guys a hint on one of them though: I will be attending classes in this institution very soon: Instituto di Marangoni. It’s one of the very best fashion schools in the world. I want to go to the campus in Milan. Just their placement services is to die.. take a look at this:

In 2005, we arranged over 600 between internships and job offers at top fashion houses including: Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Dolce&Gabbana, Prada, Alberta Ferretti, Gruppo Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Jil Sander, Valentino, Missoni, Versace, Alessandro Dell’Acqua, Costume National, Roberto Cavalli, Helmut Lang, Bally, Bottega Veneta, Calvin Klein, Gianfranco Ferré, Etro, Celine, Ferragamo, Marzotto, Gruppo La Perla, Erreuno, Jean Paul Gaultier, Moschino, Krizia, Blumarine, Capucci, Lancetti, Furla, Gilli, Mandarina Duck, Luciano Soprani, Mariella Burani, Max Mara, Replay, Mila Schön, Romeo Gigli, Gusella, Lonsdale, Guru, Ungaro, La Rinascente, Gaetano Navarra, Kookai, Vestimenta.

Oh. And I have almost finished (just a few more tweaks) a commissioned theme for Beauty and Minerals. They sell mineral makeup- makeup that actually does good for your skin. See it here: Beauty & Minerals. Serious individuals or groups interested in having a theme or complete website made specially for them, contact me directly at crisel@crichi.com. (Note: this is not a free service.)

This is Natassja mauling Santa Bear til she rids him of his stuffing.. awww.. lol. Crazy puppy.

Happy Birthday Dad

It’s dad’s birthday today and we went to Kimpura to celebrate. Thanks everyone who sent greetings via moi. I already passed the message. =)

My brother found this and I think it’s great: (the electronic violin is amazing)

I miss Holland..

100 Mob Randomly Chasing People

This is soooo soooo funny!

Almost Nightmare at the Museum

Dad had dinner here last night of Cebuano dishes he has not had in a long time (I think). He brought my watercolour pencils which I left. Then we went to La Marea at Crossing to have coffee with Tito Rudy, Ninang Loy, Tito Luchoy & Tita Carla, the latter two just arrived here from Canada for the Sinulog. It was a sort of mini-reunion for them. I was the only one under 40 years of age XD.

After the catching up which lasted til about 11pm, we then took dad to the Cathedral Museum of Cebu so he can see it before going back to Manila (this afternoon). Yes, the museum opened its doors for us some minutes after 11 in the evening. It was almost nightmare in the museum except the ivory pieces and Banglos sculptures didn’t come to life..

Something I scribbled:

I am addicted to Starbuck’s green tea frappuccino with hazenut syrup. It’s wonderful.. Every sip is wonderful, specially the first. It’s like taking in liquid heaven. I tried it with irish cream, like the barista suggested, but ick. It didn’t taste good at all.. Hazelnut syrup is the way to go.. loveitloveitloveit

On to the Golden Globes..

At the Hong Kong Fashion Week last Wednesday..

PETA is seriously so annoying.. Animals are for humans to use be it food or clothing. They don’t even know what they stand for anymore.. they just throw buckets of paint on anyone hairy enough. And anyway there is NO law against using animal skin for clothing. Nothing wrong with it. They really went out of line when they beat up that old woman with a baseball bat one time. She of course was just walking down a sidestreet in a furcoat when it happened. They care more about the ethical treatment of animals than ethical treatment of humans? They’ve to get their principles straight.

On American Idol: I really like Perla Meneses.. She’s so quirky and fun.. lol.