New York, New York

Ola folks..I just returned from spending an exhilirating weekend in the fashion capital of the world - atleast my little world - New York City. Every sidewalk was a runway. People strutting their stuff on 5th avenue. A Carrie Bradshaw at every headturn. People struggling to exhibit their uniqueness in every sense. The week before I spent it in Gaithersburg, Maryland which is like any other suburb(yawn!) in the United States. The contrast between the two places was rather hard-hitting. Interestingly enough it was pretty ironic as well.

I was getting a croissant for breakfast at a little bakery around the corner when in walked the fashionista - a skinny, asian girl. pretty, in her mid-20s. Wearing cute shorts and a tshirt. Perfect for the hot-humid weather. Until I saw what she was wearing on her feet. She was wearing furry ugg-boots. In the middle of sweltering humidity and a 100 degrees, wearing ugg-boots with short shorts was not chic, it was geographically out of place. An interesting thought did cross my mind. I have been writing about how people are time displaced and seem to be in a time capsule. For the first time, I was witnessing a woman who lived in two hemispheres at once. OR maybe she thought wearing furry thick boots and shorts made her legs look skinnier.

Immediately I thought of this woman I saw in Gaithersburg, the previous week. She was a female gardener mowing the lawn and clearing out weeds. She was a latina woman in her mid-20s. She was dirty and covered in mud. But she looked like she had walked straight out of a fashion magazine. She was wearing beige pants with a dirty off-white shirt. She had rolled her sleeves to right above her elbows and was wearing a brown leather belt across her waist. Even under the dirt that she was covered in, she managed to look super stylish. As I said before it was pretty ironic. Style transcends boundaries.

I spotted this outside a salon while I was in Oregon last week! (pic taken from my phone) Brought a big smile to my face.. Enjoy!

Kramerica anyone?

I have been busy and lazy with my life. Sometimes you just drift and things just seem to be happening around you. Its like you took a remote control, hit pause and hit play again. Your life seems unchanged. Although real life around you seems to say something different. Before I digress, back to my usual venting.
I was travelling on the local train in Portland, Oregon to visit a local brewery when I came across my long forgotten woe. Portland is a beautiful city, scenic and modern and also very crowded. The train system seems to be rather excellent and is the main choice of transport for working people who worked outside the city.
As my colleagues and I settled in the comfort of our comfortable albeit unfamiliar surroundings(we love our cars), I was watching this young man who had just boarded the train. He was wearing formal work-clothes which suited him well. Sadly though, the moment he sat down, it hit me about what was wrong! The trousers were a little too short..just about half an inch or so shorter than his cuffs. And as he sat down and his pants went up, I could see glaring portions of his socks! It instantly reminded me of the character Kramer in Seinfeld. Kramer is seen in almost all episodes of Seinfeld wearing these ridiculous trousers. It adds an extra zing to his already quirky character and makes him what he is. But the rest of us are not lucky enough to make ourselves rich by wearing funny looking pants and still gather iconic status!
A dear friend of mine was recently telling me about how tricky it is to get tailor made clothes in the United States. We are surrounded by chains and chains of stores and nobody caters to a certain body style anymore. But some brands fit better than others, and perhaps its wise to take a moment and get simple things like the length of the pants straightened out, especially when they are formal work-pants. I wish them success in their quest!

Wash,rinse,repeat(the re-cycle)

Last week has been interesting. I gotta chance to go to the "City of Love" to attend a fashion show. Really loved the show and thought some of the creations were pretty interesting. Will upload pics from the show a little later. The show was put together by students of fashion. The things they had learnt in their four year program from fabric making to dress design. Haute Couture. The works.
Needless to add, the crowd lived upto the fashion show. People all ages showed up in all sorts of fashion. From accessories to shoes to clothes to hats. Each in its own telling a little about their personality and perhaps their attitude. I was in absolute heaven. It was the best couple of hours I had spent in a long while.
Retro chic was largely "in". Polka dots, greta-garbo hats, headbands, scarves, hepburn-style pants, big super-size-sunglasses, big colorful prints, dobby-pants for men and women and the like. Suddenly I was transported back into the 60s again. Talk about recycling. Admittedly though, the clothes did look uber chic.
In the midst of all this creativity though was one person that stuck out like a sore thumb. The director of the fashion school! A woman about 45-50 years of age dressed in an ill-fitted suit with shoulder pads!!!! And the clincher - bold gold jewellery! As she stood there making the opening speech, I was cringing in pain. From what I had heard she was supposedly very wealthy and you could tell she had a sense of power and command. Whatever it was it didnt show from what she was wearing. Maybe she was trying to make up for the balance in this world. Or maybe she was a little ahead of her times..If people are going back to the 60s in their sense of style, maybe she just went back to the 80s when shoulder pads and gold jewelry was in!! Whatever it was, it wasnt working!

I have a confession to make. Blogging against fashion-peeves has been therapeutic. Lately, I have noticed that I am not giving people a mental makeover as I meet them. In fact, I dont have the same anguish, I am slowly drifting into a bit of complacency as I become more forgiving of the violators.
As my dear anonymous friend commented on my last blog, I could really use a makeover myself and become a fashion cop. So I decided to wear my pink fashion police hat (an homage to 'legally blonde') and carry my shrill whistle and walk the country looking for violators. Sadly enough, it can only be wishful thinking as I still have my day job to keep! Still, I have two incidents to report as I went through the vagaries of my every day life.

I went to the optometrist the other day to finalize my contact lens prescription. This bitchy female doctor is there to welcome(how ironical) me and find out how comfortable I was with the prescription. I should have known she was bitchy right from when I saw her. The white coat threw me off briefly. As I was leaving the store, after having a violent moment with her, I noticed what she was wearing. She was wearing all black clothes(black top, black pants) and shiny red open-toed pumps. I figured the only thing she needed was a pair of horns and she would be ready for a halloween party.

Next, I was at the airport leaving Baltimore to travel to Los Angeles recently. It was a beautiful sunny day, about 75 degrees. It was going to be a long flight about 5 hours. People were in their summer best - shorts, capris and the like. As the flight continued to board though, I was looking for my shrill fashion-cop-whistle...so I could flag this couple down. The woman was about 33 and the man was around 35. They seemed very cosy, chic and ready. Ready to go skiing that is! They were both dressed from head to toe as if they were out on their yearly trip to Aspen. They would jump of the plane and ski away onto the diamond slopes. I couldnt understand what was going on. And this is spring for Pete's sake!

Welcome to hookerville!

I have been travelling in and out of Northern California these days. My long travels across the country seemed to have temporarily stopped!(phew!)
For the kind of work I do, I rarely get to see my fellow team members. So it was a nice change to be in our Nor Cal office and I got to "hang" with a few of them. I work for an hardware engineering firm and as most of you probably are well aware we, engineers amongst other things, severely lack any sense of fashion. Rightly so, I guess. Our mind works in different dimensions and we rarely have a problem with it. We fall in love, marry and breed our kind. so we pass this legacy of lack of keen sartorial appeal to our generations to come!
I am not complaining, mind you. I am just observing.
I ran into one of our young project managers who had been away for the good part of the year on maternity leave. I have chatted with her before, and I somehow never seem to elicit enough (intelligent) responses from her to be able to carry on a conversation beyond 30 sec.
For some reason, on this ominous day(you will know why it was ominous in a few), she decided to show up at work in hot pink pants and a low cut black blouse! I immediately went to a stage of 'fashionaphylactic' shock and started jabbering away with her to cover my involuntary reaction.
Maybe she decided that she need to make a statement and let people know she was back in town! and needed to do it with some sense of panache! whatever it was, she succeeded in getting my attention.
But the strange thing is - that given that we are engineers, and the larger portion of the population consists of men, it probably went unnoticed!

Peeping Tom!

Down, down, down..Alice fell into the rabbit hole without ever thinking how she will get back again. She saw a little door and was curious to find out what was behind it. It was locked. She looked around and found a key on the table. She unlocked the door and could see great beautiful gardens and many wonderful things. But she was too big to fit into the door.
Alice in Wonderland was wonderful. I am seeking inspiration from Lewis Caroll to use euphemisms to write my next blog!
Euphemisms, because I am trying to be subtle about it and dont have the gall to write explicitly. Women wearing pant suits was considered a big step for feminism. 'Nice' women wore skirts and blouses and that was that.
Times have changed and so has the mentality. In keeping with wearing 'formal' clothing at work, many women wear formal shirts along with their/skirts or trousers. The shirts, however, being not so friendly to the women's body, fit them like they would fit men. Things have gotten a little better. Nowadays, shirts have curves and waists. But, some women are better endowed than others and they leave a peeping hole between their second and third buttons because it doesnt fit perfectly!
Ladies, my only suggestion is that please correct what I can deem only as an honest mistake. Its not in the least bit sexy to have a peeping hole! So the next time you are out doing your power shopping, I would suggest that you definitely take steps to ward off any peeping toms!

doughnuts are made of (w)holes!

Atoms form molecules. Molecules form matter. and so on and so forth. This has been the nature of life. The point I am trying to make with this analogy is that ultimately the idea of a "whole" is our truth. No, I have not gone bonkers. I am not trying to get into metaphysics or have become deeply philosophical. In a minute you will understand where I am trying to go with this.
There are people of course who choose to defy this absolute banal truth and pretend as if it never existed at all!
These are the people who you see, men and women walking in a mall/airport/street, without any clue that they are defying science! They behave as if their upper half of the body and their low half of the body belonged to two different people. Human beings are not always the perfect 10 models. They dont grow proportionately wide everywhere. some have convex curves and some none at all. Some are top heavy, and some are bottom heavy. Some gain fat and have huge girths.
However, if you walk into a mall, the bottom heavy ones will buy size 10 jeans and buy a Size 'small' for the top! its as if they would rather believe that as long as they are able to fit into the 'small' top..there is hope in this world..some day you will be able to buy those size 2 jeans to go with your small top! Until that day however, please try and apply the norms of metaphysics to your sense of fashion!

the HQ (hair quotient)

I was talking to a dear friend today and was reminded gently that my readers were waiting(just a little flattery never hurt)! so..without much ado. first the apology. Sorry for not writing for so long!
next my pet peeve.
When I was a child, I used to visit an ophthalmologist for getting my new glasses. The doc was a good friend of my fathers. And as he was testing me for my eye sight, he would do the queer thing of putting the light into my eyes and make me look at something on the wall, while he looked closely at my retina. Sometimes he would deviate and say things like , "Keep looking at my ear". I would look and couldnt help but suppress giggles at the jut of hair popping out of his ears.
After all these years, the giggles have just turned into a little bit of disgust as I have known more and more men esp Indian men who have not been able to keep their hirsutedness under check.
These are young men between the ages of 20 and 40. I dont know if its some new gypsy thing that has caught on, or they are all trying to collectively defy metrosexuality or start some new age revolution! But whatever it is, its not working...
These men have forests of hair coming out of their noses/ears/that-one-hair-sticking-out-of-the-eyebrow. Guys, one piece of advice - unless you want to remind everyone of how evolution started..just do everyone a favor and groom yourself a wee-bit. You dont have to work towards being the next GQ man but next time before you step out of the bathroom just make sure that the HQ is taken care of!

breakfast at tiffanys(!!)

In the movie 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' the main characters Paul and Holly celebrate by doing things neither of them has done before. Paul has never had champagne before breakfast. Holly has never been on a walk in the morning and Paul has never been to Tiffany's. They try to shop for something for under $10 at Tiffany's and pass up the silver telephone dialer.
Whether this movie has anything to do with the fashion mishap I am going to write about or not, I am not sure. But it was a great movie.
Time and again, I have come across friends wearing these pieces of jewellery given to them by their loved ones. My black friend in Florida had silver ear rings and a necklace to match from Tiffany's given to her with love for Christmas from her sister. My sweet friend in California has one such bracelet from her fiance. As romantic and sweet these gestures may be, sadly enough, these pieces of jewellery just remind me of those prison bracelets that were once worn by prisoners with their identification number on them. Or those bracelets worn by porters in India.
Some demented designer imitated these designs. Engraved the words Tiffany and sold them to the poor souls.
Please people, I know you love your loved ones. But a lesson has to be taught and learnt somewhere, I suggest that you defy the norms and stand tall against these fashion violators!

the everyday gecko

sometimes I hit a blogger's block. Its not because the world has suddenly become filled with beautifully dressed people, its just me. since I owe it to my readers, I am going to force myself to blog.
Saturday afternoon, I was on a hike at half moon bay. and in front of me walked this woman with a new fashion peeve - camouflage capris.
Whats with people wanting to wear camouflage clothes. They come in all shapes and forms. Cargo pants/shorts/capris/ skirts/dresses/even a string bikini/tshirts. i dont get the concept. Have we all decided that we may have to hide behind the bushes anytime soon? Has the orange alert really gotten to us?
The chameleon changes its colors to make itself invisible. Hence it becomes green, brown whenever its in that type of flora/fauna.
We, normal humans, however have no such need. The large green leaf like things have been used by the military so they can be concealed on one of their 'missions'.
So my request to yall...unless you are a military wannabe, please please discard ur camos.

trapped in The BirdCage

a little sleepy, blogging from the Phoenix airport. thank God for free web access!
today was quite an important day. there was a lot of preparation for this day. An important customer was going to come and view this new technology that I was demo-ing. The customer was a 'power woman'. she held a real high posn with a biG company and was known to be a tough cookie. (trust me..this description is important)I was actually scared of meeting her.
So me and the rest of the team are waiting for her to come. She walks in with her entourage(but of course..people like her always have an entourage..eye roll).
One look at her and all my tension vanished. For all the hype, and my expectations of her...she walked in looking a little more like Nathan Lane in The birdcage and a little less like Roseanne.
Her hair, the drag-queen eye makeup, the caky foundation, the bright red rouge. I expected her to break into 'We are family' , any moment. Her hair had been styled with those big roller curls. I am sure she had stayed up in the night trying to make her hair look 'pretty'.
I could tell though why nobody had informed her of new fashions. People probably were too intimidated of her and just liked to pander to her ego and nobody dared say anything abt the big hairdo or the big eyes!
And surprisingly enough, I have actually run into people like her before. And they have the exact same make up.
But her big gaffe gave me courage...and of course bad goosebumps.

instant gratification?

been bored to death. today i ran into an interesting incident. the orange alert at the airports created a chaos of sorts. people were asked to throw away things with liquids in them - lip gloss, lip stick, moisturiser, tooth paste and the works..everybody was complaining about it.
As I was standing in line, this middle-aged woman(she must be 35..is that middle-aged)..comes along. pretty face. makeup. a little bit of a shocker was her lavender tshirt which said - 'instant gratification' in several different places.
I was kind of stunned. Perhaps, I have a limited knowledge of the english language. or maybe I had a dirty mind. But I could only think of one meaning. Women that age sporting explicit logos like that were asking for too much.
The funny thing is - that my opinion about these kind of borderline lewd tshirts and people wearing them was reinforced a few minutes later.
In the course of some random conversation, I was talking about how irksome the lines can be especially when you have to travel for work. This woman looks at me and asks, 'what is it that you do again hun?'. Innocently enough I explained that I was a consulting engineer. Her reply - ' I know my friends who travel way too much. and they are upto no good! They are all hookers'
Go figure!

White sucks(whoops) n formal shoes(esp black)

People. I am back with a vengenace. Have u noticed that if you look at ugliness long enough, you forget ugliness and it just becomes non-ugly.
An old forgotten woe, was reminded by a new friend who brought it to my attn last week.
I choose my words carefully, cause I am hoping to make my next point without malice. Non-Ugly is a very simple word. Not too much on the other side.
Imagine you see a well dressed guy walking by, you check him out. head to toe. and like a mustang on highway-1 hitting a speed breaker you are just hit. There are no air bags to protect you! without any warning...
by the biggest fashion faux-pas. The WHITE SOCKS. not the baseball team. but the white socks under formal leather shoes. Why, oh why?? My senses just lament.
I think its because you can buy them by the doz and they are cheap. Unfortunately, cheaper by the doz has nothing to do with it. I have seen these people add to my misery!!! they wear worn-out white socks under black formal shoes....dont know which is the bigger crime..

Old Hollywood/Bollywood movies showed the main protagonist of the movies with the top few buttons of their shirt open. Their Chest Hair peaking out. And the thick gold necklace to show a sign of opulence and sexiness all rolled into one.
This gentle people, was in the 80s. Wake up and roll into the new millennium..Wearing a gold necklace is not an option. Especially not for any non-black folks. Jewellery of any kind, barring finger rings(only ur engagement/wedding band) looks good only on the brothers but no others...(aha! poetry crept in)
Whoever told you that you look sexy with your top buttons open and a thick gold necklace showing is probably from Tennessee. Where the Elvis hangover hasnt gone yet. But all others, beware, that person is your enemy.

Animal Farm

Finally got an oppty to find material to write. Apologies to my readers!(wonder if I have any:))
I was at Tulsa, OK the entire last week again on official travel. And lo and behold, I found my material as soon as I landed!
Without much further ado, presenting (drumroll)- the animal print!
Every third woman(ok, i am exaggerating a lil), in Oklahoma wore some kind of animal print. The most popular was of course the leopard print. Young and old women alike wore them in the form of dresses/shirts/pants. Gift shops at the terminal had luggage which was made out of them. Women carried vanity bags made in the same print.
the word 'hideous' in this case is too literal. You wear the hides of these animals to look -glamorous?????
I guess they are trying to waken up their wilder instincts by wearing these "hide"ous outfits.
its not only ladies in Oklahoma who are accused of this serious fashion crime. I have seen everything from zebras to leopards being converted into some sort of accessory - a purse, head band, a belt, shoes have these prints all across the country.
If the animals in the jungle had any legal representation, the designers would be being sued for this fashion crime!
Ladies, just some good advice - unless you were working for PETA and you were tryng to make a point about animal cruelty, please dont be seen outside carrying these natures' aberrations.

the happy shirt

I have been sitting in an interesting software training class all week. (sidenote: the instructor sounds like ben stein)As I havent been out to see the daylight, I had to find my next pet-hate in my confined circumstance. And I did. Even in the small population its not hard to find 'em.
Without further ado, announcing - "the happy shirt"
The happy shirt is the shirt that you wear on occasions you are happy. There is the holiday shirt, with flowers, fruits, other flora/fauna on it. These shirts were made for vacationing. You will find 'em on your flight to Hawaii/Florida/the caribbean/Mexico to show how "happy" you are going to be in the next few weeks. And maybe the next few week as a hangover from your holiday.
There is the other sweater which comes in the same category - the holiday sweater. This is the ugly sweater with tons of things - from christmas trees to bells to reindeers and Kris Kingles..only meant and sold during the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to Xmas.
When they made these pieces of garments, they were made with a destiny in mind. To change their destiny and wear it out of their contexts is a crime. A fashion crime.
Why do people still want to wear them long after their vacations or in highly inappropriate places(like the software training class), I fail to understand. Perhaps, they want to have a constant reminder that the vacation is not far away. Perhaps, they love xmas so much that they dont want to let go.
My earnest request to those people is that please look at those reminders in snapshots of your sweet memories. Your photographs. Please dont try and make us poor souls part of your "happy" memory...

Alphabet Land

A B C D E FG
H I JKLMNOP
QRSTUVW
XYZ
Now I know my abc, next time wont you sing with me?

I was at a dinner party yesterday with some very pretty well-dressed women. One of them was carrying my pet-hate as an accessory. The monogrammed purse.
Louis Vuitton, Yves St Laurent, Dooney and Bourke, Coach drive me nuts. Louis Vuitton is probably the worst. They have it plastered all over the place! Their signature. LV LV LV LV.
There is no chic sophistication in creating a purse with the letters of the alphabet all over them!! No beauty. Its not artistic or even pretty to look at. if anything they look garish. A slap on the face of aesthetics.
I think its an insult to all humanities intelligence to be seen carrying these purses.
All these designers have the arrogance to think that they dont have to create a beautiful piece of art for these women. Its very philosophical actually. If you think about it.
The purses are just used blatantly to flaunt their wealth. Its like they are saying - I dont need anything to be aesthetic. I can just carry an ugly piece of material. Put the letters LV/YVL/DB whatever over it. And it will mean that I have a lot of money(they cost anywhere between $250 - $3000 bucks) and that means I obviously can buy anything I want. And thats all anyone in this world cares about anyways, right? WRONG!
Worse yet, are the people who buy the fake ones! Or maybe they have a sense of humor...
Ladies, we have to collectively rebel against the arrogance of these mindless designers. We should bring back the art of good aesthetic wear. We owe it to ourselves!

VPL - Visual public lewdness

A friend from a past life once told me that his biggest turn on was VPL. Apparently, his wife actually points these out to him when they are out in public. VPL, to us ignoramuses, is an abbreviation for Visual Panty Lines.
It has affected women since time immemorial. Before a woman gets out of the house, the one thing she does check for are these excruciating yet unscrutable details - which is the visual panty lines. Especially when she is wearing those snugly pants or the arch nemesis the white pants. And thus was born the invisible panty line - the thong. Women wear this uncomfortable piece of cloth to make invisible the panty line. My sympathies to them.
Why is it that men never ever seem to have this issue? Why dont men have VPLs?
I am confused about my stand on the issue though.
On a whim, I surveyed some of the men I know about their stand on this issue. I classify the men into three types - the-ones-whose-opinion-matters, the perverts and the inconsequentials.
The Towoms are guys who have a reasonable attitude towards all mankind. They are open minded, sensible kind of guys. The ones most women like to go out with, but cant really seem to find.
The Perverts are guys who have an X-Ray machine in their heads and probably X-Ray every woman in their spectrum. They probably even x-ray their neighbors grandmom.
The inconsequentials are guys whose opinion doesnt really matter. You dont even care if they cease to exist.
So I did a surveyed my Towoms. And guess what ladies! therez good news.
They were surprised that women even care about these things! They said they never check out women's butts and go - "Ooops! she is wearing a panty!".
So ladies, relax, next time you get out dont get too frenzied if you have a VPL.

old mc donald had a farm..EIEI YeW!

Yes people. The topic of today's discussion is another fashion peeve - the overalls. Men and Women alike bought these overalls. They tried to glam them up. They hacked the legs off, called 'em short alls. They wore skanky spaghettis under 'em to give that naughty slutty look. Alas! The only person to have the last laugh was ole Mc D.
Even our coolest hip-hoppers couldnt sex 'em up enough. Some of the homies even tried it without a shirt/tshirt inside..to give just a hint of appeal. Well, whaddya know. The overalls still look good only in one place- the farm.
Wait, they look good even on the preggers mamas-to-be. They look kind of cute with the baggie earth-mother look. I guess they look comfortable in them and thus they make good maternity clothes.
They make good work clothes too. Like when you are painting a wall, or being grease monkey.
Because once you are done with your tasks you remove 'em.
So please please hot mamas, (pretty please!), lets take those cute overalls off, and store them in the closet until one of the above mentioned occasions arise, or when the stork comes to visit the next time?