CURIOUSER NEW YORK

I love how right before the New Year's Eve every media outlet starts to reflect on the past year, talking about "the best photos of 2011", "the best events that changed the world 2011", "the best technology of 2011", "the best fashion trends 2011" and so on. Everyone seems to be reflecting on the ending year of 2011 and making predictions and wishes for 2012. This includes, of course, New Year's resolutions - a traditional list of things to do and accomplish in the new year - especially popular to do in USA. Growing up in a different country, we didn't make those lists. Yes, we reflected, remembered and talked about certain accomplishments and wishes for the new year, but they were not lists. Not in every country people make lists. Personally, I don't make lists. I don't believe in lists. I call them 'mental notes' - I make 'mental notes'... I believe in living one day at a time and just be better at it...

Whoever knows me well, knows that I've bee obsessed with the advertising industry since high school. I used to go through all kinds of print ads, tear them off from the magazines and re-do them: text/slogans and the visuals. Back in my NYC days when I experimented with the ads' like black and white photography...

Lately, there have been quite a few collaborations between retail stores and top fashion designers. I wonder if that's the result of the economy, when - [finally] - the designers recognize that they've been missing a huge chunk of the potentional customers, who could shop their designer collections at moderate prices. Personally, I do like when designers collaborate with low-end stores, although we all understand that it's not the same to wear Versace from Versace high end collections and Versace from H&M collaboration , but the price of $199 vs. $2,999 does make a difference for the fashionistas, who can't spend all their salaries on a designer's items. So, we succumb to the 'collaborations' because we do want to be fab and stylish. On the other hand, I'm always at owe with the notorious fashionistas - [think the It-Girls of the likes of Chloe Sevigne and Mary-Kate/Ashley Olsen] - who wear proudly both Forever21 and H&M items in the com...

Over my short - [but very productive in all the senses of the word - especially in the homemade food consumption department] - Christmas break with my parents, I spent some family quality evening with a glass of wine flipping through our family albums.  Yes, this is what I do every single Christmas, as if I've never seen those photos before, but for many reasons - it still has the magic over me. It still brings me a deep settled pleasure in seeing what a great family I was so lucky to be born to and grow up in. I cherish every moment of my childhood and adolescence, as well as the times when my parents were young and care-free, as I am right now - and when I was not even in the picture... However, this is not one of those 'nostalgic' posts. It's about my fab discovery...

Jeremy Scott is a truly unique individual, or as per Latin 'interpretation' - he is a true Singularis .

I like the fact that what used to be a very stereotypical - [and, thus, widely known around the world] - souvenir that the visitors to Russia bring back home - the Russian Dolls , are now taking attention from the biggest fashion designers in the world. They are now a very hot commodity- both in a private collection on the shelves of one's house and in the fashionable art exhibitions.

Perhaps the fact that I wouldn't be caught wearing this kind of outfits - [ever?] - is why I like it so much and find extremely sexy - in a rather smoky, lacy, shocking way...Although, as an official New Year's Eve resolution - I'll try to tend to be more risqué in 2012 in my choices for fashion...

Last August I did an amazing road trip with an old friend of mine from high school, with whom we took a car, charged iPad with an European SIM-card and made an approximate hand-written map of what we wanted to see and how to go about doing it in just less than 10 days - [yes, American vacation times are very short...]. Our ' Napoleon's ' plan - [in other words - our GRAND plan] - involved to see much - [if not all] - of Montenegro, the east side of Italy - [starting with the south of the country] - [but happened to see the central part as well] - and everything in between, which happened to be Croatia and Slovenia. Without a right navigation system and certain , it could have been a disaster, especially if we didn't know the specificazioni ...

I love, love Christmas and New Year's celebrations - and for very different reasons... First of all - I love taking photos of the holiday decorations in the city. I can't never get enough of the holiday window displays, street lights - day and night, restaurants' interiors, in-store music, and, of course - the holiday sales... I know some say it's 'cheesy' this, 'cheesy' that and the winter holidays are just the epitome of 'cheesiness', and many people, who know the fact that I take holiday photos EVERY year, are surprised by that as they think that NOTHING changes in the city in terms of the decorations...it's same old, same old - just as the Rockefeller Center's Christmas Tree . But it does change, and I notice it because I shoot it every year and can see the difference...

  It's been my fifth year in a row spending Christmas in College Station, Texas - a town that I would have never thought I'd end up going to more than I do to any other places in the world. [How many times I wished my parents settled in places like Paris, London, Florence, Split, Berlin, or at least - in San Francisco and/or Washington, DC - the places that I'd be more than happy to visit them at more often!] So, it's a true battle when the holidays or vacation times come - to go visit my parents in Texas or to go to Paris, Amsterdam or Tokyo - or places I've never visited before? - a battle that I often loose in favor of my parents, and, thus - in favor of the little Texan town, College Station...

No matter what the others say about second hand shops - [" How can you wear something that's been worn by other people? Do you trust the hygiene of it? Bla, bla bla - a regular talk between my friends and I who do not believe in shopping second hand for designers' clothes, jewelry with 'historic dust' and things that didn't come right out of the factory...a.k.a. items that smell 'brand news'] - I really, really like those second hands, for many reasons...

  It's rather flattering - [I must admit to my own vanity] - when someone from the high fashion world starts to follow your tweets . Especially someone, whose work you really, really like! Long before Prabal Gurung started to follow me on Twitter, I was already a big fan of his work...

“If sex were shoes, I'd wear you out. But I wouldn't wear you out in public.” (Jarod Kintz)

It's Thursday - I know that much, but I wanted to share with you My Wednesday . Many friends - [and some of my very curious family members] - always ask me, what my regular day is like during the week, and, because I'm usually running to something and/or from something and moving from one thing onto another thing, I keep responding that - ONE day, SOME day, I will tell you how an-hour-by-an-hour I spend my weekday... My Wednesday, December 14, 2011

It's been quite an interesting day last Saturday - the overindulgence in two very different events that took place that day and draw my attention to. One was a complete the opposite from the other one: a very silly entertaining one vs. a very serious important one. I must, though, admit, I enjoyed both! Last Saturday, I became a witness of my very first Naked Santa Day in NYC, which - as it seems - I happened to miss through all 5 years of my life in NYC. Perhaps I was preoccupied with the New Year's celebration - my favorite holiday of all times - more than with Christmas? Maybe, maybe... But as far as I remember myself, I never participated in such massively silly dress-alike events in my life. [Halloween doesn't count...] And on the same day, at the same time - last Saturday - I've also been a witness of the Russian protest against Putin and parliamentary election fraud at the Russian consulate. That happened to be just one block from the Central Park , wh...

More than 200 Russian residents of NYC and the boroughs/suburbs showed up in New York to protest this last Saturday (December 10, 2011) in front of the Russian Consulate on Madison Ave. and 91st Street, demanding an end to Vladimir Putin's rule and a rerun of a parliamentary election. I happened to be among them... I know, I know. It's too much to handle for a blog that seems to address fashion, culture and lifestyle 'issues', but hey, I've been there - [and not that you've never ever in your life participated in any kind of a protest before, have you?]. I came out on a very cold Saturday morning - [yes, I need some TLC-pity from you on this one] - and, even at the possibility of missing a play at the BAM that I've been so looking forward to - Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape ] - so, of course, I'd like to mention this fact of my last weekend's life. And not only to mention -  I'd like to share with you the photos I took d...

  I enjoy the fact how Russia has been progressive in many areas of the life since USSR has ceased to exist - [except for the politics and economy, obviously] - and how it has been progressively integrating the 'WEST' into the 'EAST' fast, adding its own cultural charms and peculiarities.

Central Park's runners' shadows... I'm sorry, here I go again.... Not a week - [if not a day] - goes by when I don't talk about my adoration for NY Central Park, especially the Central Park Reservoir , but that's because it is not only beautiful, it is also rare, and it is a rather 'odd' forest-y gem in the middle of one of the heaviest urban cities in the world - [excluding Hong Kong and Mumbai, of course] - where one would expect to see no green lands and ponds with various kinds of ducks in it... Moreover, Central Park is, perhaps, the only place - [not counting some small parks and water promenades in the NYC boroughs, like that long beautiful scenic promenade in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn] - where ALL of the New Yorkers can work out at  - any time of the day - and do all kinds of sports, from tennis to rugby... However, one of the things that defines Central Park is... the marathons!

I'm absolutely in love with my Sweater cuff boots . Little did I know that I'd be, actually - [and literally] - living out of them.  When I first saw them, I fell in love with their look first. Then, I tried them on - and fell deeper in love. And when I took them for a walk, I realized, that we were meant to be together, and...forever, or until...they wouldn't be able to be fixable. I'd give it a 10-year run, and then they'd become 'vintage' worthy....

Exercising partners, Central Park/NYC It's been already three days that I haven't been running in the park. It feels like a month though. Here's a thing, once you start running on a daily/regular basis, you feel addicted to the feeling afterwards - this eternal euphoria that runs through your body after a work out that releases all the stress and tiredness from your body. So, when it's not present in your life, you feel lame. At least, that's how I feel...

A casually chick couple - weekends is a great time for a couple to share a fab desert in a fab location. Soho/NYC Especially very good time to spot New Yorkers casually, but stylishly dressed is - on weekends. Even on weekends, New Yorkers don't let the the weekend vibe get them out of the stylish mood. 

Deep down I knew there was something quelque chose de nouveau about Carine Roitfeld - one of the most controversial - [and sexual] - women in the fashion industry, the Editor-in-Chief of French Vogue.