CURIOUSER NEW YORK

It's been three weeks since I came back from my trip to Germany and Sweden , and I'm snot even close to putting all the photos I took on the trip that I promised to show to my family and friends. I've never realized back when I was a teenager that with each decade new innovations would come - like photo cameras, gadgets, iPhones/iPads and such, that would result in us taking so much more photos that it would become a challenge to organize it all.  Back in the days, we'd take a few photos, then turn in the photo film at a drugstore and in a few days we'd pick up the print-outs - viola! Easy, fast, painless…But nowadays - it's a completely different picture. Now that we digitize everything, and with all the photo Apps we have - we store all our pictures on our gadgets for months and years to the point, where we loose any interest to dig that far back for the photos to put them up in the albums. That happens to me a lot -  unless I take care of my photos ...

  I like this quote about the denim-on-denim look:  Denim on denim is dandy; but denim on denim on denim may very well be too much of a good thing.  Yes, I know what you imagine when someone tells you: denim-on-denim... You imagine the 80s - the all jean look blended-in. You imagine the 'crime' makers and the Life & Style's 'worst dressed lists'. You imagine the stonewashed jeans on jeans look, just as you imagine the pleaded shirts with the loafers, although, as separate garments, and if well combined with the right accessories and footwear - it could be quite dandy. 

Pinch me - is it really the end of September already? Where did the summer go? And I thought I just started to enjoy my linen dresses and wedges...ahhh Paying tribute to the last days of summer - [ which, I learned not long ago from living in USA, include three weeks of September ] - I reminisced back to the summer trip to Stockholm last August and put together a post on a minimalist look - a rather laid-back look of the Stockholm's city dwellers .

When I was little, I remember looking through my mom's closet and thinking how I would like to grow up and become like my mom - with the same great sense for fashion and style.  My mom always had a great style. In the times when nothing much was available in USSR (now Russia), she managed to find fabrics and other materials and put it all together - [ with the help of my awesome grandmother ] - so that it looks so chic that hardly anyone could have guessed how it could have been made with an old sewing machine and with a few pieces of tools. I remember going through her old stack of the only foreign fashion magazine available at that time in Russia - Germany's Burda Moden . I could only imagine if she could have gotten her hands on the likes of Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar!

The last place I'd go for fashion to would have been the South Street Seaport Museum , but as I've learned last week:  1) never underestimate the fashion scene in New York City 2) fashion can be found in the most unexpected places  3) there's still a lot I don't know about New York City - and keeps surprising me...  Last week I was doing some research when I came across an interesting blurb about a Fashion Night Out event at the South Street Seaport Museum and I thought that they might be joking as this is the last museum I could assume would be doing a fashion event. But they did, and they had a reason for that.  The museum's exhibit "Made In New York" featured the local aspiring designers - the graduates of Parsons School of Design . Of course, one should take into consideration that the South Street Seaport Museum is not MET, so the exhibition is not of the same grandeur. It's on a smaller scale, but nevertheless, a very interesti...

You can take the shoes away from a girl, but you can't take a girl away from the shoes… It's that time of the year, when you force yourself to go through your shoe-racks with a goal to pick and choose, which shoes would stay for another month as the semi-warm weather still permits and those that absolutely must to go. The ones that have to go would be the likes of espadrilles and wedges that you're used to hang onto so dearly during your getaways to the sandy beaches this last Summer that the memory of those long-gone beach days makes it harder to pack those shoes away. September and October, thus, become the months when your outfits look very much 'in-transition' - you are still kinda wearing summery clothes, but at the same time - you are warming yourself up with some boots, socks and footless leggins. At least that's what's been happening with me for the last two weeks, and I kinda liked the way it looked, so I started wearing knee-high socks...

I'm not yet done with Stockholm.   Last month when I visited Stockholm, I spent all three days walking around the city, taking a boat cruise only once to reach the far islands of the city and to see the city from afar to enjoy the Old Town at the fullest. One of those days I spent walking around the Stockholm's Sodermalm district, think of it as something close to New York City's SoHo + West Village. Before I went there, I've read in the guide that this district has flourished over the years with the design shops, fashion boutiques, art galleries, furniture stores, cafes, restaurants and what-not… I made it a mission to spend enough time exploring that area so that I could get the full vibe of the district, and I did. 

I'm not yet done with Stockholm , or with Europe for that matter. Just because I've stayed in Stockholm for only three days, doesn't mean I didn't have enough time to shoot around the area and picture the local lifestyle. I have quite a few photos to share, and for those you know me relatively intimately, know that I have a very special feeling towards biking . I'm a biker myself - not one of those who do marathons or anything, but one of those who uses biking as a lifestyle - biking to work (I did it in LA, SF, and DC) and biking around the city on weekends ( doing it now in NYC )…[ Can't you guess by the name of my blog? ]

  Yesterday I went to see Alexey Sorokin Spring 2013 fashion show that took place at the historic Pier 57. I talked about this Russian sensation, discovered by the NY-based fashion magazine Depesha , in my previous blog , and as I've anticipated, the show was incredible, but…too short. Meaning, according to my friends and the people sitting next to me on the first row - [yes, I had the best seats on the house!] - we all wished the show was a bit longer as it was visually very, very beautiful. Here's what I mean…

When I was in Stockholm, I've noticed a certain trend or, rather - a style - in the way Swedish men were dressing.  While in other cities, like Paris, London and New York, you can see men wearing flamboyant and/or patterned/bright clothes, in Stockholm that was not the case at all. 

I got an invitation to attend the Spring 2013 fashion show by a designer from Russia, Alexey Sorokin. Well, since I have a soft spot for Russia, I was very happy about this invitation, especially after I've checked him out online and saw his incredibly creative works - [I've heard from him before, but not on a bigger scale, so I had no idea what to expect from him]. His show is tomorrow, September 12th, and I'd love to introduce this Russian sensation - [who, I pretty much sure, will take the NY fashion scene by storm tomorrow night and whose name you might be hearing very, very soon], but for now...here's his story:

It's very hard to concentrate on any other activities in the city, when the Fashion Week takes place in NYC.

Last Sunday I attended a fashion show of my friend, a very talented designer, Leonid Gurevich . I was looking forward to seeing his Spring 2013 exquisite collection as he is one creative person.

I'm ready for the Fashion Night Out!

I couldn't get enough of Stockholm many bikes and super stylish Swedish design offices, galleries and shops - done in a very 'IKEA'/Nordic style. I embarked on the trip to Sweden for many reasons - to see it and to shop in it...

  The SoFo, or Sodermalm district of Stockholm is like SoHo district of NYC: very young, very hip, very...diverse. The many cute, artistic cafes make it very easy to do some people shopping and street fashion photography shooting. This is exactly what I did at the String coffee shop...and check out Pelikan restaurant. Some more of Soderlmalm's hipsters... One of my favorite shops in Sodermalm is Tjallamalla .

I swear, I haven't planned it this way, but it happened, and it happened perfectly. I happened to be in the right place at the right time. On the day of my arrival to Stockholm, I've learned that it was the first day of the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in Stockholm . And on August 29th, in the center of the city - or in one of the 14th districts, named Kungsholmen - the central part of Stockholm with the largest shopping district - the fashionable action was happening. Right there, on one of the central plazas of the city, there were tents set up for the fashion shows, next to the ones for the after-show parties... While I didn't go to the runaway show - [the main purpose of my trip, after all, was to see the city, duhh...] - I did go to an after-party, which was by the invitation only...

Not that the American and/or Italian punk and rock fashion looks any different...

I found the street fashion of Toronto very laid-back and very simple. There isn't much of the 'global fashion influence' that can be seen in a personal style of a Toronto resident, however, once in a while - [when you spent as much walking and visiting various cafes and shops in the city] - you can meet a local, whose style is a bit more diverse than the ones of the others...