New Post Soon!

2009 November 11
by choubelle

verry soon. ex oh.

Poll-tastic: What decade most matches your fashion sense??

2009 October 28

Luxe vegan handbags on Etsy?…You bet your socks yes!!

2009 October 18

British based designer Sacha Knight of Hyde S.K really knows her stuff when it comes to making beautiful bags.

Knight’s colorful handbags immediately caught my eye one day whilst wandering around Etsy,  and when I saw how cool the tassels and detail each Hyde S.K bag had I was sold! From moc-croc scales to the adorable wooden charms, this designer’s native inspired collection is a winner through and through.

The phenom deets of Sacha Knight's designs make me want neeeed to put tassels on everything I own. Right now.

Did I mention that all of her designs are environmentally sound? She uses lorica instead of leather, because after working with leather for several seasons, she decided it really conflicted with her vegetarian  lifestyle. saweet!

For more about Knight’s handbags, check out this article from Refinery 29, and Knight’s website and of course, the 

Hyde S.K Etsy shop.

Now if only I could haul my notes around to class in this bag!

Ode to the red balloon…

2009 October 14
by choubelle

The Red Balloon

In case you are not acquainted with The Red Balloon, it is a silent french film about a little boy named Pascal who chases his red balloon all throughout paris. I think the words “balloon! balloon!” are about all that the little boy said in the whole movie….

Time to bundle up! Autumn is here.

2009 October 12
by choubelle

The other day my Mom and I tromped out through our field to pick fruit from the trees, and much to our surprise, there was lots and lots of fruit!

Pears and plums, but no apples.  I think the deer got to them before we had a

chance.

Its rather amusing that we call them “organic” because the term sounds so fancy-schmancy, but its true…we didn’t do anything to the fruit all year…it just grew all by its lonesome with a bit of help from summer sunshine!

I got adventurous and climbed up into the pear tree to shake down and pull down the giant branches of fruit. We had hundreds of pears. I don’t know what to do with them all! I think I’m going my hand at making puff pastry so I can make pear danishes sometime this week.  So far I’ve had a productive semester off before I head off to college this January, which will be quite exciting.

Isn’t my mommy adorable? She has really long red

hair underneath her hat, and she is super kind. I’m very,very lucky to have a mommy like her!

The weather is getting nippier and cold even from when we took these pictures! I went in to the city for two days to visit my grandparents, and when I came back, the leaves were all off the trees. So much for scenic foliage!!

I’m pretty sure this is my favorite fall outfit. All corduroy. My favorite RL brown cords, a Massimo for target jacket and my favorite red cap made by somebody I can’t remember! Corduroy is so warm and comfortable, I highly recommend it. :)

As always, have a lovely day, and stay warm if you reside in cooler parts like me!

xoxo

Choubelle

Don’t you think we should have more fashion illustration??

2009 September 29

…Photography is great, photography is wonderful. Photography probably moves product off of store shelves more easily than illustration, but golly, isn’t illustration lovely? I wish that mags and ads would feature more of it. The colors make me smile…especially if illustration is in watercolor!

Some of my favorite internet places to view fashion illustration??

Where to start….

The Flickr Fashion illustration pool is a great place to go to find fresh images and ideas from lesser known/seen artists.

Then there is Illustrophile, a blog which features delightful illustration and commercial art.

And last but not least Illustrationweb represents/features the portfolios of oodles of pro illustrators and graphic designers.

Every time I visit these sites, it feel like I’ve stumbled on Christmas in July (or in this case, September). There is always something good and something sweet to see!

Image courtesy of illustrophile.com, Artist: Rebecca Wetzler

bisous!

Choubelle

P.S.

-I will post some of my own fashion illustrations quite soon! I do so so many, and never seem to post them…this will change!

-I’ll also do my yo-man duty and cover more Fashion Week excitement. I love the video feature on my new iPod nano, and tune in to style.com podcasts and Mod TV for spiffy deets on S/S  ’10. Lots of colors, lots of cool backstage stuff. Highly recommend it!!

Ralph Lauren channels farmer chic for Spring 2010

2009 September 18
by choubelle

I am inspired by the character of the worker, the farmer, the cowboy, the pioneer women of the prairies -Ralph Lauren

Very cool, eh? And comfy! I’m crazy about the denim and leather, and I love the hard times thirties statement. Ralph was smart not to just mimic or have a new take on the eighties shoulder pads etc. like a lot of the other designers out there.

xoxo

Choubelle

Eastern influence: Marchesa

2009 September 13

Last night, I was flipping through my fashion magazines, cutting out a select few images that I wanted to save before I tossed a sad amount of paper magazine tree carcasses into a brown paper bag and bid them recycling adieu, when I discovered soft and delicate dresses from design house Marchesa.

Below are several looks that I just had to keep in the back of my mind. I hope you like them as much as I do! I love the delicacy of the designs. The Asian influence and mandarin necklines are opulent, but not overpowering to the delicate fabrics and romantic pattens of the fabric.

My only wish is that these dresses could somehow incorporate color! I think the designs could look so much more fresh and young with a shot of red or–better yet–more  cherry blossom pink!

Below: Beautiful designs for various 2009 Marchesa collections


I love the delicacy of the designs. The Asian influence and mandarin necklines are opulent, but not overpowering to the delicate fabrics and romantic pattens of the fabric.

Thank you for a lifetime of service

2009 August 27

He was for the poor. He was for those who did not have health care. He was for the reduction and elimination of racial barriers. And so Ted Kennedy was somebody who reached out for all of those, who were not yet benefiting from the American dream. And he strongly believed that America had the potential to give all of its citizens an opportunity to lead a good quality, healthy life. -Colin Powell

The Kennedy’s are a powerful symbol to this country (particularly if you’re from an Irish family like yours truly), and the day before yesterday was quite sad for us Americans,as Senator Ted Kennedy’s life came to an end after his long battle with brain cancer.

In the past, I did a blog post about the Kennedy family as an homage to their traditional, nautical and classic approach to clothing style, and the powerful impact that the Kennedy family has had on the way we dress.

…But Kennedy style is only a veneer, the icing on the cake, so to speak. The helping hands that the Kennedy family has extended far and wide to all of us have been a vital building block in this country.

I want to share my own family’s story about how Senator Kennedy touched our lives. When you take a step back and realize that one person can have such a profound postive impact on so many people, it truly is remarkable.

here goes.

Yesterday, my Mom called in to NPR to tell her story of how in the late 1960’s Senator Kennedy made it possible for her to come home from the hospital by donating her family a hospital bed that would help hold a k-wire in her leg in place so she could recover from her operations at home with her family. Thanks to Senator Kennedy, my grandmother and grandfather were able to stay at home with their other children and also take care of my mom when otherwise she might of spent months in the hospital while my mom’s family struggled with the stress of having to travel into the city frequently to visit her.

So there you have it, Senator Kennedy helped my mom’s parents, my mom, and now forty some odd years later this story has moved me. His one life had such a big impact! I hope that you too can find someone to look up to like Senator Kennedy. He was a man filled with such drive an purpose. He realized that whether something was a large issue or a small, it could impact someone, and change their lives for the better.

“In the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger — both his adversaries as well as his allies.”-Vice President, Joe Biden

Quotes paraphrased from CNN.com

Image courtesy of boston.com

I’m Simply Mod About It, Darling.

2009 August 14
by choubelle

Hello lovely readers!

I don’t usually like ads, I find them obnoxious like the rest of us, but when this spunky little dress caught my eye on Facebook, I had to post it for the sake of remembering it, because next time I make myself a nice little summer dress with a simple silhouette and a bit of fun flare at the bottom, I want it to look something like this. It is from ModCloth.com and has the most tragically atrocious name for a dress that I have heard to date, “Gettin’ Twiggy Wit It”. Oy vey.

But nontheless, isn’t it fantastic? YSL Mondrian + Lilly Pulitzer = AMAZING. You get the picture.