low click of a ticking clock

Dream master* and fashion photographer extraordinaire Tim Walker delivers what is undeniably my favorite magazine cover shoot of the month in the December 2014 issue of Vogue China. The mostly monochromatic schemes are highlighted with splashes of bright color, each shot enhanced by dramatic shadows and practiced angles reminiscent of the millennia-long tradition of Chinese calligraphy that inspired this spread.

Up until I started high school and joined the debate team, I used to spend my Saturday afternoons at ink-and-wash painting lessons at a studio inside the Seattle-Chinese newspaper office building in the city, trying to emulate the wet-to-dry brush techniques used in both traditional calligraphy and painting. Chinese art, much like Roman art in the West, is obsessed with order and discipline. The practice of calligraphy itself is first and foremost a practice in perfection; the primary objective for most students of it is to write each stroke with measured precision that can be repeated with each character for every work transcribed.

I'm not sure if it's because of or in spite of my traditional art background, but the thing that really drew me to high fashion editorials was how they could embrace such raw emotion and turn dresses into an art form beyond practicality. Fashion is art unlike the compositions I studied in my childhood of art lessons in everything from sketching to cartooning to watercolor; my favorite photoshoots emphasized expression in the way they were able to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Fashion is Modern with a capital M, and the initial spark of interest by the provocativeness and absurdity high fashion had to offer grew into a lifelong passion for fashion.

Sometime between 2007 when I started reading Vanessa Friedman's Sunday fashion column in the Financial Times like it was my religion and today, the lines between fashion and art appreciation have blurred and seeped in to one another and became inseparable parts of my life. Coco Chanel, my first fashion heroine, said: "fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening," and it's something I really took to heart.

Before I started this blog, I was writing a different (older, embarrassing, and thankfully now private) personal blog throughout my first three years of high school also by the name "seattleite fashionista" even though I only posted about fashion 20% of the time. It was never so much about personal style anyhow: fashion, to me, is about the way I live my life and how I come to perceive it. Fashion on this blog is how I document and express my aesthetic interests of the moment: what am I feeling? What do I want to see? What ideas or themes am I attracted to?

Although I didn't make a post about it last year, 2013 was all about invented nostalgia and escape plans. I dreamt of road trips and amusement parks and rainy days at cafes, imagining a life a little too good to be mine, telling myself I'll get there eventually. I was scared to stop dreaming and start living, and after giving myself the first semester of college "off" to figure out who I was, I gave myself permission to let go a bit and experience life instead of simply meticulously daydreaming. I said yes to everything I possibly could and my life this year was so much more colorful and memorable for it.

2014 was a year of flashes of color much like the chaotic and beautiful Vogue China shoot: not only was it the pop-art supermarket pinks at Chanel RTW and the red neon signs reflecting on glass windows at bars on the 33rd floor of the Shard in London, it was also the bright grey of that rainy Saturday in March when I jokingly told a friend to bring me food and he actually showed up at my window with a tray full of cinnamon rolls and container of Häagen Dazs ice cream, the dazzling blue of the London Eye at midnight on my last stroll through the most magical city after a long Friday in August, and the warm cream of the light I stared at at my best friend's apartment when I was lying on her roommate's bed asking her "do you think he likes me? Because I like him a lot" on a Thursday in November.

I want to know, does it bother you? 

Low click of a ticking clock 

There's a lifetime right in front of you 

And everyone I know 

Don't Lie | Vampire Weekend

xoxo, vivian

Images from this post taken from: "笔墨幻境" (trans. "Ink Fantasy") by Tim Walker for Vogue China December 2014

* 造梦大师 translates to dream/illusion master, as Walker is referred to on the cover of this issue

the fictions we create

I'm not really sure why I've been subscribed to Net-a-Porter emails since high school if I obviously can't afford to add studded leather Valentino shoulder bags or even Totême wool-blend felt coats to my online shopping cart, but I think it has something to do with the carefully selected items in the editor's pick section and the modest yet lovely editorials constantly featured on the website that keep me coming back from time to time. I'll admit while I usually spend about three seconds (if I'm being generous) to look over the daily promotional emails I get from the websites I normally shop at, I was more than a little intrigued when Net-a-Porter sent me an email about November's cover story with "A Modern Heroine: Keira Knightley on fighting for feminism in film" as the leading headline.

"I left [fairy tales] behind. Why should you be told to wait for some f*cking dude to rescue you?" the almost 30-year-old actress challenges, and it's a question that resonated with me for the rest of the day, and one that I feel like I've been thinking about a lot in the last month or so especially. Now that I'm older, I find myself being even more critical of the damsel in distress dilemma. What was a happy ending after all? One where the princess gets saved from an evil fate by the dashing prince in exchange for a hand in marriage?

Even as a kid I remember that was something that always upset me: the clever, hardworking, graceful princess you spent the entire story getting to know always required a prince to come in at the very end to truly escape. She was always adept but not capable enough to truly save herself, and her virtuousness is only important because it was what makes her worthy of the prince's love and affection; by the end of the story, she is reduced to be nothing more than the ultimate prize for the prince, the true hero who is redeemed simply by showing up at the right place at the right time: at the end of the day, it's his story all along. Veni, vidi, vici; after happily ever after, he gets to rule two kingdoms—his, and hers—and she to give him beautiful sons as heirs. 

—

There's something so achingly sad in Daisy Buchanan's reply when she's told she gave birth to a baby girl: "I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool." Because Daisy isn't a fool at all, despite what the men in her life want to believe; she knows that there's no space in this world for girls who don't need boys to save them, and the only thing girls can do is play the game by the rules.

“It’s a political thing, having a baby girl, in a way that it isn’t for a boy. You think, ‘Oh, isn’t this fairy-tale lovely?’ Then suddenly you worry, ‘What [expectation] am I planting with that? I don’t want her to be waiting around for a man to fix her problems.’” 

 Keira Knightley, The EDIT interview

That girls grow up learning they need to be pretty and smart and kind in order to be desirable to men rather than heroines of their own narrative is something we're so used to acknowledging that most of us won't even immediately register the inherent inequality in expectations. 

—

“I am not dangerous. Only the stories are dangerous. Only the fictions we create, especially when they become expectations.” 

David Levithan, Dash and Lily's Book of Dares

I still remember being fifteen and looking for a hero in everybody but myself: are you going to be the one who saves me? I asked, not because I needed saving but because I wanted it. 

What happens to the princess whose prince doesn't rescue her in the end? I was sixteen when I spent a year and a half answering that question writing the only piece of fiction I've ever published, about a schizophrenic violin prodigy and her search for salvation. I'll come back to write a much more in-depth post on "Facing the Music" some time in the coming months; even though it's been over three years since I finished the complete first draft, this story has felt like a work in progress of my own growth too. 

Four years later and in spite of everything, I still haven't completely let go. Here I am, critiquing what's wrong with the idea of waiting for prince charming to come, and yet I still like being told by others that they'll be there to save me from myself; I still want to believe that I don't have to fight by myself all the time. The other night when I was up at 3:30am doing Greek drills, I had both The Weeknd's "Rescue You" (Let me rescue you / I can see the truth / I can see right through the pain) and Lana Del Rey's "Off to the Races" (Because I'm crazy, baby / I need you to come here and save me) playing on repeat. 

I wish 15-year-old me had someone to tell me that I should leave those fairy tales behind; I wish 19-year-old me had someone to tell me that I'm not a bad feminist for liking the idea of them anyways.

xoxo, vivian

Images from this post were taken from: "The Heroine" by David Bellemere for The EDIT November 2014

I found my love in portofino

Even though I've been home for two weeks now, it didn't start feeling like summer until the warm weather and sunshine slowly seeped back into my life again. I'll admit I was looking forward to coming back to rain (if only so I had an excuse to watch TV all day) (which I did), but it would be poor taste to not appreciate how nice the Pacific Northwest gets around this time of year. I think this is a sign that I'm getting old: I always have to pause and remind myself that I need to enjoy this while it lasts, especially because I really just don't know how much time I'll spend at home in Seattle in the years to come. 

For example: who would have predicted that I'd be studying abroad in London this summer a year ago?! Even though I've been making these plans for months now, I still can't believe I'm jetting off to England in a month's time. It's been almost three years since I traveled overseas and four since I traveled to Europe; my wanderlust has only grown and it feels surreal that I'm about to start traveling again. 

When I was younger I used to read a lot of books about super rich kids (think Gossip Girl and other such stories that follow the Cecily von Ziegesar oeuvre) who spent their summers in the Hamptons and the Côte d'Azur with shiny yachts and Cavalli couture. That kind of life was always just so fascinating to me with its extravagance and indulgence—their vacations were nearly unimaginable for a suburban girl like me. I guess it's good I've only ever lived vicariously through the rose-tinted lenses of books and TV shows though: at the end of the day, I think I'd prefer sitting and reading in a cafe by the French Riviera and observe than actually participate in that kind of excessiveness (although I definitely wouldn't mind a closet full of cruise collections).

Anyways, the Dior Cruise 2012 ad campaign is probably one of my all-time favorite Dior Ready-to-Wear collections to date. It captures so many elements I love about Dior, from the way the color palette perfectly complements the colors of Portofino itself to the way its designs embody the femininity and romance Dior is known for. 

I highly recommend watching the short film shot by Ellen von Unwerth for this collection (embedded below). Jac Jagaciak in this film reminded me a bit of a more polished and elegant Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman (1956), although if we're going to talk Dior channeling Bardot, Tim Walker's Dior Addict 2012 campaign with Daphne Groeneveld embodies more of that brand of carefree liberation. 

Christian Dior Cruise 2012—I Found My Love in Portofino

I'm not even going to deny or make excuses for the fact that my blogging has gone from sporadic to seemingly non-existent in the last year, so I've made myself a resolution for at least my month left back home before I'm off across the pond: I will be posting here twice a week, with fashion posts on Fridays and film/literature/TV/life/etc. posts on Tuesdays. It'll make me feel like I'm accomplishing something in my month off from school, yeah? ;) I hope you all are having a lovely post-Memorial Day start to summer! 

xoxo, vivian

Images from this post were taken from "I Found My Love in Portofino" by Ellen von Unwerth for Christian Dior Cruise 2012.

that kind of luxe just ain't for us

I never knew grocery shopping in couture was what was missing from my life until the Chanel Fall 2014 RTW show debuted at the Grand Palais in Paris last week, and lemme tell you, this collection was instant theia mania for me. After weeks of dreamy dresses in a succession of fashion weeks littered with Hollywood awards ceremonies in between (particularly loved the ethereal Valentino Spring 2014 Haute Couture collection, schoolgirl-cool Miu Miu Fall 2014 RTW collection, and this year's Academy Award red carpet turnout), this season's Chanel show was the refreshing break I needed from the prettiness I've come to expect. 

While I love my Elie Saab gowns and Oscar de la Renta confections as much as the next fashion aficionado, the bold patterns and Pop Art consumer-culture roots of Karl's latest spectacle makes this my favorite show of the season by far because it reminded me of why I fell in love with fashion in the first place. The bright, gaudy colors transformed the mass-market consumer culture into something bold and a little fantastical: if only my grocery shopping trips were filled with Chanel tweeds and the only stylish high-rise sneakers I've ever come across.

It's this excessive attention to detail, from the sweatpants ripped just-so and jackets with neo-corset midriff insets to the 500+ repackaged and relabeled supermarket goods, that turned the mundanity of rolling a shopping cart down florescent-lit aisles into a glamorous affair. I think the most important question that needs to be asked at this point is this: why haven't I gone to Safeway dressed to the nines for no good reason at all yet?!

Ha. I actually have to go grocery shopping for like the first time this semester next week; I have a week and a half left of school before spring break, and the most glamorous plan I have as of yet is to go to the supermarket because the dining halls will be closed and I can't afford to eat out every day. (I know, my life sounds really exciting, doesn't it?) There are worse things than "being stuck" in California for a week without lectures to attend—I'm sure my friends and I will make some spontaneous plans for an adventure soon. 

xoxo, vivian

Images from this post were taken from: Chanel Fall/Winter 2014 by The Satorialist; Sisley Fall 2010 ad campaign; "Impressions Fortes" by Naomi Yang for Glamour France February 2014; Noel for Chi City Fashion

take off to a different place

Every once in a while I look at the calendar in disbelief: it's mid-August already? I feel as though summer vacation has barely started, and yet I'm leaving for California in less than two weeks and starting my first semester of college in three. I've finally just got settled into my new house after moving out of the house I grew up in, only to be forced to move into another home two states and eight hundred miles south of the land of evergreen trees and familiarity. And even if I wasn't the one leaving, my best friend of thirteen years just left for college herself this morning and is among the first of many people I've known for years who are about to leave for different corners of the country.

I made a list of things that I wanted to do earlier this summer, but now that my vacation is almost over, I realized that I've barely completed my (seemingly modest and easy!) goals, ranging from getting my driver's license (I've started learning at least and can drive on the road now, does that count?) to making elaborate breakfasts (this ended in me making lunch at 9:30AM a few times because it turns out we don't have breakfast foods in our fridge so I think I should get points for effort here). I really hope this isn't reflective of my ability to meet goals for college, because then I would be in trouble...

When I was looking through the Anthropologie August 2013 catalogue a few days ago, I couldn't help but to feel jealous of how great these outfits would be for traveling and sight-seeing. This was the first summer in six years where I wasn't able to go on vacation because of the new house, so I've been spending most of my days lounging about on various sofas at home, attempting to read or marathoning Downton Abbey while simultaneously wishing I was elsewhere, or more specifically, taking pictures of Big Ben in London or on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris like we had planned before we decided to move.

Oh well, c'est la vie. At least I have more books to read than days I have left in Seattle to keep me company, and who knows where I'll be in a year from now, because you never really know, do you?

xoxo, vivian

images from this post are taken from the Anthropologie August 2013 catalogue