VERA WANG

Vera Wang, with her combination of wide knowledge and experience; along with her passion for fashion, is the hottest yet elegant designer in the wedding world. Not only has she made the wedding gown industry her empire, but she’s also now all over the place with her classy and fresh clothing line, perfume, book and eyewear.

Wang was created for fashion; she was born into glamour and clothes. Since very young Wang would go shopping with her mother for high couture clothing; which didn’t take time to leave a mark in Wang. “It is horrible to say, but I was stigmatized by being a bridal designer for a long time,” says Wang, “I am amazed I have been able to move beyond it. I had really all but given up trying, but I did it because it was my lifelong dream.”

Believe it or not Wang’s first love weren’t wedding gowns, it was figure skating. At age seven her parents gave her a pair of ice skates for Christmas, she soon started practicing and later on competing professionally and with passion. “When I was young I thought nothing of waking up at four in the morning and rushing to the rink just to have 10 minutes longer on the ice than my competitors. I had to sacrifice things, like a social life, to be a skater at 15. But I loved skating so much that it was worth everything to me.” Let’s thank the Lord for ice skating; because without this passion of Wang’s she wouldn’t be the great classy designer she is; at age 8 Wang would already be sketching dresses to skate, not only was she involved in the technique, the choreography and the music, but she was pretty interested in what was it that she would be wearing. Clearly ice skating left something in Wang, since she says that she designs gowns in which the brides can dance comfortably in.

“Go work for somebody and get paid to learn. It’s tempting to think you can go off and do your own thing, but there is so much to learn in ways you’d never know”, advises Wang. Of course Wang didn’t start out from nowhere; after all during working experience she was exposed to more clothes than most people are all their lifetime. “When I quit skating I asked myself, ‘What is the thing that I can do that so totally fulfills me the way skating did?’” said Wang, “and the only other thing was fashion. I didn't have anything else that I loved as much as clothes”.

After her hard choice Wang moved on and landed nothing less than a job at Vogue, her first year Wang, in her own words, “did nothing but Xerox”, but soon enough she became the youngest editor in Vogue at age 23. “To be a fashion editor at Vogue, which is about the highest you can attain in fashion magazine-land, there's nothing you haven't been exposed to, no conditions under which you haven't worked, and you had to produce. You might be doing swimwear in January, or furs in July, with the makeup running and the hair limp and damp because the girl is sweating, but you have two days to do six of the biggest fur advertisers, and if you don't come home with extraordinary pictures, you're in deep trouble. And if your pictures aren't good over a period of time, you're in jeopardy for your job.” After 16 years in Vogue Wang landed in a calmer place where she was able to work at a slower pace, the place which was the land of Ralph Lauren where she was the accessories design director. Then Wang met her now husband, Arthur Becker, and after some time started talking wedding; that’s when the whole thing started out.

“When I decided to get married at 40 I couldn't find a dress worth the modernity or sophistication I wanted. That's when I saw the opportunity for a wedding gown business.” As you probably guessed Wang designed her own dress and the rest is history.

Wang has a gift, she’ll take whatever and give it her own twist; she can take a simple wedding gown and turn it classy by going outside the box and giving it her personal touch which consists on making the woman feel sexy yet comfortable. But where does her secret rely? “I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist. I go to the past for research. I need to know what came before so I can break the rules” says Wang.

There’s no doubt that Wang’s different than all other designers out there; I mean she’s got her Chinese self mixed with her American ways and she has respect for women; “I am a feminist” says Wang, “when I stop and think about it, there's no other way I can label myself. I am for women. I think some of the greatest designers have been men, but I think there are some for whom women are abstract. It's a design concept. Or it's some kind of fantasy or joke on women. Either way, it's not based on a real understanding of women and women's needs. I respect other women, and my clothes show it. I'm not making fun of them or trying to degrade them or make them feel silly. I'm trying, if anything, to make them be at their very best.”

Without a doubt Wang portrays a great role model as a woman; she’s a mother, a feminist, successful at her job and a wife and it’s great to have a designer out in the world that actually cares about all of us women.

going back to the 60's with tie dye

Walking around the streets of San Francisco and its shops I found a certain hippie vibe to some people and places, which brings my mind to tie dye; whenever I hear the word tie dye or think about it; it brings my mind to thoughts of the 60’s meaning drugs such as weed and LSD, love, peace and brown headbands with flowers around them. During this times fashion is all about taking trends from other decades and molding them into our modern times, we are starting to look mostly like we are re-living and dressing like in the 80’s but with a twist to it, which consists in adding even more stuff from other times, like denim jackets from the 90’s that are being worn all over the place now, high waisted bottoms, several kinds of headbands and vintage clothing, a look that a huge mass is going for nowadays.Tie dye against popular belief wasn’t created during the ‘60’s by long haired hippies, it has a history through out the years; it was used in countries such as China, Japan, India and Egypt thousands of years ago and since they had no artificial colorants they would use different colored berries and plants to color them. To some people’s surprise it was in fashion during the Depression, back then girls would tie dye cotton flour sacks, then cut them out and sow them into not only their clothing , but also curtains and pillows, the bright colors and fun patterns made those dark and stressing times seem a little bit happier.

It wasn’t until the ’60’s that tie dye came back in style, when great movements going for freedom and peace against the Vietnam War; promoted by the young people of that decade were on the happening, the idea of monotony and authority was dreadful for this hippie, free spirited generation; and tie dye was a form of artistic expression which was all about being yourself by tie dying a t-shirt, a sweatshirt and even a curtain; with your personal combination; later on not only was it a symbol of self expression and individuality; but a trend all over the United States.

Back in the day tie dye was self made so the colors would fade away after a few washes and you’d have to do another one, or stay with the colorless one; nowadays tie dye doesn’t have to be home made, you can buy already tie dyed skirts, t-shirts, pants, sweatshirts, dresses and other pieces of clothing, there are huge varieties of colors and patterns for any taste, if a person isn’t into the rainbow like colors that the typical tie dye shirt or dress has, other combinations of colors can be found in the stores, like brownish and grayish tones, also if someone likes a color a lot they can go with the all blue, all pink or the color of choice tie dye, there are also many different unique designs for different tastes.

Now tie dye is mostly seen as the shirt that you wear with your pijamas, or the sweatshirt that you’d wear to the gym, but it might as well become a trend, because as we all know fashion has gone on a time machine and it’s taking the best that it can find; and why not bring back the colorful fun, originality and meaningful symbol of tie dye.

DISASTER IN THE DESERT

It was supposed to be a fun camping experience for the four Mexican college students, but unfortunately it ended up with the lives of two of them and it will remain as one of the worst experiences ever for the other two survivors. Three boys and a girl were on their way to their camping spot, they took a wrong turn and got lost in La Laguna Salada, a desert where there were no people and no cars to be seen; then the car broke down, they were stuck in there with not much food and not much to drink either. Fernando decided to go look for help, he never came back, after a while Jair decided to go too, didn’t come back either. Anahí and her boyfriend Eduardo remained together while looking for help. Last Tuesday they were found almost dead by a helicopter, while Fernando and Jair were found dead. When reporter asked Anahí how they made it she just answered “we had to have faith in God”, she later on told friends that they were so thirsty and dehydrated that they had to drink each other’s pee. Jair’s and Fernando’s funeral were held this weekend at Mexicali.

RESPONSE TO CLASS ACT

The author immediately pointed out that the Academy of Arts isn’t mostly known “as the largest private art school”, but rather as the school where two reality stars met each other and how the director of the Academy’s fashion department, Simon Ungles, encouraged Heidi Montag to quit school, go to LA to become a celebrity, just to get her own line; this seems like she wanted to start off sending out a bad appearance of the Academy as to make the director of the fashion department seem like he couldn’t care less about helping his students pursue their dreams through education. I had a hard time finding positive comments on the Academy, instead all I could see were remarks that ridiculed the Academy and Ungless; like “…a bespectacled Englishman whose broad shoulders and buzz cut made him look more like a drill sergeant…”Whenever I found the few positive comments on the Academy, they were always followed by sarcastic remarks. It looked to me as if the writer wanted to make the Academy seem as a quickly growing school which had only grown because every kid with no talent as an artist and the money for the tuition could get in as easily as the most talented one, unlike other prestigious art schools.