Need-to-have Fashion Apps

Feb 13 12 under Around the world, Ottawa Fashion Week | Leave a comment

The fashion industry is replete with choices.  So, naturally, there are a lot of apps out there designed to keep you up-to-date with the latest trends and to prep yourself for Ottawa Fashion Week.  We know you’re probably busy trying to decide which seat section to buy your tickets in for OFW this weekend, so we’ve taken the time to find the best fashion apps for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.

 

Here are our top picks for the iPhone:

Cloth, $1.99: For those of us who don’t have our dream closet just yet, it can be difficult to visualize the perfect outfit while searching through piles of clothes jammed into a dresser.  Cloth is an app that helps you catalogue your clothes and favourite looks so you can easily re-create them later.  Users simply snap a photo of what they’re wearing and can organize photos into categories or add tags for quick retrieval. This app is great for days when you’re not feeling inspired or if you’re running late in the morning and need some fast fashion help!  You can also post pics to Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr to share your favourites with friends.

StyleCaster, Free: If you are one of those people who are too lazy to open your front door to see if it’s cold before deciding what to wear, then this app was made for you.  StyleCaster determines your location and shows you fashionable ways to dress for the weather.  The app also tells you the stylist, makeup artist, hair stylist, and model who created the look so that you can deepen your knowledge of industry players.

chicfeed, Free: If you like to get all of your information from one, easy place, check out chicfeed, a site that acts sort of like a mini fashion Twitter.  The free app combines the latest photos from popular fashion sites like the Sartorialist, Face Hunter, Jak and Jill Blog, Cherry Blossom Girl, LookBook, and altamira.  Simply swipe the screen to move between images and get your daily dose of the latest looks.

Style.com, Free: Similar to chicfeed, the Style.com app merges photos of runway shows in major cities so you know what’s new in the fashion world before anyone even has time to tweet about it.  You also have access to party coverage and Style.com’s video catalogue. Maybe we’ll get Ottawa on the map after this killer season of OFW!

Stylebook, $4.49: Stylebook is the ultimate app for playing dress-up with your own clothes.  Stylebook allows you to add pictures of your clothes and mix and match different pieces on a free-form canvas.  You can also track outfits you’ve worn on a calendar so you can see your personal wardrobe history.  This way you can have all the fun of trying on clothes while cuddled on your couch with a blanket!

 

The ultimate Android app is:

Fashion Dictionary, $7.13: Quite simply, this app defines 30,000 different terms used in the fashion industry that the average consumer might not be familiar with.  The app features the terms in four languages – German, English, Italian, and French – so you can prepare in case you get lucky and make it to an international fashion week.  If you want a less expensive and similar app, you can download Fashion Language Guide & Quiz for $1.26, which has 100 English terms.

 

And finally a couple of BlackBerry apps:

Vogue Stylist, Free: This app shows you new trends in fashion and helps you find personalized looks that fit your body shape.  You can select what occasion you need an outfit for and what colour you want, and if the app doesn’t give you the advice you need, you can get personalized fashion advice from Vogue India within three days.

Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker, Free: This app is for all of those BlackBerry users who nearly cried when they realized they couldn’t get the Style.com app.  Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker is about the closest app available for BlackBerry.  The app gives you access to images from runway shows within a day of the show, street style, and fashion news.  You can also save your favourite items for later reference.

 

photo credit: image hyperlinked

^Caresse Ley

Read More

…brought to you by, the Westin Hotel!

Feb 6 12 under Around the world, Ottawa Fashion Week | Leave a comment

 

A Sweet Deal on Overnight Accommodations from the Westin Hotel

Laden with modern design, contemporary furnishings and stunning views, The Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa is a stylish haven for renewal—it’s also the only place you’ll find a special Ottawa Fashion Week accommodations package.

So here’s the deal—from February 16-20, The Westin is offering guests the following:

  • overnight accommodations in a guest room featuring the Westin Heavenly® Bed;
  • 2 tickets to Ottawa Fashion Week Runway Show; and
  • incredible rates starting from $279.

If you didn’t already know, Ottawa Fashion Week is being held at the Westin Hotel this year. With this deal, you will literally be waking up and winding down to the glitz, glam, creativity and sophistication that you can only find at Ottawa Fashion Week.

Book your stay online, or call 866.716.8101 and mention rate plan OFWPKG. Valid for stays February 16-20, 2012.

^WJ

Read More

Memorable Fashion Moments

Feb 1 12 under Around the world, Hot Topic | Leave a comment

Kate Moss in Alexander McQueen, 2006

SOME MEMORABLE FASHION MOMENTS  Throughout the years there have been noted moments that have defined fashion and the players within it. Whether these times have made you laugh, watch in intrigue, or shake your head in disgust, these are some of fashion’s memorable moments.

NAOMI’S FALL FROM GRACE  Naomi Campbell is one of the most famous models of our time. However, this 90′s icon has become recognized less for her grace and more for her antics. It was at Vivienne Westwood’s Fall 1993 show in Paris where the supermodel took quite the tumble down the runway while wearing skyscraper-high heels. This incident was relatively innocent compared to what happened just over a decade later. In 2006 Campbell was charged with second degree assault after throwing her cellphone at her housekeeper. That act alone would define the model many years afterwards.

THE GHOST OF KATE MOSS  At a time when supermodel Kate Moss was being dropped by almost every designer on Earth because of her cocaine habit, Alexander McQueen continued using her in his collections. It was McQueen’s fall 2006 collection, Widows of Culloden, when the designer changed the game of fashion. At the closing of his show Moss appeared as a hologram on stage, twisting and twirling slowly to tragically romantic music. It was one of the most visually appealing moments that fashion audiences have ever experienced.

Read More

Ottawa Fashion Week Nostalgia?

Jan 4 12 under Around the world, Ottawa Fashion Week | Leave a comment

Ottawa”>http://vimeo.com/31785045″>Ottawa Fashion Week ’11 from { First Kiss Films } vintage cin on Vimeo.

Feast your eyes on this OFW Spring/Summer 2012 video of runway and behind the scenes footage. Will YOU be at the shows this season? Keep checking our website for more details regarding the upcoming shows. You can also keep posted by following us on Twitter or tumblr. Oh, and don’t forget to check us out on Facebook.

^AM

Read More

…the eye of the beholder.

Dec 7 11 under Around the world, Hot Topic | Leave a comment
 

Hailee Steinfeld, Lindsey Wixson, Elle Fanning

A frequent purveyor of fashion magazines, it never donned on me before. The focus for me was, of course, the clothes. But the more and more fashion editorials you thumb through, the better you are at identifying the models and clothes featured. So while looking over the pages of British Vogue, I remembered the model used in one of its editorials, Lindsay Wixson. “I remember her!” I said to myself, “she’s on the cover of style.com/print and wasn’t she the face of Prada at one point?”. Naturally, I looked up her credentials and was in sheer shock and awe when I learned of her age. 16. Yes, that’s right 16 years of age. The Prada print ads I was referring to, I saw last year. I remember my boyfriend had caught a glimpse and asked me if the model was a little girl. She might as well have been.

The aforementioned anecdote bears the question; why are children modelling clothes made for today’s woman? What do I mean by “today’s woman”? In the interest of this post, she is affluent, over 30 years of age, has a thriving career and gracefully balances her work and family life. She is not 16 years of age. Or 13 for that matter (yes I’m talking about Elle Fanning). Granted, Marc by Marc Jacobs is targeted to a younger generation, but not 13 years young! Doesn’t it just get your knickers in a knot? The world was up on arms, earlier this year, when French Vogue released a full-length editorial featuring a make-up donning, provocatively posed 10-year-old girl. The reasons behind the editorial? To make a statement against the fashion world’s beauty idealism? Perhaps.

It’s been famously written that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. Indeed it is. Regrettably, many look to society to shape their ideals of what beauty is (read: should be) – expectations become unfulfilled, travesty ensues, inno is lost. I would hope that in 2011, today’s woman has a healthy take on what beauty is or should be. I hope the same for their younger counterparts: today’s woman of the future.

Tell us, what do you think? Sound off below.

^AM

Read More

Bizarro World: when online goes print

Nov 13 11 under Around the world | Leave a comment

As we’re all well aware, this so called game of fashion is ever changing – what’s old is new, what’s hot is cold and what’s up is down. Over the last few years, the world of fashion’s presence crept to the far reaches of the Internet: expanding its reach and potentially diluting its exclusivity.  But at the end of October, as the fashion weeks had finally concluded, Style.com –fashion Mecca to most, exclusively online (hence the name) – announced the premier of its first physical magazine, Style.com/Print. Yes, print. What a twist! Print is not dead, as many have come to believe with media’s current emphasis on all things virtual (e.g. web, blogging, Twitter, Facebook etc.).

Print has now become an extension of online and vice versa. Business of Fashion (you’ve heard of them right?) sat down with Style.com’s editor-in-chief, Dirk Standen who mentioned “there are possibilities for cross-selling across print and the web”. Media outlets are further extending their reach to the masses, and in the world of fashion, why not? Why not open its previously barred doors and let everyone have a peek, a taste of what goes on in a world that some can only dream of? Style.com/Print does exactly that: takes its reader deep behind the scenes of the Spring 2012 collections in a way that online could never achieve. The mag dives into the intricacies of fashion month; everything that the four jam-packed weeks of euphoria-inducing fashion entails, with the potential of becoming a bi-annual or quarterly publication.

What does such a shift mean? Even more exposure, more reach and more inclusive of the fashion world. Does that dilute it’s exclusivity? In this writer’s opinion: no, not necessarily. I still can’t walk into the tents and plop myself down in front row at NYFW. I still can’t shake Marc’s hand or air kiss Phoebe, commending them on their fabulous shows. I still can’t afford or even touch a Galliano gown or try on a Rodarte, Lanvin, or Vionnet creation. Sure, we all have been granted “access” to this world, but it’s still not accessible: we are all outsiders looking in. And I’m okay with it staying that way.

photo credit: hyperlinked
source: www.style.com, Business of Fashion

^AM

Read More

Alexis Reyna

Oct 1 11 under Around the world, Designers, Ottawa Fashion Week | Leave a comment

Barcelona-based Alexis Reyna premiered his eponymous line in Canada at Ottawa Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012. The show was late to start (but aren’t they all?) and began with a continuous loop of music.  The first model quickly marched down the runway with eyes wide open, looking forward, like a zombie awoken. The limbs of the models were adorned in paint, in patterns that seemed skeletal. A new take on the boyfriend blazer, plenty of room in the shoulders, sleeves and waist with unsewed, deconstructed hemlines. The blouses billowed down the runway as did a crinkled, distressed maxi shirt dress. Denim cut-offs, mesh shorts and tops, knits re-stitched; all the hems and seams left unfinished, as if abandoned….like zombies. This collection saw the debut of Reyna’s menswear line; a grouping of graphic t-shirts, mesh and shorts.

Mid-way through the show, Alexis himself walked the runway, armed with only his Sony DSLR and mesh shorts. The crowd was amused, and maybe a tad bit flustered, as he photographed the photographers to then the models. The creativeness behind his collection, as well as Alexis himself, have certainly stood out at Ottawa Fashion Week. For more photos of the Alexis Reyna Spring/Summer 2012 collection, visit our Facebook page.

 

^AM

Read More

racial diversity – part deux

Aug 12 11 under Around the world, Hot Topic | Leave a comment

American Vogue July 2008

Like my last post, I’d like to further pierce the surface of diversity in the fashion industry with regards to race.

The issue of lack of diversity with respect to race is a little more close to home for me as I am African-American. Growing up, the only model of colour I knew of was Naomi Campbell. Excuse me, supermodel, Naomi Campbell. All my fashion icons growing up were, well celebrities (I clearly didn’t know any better), and mostly of the caucasian persuasion. Back then I wasn’t privy to the, comparably larger, fashion icon pool of African-American women.

Read More

body image – part deux

Aug 1 11 under Around the world, Hot Topic | Leave a comment

The June 2011 cover of Vogue Italia

This blog has touched diversity (physically and racially) in the fashion industry. In that post, I merely skimmed the surface of two issues still plaguing the industry today, societal perceptions on what is deemed beautiful and fashionable. Let’s revisit the stigma surrounding body image.

Read More

The dreaded c-word…

Jul 28 11 under Around the world, Celebrity fashion, Hot Topic | 2 Comments

Chanel 2.55

Yes, the “c-word” and its “f-bomb” counterpart. Maybe more so during a trip to New York or other budding fashion capitals, have these words crossed our minds or, heaven-forbid, our lips…

Read More
← Older posts