{9.14} Hump Day

The Brief is all about design-savvy travel inspiration, take a mini vacation by browsing its content.
After reading Suri’s Burn Book I’ve decided I want to become friends with this kindergartner (or tumblr) asap!
Procrastinate by looking at the fantastic websites featured on The Best Designs.
Bloggers are the future of everything, not just fashion – expect me to blog about it soon, in the meantime read this fashion week piece.
Austin Link: I love a good cover song, and I really love a good cover band… so here’s a list of the best cover bands in Austin.
Still not sure how to use Google+, follow these multimedia journalists to get access to their content and learn from the best.
(photo via pinterest.com)

Prime-time prep.

I have been on a very preppy streak lately – my Foursquare check-ins, my choice of TV shows and even where I dine (it’s not everyday you go to a restaurant where the servers are required to where Vineyard Vine)… and you know what? I don’t hate it.

Fashionably bookish.

via Kate Spade

The Book Clutch – for the fashionably nerdy.

Getting the upper-hand.

via Kate Spade

Don’t let chilly weather get the upper hand. hail a cab-or simply channel the city-with the bold embroidery on these colorful mittens. Gotta give props to those who like fashion to be fun.

Watering Coach’s poppies.

oppy flowers may be part of the Wicked Witch’s evil plans in The Wizard of Oz, but they don’t scare away Coach. The popular high-end accessory and apparel brand is making poppy flowers the center of a new marketing project, one with an entirely social media focus. Poppies will be popping up all over twitter, facebook, and blogs – here’s how they will grow…

The Poppy Project is an innovative art project by Coach that celebrates bloggers and blog readers in the spirit of the new Poppy collection. To participate, blog administrators embed a small piece of code in the header tag of their site and a pattern appears on the sidebar which bloggers and readers will be able to interact with through tweets, facebook “Likes” and site visits. The more interaction, the more the poppy pattern grows. Each pattern even has a chance to grow a Coach Poppy purse – if someone finds the purse and clicks on it, Coach awards them a gift.

The entire project is innovative. It combines the strengths of various social media tools and puts them all to use in one major project. Poppy itself is already a fun brand – channeling a design which brings in a young “PINK-esque” Victoria Secret market with a higher-end, designer savvy cliental.  Now, by reaching out through the online community, Poppy will bring in more views for it’s line and more publicity for its entire campaign. It is exciting to see a company not just reach out through social media with a simple contest, but to reach out through social media with an entire line of tools for anyone to use.

Well… almost anyone. I wish I could add a poppy pattern to my blog, but unfortunately you can only place code in WordPress headers if you purchase a domain and WordPress upgrade (both things I will do as soon as I have a real income). In other words, using the WordPress.com free version doesn’t make the cut. I am restricted from fully participating, but I still want to see the Poppy campign take off… so get ready for some #growpoppy grow tweets from me.

Even though the poppies in The Wizard of Oz put her to sleep, don’t be surprised if you see Dorothy embracing the Coach Poppy and maybe even skipping down the yellow brick road with a new clutch or accessory for Todo sometime soon.

Drop cap art from dailydropcap.com

What the King of the beach says.

I read Vanity Fair for the interviews. It seems like when they go talk to a celeb or just some random guy on the street, usually VF reporters get something good and, more importantly, real to come out of their sources’ mouths.

I liked a recent interview by Bill Bradley done for the article Wavves: We May Sing About Smoking Pot, but My Mom Likes King of the Beach. In it lead-man for the Wavves, Nathan Williams, says…

“Every time you open your eyes in New York, you see a weird guy or a beautiful woman.”

via The Sartorialist

With her nose stuck in a book.

“Featuring a book on your bookshelf is akin to displaying a trophy. You’ve accomplished something in reading a book; it feels like a victory. The opportunity to display your literary conquests in unique or unexpected ways is something I will greatly miss with e-readers.”

The New Yorker’s The Book Bench on Bookshelf Porn

Take that Kindle, Nook, and iPad…

via And the Pursuit of Happiness – George is Everywhere

via Bookshelf Porn

via Jane Mount

via Victoria Reichelt

via Bookshelf Porn

via Amanda’s Facebook

via Absolut Materialist

via Jane Mount

via Kristen Angelo

Flea finds.

ver the past few years I have lost hours days of my life just clicking through blogs – blogrolls have to be the most fascinating procrastination device ever invented.

Some of the blogs that always instantly capture my time, and subsequently my attention, are design blogs. Interior decor, fashion, photos, layouts, prints – you name it, I love it. Even though I’m no design expert in any of these categories, I do think I have always had an eye for what looks good and how to make things interesting. After all, I am the direct product of a mother who only needs a bucket of paint, a spatula, and a piece of newspaper to redecorate an entire house. The creativity gene is there, even if it is not quite trained.

So this weekend I took a lesson from some of my favorite design blogs and I went on a mission in Manhattan. Let’s call it Mission: One-of-a-Kind.

The best home decor and fashion finds are never from a department store or off the shelf at Crate and Barrel, the best finds are things no one else can have (and not because of price tag discrimination) and from places no one else knows. Those were the things I set off to find and the places I wanted to discover. Cue: dun, dun, dun, dun dun dun – Mission: One-of-a-Kind music.

If you know Manhattan, then you know all about the Shake Shack on the upper-west-side. The place has the best 3,000 calorie chocolate milkshakes in the world. Ironically I like to run there on Sundays. My path from Morningside Park, t0 Central Park, and then to the calorie count killer takes me through an “organic” flea market (what organic and flea market mean together I still don’t know). So I decided this Sunday I would bypass the shake and instead go shop with the ‘greenies.’

Rain and a poor sense of direction prevented me from making it to the organic flea market, but instead led me to an even better find – a secret flea market in the depths of a public school basement. Getting lost lead me to exactly where I wanted to be.  Literally the lady ‘guarding’ the door said, “So glad you came…” in the sweetest grandma voice ever, and then “…don’t tell our secret” like some creature out of a horror-flick. I’m pretty sure I can outrun the seventy-year-old woman, but I will keep the secret just in case (and so no one else can get my goods)!

So was Mission: One-of-a-Kind successful? Absolutely. Pictured (COMING SOON) are my favorite finds: drawings of NYC circa 1934. These sketches were made on the back of book pages and have handwritten notes from the artist of what city scene each depicts. I can’t wait to frame these in my first apartment… umm, when exactly will I be sucking it up and moving out of the sorority house?

(Drop cap art via www.thedailydropcap.com)

Happy hump day.

surprise ball on Vimeo by kate spade new york

ize does doesn’t matter. The best places in New York to shop are not always the GINORMOUS department stores or multi-level mazes on Broadway. Sometimes the best places are narrow store fronts that require you to ‘suck-in’ and turn sideways to let another shopper squeeze by. They are marked by conspicuous signs. And they are found by navigating the “mean” back alleys of Soho and West Village. So Happy Hump Day – here’s a video from two great shops I have enjoyed visiting in New York. In this video the team at Kate Spade New York (hello well-known designer name) shows you the magic of a “special ball” from kiosk (hello new find).

Speaking of Kate Spade…

Whoever is running the Kate Spade social media marketing projects – applause to you. Obviously I am liking your video on vimeo, but the other content you have is so much fun too: behind the scenes photos, an aesthetically designed facebook page, a blog titled ‘Things We Love‘ AND a shout out to a St. Louis business (that I am obsessed with) – there is only one thing I can imagine still wanting… an invitation for a job! Hire me, I’m in love!

(Drop cap art from www.dailydropcap.com)

I’m leaving on a jet plane.

ou should never stop answering the question: What do you want to be when you grow up? I fully believe the moment you stop answering that question is the moment your dreams die (ok, a bit dramatic, I know). When you were a kid, no one ever expected you to answer it logically (probably why my answer of ‘writer’ always worked when I was little… not so funny now is it Mom and Dad?). But as you grow up people judge your answer by its plausibility, security, and social acceptance. I know where my limits lie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t plan for an ideal world…

It's a good thing I like airports.

So, what do I want to be when I grow up? Easy. A jet setter.

If I was a jet setter this is what my weekend would look like:

On Saturday I would fly to Santorini and check into a hotel with a room like this,

I would open my balcony door to see this,

I would wear this vintage suit, carry this bag, and hide behind these,

I would spend the afternoon by this beach and the sun’s dying hours by this pool,

I would meet this (or this) man for a dinner and look this glamourous,

I would take him to a local place and we would dance till dawn.

On Sunday I would camp out at this cafe and read this book,

And on Sunday night I would look this good on my red eye to Charles De Gulle or JFK, because every good jet setter knows Sunday night must end and Monday morning must begin either in Paris or NYC.

Sadly I am not someone who gets the pleasure of connecting flights and stamped passport pages (yet) – but this weekend have no doubt that I will pretend to be. I’ll substitute island shores for Central Park and I’ll wear my Ray Bans purchased in Chinatown. Fake it till you make it, right?

(Drop cap art from dailydropcap.com)