What to wear in India

Since staying in Hyderabad, India, I 've had the chance to observe the local fashion and traditions in apparel. When walking down the street you get to see women wearing  colourful sari draped over the body in various styles. Or kurta which can be worn by men or women. Nowadays Indian men seem to dress like Europeans, however most of the women remain wearing the traditional sari on the streets, or in the shops. The culture prohibits wearing short clothes on he streets. However, young women  follow the Western trends- usually in clubs and restaurants you can find lot of women dressed in jeans, shirts or even shorts and short dresses.

When shopping in Hyderabad you can get some Western brands but in most of the shops they place importance on different variations of traditional clothing.

 

Some examples what you can find in the stores:

 

 

 

Beautiful bridal sari:

 

 

When travelling around India you don't necessarily have to be dressed in sari or kurta, wearing jeans or t-shirts is completely ok, as long as legs are covered. However, visiting different places may require different clothing. When entering the temple for example you cannot wear open chest tops, the chest, arms and legs must be covered. On the other hand when being invited to a party you are more than welcome to come around in short dress. Depending on where you're going or who you going to meet you need to adjust between the ''yours'' and local fashion.

 

A lá Blanka

This illustration was inspired by the work of Blanka Matragi, czech designer who lives and works in Beirut. Matragi creates gorgeous gowns worn by the richest women in the world. She uses luxury textiles and silk dyeing in order to create beautiful creations. The style of dresses should bring you the world of a princess living in incredible abundance, surrounded by thousands of servants who fulfill any wish you have. When you want to feel like one of these princesses, there is nothing better to do than putting on a beautiful dress and pretend you are on a ball. The magical feeling comes over and you can suddenly hear the music and dance with your prince.

Success is a dream

There are two ways how to become succesful or even famous. Luck or hard work. In the first case there is not much you can do. It´s just like the lottery. You either get the numbers or not. But in the second case is a little bit different.

I have been recently asked to write down an article about my favourite designer. My choice couldn´t be anybody else but Coco Chanel, the french designer who brought about a true fashion revolution. We all know what she manifested in the world of fashion: created timeless style, relieved the female silhouette from corset and created legendary little black dress, Chanel No 5 and Chanel suit. Her work and life was truly admirable, although she started out from nothing.

Born in a poor family and brought up in an orphanage after her mother´s dead she we went through a lot of difficulties until she buit up the the empire which now carries her name. Her work and life inspired millions of women.

The world of ( not only )  fashion is full of people who achieved their dreams by working hard and not giving up in the times of misery. Well, true some of the famous people were discovered by coinsidence and the factor here was pure luck. Let´s forget about the "lucky" ones and focus on people who have been truly working hard to achieve their goals. There are so many examples in the history, just mentioning a few: Napoleon Bonaparte, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa. We don´t need to search among great names to find little heroes who create this world better, or just fight for their dreams. In any industry. During my modelling assigment in London I was fortunate to work with some really great creatives and interesting individuals. Among them was Lisette Mibo, a BEFFTA Award and Congolese Award winning model from Congo, who is using a well earned platform as a model tocreate positive change inher home country. Or another beautiful modelof colour and a friend of mine Estelle Digridi, who became successful after a long time of trying and hard work.

You might be working in a completely different industry but surely you know at least one person ( and it doesn´t necessarily have to be someone suppersuccesfulor famous) who you respect and admire for their achievements and look up to.   

End of skinny models?

About time!
NEW YORK — Vogue magazine officialy annouced: There will be no more work for underaged and skinny models. The 19 editors of Vogue magazines around the world made a pact to project the image of healthy models, according to a Conde Nast International announcement Thursday.They agreed to "not knowingly work with models under the age of 16 or who appear to have an eating disorder," and said they will ask casting directors to check IDs at photo shoots and fashion shows and for ad campaigns.
Looks like the era of unhealty ideal of superskinny models is coming to its end. 
The era which was bringing for years the ideal of superskinny body to be considered beautiful and caused  models dying from anorexia and milions of young girls with damaged confidence, who believed to be ugly just because their weight wasn´t below a certain Body Mass Index.A good friend of mine, who is a model  and myself often encountered the problems set up by this standard where everything above size 0 was considered "overweight".  Still there will be unhealty standart remaining, but it´s a big step.
American, French, Chinese and British editions of the fashion glossies are among those that will start following the new guidelines with their June issues; the Japanese edition will begin with its July book.
The primary fashion organizations in Italy and Spain banned catwalk models who fall below a certain Body Mass Index level, and earlier this year, Israel's government passed an anti-skinny-model law.

Still, there is persistent criticism that the fashion world creates a largely unattainable and unhealthy standard that particularly affects impressionable young girls and we can hardly expect coming back to the ideal of Rubens´sThree Graces. Or could that happen, that the world will turn to another extreme? In the history there were different types of beauty, not to mention that everybody consideres different things pretty.

In the end the real beauty comes from inside.  

I ♥ SHOPPING: Why should we buy black shoes

Today I went into the town for little shopping. I was after a nice pair of black shoes and came across lovely purple pair of heels.They were gorgeous and even fit well, but I ended up buying black ones. When it comes to us women, there is nothing we enjoy more than trying on gorgeous shoes which we are not going to buy anyway because : the don´t fit us properly or they do not match anything we have in our wardrobe. No matter how much we desire to buy those gorgeous red or purple or golden  shoes with high heels, we eventually end up buying flat black  shoes because they

are more comfortable  and they do match most of the garments in our wardrobe. But even black shoes can look gorgeous. For example those ones I bought today are lovely,sexi, high heels yet comfortable and match eveything in my wardrobe.

So when buying new shoes, what´s more important to you? Design or comfort? Can a woman only be sexi in high heels which cause her lot of pain, whilst she is trying her very best to hide the facial expression of a fashion martyr.

Fortunately for us women even flat shoes can be sexi and fun to wear. Important is not only the design, but the shoes must fit and somehow match our personality - we have to be comfortable with them and feel sexi and cool about them, even if we are wearing trainers. Just like clothes they must become our extra layer. They have to be convincing.

There is no general advice when it comes to buying shoes. You know that feeling when you pick up a gorgeous pair of shoes, which you have seen in a magazine and it costs half of your month salary, you try them on and even though they are not very comfy, you come over to the counter and purchase them.You come home, knowing that tommorow you have to go work and you are definitely NOT going to waste your new gorgeous Fiorangelo shoes for that. You decide to wear them to the date with your new boyfriend, and naively believe that you are going to be irresistable. But when you come to the nice restaurant for romantic dinner, you realise you can´t even walk properly and you your "catwalk" it´s far away from what we see on the runway shows. You look and feel insecure, you stumble, fall over and romantic dinner is ruined, not to mention that the beautiful, expensive shoes are damaged. You start to think that maybe it would have been much wiser to buy those simple black shoes instead. At least they would fit you better. More is less and what looks gorgeous doesn´t always do the right job. As the great Ralph Lauren said: Women should not look like fashion victims.

So ladies, good luck with all your future shopping and hope you always pick the best choice for you.