Meet my friend Bella

                              

This is us pre-brunch in front of Bella's house. She looks so Chanel and I look like I have two black eyes. Life can be so unfair.

                       

Karl Lagerfeld is an absolute genius. I wonder if he had the 4th of July or Bastille Day in mind when he designed this collection.

Turban tutorial

Though I'm now a knitter and I basically live in Siberia, most of the scarves I own are satin or silk.  And I usually wear them as headbands. I'm going to give the turban a try but I suspect that it won't stay put.

mad for mochilas

Valentino Resort Backpacks

Prada

A mere 17 days left in the style void. I cannot believe it!

So I've never been big on backpacks. My friend Azucena likes hiking and hiking backpacks and a few months ago we went shopping together and she got this brown and blue hiking backpack with the strap around the waist for support...you know what I'm talking about. So she tries it on and asks, "what do you think!?" I didn't respond. I couldn't think of anything to say. The bag did nothing for me. But a few years ago Prada seriously tempted me with a purple satin backpack. It was beautiful and I passed it every other day in Union Square and outside the Prada store I'd stare. Man, I miss being seduced by beautiful window displays. I digress. So,  the Valentino backpacks from the resort collection also put me in a trance the first time I saw them. When I look at them I think obi, kimono, Memoirs of a geisha. They're just sooooo interesting. I'll take the one on the right because I do like backpacks that don't have waist straps and don't make me like a junior high school student.

This will surely make you smile

Espardenyes

It's hot. And leather flats/sandals do nothing to help the situation. That's why as soon as I get to Barcelona after I've spent some quality time with my favorite Catalan, I'm getting a pair of espardenyes. Also known as espadrilles.  They're made of straw and canvas and let your feet breathe. Please please please let me find the size, style and color that I want. I've lived and looked for shoes in Spain and it is no easy task when you wear a size 41. However, big feet have proved themselves to be advantageous, no one ever borrows/ruins my shoes except my sister and she lives in Chicago.

recycle reuse

So I bought the above shoes on clearance at Miss Sixty, oh and I should mention when I bought them they were bejeweled with the purple jewels you see on my sweater, but in less than a week they started coming off. There are still two unaccounted for jewels in Nayoro, Japan and San Francisco. When the jewels started coming off I thought "I guess I could use plain purple suede flats".  Then 10 months later I decided to embroider them. And a few weeks later after looking at this post I decided to do something with jewels that were cluttering my living room. Thanks Carbon Couture, you're a genius.

Flowers

Finally. I've only been to a few museums in Japan but today, by far, was my best experience. I saw the Kataoka Tamako exhibit in Asahikawa. To be honest I'd never heard of her and when Mayumi, my Japanese teacher, suggested we go I thought it was going to be an exhibit on eggs. I confused the artist's first name Tamako with tamago which means egg. I like eggs so I figured why not. Once we walked into the exhibit I was pleasantly surprised. It turns out Tamako is a painter, not an egg. She's also amazing.  I'm not going to lie the most eye-opening part was seeing that she painted Pose 14 at 100 years old. She died at age 103.
Dear whoever/whatever controls the future,
Please let me be creative until my dying breathe.
Thanks,
Aby
As you can see Tamako loved her some Fuji-san and flowers