So around the world yesterday all the fashionistas came out to celebrate the third annual Fashion’s Night Out (FNO). One of these days I’ll finally get my travel schedule together and spend FNO in NYC, but this year I found myself at the Galleria in Dallas…
which featured the longest runway in North America (a quarter mile)…
and lounges (read: booze) to get people into a buying mood…
I saw some Louis Vuitton luggage that was tempting (the personalized bags are cute) but came home empty-handed. I’m saving my energy for this coming Tuesday’s shopping marathon. My sister went to the Missoni/Target popup store in NY and everything was already sold out, so we are anxious:
There are about 5 Targets within 20 miles of my house, so I think I’ll be calling in sick that day. I have a feeling I’m about to get the…cough, cough, zigzag bug.
Tags: Dallas Galleria, Fashion's Night Out, Louis Vuitton, Missoni, Target
OK so it’s been a few days since my prematurely exuberant entry about finding a great travel bag, and I’m afraid after a day of testing out the bag, I’m back to square 1. Yes, I love the size/leather/color of the vintage camera bag, but I’m not sure I can do the whole messenger style thing. Carrying a bag cross-body is still not very comfortable to me…so yikes, I’m still in search of the perfect companion for this long trip.
A sweet reader just commented in my last blog entry about her favorite travel bag, the Louis Vuitton Sofia Coppola bag, and I’ll have to go investigate (ha! another excuse to go shopping 
). I think I do have a few options left to mull over during my short trip this week, and I’ll come back here to post those thoughts for your counsel. The big trip is in 3 weeks so the clock is ticking! How is it possible that after all these years of hitting the road I still don’t have the perfect solution for a bag!
Speaking of scarves, one of my best investments is a limited edition Monogramouflage scarf released by Louis Vuitton a few years ago in a collaboration with Japanese artist Murakami. Here, in a case of sensory overload, I’m pairing it with Italian designer Prada’s take on the camouflage.
Look 5: Prada camouflage rain hoodie jacket, LV Monogramouflage wool scarf, large black camera bag.
Tags: camouflage, Louis Vuitton, Monogramouflage, Murakami, Prada
I like to document things. Trips, events, people, especially fashion… stuff that makes life fun and funny, particularly in hindsight. Before technology became fingertip-available, I’d laminate or Formaldehyde or shadow box whatever I could and keep them in perpetuity. I didn’t want to not have a reminder of everything I ever experienced. But in time all my moves from city to city became an exercise in dumping nostalgia. It was just too laborious to tow my life’s stuff around, packing 1996 here and unpacking 2005 there.
The worst part was that the more I “documented,” the bigger my fear got in losing any of it…a trinket from 2002 might not make sense without some card from 2001 that provided context, I’d tell myself. I had to store everything so I wouldn’t forget anything. I was operating like someone waiting for amnesia to set in. (BTW, I’m fully aware that it’s a disease to be in my head.)
Luckily, I woke up one day and decided that shedding stuff voluntarily was the only cure. If I intentionally let some of these mementos go, I’d still be maintaining control over the loss. Right? Well, this worked well in theory but in practice I learned to regret dumping so many things that can never be replaced….a neon Stephen Sprouse dress from the 80s (which I sorely miss after Marc Jacobs introduced a limited collection honoring Sprouse at Louis Vuitton early this year), my diaries from middle school, photos from a lost weekend in Rio.
Anyway, fast forward to now, when I can store almost everything electronically, it is quite easy to (virtually) archive every decade of my life down to the minutiae, and the shedding becomes less and less painful. I’ll always have a photograph of the favorite shoes or tote or jacket exorcised from my closet in a fit of cleaning madness, so any amount of donor remorse can now be immediately tempered by a jpg file. The scanned 300 photos I took of the leaning Tower of Pisa now reside on my computer and not in a cumbersome box I have to keep away from direct sunlight. Life’s past is pretty manageable, not to mention portable, when you can fit bits of it on a flash drive or even CD. The downside is, of course, not backing up everything enough so that one epic hard drive fail can wipe out chunks of my life in a second.
OK so all this dribble has nothing to do whatsoever with fashion on the road, which was the topic I meant to cover in today’s entry. I think I got sidetracked when I went back to look at the pictures I’ve taken so far on this trip to cull for the Outfit Du Jour shots and realized how neatly 2 weeks jammed with real-life activities can fit in a folder on my laptop, ready to be relived in full color with a mere few clicks.
So I’ll save the fashion thing for the end of the European trip. Tomorrow let’s go chase windmills!
Tags: Louis Vuitton, Stephen Sprouse
There are literally a million stores and dining choices along the Champs-Élysées, but today this particular store with the Citroën exhibit catches my attention:
The stairs spiral around the entire building and on each floor there is a spinning display showcasing interior designs by various vendors. This is a room sparsely decorated by Louis Vuitton in muted colors:
But once inside, I am anxious to get back outside…
That’s the problem with being a nomad; I just can’t stand still long enough. I still have to get to the Louvre, but it’s so hot outside I stop for something cold. We don’t see too many cars like these in the US–and certainly not parked on sidewalks:
The bottle of water is finished by the time I reach the Louvre:
For once I don’t go inside the museum so that I can take my time enjoying the grounds. It’s easy to get caught up in the madness inside the Louvre; there’s simply too much to absorb in one afternoon session, especially with so many people jockeying for position in front of certain works of art. Wouldn’t it be great to get locked inside the museum for one night and loiter from room to room at my leisure!
On any given day there are street performers all around Paris, and today, just outside of the Louvre on a sidewalk under a cupola (which provides incredible acoustics), there’s a soprano belting out arias from the opera Carmen. A good sized crowd builds around her. Even people who appear to be in a rush to walk around the crowd seem to slow down. It’s as if her voice has us held captive in some kind of a slo-mo time warp. I look at the 15th century architecture around me, take in the sweet music written in the 1800s coming out of the mouth of someone born in the late 20th century and think to myself: I can’t ever stop traveling! It’s a gift that keeps on giving.
Tags: Carmen, Citroen, Louis Vuitton, Louvre, Paris
