Fashion: Donate your old jeans to Gap and get a 30% discount on a new pair

This is a great cause, a great fashion cause. Gap is partnering up with Cotton Inc. as they gear up a denim donation drive. Your old denim can be turned into house insulators for needy family to keep them warm in the blistering winter.


All you have to do is drop off a pair of your old, haven't worn for over a year denim at any Gap participating stores, and receive a coupon (or rain-check) for a 30% discount for any denim product in Gap (in-store only), even the ultra-cool and fast-selling 1969 premium denim line.

I already got mine, now go get yours and truly feel better about yourself after shopping!

Promotion ends March 14th.

Tennis: I'm going to Palm Springs!!

Finally, after living in SoCal for close to 5 years, I'm going to attend the Indian Wells tournament. Federer, Nadal, Roddick, Del Potro, Agassi, Sampras, Graf, Davenport, Clijster, Henin, Sharapova....and the list goes on. It's used to be called Pacific Life Open, now it's called the BNP Paribas Open. But still, it's one of the biggest tournament worldwide, right after the 4 grandslams. The best of the best players gather and the ginormous sum of prize money makes this one of the most coveted tournament. Though, it's known to produce unexpected winners, and the Williams sisters won't be there b/c of a certain "incident" ( you can google it if you want to, it's been discussed way too much with no clear conclusion, so no point for me to revisit the subject).

I'm excited though, oftentimes players debut new outfits. Sharapova will be there, so hopefully she decides to debut one of her new clothes, if not I'll have to wait till Miami. Watching her choices sometimes is half the fun.

I'm also looking forward to seeing good tennis, and feel the impact of balls being struck live. The impact and the force provides an incomparable experience than TV. It really puts you in perspective of how hard and how agile these professional players are. It's one of those moment that makes you rethink things, things we might have said in front of a TV, perhaps along the lines of "Man, I can do that" or "How can they miss THAT?!!"

I'll try to take pictures and put them here, it'll be a good photo journal for myself also. 4 more days...

I called it!!!

Back in January, when I saw a drop dead stunning dress on the Armani Prive runway, I wrote, in quotes, "Some please wear this to the Oscars". And voila, two months later, the same dress (picture here below) appears on the Oscar's red carpet being worn by none other than Jennifer Lopez!!! She was a pure vision in this dress, last night I asked for drama on the red carpet and this dress and Ms. Lopez herself embodied a blend of drama and elegance. The shape is dramatic while the pale color anchors it, and not to mention, the fabric is out of the world.

The post I wrote about this dress is from January titled "the ridiculousness of couture". I'm gonna pick her as my favorite red carpet look of this year's Oscars, hands down, although there are quite a few close seconds.

I'm too tired to write a review of the red carpet now, and a million other bloggers have already done so, I'm just going to wait, and instead of writing a review about the red carpet looks, I'm going to write a review about how right-on or how dead-wrong are some of the "critics", that sounds a million times more interesting to me.

Fashion: Oscar, the night before

I wish I can do a pictorial preview/prediction of tomorrow's epic red carpet, but it's too late and it's my 4th post today, so I must keep it short and jump in bed quickly.

All in all, hopefully I'll see some real drama on the carpet tomorrow. Last year's Oscar red carpet was far too tame and conservation, it's the mother of all red carpet and it deserves some over the top (but sensible) glamour and a true celebration of unapologetic and idealized hollywood extravagance.

Hopefully it won't be dominated by Galliano, Valentino, Versace, De la Renta, some new faces could be nice, but the power of red carpet to catapult new designers to superstardom nowadays is questionable, but still, seeing someone taking a chance would be nice. My vote goes to Carey Mullegan to wear something/someone surprising.

So bring on the ruffles, the cleavage, the see-through, and the ridiculously long train, and the bold colors, and the glitz and glam, also the "worth enough to buy a house in beverly hills" jewelry. Wear all those, smile to your fans, and fake clap to the person who had just beaten you, and don't forget to mention the earthquake victims of Haiti, Chile, and Taiwan.

Fashion: Paris FW10 Victor & Rolf

Clothes that transform - coming straight from the "Glamour Factory"

For this season, the design team of Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren put on a spectacular show. The theme was clothes that possesses duality, and it was displayed on stage where a model wearing multiple layers of clothes walks down the runway, and then the designers start stripping layers and layers off of her and put it onto other girls who'd then work it down the catwalk also. The point was to show that clothes can be theatrical and then practical at the same time.

The crazy version is transformed into barely recognizable revision of its old self, all with just a few pulls and twists; they were glamorous and wearable garment that are ready for production. The result left me flipping through the shots on style.com back and forth multiple times dying to figure out how it was done. This is an occasion where livefeed or video would have been greatly appreciated and justified.

All in all, I believe the show was truly amazing (even though apparently they've done this going on stage trick before). But the clothes were good, not great. The theatrics were there although the transformed products weren't exceptional (maybe it's because of the constraints of needing to be transformable).

Here are some shots, maybe you can also go on style.com and let me know when you figured out how it was done:

Tom Ford begins work on his own Womenswear line

This is exciting news. His talent and his style helped revive Gucci back in the early 2000s and now he is going to create his own woman's line. This must be great news for retailers and fans everywhere.

I think he will offer the same classic sexiness and sophistication we've seen in his Gucci collections. It will be feminine, luxurious, but I also think it will be younger without the constraints of Gucci's clientele. His name is almost a substitute for cool, sexy, and luxury; but I'm hoping now that he is on his own and deciding to come back from other interests, his clothes will be fresh, and desirable, which is almost a guarantee. Plus, his venture into photography and film since Gucci definitely adds artist creds to his name. This sort of association is much needed in today's fashion circle (in order to attract the newest bunch of fashionistas who are also artist wannabes). It's no longer just beautiful clothes, it also need a point of view or artistic reference, it's all about a story (collection) that has substance behind the clothes and the person making the clothes (ideally the clothes SHOULD be synonymous to its designer anyway...)

He had mentioned back in October that it should take about 18 months for the final product to be presented. So it's time for the Tom Ford fans to start marking their calendars. I'm definitely intrigued.

Review of FW2010 NYFW coming soon

I have to write this entry to remind myself to do the review soon. I can't believe I missed the whole NYFW without writing anything about it, I owe it to myself to pick out the next trend and give my own two cents.

Gotta do it soon...some designers that I thought did well: Marc Jacob, Vera Wang, Thakoon, Prabal Gurung, Altuzarra, Proenza...etc

When Tennis meets Fashion: Sharapova French Open Dress: What I think

Right here are two rumored dresses that Sharapova will be wearing for the 2010 Roland Garros. Although I'm not a big fan of her tennis (though sometimes I feel like her when I'm playing, can't put a serve in while my groundstrokes are rocking), I AM a fan of her fashion choices (most of them at least, just don't remind me of that mess of a swan dress at Wimbledon...eek). I think she gets ridiculed for trying to be daring, but IMO, her daring is far better than some other's crazy and some other's boring.

Since most of y'all have probably seen this picture somewhere, I won't write down what it's made of and all the PR blah blah blah; I'm just going to say how much I like the first one and why I'm ambivalent about the second one.

The first wrap dress is simpler, black and silver has a certain chic factor to it, and I like the fact that silver is the base color instead of black, which makes the dress look lighter. The proportion is dead on with a certain Origami feel to the pleating and roughing. The waist is cinched while the length looks perfectly balanced. It's important for wrap dresses to have good proportion in order to not look like two pieces of fabric wrapped around you. This dress is the quintessential party dress, so hopefully Sharapova will be mostly celebrating while wearing this at the French. The neckline seems pretty and it gives off a certain maturity and class. BUT, this dress has the potential to be a disaster in real life; the volumn might look nice on paper, but it come off as overly fashion-y and pretencious on court. The downfall for a fashion forward tennis dress is that the moment it crosses the line and stop being believable as sportswear, that's when it loses respect (despite how great it is) and waves of criticisms will crash the shore like a giant tsunami. So good luck with this one, b/c I really like it.

And the second dress, well..I'm "meh" about it. I see how they're continuing the print motif, which is important because it's now a Sharapova "collection". But, since the first version at AO got some serious mixed reviews, I'm not sure if I like this one also. The color choice is indeed far better, and I like how it creates the illusion of a wrap dress, but the print still reminds me of wallpaper, this time it's just looks like a 5 years old's room. The curvature on the front panel will either gives off a slim figure, or it'll just make Maria's body looks twisted. The purple looks a little too 80's (at least three seasons too late, and for Maria, who's "fashion-ed", this can count as a crime to her fashionistas supporters). Besides being 80's ish, the color isn't dark enough, and it makes the fabric look cheap. I also don't think Maria should wear speghetti straps anymore. She has gained muscle mass around her shoulder since her superstar arrival to the tennis scene in Wimbledon 2004, and a big shoulder will only be more obvious to the eyes in a pair of speghetti straps.

So yea, all in all, these are two solid dresses that is definitely Maria-esque, and it should do well along with her Tiffany & Co. earrings. I'll have to wait to see the 2nd one worn by her until I can make a more concrete judgement.

I'll probably write a review on Serena's FO outfit soon.

Billie Jean King Showdown @ Madison Square Garden

The 2nd annual BJK showdown will take place tonight, March 1st, @ Madison Square Garden!

The venue which host a long history of tremendous sporting events will once again feature the finest women tennis players in the world and great tennis can be expected from Clijster, Ivanovic, Kuznetsova, and Venus Williams! It will be an one night only event featuring one-set matches to reach the final and then a best of three set match to decide the champion.

If you have HBO, then make sure to tune in tomorrow night, specific air time and schedule can be found on www.hbo.com



Personally I think the finall will be Clijster over Venus in three sets, or at least that's what I hope will happen.

Venus Williams repeat Dubai-Acapulco double

For the second year in a row, Venus Williams wins Dubai and Acapulco back to back. Although Acapulco is a smalller tournament with lesser known opponents, it was still a tough assignment for Venus given the 11 hours time difference and the abrupt surface change from hardcourt to clay.

So congratulation to Venus again!