Back

I find 'come back' posts so annoying to be honest. Unless you're Gemma Ward or some pop artist who faded into oblivion then you're not 'coming back' because that would require people, TMZ and tFS to pray and queef and speculate about your glorious return. Which isn't my case at least, though I'd have to double-check tFS in case someone started a thread for me now with guys like Jeremy Dante or Bertrand Vergnes and all those emaciated middle-eastern European models getting threads started everyday. I swear, you kill one and two more grow.

So, earlier this year I enrolled in a workshop and became a correspondent for one of the biggest resistance radios in Honduras. Basically they get a free journalist and I get a free space to denounce shit that happens in my community. The inductive weekend took place in a convent. As in I slept next to a fucking chapel. For real, I needed to charge my cellphone at night so I went next door looking for a plug and when I turned on the lights I saw this

A fucking chapel

Also I've been a regular guest at my friend Oscar's radio show Ergo Sum, recorded at the Culture Center of Spain in Tegucigalpa's medialab. Last time we spoke about the canons of beauty and I mumbled some unintelligible crap about phi and Kant and the renaissance but then I invoked the forces at fashin and it all made sense.

crap

Then last month I made some on-field activism as organizer/translator for an international delegation of human rights observers orchestrated by Rights Action and Alliance for Global Justice. We went to land occupations and agricultural cooperatives to witness the campesino struggles and ongoing violence, torturing and assassinations from Honduran land owners, mining conglomerates and tourism companies. Simply one of the most shocking, real life-changing experiences I've had. We visited a rural community that had been destroyed nine days before, a job carried out by the guy who illegally claimed the land as his property through his private security guards and the police. They burnt the houses, the animals, the crops, everything. They brought a bulldozer and demolished the school and the church. I myself sat on the church's ruins, and as much as I claim to be an atheist, it was the hardest part of everything. I thought "This was a temple. This is where their god lived. They killed their god." And then I remember this quote Michelle showed me once

What's next is yet to be known. Mysteriousness aside, I got into this online activism workshop to be held in Guatemala by Hivos/Digital Natives with a Cause and they're flying me there sometime in mid August. Then there's another delegation coming.

Anyway I'm halfway on menswear Spring 2012. If my calculations are correct, it'll take me about a month and a half to catch up with fashion, just in time for Spring! ("!"... why hasn't anyone invented a punctuation mark for sarcasm?)

Now Reading

I’m going through THE greatest state of apathy these days. I don’t remember the last time I used the word “love” and I’m not sure why I’m pointing that out but it must mean something. Also I feel utterly drained by the thought of going out, and when I do it’s only to be reminded why I didn’t want to in the first place. The only fun I’ve had these days is the idea of dressing up as a penanggalan for Halloween.

So as I’m waiting for the epiphany that’ll make me start a new glorious laughter-filled existence, my dearest friend P. gave me the tools to procrastinate myself into oblivion: Books. Three of them:

The Undomestic Goddess, by Sophie Kinsella

The story of a rather neurotic lawyer whose life is ridiculously busy and stressful, but she’s so deep in auto-mode she doesn’t see it. So she thinks it’s normal to chunk her blackberry inside her underwear at the Spa or having birthday dinner with her mom and brother over the phone, etc. As the story develops she goes through a transformation and ends up having an revelation which predictably is, stop and smell the flowers.

Some Like It Haute by Julie K. L. Dam

It’s about a style journalist who attends Paris fashion week, gets entangled in the story of the season’s hottest designer (I’m coping this from the back of the book ok givemmeabreak) and on top of that meets a man she really likes. I’d say “She meets love” but I’m not done reading it so who knows. Pure thick fashion fiction.

Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris

I haven’t started it. However, I’ve already read David Sedaris and I’m practically salivating at the thought of going through him again.

So about being depressingly apathetic.  I’m sure it’ll pass, though I’m not sure how.  I don’t think I’m cut to have an Eye Of The Tiger-esque comeback, however tempting French movies make it look like

Until then excuse me while I continue to wander around the house carrying a blanket laying on whatever soft spot I find and turning into a cocoon.

Outfit Overload

So basically this has been my style for about five months now.

Does it read anywhere that I'm obsessed about 30s - 50s movies? I began dressing like this (slightly baggy shirts, contrasting dual color blocks) weeks after I started spending every night watching the Turner Classic Movies channel. I even got yelled "Chaplin!" while I was walking downtown once, it was a man sitting in some stairs and I yelled back: "Yes, but in color!". Honduras is a weird country yeah. Anyways I like to mix old looks with heavy complements, like that army Bershka coat or the black leather Guess boots or the black Coach messenger bag. The reason why that blue Gap shirt is my favorite

Is because that's my favorite print ever. I enjoy wearing things that look average from a distance but then when you get closer you start noticing details, like discovering something somewhere. Yeah I'm not good with metaphors sorry. I tend to use themes, like 'psychedelic Chaplin', 'junkie lumberjack' or 'Chicago journalist from the 30s'. My second favorite shirt is this Kenneth Cole one (please ignore the oooh-check-that-smoking-hot-ass dancing move and the swallowing alcohol face)

Impossible to ignore, right? Well maybe with much effort one can notice how the stripes meet diagonally in the chest. Plus the fabric is really thin which makes it very comfortable. So, now that I've completely satisfied the need to embarrass myself by publishing this picture, I can say this is as far as this post is gonna go. Later!

Hiatus Update

So maybe blogging and having a life don't mix so well after all. Like, enrolling in every workshop you can get the email address of will eventually get you acting in a play, editing footage for a short film, or, in my case, texting while the others decide how to use a giant M.

(Me - closest to camera) Gap shirt, Levi's jeans, Guess boots, vintage white framed sunglasses.

My short film was, of course, fashion themed and I'll post it here as soon as I get the audio edition done. It has birds, chandeliers and veils, and therefore, Miu Miu and Prada SS10 and Meadham and Kirchoff FW10 references. Also I got the tribute to Portuguese writer José Saramago done. Don't mean to brag but hey I got national tv coverage and somebody delayed her flight so she wouldn't miss it. That's gotta be something. Actually, from now on I will rate events based on flight-delaying statistics. Anyway y friend A. was in charge of the flier and he really nailed it.
So I'm still alive, still blogging and still throwing snow to the snowball behind me. I'm attending to a theater workshop at the French Alliance in Honduras, I've got two more workshops coming at different places and I'm supposed to attend Colombiamoda 2010 somewhere in the middle of it all. And get stuff out of my mind and in here, like the Men SS2011 collections, the whole Couture month in Paris and how John Galliano belongs to the late 1890's. Hater's gonna hate.

Workshop

First of all, please don't freak out.

Lily Cole's head, Miu Miu SS10 cat collar pin + shirt, Hussein Chalayan Fall 2000 table dress,
Miu Miu SS10 cat platforms

I know I know, this might be the scariest puzzle ever since that Halle Berry collage in "Perfect Stranger". Maybe I'll work into making Lily Cole's head repeat my name and saying she loves me. That frightening, devious image you see here is the subject of inspiration at my illustration workshop at the Center of Culture of Spain in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. To put it more clearly, this:
The skull purse was mine. And believe me it is HARD to make a dress that transforms into a table, so I just had to let go of the idea of Lily having tea over and having the solution as to where to put the teacups and settled for something rather ambiguous. The shirt wasn't exactly identical either.
Anyway we were supposed to draw first, and then make it all come to life with the aid of glue, colored paper, beads and play-dough. I'm the only one who went for a fashion-related theme, others made robots and book characters and things so cool and creative that made me feel like an Anita Loos character. Also we had to make a speech about how our character's personality. So despite the fact that Lily Cole deleted me from Facebook a few days ago (she probably sensed this coming) I assumed I knew her and added a couple of things, like the fact that she's a feminist and a political activist. Anyway the photos are all taken by Ana Granera, who also is the one teaching everything at the workshop, about whom I'll be making a post soon since she's a graphic illustrator I can stalk. I mean learn from.

Now Reading (Somewhat about fashion)

So I'll just leave aside my concerns about looking like some clumsy loser who discovers things years, decades, even ages after everyone else, and tell you all a bit of what I've been reading in the last two weeks. I got this friend who is about the coolest person you could met, and I fortunately did after living in the same neighborhood for about six years. This doesn't mean I encourage socialization, or any other form of human contact, WHICH I DON'T, because well, most people are crazy. Not crazy in a good, funny, unexpected way, I mean it in creepy life/sanity endangering forms such as taxi drivers who either race at mass-augmenting speed or listen to stereo systems set at legal-limit breaching decibels while you're in the cab. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, I never ever would encourage anyone to even leave their house, or even their bedroom, but if you're obligued to head outside and are extremely lucky, you might end up having a friend who's crazy in the way you are and lends you the books you always wanted to read. So thanks, P. Anyway, the first was"Gentleman Prefer Blondes" by Anita Loos, the fictional diary of an American goldigger in 1919 who, among many other things, gets depressed when the diamonds she's given are too small, makes plans to read books which she actually never does and when in a cruise, makes it a point to find out who is the wealthiest man on board. As part of her adventures, she travels to Europe, where she meets "Dr.Froyd" and when in England she points out with great concern that English people use "pounds of money".
"The Collection" by Gioia Diliberto is a half fiction novel about a seamstress working directly with Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel in the post-war Paris of 1919. What's interesting about it it's factual part, how the Chanel couturier worked and the fashion scene at that time, the work of Jean Patou, Poiret, Van Worth's descendants and Lanvin. I personally thought it was a bit too.. romantic? But that's only me and if you enjoy good old wipping and the struggle of an emotionaly-ill mid-twenties woman, you're in for some fun.
Brought to you by the woman who wrote "Confessions of a Shopaholic", "Can You Keep a Secret?" is the funniest pink novel I've read so far. I mean the main character is hilarious, a mix of naive and determined, the sort of thing you get from watching Bridget Jones but way better because it's written and you have the sort of insight people barks so passionately about when comparing Harry Potter books and movies. I truly don't want to ruin the plot for you so I'll just leave it at that and apologize for being so absent lately, but I've been working on some stuff I'm sure you'll all enjoy in a few days.

Also!! the Resort collections keep on coming and I have to catch up on that... I always procastinate but it's only fault of Hussein Chalayan for not having a Resort collection, believe me I'd be posting right away.

Update

Sorry for the hiatus. I won't go through the reasons that kept me from posting. For example, I won't go through the fact that I spend a week attending to four performances daily at the international theater festival "Bambú" in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. Did I make friends with some actors and one thing let to another and now I think I'm pregnant? No. Because I'm a boy. Now I'm supposed to make this blazer for a Colombian actor's band debut. He's from a theater group called Matacandelas, they're in Cuba at the moment. Anyway if the fact that I haven't finished learning to draw, cut patterns or actually sew doesn't get in the way, I think I'll go with something like this.

Jak&Jil

Also, I wrote an essay for digital magazine &i& about clichés. It's in Spanish. Because I'm Honduran.

But if anyone who doesn't speak Spanish wants to know what it says, post a comment or something. It's kinda frustrating/lame to translate it without knowing if it'll be read or not. I have another article coming in the June issue, I'm excited about working with these people.

On other news, I need shoes. I know when people say they need shoes it mostly means they are bored of their 12+ pairs of shoes (specially women) but when I say I need shoes it means I actually do, I'm bored of my Vans, converse, Zara, and a couple of more bizarre things, including heelys. Yes heelys. So, since I'm stuck in some Chaplin-meets-The-Cure stage, it's either

The Oxfords are more according to my style now, which I've decided will continue to go back in time and grow richer in color despite the confussion this causes among my friends, people staring on the streets and beloved ones. My dream outfit right now would be something like this

Billabong fedora Hat, Band of Outsiders shirt, 1930's vintage pants, Slow and Steady Wins the Race sunglasses, Oxfords, suspenders

Anyway, hasta pronto!

CK White Label SS10 + Thom Browne

Today we won't be discussing the fact that I'm on autopilot mode because I only slept three hours last night this morning. Why, you ask? Chat-fucking-roulette. As in Chatroulette.com, as in Kate Moss's latest addiction, as in staying up until 5:00am hoping you will get lucky and bump into someone extremely cool, like Merton the piano improviser


...*sigh*. No we won't discuss that. Instead, the Spring/Summer 2010 Calvin Klein White Label shoes/pants:On the shoes, they're like stuck somewhere between mediterranean twenty-something guy and Vans and it works. About the whole look: My ideas about lenght of pants changed completely when I read the GQ December 2008 issue in which Thom Browne was named Designer of the Year. There was a 5-pages interview after which this no-socks anklepants look (and most of Thom Browne's life) just completely makes sense in your head. The pictures were nice tooLunch break at 1940's Chicago banking area you say? *Buzz* Wrong, fashion editorial shooting at 2008's New York. And though CK White Label's take on Browne's trademark thing is much more lighter (thinner fabrics, subtler colors) and so more digestible to the masses, it still encourages non-standarization. I personaly think it's awesome, and as soon as I get a can of Off! to repel mosquitoes and work on my ankle exercises I'll be anklepanting around myself.
Read Thom Browne's complete interview "Designer of The Year: The Incredible Suit-Shrinking Man" HERE.