telluride

At the end of last week, headed out to Telluride, Colorado for a few days of hiking, perfecting my book-to-scenery-line-of-vision equation, and dog cuddles. I hadn't been to that part of the country at all, but some family moved there a while back and I finally made it out there. It was one of those situations where I wouldn’t have visited this very beautiful place if they weren’t living there and I would have visited them if they didn’t live in a very beautiful place.

It turns out that I picked the perfect weekend - the aspen trees were at their brightest goldenrod and I got to skip out on the Texas heat for a bit and break out my ankle boots and a light jacket.

Telluride has a fairly tiny year-round population, but there's usually a festival in town (the film festival and Blues & Brews are the biggest, but there are so many more) and, of course, ski season is a big deal, but I'm not one for winter sports so I'm happy to have missed those crowds.

The town itself is supercute.  They don't allow franchises, so it's all local businesses and there were plenty of fresh flowers everywhere.  I set up a bit of a residency at a coffee shop that generously rewards patrons with free pastries and refills, because life requires caffeine and family visits require a safe space to duck off to.  

I also stopped in a string of smaller Colorado towns in between mountain passes - all equally adorable and full of the particular brand of rugged whimsy that relatively isolated locales breed, like a jail converted into a thrift store.

Pretty much everyone has a dog and you can take them everywhere. It's great.  This is Loki, who is massive but still a puppy on the inside.

My family legitimately lives in the mountains.  This is a a picture I took from the gondola that takes you from the town of Telluride to their neighborhood. Yeah, man, their public transit is a fucking gondola.

I have long maintained that being on mountains with dogs is an important activity to participate in as frequently as possible, and I've gotta say, I had some of the best dog/mountain time of my life on this trip.  You can't tell here, but I was actually very high up a few feet away from a pretty intense drop, so if Loki had decided to misbehave, he could have sent me flying off a cliff as he is much stronger than I am.  It was cool, though - we just played! Good dog.

Super into the black and white patterns on the trunks of the aspens.  

whatever, man...fashion!

Whenever fashion week rolls around, I ask two questions:

1) To myself: "do I care?"

2) To the designers, who are not listening to me and who have no idea who I am: "how are you going to make me care?"

And that, at its heart, is why I still keep up with runway shows.  Because I feel like fashion, as an art form, is all too often on the defensive. When I see a collection that feels like its on the offensive, it's an exciting thing.  

I haven't quite come across any New York collections that did it for me, but London Fashion Week has gotten off to a promising start!  

ERDEM

Easter egg snake prints!  Psychedelic florals! Neon pom-pom looking things!  Sure to be called "country club on acid" by many lazy people, but certain other lazy people might just predict what the first set of lazy people would say.   

ACNE

Here's something about me that you might not know but hopefully will not be surprised to learn: I hate hate hate Renaissance Faires. There is nothing redeeming about them; they are simply the worst.  I got coaxed into going to one last year, though, after I worked on a dress for a Ren Faire production that cost upwards of $1000 and kind of wanted to see it in action.  "It will be fun!" they said.  It was not fun. I showed up at about 11AM and quickly started drinking so I could be drunk for as much of it as possible before sobering up to drive home early in the evening and ended up spending all those hours not doing much of anything because everything was really expensive and wouldn't have even been worth doing it it had been free. At about 5PM, I was sober and more than ready to head home, only to find out that I couldn't leave until after the Faire was closed for the day because I had taken advantage of the free staff parking and my car was locked in.  I was escorted to the camping area to wait it out, and a bunch of gross dudes kissed my hand when they introduced themselves (get it? chivalry?) and then I had to listen to them talk about how potential employers expecting them to have professional-looking haircuts is "sexist."

This comes back to Acne because at some point while I was there, I got conned into posing for one of those awful Old Timey photoshoots where they throw a sepia filter over you and want you to pay crazy amounts of money.  If you are a drunk girl wandering aimlessly, people are going to try and sell you all kinds  of things, but I did not purchase a copy. Anyway, the costumes they give you do not function as actual clothes - they tie in the back, so you're wearing half a dress over jeans and a t-shirt.  That's what this Acne collection reminds me of - princess and court jester costumes tied over everyday clothes. But, like, in a good way!

I had not heard of Marques Almeida, but checked it out on a tip from my girl Ana, who knows about these things.  It's sort of easy to glance over it quickly and notice how much it has in common with the Acne collection (flowing lavender and white, chunky 90s sandals, etc.) but I get different vibes from the collections. Marques Almeida is more "Fuck this! I'm going to the beach!" and Acne is more "Fuck this! You don't know my life!"

So yeah, thus concludes a very professional blog post about London Fashion Week.

Quilts by Meg Callahan

In the past week or so, Tricia and I made a few jokes on our Twitters about how we'd like to quilt, start a quilting circle and just be all around craft-divas. Jokes aside, if I could create anything remotely as spectacular as the quilts by artist Meg Callahan, I can guarantee you that's about all I would be doing. Her collection of textile designs are just as impressive and just as coveted by yours truly.

Ada Quilt

Harrah Quilt

Spine Quilt

Just Another Fashion Post

Long time no see! Tricia and I are cooking up a few new blogging ideas (VERY SECRET IDEAS) which we'll hopefully be revealing to you soon. Until then, I'm going to fangirl over a few of the latest collections from this past week. To be perfectly honest, there's only about 3 collections I peek at during fashion week. I find I just get way too overwhelmed otherwise and there hasn't been a Rachel Comey or Steven Alan collection I've seen and hated (although I didn't really LOVE either collection 100% , some of it seemed a bit ill-fitting, but there were definitely a few stand out looks).

Rachel Comey

Steven Alan

Images from http://www.fashionising.com/ & http://www.fashionista.com