Last minute mother's day gift guide

Mothers are the greatest gift anyone can ask for. They are the reason who we are today. All those nights they spent pacifying us, educating us, helping us deal with heartbreaks and protecting us from the big bad world; mommys are the real super heroes.

Okay before the sob fest begins, as you all may know, it's mother's day on Sunday and it's time to gift mommy something super special. If you haven't already bought a present then my last minute gift guide might be of some use!

Check out my top picks for mommy.

1. Cartier Love Bracelet - This gorgeous open bracelet in gold has a single diamond and is the perfect way to tell your mother how much you love her.

2. Hermes Wa'ko-ni Silk Twill Scarf - With an Indian Princess printed on it and thousands of hours of craftsmanship, I guarantee you, one will never be enough for her.

3. La Mini D De Dior Watch - Featuring a yellow gold case set with diamonds, this is the perfect wrist candy for your mother.

4. Chanel Satin Sandals With Pearls & Enameled Jewels - Who wouldn't love a pair of these?!

5. Gucci Leather Continental Wallet With Horsebit Detail - The jasmine green color will bring on the Cheshire cat smile every time she uses it.

6. Lanvin Classic Happy Bag - A stylish yet classic bag like this is something she'll cherish forever.

7. Lancome Absolue L'Extrait Regenerating Ultimate Elixir - This magic potion ends every mothers search for the perfect anti-ageing cream.

8. Tiffany & Co Metro Rectangular Sunglasses - Trust Tiffany & Co. to perfect sunglasses too! With Austrian crystals and black and Tiffany blue frame, any mom will feel like a DIVA!

Three Haute Things: New York Chic, Punkin' It Up & Knightley-Chanel

I guess the name says it all! Here's a list of my favourite things, and news in the week:

1. 30 Days of Outfit: Kate Spade

Kate Spade tops my list of designers who do everyday-wear best with a dash of eccentricity. This website feature caught my eye where they have put together looks for 30 days (with accessories to boot) over lovely illustrations. Aren't these cute? Each look has an inspiration behind it. I recommend -- shop!

2. The Punk Shop Sale @ Modaoperandi

I am kind of floored by this :D. The sin of the seventies never does stop evolving into super-sexy high fashion. Modaoperandi has put together this Punk-inspired sale in light of the just concluded MET Gala roping in names such as Givenchy, Thom Browne, Rodarte, Moschino, Prabal Gurung, Vivienne Westwood (This one's a given, isn't it? Old mother god of punk!), Balmain, Gigi Buris and Zana Bayne amongst others. Included in the collection is a lime green mohawk by New York Vintage as well, in addition to objet' d arts such as a leather chandelier, temporary tattoos and, a set of USD 4,000 contact sheet images. This is going to be sold out pretty soon though.

3. Keira Knightley's Chanel Connect

Keira Knightley has tied the knot with musician James Righton of the British-Indie quartet Klaxons over the weekend at a very low-key ceremony in Mazan, France. Deemed an extremely casual affair by the paparazzi, the duo were seen leaving donning sunglasses and Knightley wearing but of course, Chanel! The face of Coco Mademoiselle perfume, Knightley paired this short tulle Rodarte dress with a Chanel jacket (and apparently, the dress seems to be a repeat of her BAFTA 2008 look). Other guests rocked the wedding in flip flops.

You might also be aware that Knightley is all set to star as the legendary Coco Chanel in Once Upon a Time, a mini-movie directed by Karl Lagerfeld himself which will be released tomorrow at their Singapore fashion show. You can watch the above teaser.

Reading between the lines (black and white Marc Jacobs of course)

Black and white monochrome is one of this season’s hottest trends; so when I saw this Marc Jacobs clutch on the SS 13 runway, naturally my heart melted.  This gorgeous Embroidery Pochette "Skunk" clutch is covered in 135,000 paillettes and each panel takes 13 to 14 hours to embroider. Of course how can I forget, the soft calf skin lining and a removable wristlet strap. Click here to purchase.

What kind of a fashion blogger would I be if i didn't complete the look for you! Pair it with this L'Wren Scott dress, this stunning Ek Thongprasert bracelet, a pair of Oscar De La Renta earrings, Bottega Veneta silver caged ring and these Gianvito Rossi shoes. 

Why Don't You ....

Maleeka and I love fashion. We talk about trends, shoes, clothes, bags all day long on our bbm’s. However, the other thing we have in common is a mutual love for the history of fashion. Both of us have this innate curiosity of wanting to know more.  We constantly read up on designers from the early 19^th century, prominent personalities who have influenced the industry from times gone by, etc. You see for any fashion lover, its never just about the clothes or bags. There’s so much more to it. What inspired the designer, how did fashion photography become what it is today etc etc. So I feel today, I should inform our readers briefly about Diana Vreeland aka, The High Priestess of Fashion. 

One day, a very fabulous and stylish friend of mine (you know who you are girl!) frantically bbm’ed me and demanded I download a documentary called The Eye Has to Travel. No questions asked I did so and immediately. For the next hour and a half or so, time just ceased to exist for me as I stayed glued to the screen watching recordings of Diana Vreeland that took place in her living room which she fondly called “the garden of hell” in the 1980’s.

In her Garden of Hell

Diana Vreeland was one of the most influential women in the fashion industry till date. A fashion editor for Harper’s Bazaar (1936 – 1962), the editor in chief of Vogue (1963 – 1971) and finally a consultant at the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1971 onward); Diana Vreeland was a true fashion legend. 

The irony of it all was the fact that she was never really a beautiful woman. She was constantly treated like an ugly duckling by her mother; therefore Diana knew that if she were to make it anywhere, she had to stand out. That’s exactly what she did.

According to Marc Jacobs’s foreword in the book Allure, “she had the ability to find beauty in imperfection, in flaw, to go against the common popular opinion in what is good, what is right.” If you thought a crooked nose is ugly, she somehow would make it one of the most beautiful things you've ever seen! That was the power of Diana Vreeland.

Vreeland wouldn't just deliver a magazine; it was a book of dreams. Her “why don’t you” column for Harper’s Bazaar was to make women think outside the box, to dream, to fantasize. The photo-shoots were just the same. They weren't just models wearing clothes, they were stories.  She often sent off models and photographers for shoots to far away and exotic locations to inculcate a sense of adventure and fantasy which resulted in the most iconic images of our time. She once famously quoted, “Fashion must be the most intoxicating release from the banality of the world.”

The iconic image of Lauren Bacall for a Vogue shoot

For a shoot in Egypt, she memo’ed Richard Avedon, her photographer “think of Cleopatra walking the roofs, think of a young beautiful Cleopatra pacing that roof and everyone is so old!” This was a woman bursting with imagination. She changed the face of fashion photography. She discovered trends, people and created beauty. She just knew how to look at things in a way very few could ever do so.

The Egypt shoot with photographer Richard Avedon and model Dovima

With that being said, here are some of her most famous “why don’t you” quotes to encourage you to fantasize a little bit. Go ahead, why don’t you…

Use a gigantic shell instead of a bucket to ice your champagne?

Paint a map of the world on all four walls of your boys’ nursery so they won’t grow up with a provincial point of view?

Tie black tulle bows on your wrists?

Wash your blond child’s hair in dead champagne, as they do in France?

Wear violet velvet mittens with everything?

Have an elk-hide trunk for the back of your car?

Bring back from Central Europe a huge white baroque porcelain stove to stand in your front hall?

Have a room done up in every colour green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful—a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens?

Sensational Sneakers

Before doing this post, Hannu and I had an intense discussion about whether designer sneakers (the non-training variety) can really be made to look high fashion or are they just on the shopping lists of Delhi fashionistas who consider activities such as shopping, running, walking or even the gym as more of social soirees. That is what she and I like to do, we rule out or regale about trends in all our free time!

A unanimous opinion from a lot of friends revealed that girls are actually afraid of donning sneakers! And let me confess this, I have always placed them just besides crocs on my list of criminal fashion moves. Yet here I am writing about the very style item. I surfed and browsed and looked at celeb icons donning them with such superb flare that I changed my mind, just a little though. Then I decided to replace commonly seen active wear and club a few high fashion occasion wear items with them to create looks that I would put on myself.

Tone Down:

Strappy elastic sneakers from Stuart Weitzman (I love these, so breathable and not overtly sporty) which you can order here.
Crinkled chiffon sheer shirt from Christopher Kane from here.
Mary Katrantzou A-line jacquard-print skirt which you can shop from here.
Then a classic intrecciato Bottega Veneta shoulder bag to bring it all down a tad simpler that can be ordered here.


Tone Up:

Sheepskin sneakers with a snake cap-toe from Lanvin which you can shop from here.
Cotton-linen chambray shirt by J Crew from here.
Printed circular skirt from Chalayan which you can get here.

And finish it all off with this textured cow leather yellow tote from Valextra which you can order here.

Other Sneakers We Love:

1. Studded cap-toe Miu Miu sneakers in fuchsia which you can shop from here.
2. Studded glitter Prada sneakers which you can get here.
3. Red leather superstar sneakers by Golden Goose which can be picked here.

Gatsby Fascination

My fascination and love affair with the Gatsby era, or rather with 'flapper girls' goes back to the days when I was at design school, and to one of the sessions about the Roaring Twenties in our culture-study class. It was a second honeymoon altogether when I did a Gatsby themed shoot for ATELIER juxtaposed against the twenties car collection of the very admirable Diljeet Titus. The age of prohibition and prosperity side-by-side right after the end of World War 1 is the period where I would love to be reborn in if given a choice (this is given more conviction as I am listening to Sweet Georgia Brown while writing this). Jazz, Robert Frost, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, the 19th Amendment and women's rights, Olive Thomas... Is there any such decade that has been this explosive with such good things?

And then it is the rebellion against conventions of society in the avatar of flap girls, influenced probably by their predecessor or how I like to say, their grandmothers, the Gibsons that enthralls me to no end. These girls, in the prime of their youth with a fierce idea of freedom who probably tried to defy every unspoken rule around them layed the foundation for a lot of modern privileges in the Western world. Their origin is quite well documented in books throughout history but the most commonly agreed upon explanation tells us that once men were back from the war, women who were working in place of them suddenly found themselves out of jobs. Bored, agitated and grieved, they descended into a lifestyle in which they sort of found themselves partying away to glory. The social structure being already topsy-turvied in America at the time, the flappers faced little indignation and resistance, besides just radically shocking others with their outright boldness. Frederick Lewis Allen puts it beautifully: "They found themselves expected to settle down into the humdrum routine of American life as if nothing had happened, to accept the moral dicta of elders who seemed to them still to be living in a Pollyanna land of rosy ideals which the war had killed for them. They couldn't do it, and they very disrespectfully said so."

 

These girls drank and smoked, they wore makeup for the first time (makeup was considered the vanity of harlots), the preferred not to marry and flaunted their sexuality, spoke slang, and drove cars. "Young, expensive and about 19" as they were defined, they also embraced some pretty groundbreaking fashion. While Mademoiselle Chanel was busy dragging girls into embracing astute classicism in France during that time, the flapper disposed off her corsets or even bras, put on dancing shoes, and wore skirts that promised a view of her legs once she passed. The influence no doubt came from the boyish style doing rounds in France (courtesy madame and more) and they even started  taping their chests in an attempt to look flat-chested with a body of a 15-year-old boy. The tube dress (not our modern give-a-sneak-of-your-tits tube), cloche hats, long strings of pearls, and permed or waved bob hairstyles essentially became the identity of flapper fashion.  

Alas, like a hangover after a party, the flappers dissappeared quick, especially post the American stock market crash, leaving behind their mark that excites and evokes fancy even to this day.

Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan in the film, who Luhrmann wished to define as rich and beautiful (Prada customer)

Now Baz Luhrmann's scheduled May 2013 release The Great Gatsby roped in my very favourite Miuccia Prada alongside Catherine Martin (Luhrmann's wife) for the costumes. A movie that transgresses Fitzgerald with Fergie, the costumes no doubt are too many tads away from reality. As told through WWD, the two women agreed upon the need to evoke the Twenties, specifically, without getting mired in what Martin calls “historical pedantry.” Martin maintains that rigid adherence to historical minutia can impede the modern audience’s appreciation of a story. That said, Martin was quick to defend whatever license was taken. “The reality is that from 1920, I could find a photo or a fashion illustration that would support almost any choice that we’ve made in the film. But we are not making a documentary. We are trying to express a story in a way in which Fitzgerald’s visceral modernity is able to transgress the plane of the screen.”

That being said and done selected costumes from the film are now being exhibited at the Prada store, Broadway, New York presently as I write this. The exhibit brings together besides the fashion, production stills, backstage footage and trailers from the film. The exhibition will next be showcased at the Prada Tokyo Epicenter store from June 14 to 30; then will move to IFC Mall in Shanghai in mid-July.

Miuccia Prada sketches for the film costumes

The characteristic of opulence is clearly visible in the movie stills

 Let me get my hands on some pictures from the exhibition which I will post later. Love yours truly.

The Big Cat Chase!!

It’s no surprise that the KENZO tiger sweatshirt has become a rage in the international fashion circuit. 2000 sweatshirts were sold out in literally two days from Opening Ceremony in New York when they were launched last fall. During the SS 13 shows, everyone who is someone in the fashion industry was spotted sporting in one of these. Its official. This sweatshirt is a must have. Do I care that it’s so hot I could probably die if I was wearing a sweatshirt? I DON’T. All I know is that I have to have one.

The sad part is the highly coveted green sweatshirt is pretty much sold out everywhere. However you can buy another color from here.

Complete the look with Alberta Ferretti shorts, a pair of edgy Haider Ackermann heels, Panthère de Cartier ring, an Alexander Wang backpack, Aurélie Bidermann earrings and Ashley Pittman bangles.