Friday 31 October 2008

Apparently, I like stripes

Yesterday I was like a walking zombie, as I only had 4 hours of sleep the night before. My friend Jasmine said two things: "You are very pale" and "Is this a new shirt?"
fashionarchitect.net_mango_stripy_button_down_shirt
I bought it almost 2 years ago on sale. It has cute little baby-blue stripes and is made from the most soft fabric a shirt can be made of, and yet I haven't been wearing it because somehow it never looked right. Well, yesterday I had the epiphany I needed. I just rolled up the sleeves.

Button-down shirt, jeans and bag, Mango. Grey knit vest and belt, ZARA. Black scarf, H&M. Tie-on black flats, Pull&Bear.

Links à la Mode : October 30th


As a proud member of Independent Fashion Bloggers, I give you this week's official links:
  • 39thandbroadway - Career advice for those working their booties off in fashion!
  • A Few Goody GumDrops - Tells us Black Sinner Lipstick and Shine are not just for Halloween!
  • Capitola Girl Jewelry Blog - Get personal with these fab photo finds from indie jewelry artists.
  • dapper kid - Short essay on the history of modeling and fashion shows…
  • Dogmom’s Dish - Norma Kamali for Walmart: Far From Fug
  • dramatis personae - No Need to Wig Out
  • Fashion Architect - This is what a fashion architect’s room looks like
  • fashion in my eyes - Field of dreams,Natalia Vodianova and her family in Vogue…
  • Fashion Pulse Daily - LA Fashion Week: we review the west coast style vibes from several designers, including Crispin & Basilio, Whitley Kros, and Lauren Conrad.
  • Independent Fashion Bloggers - Stand out from the crowd by refining your unique voice
  • Iole in fashion - Exaggereted, huge, cumbersome, xxl, warm, heavy, bulky: they’re the coats to choose this winter.
  • Mademoiselle Robot - An interview with the fabulous Broken Hearts, perfect Halloween inspiration!
  • O.M.O. Writes - As the temps drop, our affinity for fur increases! Check out the luxe looks on the street and runways…
  • Retro Chick - Halloween celebrations with Style
  • ShopDiary - reviews Lancôme’s Ôscillation Vibrating Powermascara. Amazing!
  • Shopping and Info - Lots of celebrities are wearing Minnetonkas now.
  • Technology Starlet - Will Technology Let You Buy Without Trying It On?
  • THE COVETED - Need a costume? Check your closet… there might be a 60’s housewife in there…

Wednesday 29 October 2008

My tidy bedroom


More on how you can built your own really cheap shoe rack here.

Tuesday 28 October 2008

Say "NO" to bad politics and fashion choices

Today is a national holiday in Greece. We celebrate the 28th of October 1940, when the Nazis asked the greek Prime Minister to surrender the country to the Axis and he just said "NO". Cool guy, huh? He'd be even cooler if he weren't a dictator.

Anyway, enough with the historical details, my problem is one of a different nature. Every year on the 28th of October the greek army, the red cross nurses, war veterans, groups dressed in greek folklore costumes and school pupils in uniforms parade in the main street of every city. If you live in a country like Canada, Australia or the USA you may have witnessed them yourself. Remember those guys? You can't ever forget guys wearing white pleated skirts and shoes with pom-poms. Now, here's the really weird part. You see, in no other country in Europe school pupils parade military-style. They just put some flowers on a monument and that's it. Those kind of parades where conceived by Hitler in order to cultivate a military-like discipline among the german youth and were introduced to Greece in the late 60's, during the 7-year military junta of the Colonels.

So why are those parades still around? Like many things in Greece, they just are. So our problem here today isn't why they still exist, but what schoolkids - more specifically schoolgirls - wear when participating in them. You see, the greek media has scrutinized those schoolgirls' sartorial choices a lot lately, and not without cause. The parade - which, remember people, shouldn't even exist in the first place - has been twisted into a young hos catwalk. I may be verging on harsh or judgmental here, which I hate to be, but someone's gotta stop this madness:What's with the leg? Ok, I understand that you are young and want the boys to notice you, but seriously, put something on or you'll catch a cold.

The schools have tried to control this phenomenon using rulers to measure the hem's distance from the knee and threatening with expulsions, but it just won't stop. And while I really support everyone's freedom to wear whatever they want, this is just bad taste. It's universally considered wrong to wear track bottoms to a job interview or a plunging neckline to a christening, so why should it be considered ok to wear tight miniskirts and cropped tops to celebrate a national holiday? In late October, may I add. So, until those ridiculous parades are stopped altogether, why not turn them into a fashion event? Here's my take on what greek schoolgirls could wear:
And remember, knowing when to say "no" is what makes our choices. Happy "Ochi" Anniversary!

Monday 27 October 2008

Delayed

I'm (not?) ashamed to admit that I spent all of my day outdoors paying bills and drinking coffee with friends, so when I finally returned home it was once again too dark to take some decent pictures of my newly re-arranged and extremely tidy bedroom. Till tomorrow...

Sunday 26 October 2008

Bedroom, check

More pictures tomorrow, right now it's dark and the flash kills everything. Nighty night!

Tonight I'll have nightmares with zombie-hoodies

As a personal quirk of mine, I consider zippers on tops uncomfortable and always choose something that fastens with buttons. I have a phobia that metal zippers on hoodies will scratch my face. Can someone please explain to me then, why I have so many of them? I spent all day putting away my summer clothes and generally sorting out my closets and I just realized that I reaaaaaaally must downsize before I move to Athens in February. God, I wish I wasn't so lazy for e-bay listing.

Saturday 25 October 2008

Meet you there

Back in the days of Athens Fashion Week, I was lucky enough to meet the amazing fashion blogger The Clothes Horse. During the fashion blogging stone age of MyStyleDiary, her blog was one of the first I got hooked on and inspired me to start my own, so meeting her in person was a rather surreal experience. I was actually nervous at the beginning, much like a first date, but she is a real sweetheart and soon enough the conversation started flowing. During all the waiting and running around between the shows, we had time to talk about many frivolous things, like if there is a typical way greek people dress, why greek fashion week isn't taken seriously by the international fashion industry and how all the trully talented greek designers - like Sophia Kokosalaki - have to pursue careers abroad in order to succeed. Before we parted ways, she asked me weather I was registered in one of the style social networks like Chictopia and Modepass to which I answered no. I didn't see any point, as I alredy have a Facebook account to spy on my old classmates, a MySpace account to upload any non-fashion-related creative stuff and this blog to interact with all of you interesting and very stylish people. So why would I need another account that I will surely neglect checking? I contemplated the idea for some time and in the end it was all this style community thing that convinced me, so here is my newly created Chictopia account. The blog always comes first though, so I can't know if I will keep uploading stuff on Chictopia or if it will bore me and I'll delete it alltogether, but I've decided to give it a try. Oh, and for those wondering why I didn't register in Modepass as well, the answer is actually very simple: lopi was already taken. See you there!

Friday 24 October 2008

University of Thessaly Street Style

I have long admired street style blogs like The Sartorialist and Facehunter, as they combine all of my favourite subjects: utterly stylish everyday people, great photography and street culture from cities all over the world. I also admire the street style photographer's ability to achieve a next-to-perfect result in circumstances far from ideal. When it was raining cats and cogs during the latest New York Fashion Week, Scott Schuman wasn't intimidated. The broken umbrellas, water drops on clothes or a newspaper used as protection from the rain made his pictures even more beautiful and real. I have searched the web for the greek equivalent but I only came upon Athens Wears, which as hopefull as it sounds, actually isn't a street style blog and most importantly isn't updated often enough for my liking. I even contemplated that maybe Greece simply doesn't have enough stylish people to feed a street style blog. But yesterday, as I was lounging the day away under the campus trees, I realised that in fact a lot of stylish people passed in front of my eyes. In the small greek city of Volos. Some of them even were friends of mine that I hadn't realised were so good dressers. So out came the camera and here are the results:As you can see my friend V wasn't as eager to show her face as my friend A, so her request was granted and the face in question was covered. In the middle Thodoris is rocking some stripes, and in the last picture we have my very stylish and musically talented friend Larry Gus.

Thursday 23 October 2008

Hanging around graffiti

Yesterday was a beautiful day, and I spent it all outdoors. Greek TV show Oxygen* is doing some small segments about young creative people in Volos, my study town, and they asked my boyfriend and his friend and graffiti partner to speak about Color Your Life festival I helped them organize last summer, and also do a graffiti specially for them, so they could film the process. So, here we are outside the University of Thessaly Architecture School, the guys painting the day away and me photographing them, while road-testing my new Von Zipper Rockford olive/pink sunglasses.
I also took some street-style photos of students... Sart should better watch out! But I'm saving those for tomorrow's post, so visit back!

*Those of you living in Greece can watch it on ET3 every Saturday at 18:00 and reruns every Friday night at 1:30.

Tuesday 21 October 2008

Googled your way here?

As every other self-respecting blogger, I too have a visitor counter installed in my blog. Mine is provided by the kind people at Statcounter.com and I have to give them credit, as it is free, very easy to use and totally discreet because they don't run any ads on your blog. The reason I felt compelled to write all that boring intro is that my counter doesn't just count. It also gives me other usefull information about my visitors, like which country they are from or if they have visited me before, but the most interesting feature is the "google search". Yes people, I can see weather you googled your way here and most importantly, what you googled to accomplish that. Mostly, it's keywords like "lopi blog" or "athens fashion week". I've also googled "greek fashion blogger" myself and my blog came up first! Yeah, I'm that self-obsessed. I also see some reoccurring queries, which I would like to answer here for my dear visitors:
  • Zara store in Volos - Doesn't exist yet, but have faith and patience, they're actually building one as I'm writing these words.
  • Chie Mihara Greece - If you live in Volos, you can find them in Galleria di Scarpe in Ag. Nikolaos. In Athens I've heard about a store in Glyfada that carries them and in Thessaloniki I saw some Chies on a window display in Tsimiski street. Bear in mind though that the importer brings just a few models each season, so the internet is actually your best option. If you were looking for Chies within my blog see this, this, this and this.
  • Badila clothes - They now stock them in Volos, in a store in 28 Octovriou street. In Samos, visit my friend Eva who runs Falzo boutique, she will be absolutely frank about what suits you and what doesn't. In Athens there is the Badila store in Maroussi, but I had some really bad experience in that store and I don't recommend it.
  • Vintage shopping in Greece - Read this and good luck.
I hope I answered some of your questions. But there are always some that I'm not sure I can address properly. They make me think about things that have never occured to me before, they make me laugh, the make me stare blankly on the screen, and yet, they landed people on this blog. Daddy Likey even has a feature on those kind of queries. Judge for yourself as I try to answer them:
  • Other name of clothes - A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
  • What do architects wear? - See below.
  • Why do architects wear black? - Beats me. Interesting question though, I think I will try to answer it in a future post, along with the query above.
  • Where can I find a good job in fashion? - Not Runway magazine, I guess. Devil wears Prada jokes aside, it depends on your definition of a good job. If you are looking for a reasonable schedule, a decent pay and a friendly working environment, then maybe you should seriously rethink your plans.
  • Fashion inspired by food - What a ridiculous idea. Oh, wait...
  • Wearing clothes with the price tag still attached - And I'm the one who will advice you on how to do it properly?
  • What is Heidi Montag's job? - Can't help you here. It's one of the ever unsolved mysteries of the universe.
  • How much does Keira eat? - That's an easy one: little.

Sunday 19 October 2008

Its over!

So, with that last post, I believe that I have showed you all that I could of the 8th Hellenic Fashion Week. It was exhausting, but oh-so-satisfying. I do feel that I kind of have to apologize because I had to bug you about it for two whole weeks, but as I mentioned before, it would feel wrong if I didn't publish here all the photos, videos and sketches I had gathered. So, I hope you enjoyed my amateur fashion journalism. And if you didn't, well, it's all over now! Back to our old habits.

Athens Fashion Week: Marios Schwab

The last show of fashion week I went to was Marios Schwab, and let me tell you, that didn't start off good. Herr Schwab had the crowd waiting outside for more than half an hour. Very un-german-like of him.

Many people with invitations took off before even the show started, saying stuff that shouldn't be repeated here.

But once the wait was over, in we went and enjoyed a great show.

What I remember most fondly isn't the actual clothes, but the way the models stopped and posed facing each other every time their paths met in the middle of the runway. Very nicely choreographed and the music was a great match too.



Athens Fashion Week: Parthenis

Orsalia Parthenis, the woman behind the brand, is the one of the most promising greek designers that showed last week. I would wear almost anything from her collection with great joy - minus the price tag of course. The color palette was the epitome of summer shic: light blue, navy, white, cream and pale yellow and all the fabrics looked so lightweight they could fly away on their own. I also wish I had shot a video from the show, so you could also see the way those hair bounced as the models strutted on the catwalk, like a summer breeze was going through it. Made me miss summer!

Athens Fashion Week: Victoria Kyriakides

Victoria Kyriakides' show was apparently inspired by the seventies: glam rock hippie chicks came down the runway dancing nonchalantly with their hands in the air, wearing headscarves, long skirts, chunky jewelery and skin-tight black and white. Not my cup of tea, but an interesting choice, compared with all the other designers that showed in the 8th Hellenic Fashion Week.




Saturday 18 October 2008

An outfit update

So yes, even I got bored of all these fashion week photos, which continue to pop up here on my blog, even if fashion week itself ended a week ago. All this high fashion glamour has been a nice touch and I liked playing the fashion journalist for all of you, but I missed doing the more personal stuff and most of all, reading your comments on them. Until I do the last couple of posts with pictures from the shows of Victoria Kyriakides, Parthenis and Marios Schwab, I really wanted you to see my new gray bag and tribal-print scarf. The bag was a necessity, as my long-trusted gray-green leather Accessorize handbag has been suffering an almost torn strap. You see, I've been carrying it every single day for the last 8 months and I had to give it a break. My new Mango gray tote isn't real leather - which normally is a deal-breaker for me - but it was the perfect shade, shape and size. At 21,90 euros the price was right as well, so I bought it and now I am even contemplating the chocolate and black versions. The scarf was a total impulse buy, as I had just popped into Bershka to kill time while waiting for a friend, but I really love it and for 8 euros I don't think I will regret it. And that's all there is concering shopping and yours truly, for the time being. I'm going on a trip in a month (more on that later) and I really have to save money. I don't think I can go on a proper shopping ban, like my blogging friend Sal, but I will sure try not to buy any more stuff. Wish me luck!

More of Athens Fashion Week: Andria

I get a feeling that all these show pictures that I am still posting almost a week after fashion week has ended, are getting boring for many of you. Even for me it feels weird that I haven't done something more personal, like an outfit or a DIY post, for such a long time. But, I still have unpublished fashion week pictures that are totally posting-worthy and I feel it would be kind of selfish not to share with you guys. I promise though, there are only a couple of AFW posts left, and then it's back to the old habits!

So, for today I selected some photos I took at Andria's show. It's not so much about the clothes, as they were quite overdone as a concept: satin dresses, romantic fairy look. Beautiful but boring, if you ask me. But the colors... See for yourselves: