On the other side of fear lies freedom

I'm a dreamer. I definitely am. But the ambiguous thing about my personality (I know, there is something (many things) wrong with me), is that I'm a great realist as well. Which means, I like to dream big, but when it comes down to it, I think you should do what you dream about. Like Blair Waldorf once said: 'Destiny is for losers. It's just a stupid excuse to wait for things in stead of making them happen'. And since I live in Amsterdam, I'm much less afraid to take chanches.

So that's what I did today. Cause I also like a touch of mystery, I'm not going to tell you straight away. Let me give you a few hints. I talked about it a few times earlies on my blog. I am extremely excited but also quite frightened to do it. It's going to happen in one month exactly, on the day the world is going to end (according to the Mayas). This last fact won't help you any further, just a little funny thing I wanted to mention.

Well, enough mystery for now, if you want to know what I'm talking about, keep following my blog! It'll be worth it ;)

Anything can happen

Lauren Hutton: the real American woman

68 & fabulous. May sound like something you'd hear from Sex and the City's Samantha, but for Lauren Hutton it's nothing but the truth. The first time I heard of her was while reading Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen's coffee table book Influence. Lauren Hutton is one of their biggest inspirations and they interviewed her and have close personal contact with her. I immediately understood why they found her so inspiring, since she comes off as real, honest and a powerful woman.

One of the most admirable thing about her, is that she looks real. Though she absolutely doesn't look like she's 68 (I find her one of the most beautiful elder women I've ever seen, though my own grandma is still a beauty as well!), she has wrinkles and that makes her so much more respectable than all those Hollywood women using botox nowadays.

Lauren Hutton was born in 1943 in South Carolina. She was raised by her mother and stepfather(her parents divorced when she was young) and after graduation, she was one of the first ladies to attend the University of South Florida in 1960. A few years later, she moved with a disk jockey who was 19 years older than her, to New York. In this city she started working at the Playboy Club.

After she got a bachelor of arts degree, she quickly became of the most succesful models in America. Eventually she became very famous for the gap between her mouth (something modelling agencies cherish these days) but in the beginning she was advised to remove the gap. She tried doing this by using a particular wax to cover the gap. At last, she accepted the gap and it became one of the reasons she was known as 'The Fresh American Face of Fashion'. Her face is very accesible, friendly and open. Mostly, I love mysterious faces a lot more but Lauren Hutton has this certain thing. When she smiles, her eyes shine and that's a golden factor for a topmodel.

Besides modelling for Revlon, The Gap (coincidence?) and Vogue (on the cover 28 times!), Lauren Hutton also started an acting career. She had a part in 'The Gambler' next to James Caan. Other movies were 'American Gigolo' and 'Lassiter'.

She was a big fan of motorcycling, which I find very cool for a fashion model and such an elegant lady. But it wasn't always a party. In 2000, when she was 56, she had a huge accident on the road near Las Vegas. She was with many actors on a trip, when she lost control on a curve. The result: several arm and leg fractures, broken ribs, a punctured lung and many bruises.


'I'd like to be the first model who becomes a woman', is what she said. And I definitely think she succeeded in this. Wonderful as she was and is as a model (she's still signed at IMG Models, at her age!), the pictures where she's laughing, or the ones made in Africa, where's she's just wearing a simple costume and a hat, are the ones that appeal most to me.

No wonder Mary-Kate and Ashley gave her such a prominent place in their book. Lauren Hutton, who by the way never married, is strong, all-American yet edgy. May I look and act the same when I'm 68. That will be fabulous.

James Dean, my American Dream

Red Chanel Lipstick

Two weeks ago I did something for the very first time in my life. Though I've done those things very often lately (since I'm living on my own in Amsterdam for two months now) this particular thing was très speciale. No, I'm exaggerating, but I do think it was something every girl wishes for at a particular point in her life. I bought a Chanel lipstick!

Though I'm not really into brands (I hate Louis Vuitton bags for the fact you see immediately what brand it is) and I'm not at all into expensive brands (I do love some designers, of course!) cause I simply can't afford them, Chanel is an exception. The elegance of the brand Coco Chanel established, the luxury of the products, it's all so... perfect.

Anyway, the reason I bought this lipstick wasn't because I had too much money on my bank account (I wish I had) but because I received a 25 euro giftcard of The Bijenkorf (a department store in The Netherlands). I actually wanted to buy a lot of make-up from L'oréal, etc. but they don't have those brands at this store. So I decided if I have to buy an expensive product, why not buy Chanel? ;)

After wondering through the Chanel collection for half an hour my eye fell on the advertisement of the new christmas collection. The beautiful Polish model Jac Jagaciak looked very sophisticated wearing dark red lipstick and a gold/black sweater. Since I was looking for dark red lipstick for some time now, I figured this was meant to be.

Dark red lipstick is a real eye-catcher. More than regular red lipstick, which is more natural. But I love dark red lipstick for the edgy look it gives you. Especially if you have green eyes, it makes them really stand out. And in this time of the year, with a dark green jacket or knitted sweater, or something gold and black at Christmas, you look amazing, really ;)

The lipstick is available until the end of the year and afterwards it won't come back in another collection at all. After two days of consideration, I bought the lipstick eventually and god, how happy I am I did.

But the real question is: is the quality of Chanel really better than the quality of any other lipstick? I have to say, but that's also because this lipstick is really matted, that I don't think it's true. After a glass of milk or wine I have to redo my lipstick, and I didn't have to do that with my l'Oréal lipstick. But the colour is perfect, just like the package.

The moral of this story, don't buy a product because of the brand, but because you think it's a good product. I'm still very happy I bought this Chanel lipstick, because it was exactly what I was looking for. But if I didn't have the giftcard, I wouldn't have bought it, cause Maybelline or Rimmel also sells these kinds of products.

And the most important thing: like Coco Chanel said so herself, 'Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress' and the same applies to lipstick. Elegance is something you create yourself, though a dark red lipstick can definitely help.

Riverside Blues

So much atmosphere in these paintings, makes me long for a cozy, warm afternoon in a jazzy café somewhere in Frisco.

'''The eye has to travel'' through the magic world of Diana Vreeland

'A new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, and what you will do in it later'. The dress Diana Vreeland, 'The Empress of Fashion' would wear, would definitely be an extravagant and eccentric dress. Because that's exactly how we can describe her personality and her life.

The documentary 'The Eye has to Travel', composed by the wife of Vreelands grandson Lisa Immordino Vreeland, gives us a quick look in the world of fashion. We see the marvellous editorials Diana Vreeland made as editor-in-chief at Vogue, the shoots with celebrities and the costume collections she arranged when she worked for the Metropolitan of Art.

With designers as Diane von Furstenberg, Calvin Klein and Hubert de Givenchy, models as Lauren Hutton and Veruschka, former assistants of Vreeland and her children as commentators we get to know how miss Vreeland was: an authoritarian lady with an exquisite view on fashion. She discovered many models and photographers and made them into icons.

'Diana Vreeland - the eye has to travel' isn't dull, not for a single moment, and that's not just because of the many colourful and outrageous images of the editorials - mostly shot in foreign places - and images of the 'Roaring Twenties' and Sixties, but because of the interviews with Vreeland.

She is extraordinary, everything she says makes you laugh. She has a certain self-deprecating and is hilarious because of the many striking quotes. Diana Vreeland has an opinion about everything and isn't afraid to say it. The way she sits in her flamboyant and completely red room, speaking with the writer of her memoires, with red rouge on her entire face and a rasping voice, you gotta love her.

If there's truth in everything she says, is the question. But that's a part of her. She always wanted to take the reader of Vogue in a world of imagination and let their eyes travel, even if they were just sitting at home. She had a romantic view on life but was very hard working. She called the world fake but that wasn't a problem for her. Why be natural why you can exaggerate? To be natural is a form of laziness, in her opinion. God, how she inspired me by saying that. Don't be like the rest, when you can be yourself, right? Wear what you want. Though Diana Vreeland didn't really look real on the outside, she is one of the most inspiring and honest persons I've ever seen in fashion. So much more fun than the cold Anna Wintour.

‘“The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris. After that, everything follows quite naturally.” Easy to say of course, but because of the infecting way of talking, we believe Diana immediately. She was born in Paris indeed, as the daughter of a British father and American mother. She loved to dance, that was her entire youth, she met Reed Vreeland when she was young and stayed with him until he died of cancer. She started working at Harper's Bazaar, with a column called 'Why don't you?', where she gave tips about outrageous things to do with your outfits, hair or children - even during war. Later she got a job as editor-in-chief at Vogue, where she was eventually fired because she was too expensive. At that moment, her would fell apart, but she glued it back to pieces when she got a job at Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The only thing that was disappointing to me, was that we didn't got to know a lot about her personal life. We did know she was very insecure about her looks when she was young, that she had a tough relationship with her mother, that she wasn't a warm mother herself either, and that she loved Reed, but we get very rare details about these facts. And this is exactly what made Diana Vreeland the way she was, I think. A hard working, real and inspirational woman.

Even people who have nothing with fashion, will admire Diana Vreeland for her fresh view on fashion, for her hilarious way of talking, for her persistence and for her real personality. Vogue wouldn't be Vogue without Diana Vreeland. She was unconvential and took risks and that are just two of the things that inspired me when seeing this film. 'You don't have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive'. Because that's exactly what she was.

Election Day

An even more anticipated they for me, and many of my fellow dutchies, than the elections in the Netherlands. As a fervent America lover (not everything about America, the country has many flaws as well), I find tonight very thrilling.
Will Obama remain president of the United States or will it be a victory for republican Mitt Romney? Though I'm not an America correspondent (would love to become one), here's a bit more information about the backgrounds of the two men, the expectations of tonight and my opinion.

In the relatively short history of America, the rivalry between the two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, has always been grand. Candidates travel through the entire country and spend millions of dollars for compaigns to win votes. Generally the states are very divided, for example New York and California appear to favour the Democratic Party and states like Texas and Louisiana are more republican.

This year, there's a battle between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. It became clear very soon that current president Obama was going to be the democratic candidate. On the republican front there was more competition. Eventually Mitt Romney was chosen to be the candidate.

In october four debates were held. The first was won by Romney, the second (between the vice-presidents) by Democratic Joe Biden and the last two by Obama. But this doesn't say anything, since it really is a neck-and-neck race. On this moment, Obama has 49% of the votes and Mitt Romney 48%. Especially the swing states like Florida make it a tense battle.

So what are the differences in opinions and plans between Romney and Obama? To name only a few things: Romney wants the super rich to pay less tax, he wants to invest more in defence, cut down on education. Obama wants to extend the health care program, operate roughly against Iraq and raise the taxes, among other things.

If I was to live in the States, the choice would've been a simple one: I would definitely vote team Obama. The plans and ideas of Romney are way too right wing for me, I don't agree with rich people paying less tax, cut down on education (like they do in the Netherlands as well) and invest more in defence. I find Romney an unpleasant man, who also shunned to pay taxes (via the Netherlands) with his company.

I have to say Obama hasn't all my support anymore either. Four years ago, he promised 'hope' and lots of 'change'. But in those four years, he appeared very disappointing. Many of the promises he made, never came out. He didn't close Guantanamo Bay, he didn't end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan immediately and he didn't find a solution for the illegal immigrant program.

Anyhow, I still have faith in Obama. He is a very powerful and charismatic man with a good heart and I think he made promises that were impossible to keep anyway. Let's hope tonight will turn out positive for Obama and let's also hope that, if he wins, his next term will be a decisive one. So American followers, unfortunately I can't vote, but if you can, please vote Obama!

Canvas Cotton Bags

They started as a useful and simple way for ecological conscious people to carry their groceries. Nowadays, canvas cotton bags are, beside still good for the environment, a fabulous fashion item. Many girls carry them on their shoulders whilst shopping or use them as a bag in which to put the books they need for college.



Especially the fact that the bags are a way to express yourself, is something that really appeals to me. I own three canvas cotton bags: one I bought at a concert of Will & The People, it shows their logo and on the other side it says: WEIRDO. Another I received at my favourite record store, it has a drawing of a record on it. And the other one was a gift from fashion designer Miriam de Waard, and it shows on of her designs. It's really beautiful.


But there are so many more bags I would love to have. That's why I wanted to devote a post to these bags. My personal favourite is the one that says: 'Think rich, look poor'. Hilarious but there's content to it as well. The one with Kate Moss on it, isn't really a canvas cotton bag in the way I described them up here, but it's just dazzling, thanks to the use of colours and Kate's gorgeous face.