cityart wichita fashion

Archive for April, 2009

Creating outfits consisting of cheap trendy clothes is difficult to do while avoiding selling your soul. Prior to traveling to the major fashion cities such as NYC, London, Paris, and Milan, I was pretty clueless. After living abroad for a while, I got an idea of how the locals could afford to dress so well. Here are some of the basic tips:

It’s necessary to know at least the guidelines of the timeless, big city styles you find in the major fashion cities. You want to avoid looking as if you just strolled out of a midwestern Highschool. Most of the clothing you find aren’t coated in huge, gaudy labels as can be seen on tastless mall clothing and fake designer gear. If you go for even, solid patterns and colors and pay attention to the silhouette (doesn’t need to be slim, but rather well-fitting), you’re already way ahead. Where can you find this stuff without spending a fortune?

One way to get high fashion, designer-brand clothing at a fraction of the full (and unaffordable) retail price is via sample sales. Even when living in a city where these sample sales are abundant, it can still be tough getting ahold of them. Fortunately, you can do it all online! Within recent years (and months) exclusive sample sales are starting to pop up on the internet. If you’re interested in this, just google “internet sample sales” or similar keywords.



Even though this special type of sale offers great discounts, it can still be too costly. The way I’ve found most people get cheap trendy clothes is just picking the right retailers. There are a few, select stores that pay very close attention to high fashion trends in designing their lines. You’ll be able to get nearly the exact same style high fashion brands offer at literally a tenth of the price. These shops are Zara, H&M, as well as Uniqlo, and occasionally Urban Outfitters. You should also look to American Apparel to offer the same styles – American Apparel offers a ton of plain, well fitting clothes for relatively cheap.

Things to avoid:

Stay Away from the mall! Virtually any clothing find within mall department stores is cut to fit awfully baggy, and unflatteringly. Most Americans are way overweight, and even these clothes are too big and awkward looking on most people. Also, stay away from designer clothes on auction sites like Ebay! Even though some items may appear to be legit (coming with hologrammed tags and whatnot), they’re going to be fake and extremely low quality. If a manufacturer can make the clothes, surely they can make authentic looking tags, right?

Don’t forget about thrift stores. If you have an eye for style or check up on what’s going on in the fashion world, you can easily put together old or random clothes into stylish looks. I’ve seen a lot of people in NYC and abroad try this and it can work if you know what you’re doing. For more fashion tips and secrets, visit our blog (below)

 

These are some of the things you can do to improve your memory:

• Watch game shows on television and try to answer the questions. This has 4 main benefits:

1. Revision – you’ll remind yourself of stuff you used to know.

2. Practice – the effort to retrieve information will unblock passageways and get the whole process working better.

3. More knowledge – you’ll learn new stuff. I’ve heard it said that this ‘clogs up’ the brain and makes it harder to find the bits you want. Nonsense – that’s like saying that athletes shouldn’t train because they have only so many miles in their legs. The more the brain works the better it gets.

4. Monitoring – you can judge on a day-to-day basis how things are improving.

• Do general knowledge crosswords. Everything that applies to TV game shows also applies here.

• It has been shown that learning to do cryptic crosswords makes you smarter, and your memory will benefit along with everything else.

• Trivial Pursuit – traditional or DVD versions. The same benefits apply to similar games such as ‘Scene It’.

• Scrabble. You might not immediately think of this as a memory game but Scrabble is all about recognizing patterns of letters and recalling how these go together to form words that you have seen or used in the past. There’s also the mental exercise of working out where to put your word to get the highest score without creating too many opportunities for your opponents.

• IQ tests/quizzes. You can get these in books, magazines and on web sites. They provide great thinking practice and there is also a direct memory component because you will quickly realize that you have come across this particular type of problem before and probably learned a technique for doing it. The more questions you attempt, no matter how unsuccessfully, the more you will remember. It has been said that IQ tests don’t really measure intelligence; they measure how practised you are at doing IQ tests – Great! That’s what we’re after here – learning.

• Any other game you can think of that makes similar demands on your concentration and recall of rules and techniques – various card games, chess, hangman, battleships, noughts and crosses (tic tac toe) etc.

One thing you’ll notice about all of the above – They’re mainly ‘old fashioned’ games with no ‘virtual’ component. The vital factor is that YOU do the thinking, instead of merely reacting to somebody else’s electronic creativity.

An obvious exception is the Brain Training series for Nintendo DS. I haven’t seen any statistics measuring how this affects memory and thinking skills but my personal reaction is that it’s a valuable tool.

Another bonus of traditional games is that they tend to have a social aspect – they involve other people whereas the electronic kind tend to isolate you (yes I know you can play against other people but the primary relationship is still between you and the machine.)

If, however, you find yourself with a pack of cards and no-one to play against, try a game of solitaire. There are many different versions and most of them involve close concentration and memory.

In the next article we’ll look at other things you can do to boost your memory.

Tom Nolan, The Dentist in Town

www.dentistintown.co.uk

 

Fashion Has no Borders ™ FHNB Fashion & Accessory Exposé ™:  November 18th and 19th  

A multifaceted fashion exhibition will take over the Roundup Centre in Calgary this November, bringing together students, and fashion industry experts as well as both high-profile and Canadian retailers. 

Fashion Has No Borders ™ President Sharon Cornwall is excited to bring the Fashion & Accessory Exposé ™ to Calgary after a successful run in Toronto. This new and innovative show will provide retailers with the chance to further develop their reputation as respected members of the industry, as well as present entertainment and promote fashion industry education by connecting business leaders with emerging talent.

 “The show will launch and link Canada’s up-and-coming designer superstars with many of our Nation’s quality local source manufacturers, all in support of an industry that is a crucial mainstay of our diversified economy,” said City of Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier, “Thousands right here in Calgary are employed in fashion design, manufacturing and retailing. The Fashion Has No Borders™: Fashion & Accessory Exposé™ is their showcase, a chance to prove how very, very good they are.”

 Fashion students will have the chance to come and showcase their designs and creations on the runway, and future beauty school students will be able to gain more insight into the colourful world of fashion by talking to industry experts about their experience. Young Calgarians will also have a chance to perform during the ‘Fashion Theatre’ portion of the runway show. Prizes and educational bursaries will be awarded during the exposé, including ‘Designer of the year’ and ‘fashion photographer of the year’.

 “Fashion Has No Borders™: Fashion & Accessory Exposé™ is a great opportunity for the Olds College fashion students to get exposure to the industry they are studying,” said Terry Males, Chair of the School of Business at Olds College. “In Western Canada the networking at ground level of the fashion industry is difficult to find.  There is no real resource that is easily accessible to young minds to discover the extent of how rewarding our industry can be.”

 The wide array of retailers at the exposé will be split into a handful of differing categories. Kiosks featuring vintages pieces, accessories, and sport and street-inspired fashion will each have their own “zones.” Additionally, there will be zones for higher profile designers, menswear, beauty products and personal wellness.

 So, for all the fashion lovers and future fashion entrepreneurs out there, get ready for the Fashion Has No Borders™ Fashion & Accessory Exposé™ happening on November 18th and 19th from 12 P.M. until 9 P.M. both days. Cost for entry is $9, or $5 for high school and beauty school students with ID. For more information visit http://www.fashionhasnoborders.com.