Just in case spending more wisely was one of your resolutions for 2010, there is a Clearance Sale happening on the Calvin Klein website through Sunday, January 10. Everything , except for new arrivals, is 25% off at check out. Stock up on some wardrobe essentials at great prices. Here are some of our favorite picks:

WOMEN

Ink Printed Dress, $66.75 until January 10

Tie Front Print, $30 until January 10

MEN

Tuxedo French Cuff Sport Shirt, $35.70 until January 10

.

Bonded Zip Funnel Jacket, $61.95 until January 10

Tags: Calvin Klein, Calvin Klein white label, ck.com, Sale Watch

One of our favorite jaunts at Ala Moana, Honolulu’s shopping mecca, is Panya Bistro. This past Sunday, after a run to Williams Sonoma for a bagel slicer, measuring spoons, and Illy coffee beans–OK, perhaps a little bougie but we all have our moments–we headed down for a little liquid meditation. While Panya’s usual happy hour is from 4 to 6 pm, happy hour is all day on Sundays and Mondays, making Panya a perfect spot to cap off  the weekend… or ease the way into a new week. The New Year’s new healthful diet (sweet potatoes, broccoli, apples, amongst other excitement) put some limits on enjoying the appetizer selection, but thankfully, there was still room for a little Tanqueray in a classic martini ($7). Paired with some steamed edamame ($5), it was ideal for catching up on the latest fashion happenings in French Vogue.

Tags: Ala Moana, martini, O'ahu Happy Hours, Panya, Tanqueray

I’m sure I had heard the name Carine Roitfeld before. I’ve read French Vogue, which Ms. Roitfeld has edited since 2001. But honestly, two years in graduate school (much of which was spent thinking about past centuries forgotten by most) is enough to interrupt anyone’s connection to the outside world. So here’s the photo that brought Carine Roitfeld back to my awareness, glamorous but defintitely enjoying the the Purple magazine party at the Boom Boom Room in New York City (Source).

Now that I am back in the real world and have had a chance to reconnect with the reality I’ve missed for two years, I must say that I’ve become quickly enamored of Ms. Roitfeld. As the name of the site IWantToBeARoitfeld.com suggests, perhaps I am not alone in my admiration. I was particularly amused by the site’s recent posting that the New York  Post has labeled Carine In and American Vogue’s Anna Wintour Out, but I’m sure that many would rather spend an evening out with Carine than with her American counterpart.

But what makes me so fond of Carine Roitfeld ? Her past explains enough for me. Before taking on French Vogue, Carine was a leading stylist best known for her work with photographer Mario Testino and designer Tom Ford. Jess Cartner-Morley summed it up best in the Guardian :

She made her name as one part of a glorious trio, alongside Tom Ford and Mario Testino, who together created a decadent aura of sexual allure around the Gucci brand in the 1990s. Ford designed the clothes, Roitfeld styled how the models wore them, Testino took the photos – the Gucci they created together tapped into a look everyone wanted a piece of. (Source )

Without me knowing at the time, Carine was creating those iconic images that would influence my aesthetic taste. I can’t help but look back at the images from the nineties and think that they are the epitome of cool, or at least of a certain kind. And Carine was at the nexus of the cool. She told the Guardian :

Gucci was totally in my image,” she says simply. “Tom used me as – how do you say? – his female half. He would design clothes, and then ask me how I would wear them. [...] That’s what is important in a picture sometimes: the way you roll up the sleeves of a shirt, the way you handle a bag, the way you cross your legs, these can make the biggest difference.” (Source )

That sense of personal style and confidence is what it’s all about, transcending merely turning oneself into a billboard of consumer consumption by showing off labels. (See what Carine thinks of that obsession here.) Of course, a fashion editor would never outright say that one doesn’t need to be wearing the brands that buy advertising, pages, but isn’t classic French style based upon not what you’re wearing  but how you’re wearing it? Just as one of my professors once commented about literature, tout est dans le style – everything is in the style.

For more of the Roitfeld exprience, check out the recent CNN documentary from 2009 :

Here are some additional articles:

• “Anti-Anna” from New York magazine replete with veiled criticisms in the mag’s typical style.
• An éloge from Hedi Slimane, former Yves Saint Laurent and Dior designer

Tags: Anna Wintour, Carine Roitfeld, French Vogue, Gucci, Hedi Slimane, IWantToBeARoitfeld.com, Mario Testino, Tom Ford

Today’s Hawaiian word of the day is ‘iwa, or the frigate bird, one of the most famed birds of Hawai‘i.

The ʻiwa appears in the kaʻi, or entrance hula, “Hoʻopuka ka lā i ka hikina” (The Sun Rises in the East”):

Haʻa mai nā ʻiwa me Hiʻiaka.

The ʻiwa dance forth with the Goddess Hiʻiaka.

(more…)

Tags: frigate bird, Hawaiian history, Hawaiian language, Hawaiian word of the day, Hiʻiakaikapoliopele, hula, Kamehameha the First, man-of-war bird, ʻiwa, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, ʻōlelo noʻeau (wise saying)

This great clip off of Vogue.fr was a great reminder of why I love French Vogue, a publication that’s more dedicated to creativity and style than simply selling a lot of issues. In this episode of “La minute d’Agnès”, the one and only Mademoiselle Agnès, French television fashion commentator, demonstrates, in leather bustier and heels, how to make a table Vogue.

While you can get the idea of how to put together a Vogue table even if you don’t speak French from just watching the clip, here’s the jist of it.

For those of you with a passion for three things in life—l’amour, la mode et le Vogue (love, fashion, and Vogue)—you’ll simply make four even columns with Vogue magazines, then place a sheet of glass on top. Mademoiselle suggests about 30 Vogues per column, about 40 cm high. (Of course, you could make a table like this with any magazine, but I doubt the finished product would be as glamorous.) If you are not building-inclined, you may want some help. Once your columns stand straight, be sure you chose the best covers to go on top, as this is what you will see through the class. (Mademoiselle Agnès chooses several with Kate Moss.) Finally, place the glass on top, and you’re done.

While Mlle. Agnès doesn’t say this, a table Vogue wouldn’t probably not be good idea for a home with kids or pets running around. (Just imagine the disaster.) Moreover, no heavy objects would probably be advisable . Perhaps, a copy of French Vogue and a demi-tasse with some Illy espresso, non?

Now, onto the Mlle. Agnès’ construction of the table Vogue.

Tags: French Vogue, interior design, Mademoiselle Agnes, tables

Today’s Hawaiian word is hīhīmanu. I particularly like it because it may refer to the ocean, the land, or aestheics. The Hawaiian Dictionary tells us that hīhīmanu can translate into English as three distinctive things:

1. sting rays or eagle rays
2. elegant, lavish, magnificent
3. a peak on the island of Kaua‘i

The linguistic example that Pukui and Elbert provide is:

He nui ka hīhīmanu o kā lāua mau anaina ho‘okipa i hā‘awi ai.

They gave very lavish receptions.

Reading directly from the Hawaiian, I arrive at something a little more literary: “Great was the magnificence of the receptions that the two of them gave.”

Semantics aside, I’m in love with this word. There is a definite otherworldly beauty to the rays, which seem to fly within the oceanic realm. Now, which idea did hīhīmanu first describe, I’m not qualified to say. Were things of elegance called hīhīmanu in deference to the beauty of the underwater creatures? Or were the rays that the people of old saw swimming in the water so attractive that they were called hīhīmanu, an incarnation of the elegant?  Perhaps, a Hawaiian language scholar will let us know one day.

In any case, I think hīhīmanu is great addition to an aesthetic vocabulary. It transcends simple physical beauty and captures that special quality that immediately captures one eye just like the graceful flight of the rays behind the ocean surface. I prefer it over the other two words for elegant, ho‘ohiehie and hiluhilu, which simply refer to appearance alone. With hīhīmanu, we’re connected to beauty, ocean, and land in just four syllables. He keu o ka hīhīmanu paha kēia.

I found it unfortunate that, when searching for information about sting rays online, many sites talked about the dangerous barbs that string rays carry. But sting rays are not aggressive animals and will only attack in self-defense. Perhaps, if people could avoid sensationalism and allow the hīhīmanu live in peace, they could see their real beauty instead of seeking a threat.

To close, check out this clip on the Galapagos from the BBC to see hīhīmanu embodied.

Tags: aesthetics, BBC, eagle ray, Galapagos Islands, Hawaiian language, Hawaiian word of the day, hīhīmanu, Kaua`i, sting ray, ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES…

I admit that I usually skip over the local Honolulu papers and send my browser right over to the New York Times. This is one area in life where the former New Yorker in me refuses to give up control. But the articles are just too good. This past week, I enjoyed in particular…

• Suzi Menkes’ “American Beauty”, a meditation  on the passage of classic, simple American sportswear : in an interesting exchange of roles, European designers are taking up the simple and practical, while formerly pragmatic brands like Donna Karan and Calvin Klein are delving into the details. Fascinating.

• I was moved and disturbed by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s opinion piece, “Times to Remember, Places to Forget” about the progressive disappearance of any local flavor in the American landscape. This particular passage got me:

When they [Americans] remember the Starbucks where they met the one they married or the Gap where they lost the one they didn’t, they will be marinating in memories that happened everywhere but not somewhere, reliving experiences that are located in time but dislocated in space.

From a Hawaiian perspective, I find it even more disturbing to see it happening right here in Hawai‘i at an accelerating rate. Burial grounds literally covered by a Walmart, the continual progression of generic SoCal-style suburbs across the ‘Ewa plain, where we can over our beds in Hawaiian-syle quilts that were actually made in Southeast Asia.

PACK UP THAT ED HARDY,  THE NEW TATTOO TEES ARE HERE

So it seems just about everyone has an Ed Hardy t-shirt. But honestly, when Jon Gosselin  (of the now defunct reality series Jan and Kate Plus Eight) is donning them (see here), perhaps it is a sign to move on. I first heard about Horiyoshi the Third via style.com. The line is based upon the work of Japanese master tattooist Horiyoshi III. Born Yoshihito Nakano, the master was bestowed the title from his teacher. Collections are available for both men and women, covering basics like t-shirts, sweaters (yes, cardigans too) and scarves—all emblazoned with designs inspired by Horiyoshi distnctive aesthetic. While some of the oni designs were a bit too menacing for us, this groovy sweater in light blue from the new Spring 2010 collection seems less intimidating but seemsnevertheless stylish and bad-ass at the same time. Pieces are meticiously done in limited runs in Japan, making a Horiyoshi tee more of a luxury buy. But don’t the finer things in life usually cost a bit more? Distribution is currently limited, but the Horiyoshi brand is in the process of adding an online store to their site. http://www.horiyoshi-thethird.com

VIKINGS WITH TATS: NORDIC DRAGONS BY COLIN DALE

While we’re on the subject of tattoos, I’ve been considering getting one for a few years now. But as I always have to go for the complicated and arcane, I have . Though I have a few different ideas in my head—I’m going to have to get my Hawaiian genealogy down before I get a traditional kākau—the one design I’ve been contemplating is a dragon. Well, actually two. A Chinese flying dragon, fei long zai tian, in a sleeve, completed by a Nordic dragon either on the other arm or on my back, as a nod to the other half of my ancestry. Ideally, I’d get one from Colin Dale, Canadian-born tattoist of Nordic origin. He draws his inspiration of Viking tradition as well as the indigenous Inuit of northern Canada where he was born. The only problem is that Colin lives in Copenhagen. So for now it seems, I will have to wait for one of his tattoos when I finally visit Scandinavia. In the meantime, I will continue to check out Colin’s portfolio on MySpace.

Tags: Calvin Klein, Colin Dale, Daniel Gilbert, Donna Karan, Ed Hardy, Horiyoshi the Third, Jon Gossein, New York Times, suburbs, Suzi Menkes, tattoos, Viking