WOTTONCOOL

Sarah and I braved the winds, rain, clouds and crowds to arrive at Zouk last Sunday for Flea & Easy, the Fashion Elite Edition.

Upon entering the tunnel we were greeted with a horde of people which were not at all representative of the blizzard mob of humans that were in the main area. Crowd control, anyone?

For some strange reason, (our instincts must have met in mid air and locked pinkies) we automatically sniffed our way to the hansel stall to scour for samples. But Abracadabra wasn’t there! The space was so tiny they had to pack away most of the stuff and only display those pieces that have survived at least two previous sample sales.

It was Sarah’s field day of buys and trys. She is succumbing to vintage, and I, to futuristic! Gasp. She used to not understand why people are so interested and intrigued by vintage stuff. It’s second-hand, it’s probably smelly, maybe it carries some diesease! I never could appreciate shiny stuff in the weirdest of shapes and proportions.

Anyway, here is her stash!

$5 Sesame Street t-shirt

$20 Vintage mustard accordian pleats dress. Quite pretty!

$8 Printed cropped jacket. She wore it to Blueprint with her boots and it was awesome. Say “Aw-we-soo-meh!”

She bought another long white dress for $20 as well but she didn’t let me take a photo of it!

I got a wooden ring and navy patent skinny belt from Rosalind of 987FM. for $6! Sweet

Here’s what we wore to Qiu Hao’s

Jo
Top: Basic t-shirt from River Island
Bottom: High-waist pencil skirt from Bysi
Shoes: High gladiator sandals from http://www.urbanog.com
Bag: Rattan oversized clutch (actually a document folder), thrifted
Watch: Bracelet Link Watch from Marc Jacobs

Sarah
Top: Grey V-neck kimono-inspired top (by a HK designer) from Central
Bottom: Black shorts from Ojay (purchased from Sydney, Australia)
Shoes: Brown round-toe pumps from John Little
Bag: Black Adidas bag from BHG
Watch: Silver Casio watch
Accessories: Fujitsu tablet in black foam sleeve

Before Qiu Hao’s Something’s Growing

Us in the cab

I made Sarah Imitate the Burberry ad outside Taka

Sarah and I were ALMOST going to give Qiu Hao a miss, because who IS Qiu Hao?He’s a pretty talented Shanghainese that graduated from St Martin’s (Just like Jo Soh of Hansel). I only got to know about this after a brief google search that led me to two videos -

I liked to organic, earthy feel that reverberated through the easy-on-the-eyes drapery crossed with minimalist shapes in video, so I grabbed Sarah and I some tickets! It was worth it

In this collection for the SFF08, I don’t know what it is supposed to be really, but there was this recurrence of a loosely draped and layered lobes(?) on shawls, jackets, and other pieces. The reason for their presence intrigues and evades me all at the same time. There is also this delightful haphazardness in the exaggerated lengths of stray cloth falling precariously from wraparound tops and dresses. These two aspect keeps your eyes hooked to the runway. There’s so much movement in the pieces, especially since the models were walking at lightning speed(!). (Never mind that the music was a tadddddd bit loud and there was this cute little boy on the opposite shielding his ears from the might speakers)

Different treatment of the lobes - soft, lush and layered vs stiff, staggered and few
Photos from Yahoo! News

Hypnotic strands of fabric trailing the models’ a tad too-fast-too-furious walks

(An aside: yes, I do realise how bad my pictures look in comparison to the professionally taken ones. I shall borrow the bf’s camera and hopefully leech some of his leet skills for Wednesday’s show :D)

Most of the pieces had these cute peekaboo (because it’s not exactly bare) back from an over shoulder and looped back drape.

I think the picture explains it better, haha!

The designer, Qiu Hao flanked by two lanky models
Photo from Yahoo! News

He said in the video that fashion is about chance and I’m glad he managed to chance upon that. We could use something like chance and luck in the future too! Talent too, of course. I think if he weren’t a fashion designer he might become a monk (look at his head!), haha. I get the feeling that he’s pretty down to earth, un-hoity-toity and friendly. He only has a very loud pair of gold shoes, lol.

Shiny, happy gold shoes!
I think the show was quite a visual feast, if you look out for the littlest details (: Pity the turn-out wasn’t good enough to fill the entire tent.

Yay for emerging international designers!

Sarah and I have been attending a few shows at the Singapore Fashion Festival and we were lucky enough to be randomly allocated front-row seats, yo! (Okay, so it was only two shows so far :P)

Outside the tent

The proximity of our seats to the runway!

The very first show we went was Ashley Isham, where he showcased his Spring/Summer and Autumn/Winter ‘08 collections (according to Harper’s Bazaar).

It started off with edgy-prettiness with a variety of long and mini ensembles of white and speckled black, cinched in with a clean black and white waist.

Then came in pops of red! orange! and purple! and red and purple together, broken up by dark emeralds and plums!

Now that we’ve eased in to colours, shiny glimmering plates of blue surfaced on the skirts and dazzling sheets of silver plastic were gathered into pretty, and hypnotic folds. I swear, I HEARD the plastic material as the models sashayed past. Ooo, it was so close, the details were pretty overwhelming. I was tempted to stretch a finger out to feel the material haha.

The kind of dress you could hear ruffle!

Glimmering plates and boggling prints. These are genius!

There was this absolutely gorgeous printed dress that Pinks (Sarah) and I went gaga over. It makes you want to swoon over it, paint rainbows and nibble on strawberries and cream

Pictures that don’t do justice to an aweeeeesome dress

I was kinda hoping there would be more of his outrageous stuff, the kind of thing you have to see in the flesh. What with the sumptuous metallics and diaphonous fabrics!

More shows pleaseee!

Blows faux snow from the runway to make my wish!