The chicest spot to be this holiday season (if you’re in London, that is) is Élan Café, a lovely destination to experience the “rosy life” firsthand.  The café brings back the lost experience of cafés being a cultural destination, which should be cultivated again all over the world.  Coffee is not just a commodity, but an experience.  Alexandra Miller, the owner and founder, has a background in fashion, where she has been able to transfer her cultivated tastes to the café experience, stating that she is “…passionate about wellness.”  The café is partnered with Union Roasters, Britain’s first roasters to source beans directly from farmers, which include suppliers from Costa Rica, Rwanda, Guatemala, and Ethiopia.  At Élan, you will find no shortage of drinks to choose from and bites for breakfast, as well as an array of pastries and cakes.  Their commitment to ethical farming practices adds a rosy undertone to a lovely spot to enjoy coffee with your friends and loved ones!  A definite go-to when in London.

Hi, loves!  Here is my Holiday Gift Guide for 2018: a list of ideas for gifts for family and friends.

American Red Cross Donations for California Fire Victims: It’s an extreme situation here in California at the moment, and donations to the victims are essential.  With the holidays quickly approaching, this is an important contribution to the thousands of families affected.

Voluspa Candles: These candles are my all-time favorite.  Each of the scents are so wonderfully pungent, I am a long time fan of these.  Peninsula Beauty carries these in San Francisco, and Amazon also carries a large collection of Volsupa candles.  My favorite scent is the Goji Tarocco Orange, but all of the scents are quite lovely.

Book of the Month Club Subscription: For reading lovers, Book of the Month Club is the most classic way of inspiring reading in your family and friends.  The book selections are so creative and the novels that you can choose from are all current, so it’s a great way to stay plugged into what’s happening in the publishing industry and stay on top of the hottest bestsellers.  I highly recommend, it’s a great gift, and you can buy a range of subscriptions, so they don’t just offer annual, but 3-month subscriptions, which is also a nice gift!

VENUS ET FLEUR Roses: It goes without saying, I’m all about roses, but more recently, I’ve become super impressed with the plethora of flower arrangement companies that can last up to a year in how they are preserved.  The single rose, “Lé Mini,” from VENUS ET FLEUR is a great accessory to any room in your home from a side table in your living room to your vanity or nightstand!  They come in every color imaginable as well.

Pearl Bath Bombs: I can guarantee one of your girlfriends is all about having bath bombs and taking baths, and what’s especially awesome of these?  Each bath bomb has a ring!  These rings are no joke either – they range in value, and some can be valued at up to $5,000.  That’s not bad for a $15 bath bomb.  I still don’t understand how they do this, but it’s great, so I’m not asking questions…

Kendra Scott Jewelry: For the bestie, it’s always nice to splurge a bit more.  Kendra Scott has a fantastically extensive range of mid-priced jewelry.  From statement pieces like large earrings to dainty necklaces and matching bracelets, you can find a piece that can add an elegant statement to any outfit.  Sofia Vergara is a big fan of the brand’s earrings!

Kylie Cosmetics Holiday 2018 Collection: Kylie Cosmetics keeps getting more refined with their color combinations; seriously, it’s like each palette is a new kind of genius in how the colors are combined, ranging from super bold pigment to bronze and mauve tones.  What is especially great is Kylie Cosmetics is now available in-store at Ulta Beauty (beauty lovers rejoice), so you can check out the full range in store – if it doesn’t sell out in 15 seconds.  This time around, I’m loving on the adorable snowflake packaging, it’s like they’re wrapped already 😉

If you’re a millennial with an Instagram account, you’ve probably heard of or follow a number of the following fashion companies: Fashion Nova, House of CB, Pretty Little Thing, REVOLVE, Nasty Gal, Meshki, Tiger Mist, Showpo, Lucy in the Sky, SABO SKIRT by Thessy & Yiota…  The list goes on and on.  These brands have also helped facilitate a lifestyle movement – it makes sense: when you take tons of pictures and you post many different looks, you certainly don’t want to have repeat looks, which quite honestly, is the most rational reason for the rise of fast fashion.  Some of these brands have a legitimate celebrity following.  For House of CB (standing for “celeb boutique”), the London-based company has avid celebrity followers from the Kardashians to Jennifer Lopez to Gigi Hadid.

Unreasonably, however, is how they have come to be voices in the fashion industry’s notoriously stodgy way of operating in prestige – along the lines of The Devil Wears Prada, the fashion industry has always had a pecking order of how legitimate the history of fashionable garments have come to be (there really is a reason why Armani is the king of clean lines, OK!).  In comes the unforseen disruption of social media and an opportunity arises: fast fashion – fashion that is produced quickly, cheaply, with a sexy look in mind; the less material the better.  And it works.  Fashion Nova, based out of Los Angeles, has over 530k posts with the hashtag #NovaBabe on Instagram.  Users wearing their clothes can use their hashtag and promote themselves.  Some women who use this hashtag can become featured on their  Instagram page, which in turn, makes them become more followed through the company’s exposure, which has 13.7 million followers as I write this.

Katerina Rozmajzl, a 21 year old Sherri Hill model from Georgia has 534.3k followers as I write this (also in part to her look as a real-life Disney Princess Elsa).  Her consistent use of the #NovaBabe hashtag and the company’s gracious partnership with her on social media has helped facilitate this widespread following and allowed for her to use her page as an opportunity to model new clothing.  In turn, companies sending her new pieces to model, which is essentially a collaboration: she wears their clothes and gains exposure and advertises their clothes in turn – it’s the new guerrilla marketing.  The influence the company has given her has helped her to launch her own cosmetics company “Katerina Cosmetics” – which is exactly modeled on “Kylie Cosmetics,” which is no coincidence – Kylie Jenner, also 21, is noted to be the most high profile wearer of Fashion Nova clothing, being a fan of their stretch jeans.  Rozmajzl advertises her line of fake eyelashes and spends a lot of time on social media responding to her followers.  When I asked her on Instagram which brand of bikini she wore one time, she DM’d me and told me that it was Beach Bunny Swimwear.  The personal touch of social media has given power to a new arena of the fashion industry with fast fashion, and it’s not a silly part of fashion that will go away anytime soon.

Olivia Culpo, social media influencer and former Miss Universe has partnered with a number of brands including DSW – Designer Shoe Warehoues and GHD, a hair company.  Most notably, however, is her partnership with REVOLVE, another fast fashion brand based out of Los Angeles.  She was invited to the first ever, “REVOLVE Awards” this past week at the Palms Resort and Casino in Las Vegas.  This was an opportunity for the brand to highlight women who are standing out on social media, including honoring Kendall Jenner as “Icon of the Year” and model/actress Emily Ratatajowski as “Woman of the Year.”  Interestingly enough, all of these women attended this awards ceremony, which means they are well aware of the opportunity that their public partnership with fast fashion brands provides – a larger platform to promote their own.  Suffice it to say, fast fashion is not going anywhere, it’s only growing, and perhaps worth paying attention to some of these brands before they become one of the more powerful facets of our global culture.

Around San Francisco, you will see a few walls painted with a distinct style, this is the signature graffiti style of street artist Fnnch, who is best known for his murals of honey bears.  At this year’s Burning Man, Fnnch brought a sculpture honey bear weighing almost 1,500lbs and was 3 stories tall.  His unique style of art, from my perspective, is less graffiti as it is an opportunity for dreary city landscapes to come alive in colorful ways; his art is truly one of a kind.  My personal favorite work, below, is a poppy painted on the side wall of a classic Victorian style home at Alamo Square.  It’s a nice break from the gloom the city can have.

Catholic imagery is omnipresent and it’s alive.  We see it from popular culture events like this year’s Met Gala, which was a part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” exhibit, a controversial exhibit of Vatican garb on loan from the Holy See, an exhibit with perhaps an obvious Chaucerian-style critique of the Church.

We see Catholic images on HBO’s The Young Pope, which doesn’t exactly paint the Church in a benevolent light.  And then, more notably, we see it in the humility of Pope Francis, as he speaks above in a TED talk which I highly recommend watching.  Most importantly, it’s worth noting how all of the “pomp and circumstance” dulls the pure message of hope and love that Jesus spoke of, and popular culture highlights this lack as the Church’s main fault.  Truthfully, and perhaps this is worth highlighting, I think in a time of global unrest, it’s worth highlighting the importance of culture, family, and togetherness, which Catholicism has done well in upholding.

The cultural validity that the faith still holds is very real, and it’s with this platform, that the Church can begin evolving, as it clearly has – with its allowance of the garb on loan to The Met, and its projection display of nature and endangered species onto Saint Peter’s Basilica by a San Francisco-based firm, Obscura Digital, with the intent to illustrate how the Holy See is #OurCommonHome to inspire change around the world’s climate crisis.

While many would believe that the Church holds true to values that are outside of our current time, the Church could not be more relevant in giving people a sense of hope and belonging, so we experience a complex confluence of issues.  The Blessed Virgin’s presence as a mother figure is important in illustrating the importance of strong female figures in one’s life, and often the erasure of this relationship between the BVM and Jesus creates discord and undermines the family.  The Blessed Virgin Mary is a female figure to examine thoughtfully.

We see conflicting images in popular culture, such as the sexualized Victoria’s Secret Angels; historically, angels have never been depicted in a sexualized way, and with this use, it allows for the viewer to immediately make the connection that angels are naturally entities that are not holy, because they are human and sexual.  My perspective is that we all find a balance, where we continue to think critically about images that become powerful in popular culture and also take time to appreciate the importance of values that have stood the test of time.

“Virtue has a veil, vice a mask.” – Victor Hugo

I was 12 years old when I visited Venice, Italy and began what is today my undying love for Venetian masks.  They are a symbol of the Carnevale di Venezia (the Carnival of Venice), a time when all Venetians are able to let loose and enjoy all of their most hedonistic desires before Lent.  The festival brings up to 3 million people to Venice each year!  The mask symbolizes an opportunity; it’s speculated that they originally were used as a way for social hierarchy to be blurred amongst Venice’s inhabitants, but they also serve as an opportunity to not identify who is who when one is doing naughty things.

I’ve been collecting masks from Venice since that trip to Venice and I am still passionate about the cultural importance of these masks.  They are a symbol of Venice’s history and they are a reminder of the timelessness of tradition.

Carta Alta creates the masks for many Hollywood films and parties.  The masks featured above in Gossip Girl were created by Carta Alta.  They also created Playboy’s 60th anniversary commemorative mask (below).  A couple of the masks in my family’s collection are on display in my bedroom, I prefer to look for masks with a lot of detail and have unique pops of color (the hot pink cat mask was a great find!).  I hope that my passion for Venetian masks is shared by others for years to come to ensure that this never becomes a lost art.

Makeup is one of my passions, but makeup can also be overwhelming for many; there is so much out there, from high end department store makeup to drugstore makeup, from the countless YouTube makeup videos to the celebrity looks we see and wonder if we can do on ourselves.  I was lucky growing up to listen and learn from my mom’s beauty tricks as her degree is in cosmetology.  Makeup can be simple and glamorous – here are the products that I have found to be essential to my routine, day and night.  For day looks, I go lighter and for night looks I just go darker 🙂  Read on to see what I love and swear by.  My list seems lengthy, but it’s really not too much at all!  These are the things that I swear by!

Foundation: Clinique’s Superbalanced Makeup (without SPF) in Breeze (32)

Concealer: Glossier concealer in Light 

Loose Powder: Covergirl Clean Professional in Translucent Fair (I use sparingly on my nose)

Blush: Milani rose powder blush in Tea Rose

Highlight: High Beam by Benefit Cosmetics (for my fair skin tone, it adds a sweet pink shimmer)

Eyebrows: Maybelline Great Lash Clear Mascara (for grooming my brows in place)

Eyeshadow: NYX Cosmetics palette in The Natural Shadow or LA Colors palette in Bronze Queen

Mascara: L’Oreal Voluminous Original in Blackest Black

Lipstick: Revlon’s “Gentlemen Prefer Pink” or Revlon’s “Love That Red“

Lip Liner: L’Oreal Colour Riche in Forever Rose or L’Oreal Colour Riche in Always Red

Lipgloss: NYX Cosmetics Butter Gloss in Creme Brulee

It only took the sound of an explosion and a power outage in my neighborhood yesterday to actually wake me up to the reality of how important emergency preparedness really is.  I live and have lived in California for my entire life – I am used to the concept of the “Big One” happening and have pushed the thought far away in my mind, until yesterday’s power outage.  I think I was sufficiently spooked into the reality of what it means to actually have to deal with a serious emergency.

That’s what led me here, FEMA’s link to creating your own emergency preparedness kit (seriously, do it!) and the types of information that you want and need on hand in the event of an emergency.  Ready.gov has tons of interesting information, and I highly recommend bookmarking it.  A small backpack from Amazon with the “basics” seems sufficient, but it’s actually not – the items you can collect on your own can be more personalized and make you thoroughly think about what an emergency can involve – it’s random, but even remembering things like toys and books for children and feminine hygiene products…  Also, filling out information beforehand is so crucial, I am starting to think, in the event of a real emergency, I’m not sure if it’s that easy to quickly recall the memorized information that is second nature to us.  Just think, it’s better to prepared than not…   Are you ready?

 

If you are close with me, I have probably mentioned to you about how I avidly follow a miniature chihuahua on Instagram (@machi5536) named Omo and she resides in Tokyo, Japan (I think).  Omo is the funniest pup on Instagram by a long shot (I’m serious), but I’m not a huge fan of the effort that Omo’s owner takes in dressing Omo and her companion in silly outfits, but I will admit, it’s still amusing.  Nonetheless, Omo’s personality is so vibrant and so adorable that she is a little ray of sunshine in my Instagram feed everyday, that I truly enjoy every moment of.  Whoever Omo’s owners are, I am grateful that you have shared little Omo in all of her adorable hilarity to the world.  We love it.  #ILoveOmo

There are so many reasons to smile for Smile Train.  This organization has a sustainable business model where they empower local doctors to provide cleft lip care within their communities.  Through this model, there can be more change affected as there is more opportunity for children suffering from cleft lip to get the surgery that they so desperately need.  The organization has given over 1,000,000 cleft repair surgeries and every 5 minutes, a child is getting the surgery – lives are literally being transformed with this organization.

This is a remarkable concept that can be scaled quite well; as far as the organization itself goes, they have done a remarkable job with their marketing and their partner organizations – partnering in 2016 with The Miss Universe Organization, where recently Miss Universe Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters represented the organization at the United Nations.  Another partnership done well has been with Kylie Jenner and her company, Kylie Cosmetics, which donated almost $500k in proceeds from her “lip kit” products alone, and helping 600 children with receiving the much needed surgery.  Another successful partnership has been with Christie Brinkley being their Goodwill Ambassador, representing the organizations at events for more than 10 years.