Story Of Our Lives.

Joe Aimonetti took some beautiful stills from the short
Jillian Rabe produced about stumptown fashion called Portland Is Coming. The project was designed not to feature any specific designers or boutiques, but to be something digestable to remind the community what we do. We are beginning to tell the story of Northwest, Southwest, Southeast and Northeast Portland coming together to create all we are capable of creating. Shot all around town, in the four quadrents of the city--Mississippi, East Burnside, Southwest view from the hills--and they all meet on the bridge. Jillian had the sweet idea of casting the models from the areas they live in. We played around with hair and makeup, getting creative, inspired by how the young hot things do it here. Mission continues to build an atmosphere of support and profitability (read: sustainability) in the city we love in the industry we love.

Film to come by Cliff Sargent. Hair and makeup by Megan Rabe, Hanna Nissen and me. Wardrobe styling by Jillian Rae Jewel. Models Jillian Rabe, Sam Kamerman, Monica Kirnak, Nicole Cooper, Emma Pelett, Heather Rieder and Caelah Falbo.

Costume Season

Summer is here. We skipped spring in Oregon this year, so the sun is especially poignant today. I am ready for the rest of my life after this magical solstice weekend in the forest at Yachats with so many of my most glorious enlightening friends.

I love this guy's sexy feather shoulders. Costume making time!

Bo'ee, Come With Me

Enjoy these flowers by master Irving Penn. They are on my walls and have been in Vogue and in very lucky galleries and can serve as inspiration for a subtle kind of beauty. A beauty that is perhaps more than it seems... and is life even if at first seems like a death. I'm going to be bossy today. Look at these flowers. Listen to this music. Maybe it will be just what you need! Music heals by giving voice to those crunchy hard places within. The heartbreakingly beautiful songs by The Idan Raichel Project have helped my core find voice for years.
(I allow myself only one or two regrets per lifetime. One involves letting go too quickly of a great guy I met in the dorms freshman year of college. Best French partner ever, and so cute, though irritating that our French teachers thought so too and gave him better grades on our group projects.) The (one) other regret is missing the Idan Raichel Project when they came to U of Oregon and gave a free concert--I even interviewed and wrote the damn article about them! But now that is my new life mission. Even the titles of the songs carry an agonizing grace: Im Telech (If You Go), Hinach Yafah (Thou Art Beautiful), and my lifeline: Bo'ee (Come With Me). I go crazy if I don't do a mediation run to Bo'ee at least a couple times a week. When I need a little extra love, I turn it way down on my iPod and sleep with it playing into my ears on repeat. If you iTunes it, you will understand why. It is just the right vibration. Resets me. The perfect tool to give me an instant connection to that inner sacred, centered space within me. I can't understand the Hebrew words, but my soul knows that same sad song--Come with me, even though I know you can't.
No matter the season: Siyaishaya Ingoma (Sing Out For Love).

Clarity Of Thought, Clarity Of Heart

Satisfaction of one's curiosity is one of the greatest sources of happiness in life.

-Linus Pauling

See you on the 8.

Loving The Mute. Sometimes It Is Necessary

Shopping Nasty Girl and loving it.

Just Enough To Hold Us Until The Storm Can Settle Down

I don't want to die from a massive wave

I just want spring rain for my rose bush

I remember the feeling of dreaming, waiting, and doing in order to escape to that place of bright creative. Not that I didn't love the intellectual or social aspects of school, but I tended to place suffocating pressure on myself--the pressure and the daily mundane was a near-fatal cocktail. Go Ducks, go competitive journalism school, but it probably would have served me to go to a Waldorf university (do they even have those?) or been an art major of some kind. It is much more natural for me to be living like alice in wonderland than to be living in rules and guidelines quick sand. Much more enjoyable to fly rather than stand in suffocating, thick muck. To walk on earth with ease is a skill. Morning inspiration from a fellow wild child full of grace.

Loyalty To Life Of A Bird Or A Flower Reaching For The Sun

"Accept the fact that the achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness--not pain or mindless self-indulgence--is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values. Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume--and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility--learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness--and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man." Or a woman.

-Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

You Can't Steal A Gift

Gorgeous Lara Stone.

PDX Family Prom: A Family That Comes Together Stays Together

Here's a formula for living a life you love: Have great friends, plan cool adventures with them, work hard on projects that make you happy, only work on things that make you tick (or make you money), dress up, don't take yourself too seriously, listen to music, eat yummy food, drink Dry Fly vodka, stay up all night playing with your friends every once in a while (or every weekend or so), meet new great friends and let people you love know it!
Oh, and next year, don't miss the PDX Family Prom! Saturday night at Mt. Tabor Theater Just People threw the best prom Portland has ever experienced! (That is a scientific fact, I checked Wikipedia.) Just Peeps, Marv Ellis and the Platform, DJ Wu and DJ DV8 threw it down all night, and Phil and I MCed between sets, playing co-class presidents announcing superlatives, reminding prom goers to pledge their virginities* and get their prom photos taken by Moon Rok. I finally found a dress (mini gun-metal gray from Sloan boutique on 23rd) after my typical outfitting procrastination; everyone came looking so fly and fresh and steezy in their prom-wear!
(*Just kidding about the virginity pledge.) 56 hot Portland (and Eugene) old friends and new friends met at Bliss Cupcakes and boarded the trusty NW Navigator (aka Jillian Rabe's bus) (Jillian above with photog Shaun Mendiola) for the drive to Mt. Tabor. (We with the Just People/Jillian Rabe bus crew only take safe rides!!) Gorgeous Dry Fly Distillery rep Courtney Olsen Clarke and her hubby Jimmy Clark (from 94.7) miraculously showed up with millions* of tiny bottles of Dry Fly, and Just People manager Colby Hayden stocked the bus with PBR, so don't worry, no one was thirsty. Then we rode the bus and danced and sang and played music and watched music and took pictures and eventually made it back to the Cheerio estate in the woods to stay up all night long! (*Not really millions.) Ah, to be young again.

Top top, May 15th marquee. Above, sexiest couple Leah Haas and Just People drummer Alex Greene. Below, Alex and buddy ball Kevin Blackmore on the bus, Tory looking fly in his glasses and gear, Jillian and Tony "pinning" each other, Erica and Ryan in Bliss, Tim Shroyer and Tony sharing a quick celebratory prom smoke and fabulous Reem and Ari walking the red carpet.Thank you Shaun for all these great photos!! Two photos up, he and his beautiful girlfriend Jillian share a moment of love :) Above, Phil and I onstage, getting into character. (Me: preppy prom queen, Phil: goofy class clown. Oh wait, we didn't really have to do much to get into character.) (I swear I don't know what's going on with the whole prom queen thing.) Below, Just People: Scott leading the assembly line, Ian singing backup vocals and on his electric, and Peter on guitar and Todd kicking ass on bass. Above, Brook and Miss Alison Grise enjoying the micro brews and "de-virginize" prom punch from the bar. Below, Megan, Jillian and Ani looking gorge, and Kerri looking spicy and sexy! Great night is an understatement.

Mercury Show: Don't Miss It (Next Year)

--
Well, a week and a half too late to encourage you to come out for the Portland Mercury Open Season fashion show, but I'll give you a little re-cap on it! Huge loving shout out to sponsors of the show--Dry Fly Distillery, Ninkasi Brewery and Art Institute of Portland! All are so supportive of local happenings.
--

I had the privilege of helping Andy Lifshutz backstage assisting makeup artist Jeffrey Kyle and WATCHING AND LEARNING AND SOAKING UP ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING JEFFREY SAID AND DID. You see, to learn about makeup, I just did it. I worked hard, threw myself into crazy situations where I had to create under pressure. Create my ability on the spot. I ditched the idea of going to the Jemma Kidd Makeup School in London (for the moment) and just worked. Thank god my hand always seemed to know what it was doing even when I personally had no idea. I'm so grateful I had to work for it and didn't have my hand held through my learning process, but any time I do get the opportunity to watch a pro in action, I do not blink an eye for the entire application. Everything technical I have learned about makeup artistry has been from watching a pro just work.

I had the good luck of meeting Lisa Bass (of LBASS Cosmetics) in Eugene, and I apprenticed as her assistant to get me started--there I similarly absorbed EVERYTHING SHE SAID and trotted along behind her sweeping fabulousness asking question after question after question. I met top Portland makeup artist Kymm Ernst a couple years back on a Portland Monthly Magazine fashion shoot and nannied her beautiful children for a couple summers, constantly grilling her about her experience with photo shoots, magazines, models and makeup. When Andy mentioned he had this great makeup artist for the Mercury show who worked for years with Pat McGrath on the Paris and New York and London shows, and who just happened to mention he needed an assistant, I nearly fell off my bar stool and spilled my tequila sunrise! Hell yes I am free that night! And absolutely I will assist him!

Pat McGrath is my makeup idol. I've been reading about her and studying her work since I opened my first Vogue in middle school. Jeffrey was fantastic, hilarious and endlessly patient with all my questions. Andy's models and I grilled him about all our favorite style.com models he's worked on, and he gave us merry renditions of the crazy high fashion backstage drama. I learned so much new technical, and he was so empowering--he didn't hover or correct anything I did.

Andy's jewelry and armor stood out with the simple but beautiful metal makeup and those hot little body suits. In my opinion, he stole the show. (But then again, I was backstage the whole time.) Mr. Lifshutz is a talented young man. Do not underestimate the power of leather, mixed metals and found objects. ("My materials for this collection were gathered in Berlin, NYC, Mexico and Portland.") He is going to rock your world, so watch him closely. And be proud that he is from Portland and helping lead and represent our movement of fashion design. I brought his work with me to China and it got a lot of attention. Thanks to Lisa Warninger for these great photos.

Awesome job to the models: Dique Scott, Amelia Pape, model Adazoe and ballerina Mia Leimkuhler. I can't say it enough--I love fashion, and I LOVE Portland fashion. There's some good shit happening here.