Play Time

I'm in Chicago, hanging with my sister in her beautiful apartment up in the Andersonville neighborhood after a long adventure day, finally getting to the long overdue post about the last Bus Family trip. Here's what's up:

Jillian Rabe Bus Family. Blue Moon Diner for some grub and a photo shoot. Queen of Hearts tavern, thank you bartender Johnny Harris. Pictures from Shaun.  PBR sponsor. Some pretty peeps, very fun night. Photo shoot from Darren Utt to come (far below with cigarette and Shwoods).

Chrome-Plated Guys & Dolls In Fat City

No cubes allowed--Bus Family Rockabilly night was a tickle. Photos from Shaun Mendiola. That guy has an 18 karat camera. Save me before I continue writing '50's slang.

The Freedom Of A Place

I love this shoot because it reminds me why I love fashion as art. (Not that I'd really forgotten.) The dresses, the styling, the makeup, the model, the photograph, the desert, the sky, the pile of skulls...I love the many layers to this. The best is art that isn't restricted by its form but rather freed by it. I am just as likely to run into this scene a mile out into the Black Rock Desert as I am to catch it in the glossiest fashion book release (Ten Times Rosie) and London photography exhibit this week. This collaboration features Thomas Wylde dresses, model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and photographer Rankin, founder of Londan-based Dazed and Confused magazine.

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There is a moment during nighttime when the energy shifts just barely, and the dark sky subtly clicks into place--a slight softening of the harsh black we'd grown used throughout the night. In the great expanse of a desert salt flat, your eye can take in the entire sky. Especially set against the harsh land dry...really everything the sky does out there is dramatic. When the sun starts its slow incline before dawn, you may catch some of the expressive skies you've ever seen. In an interview with style.com, Rankin said of the cold desert dawns: "When the sun comes up over the salt flats, you really think you're in another world!" Sometimes if you're lucky, for a moment you really are.

Wow Look At The Rock On Her Finger!

Speaking of Sahlia, check out her beautiful website, if you haven't already. Not sure, but she may even have a few of these one-of-a-kind raw crystal rings left! You might want to go into her studio and try them on so you can fully grasp how precious and powerful they are. I am lucky enough to be the proud mama of one of these lovely little amethyst flower babies. Sahlia said the only condition was that I could never lose it. All summer I wore it as my trusty little love nugget to all my festivals (yup even made the journey there and back from Burning Man) and on all my outdoor hikes and adventures. I always imagined that I'd need to be a blushing bride-to-be before I wore major bling (hah), but I turns out I am granted the pleasure of bling without the obligation of lifelong vows. Amethyst key words: Protection, purification, Divine connection, release of addictions. Sign me up!

Why Wine Is Forbidden

When Sahlia texted me about coming by her studio Friday to help her name the jewels in her new bridal collection, I was reminded that I had never posted the finished photos from our shoot! The models were so fun to make up and I love Sahlia's breezy natural but accentuated style. She's a great director. She knew exactly what she wanted: "Nothing green in the shots! I want those plants out of there!" I'm always a fan of meticulous attention to detail.
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For full credits from the shoot, shot by Ben Pigao and assisted by Shaun Mendiola, go here. Above, Sahlia giving an extra touch up to Hannah's lip gloss.

For a wedding collection naming gift (and oh yes--engagement gift!!), I stopped by Powells and picked up my favorite edition of The Essential Rumi, edited and translated by Coleman Barks. We're going to drink some red wine, get some Rumi inspiration and name those sweet jewels.

Because I Love This, I Am Never Bored.

Now, I want you to understand something before I go on and on. And yes, I AM about to go on and on. Some time around summer solstice, I melted into a giant wet puddle and would have stayed like that for the rest of my life (going on like a wet blanket) if the summer (with all these loving friends and the 9 glorious days that reached shockingly high temperatures in the low 90's) hadn't come along, mopped me up and finally put me to good use. So allow me this. I want to tell you about the 10 special days I spent on the 8 at the Oregon Country Fair in the sacred woods outside Eugene. And yes, I really do want to tell you about getting grounded in the woods at Tenmile, as well as the 10-mile hike through old growth (in coastal woods that would be just perfect for geocaching). I want to go on and on about frolicking with real-life fairies during a very real mid-summer night's dream and witnessing those talented musicians onstage at the top of Cougar Mountain.

I really will tell you about the gutted, converted school bus my friends painted and filled with couches and all the trappings to ferry us to the Burning Man. I could write a thousand blog posts about our week on the playa in Black Rock City--the sunrises and sunsets, that epic neon double rainbow...the fairies and bunnies and all the beautiful, intelligent freak flags that were flying high. I've got to tell you about the art...and the music...and how incredible it was to be on United States soil (or alkaline dust more like it) but meet just as many people from all over the world as I did Americans. Oh, and how we almost literally weren't even on planet Earth for this entire time.

I have to take it slow though, because this summer was a summer of healing, and that healing is precious. My REI lightweight camping gear got packed and unpacked constantly, and I swear more nights than not this summer I had use for my headlamp. I had the pleasure of loving Oregon in a way I'd never given myself time to before. All that time spent at the coast, on Mt Hood, in the desert rafting on the Deschutes, and cozy time in Eugene and Portland really did me right. Summer was like one giant decompression. And trust me, I needed it! I'll get to some of it. But for now, I must bask in a summer well lived.

At top, my dusty gypsies basking in the sunrise outside the temple at dawn (me in the gold turban and puffy pink Missoni coat). Also from the playa, biking from a wine tasting (no doubt) to a roller rink (obviously) with Taran midday, and last... my favorite art car. Reminds me of my Grandma Louise and the butterflies I used to draw for her. These wings really flapped.

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