Paris Fashion Week: Day 1

First and foremost, I would like to begin—as I do all too often—with an apology: I'm sorry. I knew my resolve to return to blogging would last about a New York minute. What can I say? I'm a college senior. It's spring. I'm busy. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.

Luckily, I've been forced to get back on the blogosphere by the professor of my Advanced Journalism course, Pulitzer-prize winner and all-around awesome human being David Rohde, for an assignment. Thus, here I am again! I know— you finally feel that all is right with the world. I missed you guys, too.

Here's the deal: I have to blog from today until Friday about an ongoing news story or event. And, oh-so-serendipitously for me, Paris Fashion Week happened to start today as well— and in a surprisingly eventful way.

The first day of a Fashion Week is usually rather sleepy, with fewer and less prestigious shows scheduled than for the later days of the week. Today's should have been no exception. Only three designers showed their Fall/Winter 2012 collections—Cedric Charlier, Anthony Vaccarello, and Julien David—none of whom are particularly recognizable outside of those very much in-the-know about fashion (full disclosure: I had never heard of any of them). However, PFW 2012 has still managed to have quite a kick off.

First, came the news that 19-year-old supermodel sensation Karlie Kloss—who had been mysteriously absent from the New York, London, and Milan runways this season—walked in the Anthony Vaccarello show and is rumored to grace the runway again in the upcoming week.

Then, a [twitt]eruption of messages from fashion insiders and media outlets finally confirmed the whispers that Yves Saint Laurent Creative Director, Stefano Pilati, will be leaving the French fashion house this year, as well as revealed that Jil Sander will be returning to run her eponymous fashion label after the leave of creative director Raf Simons.

Finally, the Anthony Vaccarello (seriously—who is this man?!) show stepped back into the limelight, after the Huffington Post reported that one of the models fell on the runway and had to be helped off.

Considering the footwear at the AV show, however, it's no wonder. I'm sorry, but when will we learn—pointy-toed heels just don't work. For anyone. A) They make your feet look bigger, since you have unnecessary space in the pointy part. B) They are usually uncomfortable/difficult to walk in because their heels are pencil thin. C) Any attempts to fix said issues of discomfort/difficulty seem fairly implausible...Can you imagine a thin, pointy toe with a thick, wedge heel? Didn't think so. The few glimpses the HuffPo photos show of the clothing at the AV show, however, seem promising—especially the many asymmetrical necklines.

The Cedric Charlier show seems to be the only one that's gotten full-blown coverage in terms of having individual shots of each of the looks (see: NY Times Fashion&Style). While the construction and tailoring look immaculate, I'm fairly unimpressed. Considering how huge of a trend the military look has been in recent seasons, I'm not sure who at CC was thinking, "Oh, you know what would be REALLY creative for F/W? If we started off the show with a military jacket." Yawn. Also, nearly the entire collection is black or navy, which I know is common for the F/W runways, but is still something I have a hard time understanding. Who said color can't be your friend year round?

Fall 2012 NYFW Schedule...

Released officially today. Click and weep, people. Click and weep.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go think about how I'll probably be spending Valentine's Day evening dateless and freaking out about what I'm going to do post-graduation rather than watching the Narciso Rodriguez show. Hmpfh.

Strikes & Sandals? Protests & Platforms? Abolish Alliteration? Oops.

Sorry for the delay, everyone! My return to blogging has officially begun...albeit, in a pretty roundabout way.

See, at this moment, I was supposed to be in Little Rock, AR boarding a flight to Atlanta with my parents so that we could later board a flight to Lagos, Nigeria so that we could visit my father's family for 10 days because my parents haven't seen them since I was 3 (i.e. in 18 years) and because we miss them and because being in consistently 90 degree and sunny weather in January sure beats being in whatever freaky, bipolar, likely-due-to-global-warming weather we've been having lately. And such.

But, alas, if you watch the news, you've probably heard something or another about the nationwide strike that began in Nigeria yesterday due to the president's (theirs, not ours) decision to end a government subsidy that kept the price of fuel down for citizens, leading fuel prices to more than double...yeah...ouch.

In fact, Big Ouch for most Nigerians, considering they not only need fuel to run their cars, but also to power the generators they rely on for electricity since even in 2012 the government hasn't managed to figure out a way to provide power to citizens on a constant and daily basis. (Embarrassing aside: When I visited my family by myself in 2009, my aunt turned on the generator for me and only me every morning so I could straighten my hair...talk about #FirstWorldProblems. Also, thank God I don't do that anymore...(post about my hair transformation TK, obvi)). If you haven't heard about what's going on, read up! It's kind of a big deal.

And it's kind of the reason our flight to Nigeria tonight was cancelled and, for the time being, we are going nowhere, which has left us with:

Two parents, who nevertheless had to drive two hours to a Dillard's to return a jacket on the last day possible because my Dad was going to do so in Little Rock,

One utterly perplexed dog, who was picked up from the dog sitter after less than 24 hours this morning, and

One Anita, who promptly changed out of her strategically planned, cute-but-still-comfy plane outfit after picking up said dog and has now been re-watching Season 5 of 30 Rock in her pajamas for the past three hours.

Naturally, the logical thing for me to do while already trying to split my attention between Liz Lemon and updates from CNN, Delta, and Twitter– #fuelsubsidy, #occupynigeria– has been to to browse the Bloomingdale's website. It was there, in the "New Arrivals" section of Women's Shoes, that I stumbled upon these beautes:

Cynthia Vincent "Juno" Espadrille

Gorgeous, right? With that awesome, woven heal and bright Ikat print? Yet, while attempting to wipe the drool from my keyboard, I realized that they bear an eery resemblance to a pair of sandals my friend Graciela wanted this summer and that were also Cynthia Vincent...

Cynthia Vincent for Target Wedges

Well, for Target, that is. Obviously, we could go into the nitty gritty about where these two pairs of sandals were made, the quality of the materials used to make them, etc. etc., but you have to admit– at first glance, they're pretty darn similar. Light platform wedge bottoms...bronze-y insole...pink/blue/yellow abstract print...straps that criss-cross somewhere...

Of course, the one difference between them I do notice is that the ones at Bloomie's retail for $195 which, all things fabulous considered, is not completely crazy, but is nevertheless striking when compared to the $15 a pair of Cynthia Vincent for Target wedges currently sell for on eBay.

Considering I will be a college graduate in four-and-a-half months (i.e. with officially no excuse to spend my parent's money), the Target kicks are a much more realistic and desirable choice for me. Plus, despite that the more expensive pair is strappier and has a zip closure rather than velcro (seriously? they still put that on shoes?), I actually like the cheaper ones better because they have more yellow on them. Too bad they don't have them on eBay whatsoever (the ones I mentioned before are a different style of CVfT sandals).

If you were kind enough to read this far (i.e. you're my mother), you're probably thinking to yourself: "Did she really just begin a blog post by describing civil unrest in a developing nation and end it by comparing the high- and low-end versions of a designer's sandals?!"

Yes. Yes, I did.

... Happy New Year!

So...

Remember how back in, oh, September, I wrote this super-heartfelt post about how I promised I would begin blogging again? Yeah, that didn't work out so well. Which is why I feel the need to write another post about how I'm actually going to begin blogging again...

In 2012.

No, this time it's for real y'all! I'm ridiculously good at keeping New Year's resolutions for a month.

Until then, enjoy the last couple of days of 2011! And Happy New Year! May your celebrations be full of metallic and sequins. And may your outfits look NOTHING like what any of the actresses wore in New Year's Eve. Honestly, I was almost bothered less by how atrocious the film was overall (the NY Times summed it up nicely) as I was by how poorly it was styled. You know there's a problem when you manage to make Lea Michele, Katherine Heigl, and SJP all look weird. Wrong.

Cap sleeves have never done anything good for anyone. See: Hilary Duff in Lizzie McGuire.

OK, I realize that this probably doesn't seem that horrible, but I couldn't find a picture of her end-of-film outfit. Suffice it to say that skin-tight, long-sleeve, silver, latex-looking mini dresses are generally not great looks for people. Just sayin'.

Again, this picture fails to convey what was so offensive about Sarah Jessica Parker's outfit in the film. Three words: Fur. Lined. Clogs. I rest my case.

Sowwy :(

I have not posted in over a month and it is pathetic...I is sowwwy :(. Things happened! End of summer things! And starting first semester of senior year things! And just feeling generally uninspired because I'm in Providence and not NYC things! Blehhhhhh. Alright, enough excuses:

I, Anita Badejo, do hereby solemnly swear that I will make a concerted effort to begin blogging again.

For reals. I'ma do it. Just not right now because I have class tomorrow and I am tired.

For whatever few readers I still have out there– I see you random friends in Spain and Indonesia!– stay tuned! I shall be back and I shall rule the blogosphere! Rule, I tell you!

...

Or I'll just provide some fun posts on cute things. Whatevs.

There's Red and Pink Errrrwhere!

Until recently, I was under the impression that wearing red and pink together was still somewhat taboo. Then colorblocking happened and rules like that sort of went out the window, just like the "no brown with black" one did ages ago.

However, I still can't help but muse over how popular this particular pairing seems to be right now. First, I noticed it with this Fall's Lanvin campaign:


Then, with SJP's September Marie Claire cover:


And again today, when I saw Rashida Jones' outfit for the Our Idiot Brother (which, btw, I can't wait to see) premiere:


Though I tend to avoid wearing pink, I kind of don't hate this trend. There seems to be something ineffable about combining hot pink and fire engine red that just, I don't know, works. Have or will you be rocking this one, as well? Or will I be the lone bubblegum/hot tamale ranger walking around my college campus this semester?

Read the ELLE September Issue!

Gwyneth! The ELLE 25! A feature on my future husband Paul Rudd! Gorgeous editorials-- including one on metallics and another on polka dots! And promo pages written and proofread by meeeeee!

Run to your newsstand! Run to your supermarket! Run through the hills!

...

OK. I'm finished now. But really-- it's good, y'all. And I helped work on it. Ba-bam!