Flight LGA// The Skinny of It// I Am

Flight LGA


Well this is the collection I'm going to submit for my Fashion Portfolio class in about 45 minutes. Honestly this week I wasn't really inspired or gung-ho about it as I was the previous week. The idea of travel still hung with me after the Howl collection so this week I decided to do one based on travel hence the name 'Flight LGA'; LGA being the airport code for 'La Guardia', one of the hubs I always go to on my way back from Toronto. This one was loosely based on Hong Kong street style (no I did not take the inspiration pictures- I found them on this Chinese lifestyle website. I joined it because they have a street style gallery) and origami paper airplanes. Check out the pockets of the jackets and the denim. A lot of the cutting and details are derived from the folds of origami planes and the fabrics chosen were predominantly on the cooler colour palette with lots of blues and greys. It makes me a little depressed looking at the figures compared to the Howl collection I did last week. Ah well. Lots and lots of hoodies this week with a lot of cable knit integration. The jerseys and knits are super soft with extra thickness and pile. The weather is getting cold quickly so I designed this collection so that girlfriends all over would want to snuggle closer to their boyfriends in these clothes. :D
Enjoy:


Inspiration page, fabric swatches and first set of croquis


I feel like this collection came out a lot more sober than my previous one



The next time I want to play around with sheers and translucency. I know: tricky tricky. But I have some ideas swimming in my head already.
And no, Rin, it does not mean their bodies will be exposed for your viewing pleasure. -_-
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The Skinny of It

I got out of my fashion portfolio class an hour and forty minutes early so my friend from HK and I decided to get lunch at Murray's, the local bagel shop near school. As we tucked into our bowls of lentil/chicken noodle soup and bagels stuffed with cream cheese, we talked about the pressures of being thin especially being Chinese.
I admit it, I feel enormous pressure to be skinny.
Surprisingly this pressure is not derived from Britney Spear's sudden weight loss nor the supermodels gracing the magazines. In actuality, I feel the pressure from all my friends around me. My roommate last night mentioned that she didnt want to get fat this weekend because her mom is visiting and they'd have to eat restaurant food; because she's losing weight, her body would naturally collect more fat once she started eating. She doesn't eat lunch, she snacks.
And then there are other people who are more subtle in their tactics: they eat a small portion of a given meal and saying they are too 'full' to finish it. Technically for any of those people who are environmentalists and wanting to diet by eating only a fraction of it, they defeat the purpose of eating 'healthy' or 'organic' or 'no red meat' by throwing out consummable food and wasting all the energy and material used to make the food in the first place.

It drives me nuts when friends watch their weight in order to be skinny. It annoyed me so much last year that in reaction, I gained weight by eating a lot. In defiance of the fear to gain weight, I would eat a lot to make the point that I thought they were really stupid. And then I went to HK, ate five meals a day and lost all the weight I gained in NY. Now I'm back and people have noticed my limbs got thinner and I guess they feel pressured to lose weight too. And I wasn't even intentionally trying to lose weight either but I know people are affected by it.

It's why I like to hang out with guys more- they eat a lot though they have faster metabolisms. I like sitting down with a slice of cake and a cup of tea and talking but it spoils the mood when I see my friend hesitantly looking at the pastry and calculating how many calories are in the cream and how much to shave off so it doesn't show on her face the next day. When I'm having Red Mango, I don't have to watch girls picking at it slowly waiting for the ice cream to melt so they could toss it out. It also annoys me to no end when we intentionally go out to eat something unhealthy, like a burger, and have friends sigh and comment on how fat they feel. Dude, get a grip.
I haven't gone to the gym in ages here because I realized I could lose weight just standing around in HK, walking up and down the slope to my apartment and shopping. XD So why pay $70/month in a smelly sweaty gym exercising like hamsters on a wheel?

Sighing and telling me your stomach is so small it can't fit anymore is a bunch of crap.

I can't stand it.
It's complicated; not only is it a physical tug p' war, but a psychological/emotional one. I don't want to ask those 'dieting' friends to eat stuff I bake in case I seem like the devil tempting them. As I said the other day, I show love through doing and making things- baking being one of them. And if do only accept it and eat only a portion of it, I feel a little offended because they didn't seem to really enjoy it because they were too worried about how many cups of sugar I used for the frosting. --

I am going to Boston today! Hooray! Back on Friday. My friend (not diet conscious thank goodness... I seem to get along with these people better. This may sound odd, but I open up both spiritually and emotionally to these people A LOT more because they are more secure in their personhood than those who are constantly harping on their own weight. My closest friends all love to eat) and I are staying in a Bed and Breakfast and we're gonna walk around the historic parts of the city.
Oh yes, I have also found a good dessert cafe called 'Finale'. ;)

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I Am

Whether or not we are aware of it, we are constantly having an inner dialogue with ourselves. So it's interesting when you become conscious and catch yourself putting yourself down or becoming smug because a friend did something wrong, and you did it right.
Yesterday I caught myself thinking about my friend and how I couldn't measure up to her socially. That brought on a whole slew of other reasons why I couldn't measure up that in a logical sense weren't really related but in my head somehow jumped the line; I'm not loud enough, I don't know any korean, I'm not pretty enough, not open enough, not cute, not sexy, I don't like to dance or sing, don't like to drink, don't like to go clubbing...
And as I was trying to pull anything out of the air looking for a reason to try and understand why I wasn't as socially attractive as my friend, I realized that I often focus on everything that I am not rather than all that I already am and can do.

I am a child of God.
I am a descendent of one of the Song emperors of China (at the climax of China's development in art, baby)
I am Chinese.
I am American.
I am Canadian.
I am fluent in English.
I can speak conversational Cantonese and French (Mandarin in progress!)
I am majoring in fashion.
I am majoring in sustainable design.
I am tall and relatively 'thin'. Wait- make that 'slender'.
I am memorable (for reasons see above).
I have anime hands.
I can bake.
I can draw; both realism and illustrative.
I can play the violin (well, used to)
I am a super fast walker- catch me if you can.
I lived in Chicago.
I lived in New York.
I lived in Toronto.
I lived in Hong Kong.
I lived in suburb.
I live in a city with millions of people.
I am a designer.
I am a photographer.
I am an artist.
I am Sam.