Event review: Tim Gunn

I drew this in the dark because I'm polite. 

I'm quite certain Tim Gunn walked out onto this stage and thought to himself "Those ferns are beat!" The ferns had brown tips. Cough, cough. 

Otherwise, my date was lovely- she stuck with me through the long signing line and took a cute pic with him that you can see here on her tumblr. She's my first internet-stranger-lady date of Arkansas.
I went on tons of internet-stranger-lady dates in NYC and usually it's good. I started stalking this girl online when she was tweeting from a Maddow talk at the Clinton school.

Tim talked at length about restructuring the fashion design program at Parsons and I feared that all of this beauracratic talk was lost on the audience, who I'm sure really mostly wanted to hear what Heidi eats for lunch. He really talked so much about the administration at Parsons.

He did mention how he created the senior review and I can attest to how freaking cool that process is, as I went to see (photo album here) my friend and former intern present her collection. Each student gets ten minutes to present a final senior collection in front of a panel of various fashion professionals. It was one of the coolest things I went to while I lived there.

He was really great and sweet and gracious until this one little point toward the end where he brought up Tavi Gevinson and made this erroneous claim that her parents bought all those designer clothes for her and that fourteen year olds don't know anything. That stabbed my heart, but not too bad because I'm not the biggest Tim Gunn fan anyway.

I didn't let him know that Tavi is now running a feminist website for teenage girls (that girls my age love too!) His negative comments about her success showed his age, in my opinion.

I have flipped through the book which he's promoting, and it is a patriotic text book of American fashion history. I did tell him that seeing the full page photo of Michelle Obama made me run back out to the lobby to get a copy for myself. It did.

I was really just there to get some old gay man wisdom like what Tom Ford gave, and to get the book signed for my play-brother and his boo.

Parsons Sr. Thesis Show

Today was awesome! My friend Gilda did her senior presentation at Parsons. Parsons is Fierce. I've seen the FIT Student show and this Parsons crowd kicked that ass! (Con-Ed classes are like $500 - owww!)

I don't watch Project Runway but I kept thinking this was like real life project runway.

Each student had 10 minutes to present a fall 2010 line. The front row was a panel of judges/professors/jurors if you will. I was able to leave work early since I went in before I officially started to do some fit modeling. I was free to enjoy all the presentations but I don't know how to control my DSLR camera and the pics aren't that hot but here we go!

Here's Gilda!

She is going to be really legit one day. She already is. I think she'll be famous. Or, I should say, her brand will be famous!

This boy is going to be high-profile. He had such a wonderful, funny personality. He talked about the care instructions. I loved that he cared.


I feel yucky comparing him to Austin Scarlett, but that's who he reminded me of. BUT - This guy was really outgoing and smart and I love him. He's the only white person in the class. Maybe I could go on a minority scholarship? Hmm....

I loved the technical structure and details in all the garments. These people know how to mother'fucking build some clothes, damnit!


This girl (right) had it going on. I want to copy her blouse that she has on.

She was sponsored by a silk company! So many of these guys were ultra-professional in their thinking. It was so awesome.

You can see my photo set on Flickr here. It's about 50 photos.

I had a realization today - I don't hate fashion anymore. I'm at a good place. Vogue came in the mail and I didn't sneer and shove it away from my face. I pored over the fashion spreads and enjoyed it. I don't hate fashion anymore. I think I'm back in the spectator seat. It's not smothering me with a pillow in my sleep anymore.

I ride the bus across 5th Ave every day now. There's a clear hand bag in the window at Prada that I want to get to know, but I know that's a horrible idea. I need to stay on the bus. I took a bus up Madison Ave yesterday and it was really heart-wrenching. It's too much fun up Madison Avenue. So many wonderful, horribly expensive things.

Today was just really nice. The technical seamstress at work is Chinese and she offered half of her lunch to me and it was homemade dumplings and they were DELICIOUS! I wolfed them down and enjoyed Teen Vogue while I ate 'em up!


I took a pin that I got for 50 cents in Arkansas and turned it into a necklace:


And here's my outfit of the day - with jacket:


No jacket but even worse photo quality:


Days like this - really awesome days - make me want to stay in New York City forever!
Oh wait, there's even more! I got a new ride!



It's not quite ready yet, but I'm so excited! It has the teeniest bit of pink trim. It's a Schwinn Cream. Can't wait! Summer of Velocouture is on!