I am still alive.

I've been MIA - shame on me.

You can find me on elephant journal these days, editing others' blogs and writing my own:

My Love Affair With New York City.

Busy week!

It's been a while, and my excuse is work, work, work, castings, castings, castings, plus of course the fact that there is just no point posting images of myself in my yoga pants heading to Crunch, or wearing jeans and a tank top to walk the dog. But the other day, I actually remembered to take a picture on my way home before I changed into my gym clothes and went to hit the treadmill...!

• floral romper: Wyatt
• shades: Coach
• chain strap bag: Marc Jacobs
• platforms (not in picture - sorry!): Elizabeth & James
• no jewelry except for pearl studs - I figured the rest of the outfit was busy enough for what I was doing that day
• ice coffee from Dunkin' Donuts... and the little gray, mollusk-like thing is just my very unstylish key ring! :)

Making your signature style more casual

What if you have a full day of castings, voice class and a chiropractor visit, and are craving pearls, chain strap bags, powder pink mixed with black, pencil dresses... but need to be comfy and able to move fast from appointment to appointment without losing your cool or getting bleeding blisters? Not to mention, most of your castings call for a "casual" look? Well, you compromise!

• jeans: Miss Me
• powder pink t-shirt: H&M
• black cardigan: Flash (chain store in Sweden)
• sandals: ShoeDazzle
• silver necklace and earrings: old stuff that I've had forever... couldn't really wear any statement pieces for what I was doing today
• chain/pearl belt: some cheap wholesale store on 6 Ave in the 30s (you know, one of those where you can "only make a purchase if you're a wholesaler" but as soon as you wave a couple of dollar bills in the owner's face, he'll let you buy whatever you want :D)
• chain strap bag: Kate Spade

Working hard for the money

Just came home after 12 hours on set - thank God the shoot was in the Meatpacking district, close to home! And thank God I remembered to bring flipflops for the breaks! :)

• jumpsuit: DVF
• necklace: French Connection
• bangles: street fair
• earrings: gift from my mom
• belt: Filippa K
  
• purse: Kate Spade
• shoes: was wearing Calvin Klein heels all day but walked home in flipflops... there was a time when I would rather have died than done something that unfashionable, but these days I just have no shame.

Not a very glamourous day

This is how happy I look when I have to spend my Sunday sifting through the aisles of Home Depot, trying to figure out whether Krud Kutter, Greased Lightning, Goof Off or Goo Gone is the best choice for removing permanent marker from clothing.... instead of catching a Vinyasa class and then going to the park. My boyfriend, the accomplished graffiti artist, had gotten Sharpie on his new Lucky Brand jeans and as the lady of the house, it was my job to take care of it. Le sigh...

• halter crochet dress: can't remember the designer - got to keep it after I worked for her as a showroom model at Coterie
• feather earrings: street vendor on Astor Place
• bracelets: Judith's Jewelry
• tote & shades: Coach
• shoes: not visible but I'm wearing golden strappy sandals!

And if anyone wants to know, all those stain removers that I mentioned above can suck it...! I had no luck with either of them, but got the stain out completely (without damaging the fabric or stripping out any of the blue denim color) by using Garnier Fructis hairspray and a fair amount of paper towels. Who'd have thought!? :)

Hanging with the pup

We're basically on our way out - I'm just trying to decide on which ice coffee flavor I want today... French vanilla? Pistacchio? Chocolate toffee? Chocolate raspberry? Coconut cream?

And also, I need to pick out a handbag - I am thinking something oversized and floppy. Decisions, decisions...

• maxidress: Nicole Miller
• slippers: DKNY
  
• necklace: street fair find
• sunglasses: Coach
  
• puppy: purebred Chinese Crested Powderpuff - doesn't get much better than this!

Date night!

It finally stopped raining so we can go out to dinner! :)

• knitted romper: Nanette Lepore
• camisole: H&M
• sandals: ShoeDazzle
• necklace: Enz's on 2nd Avenue
• bracelet: Scoop
• bag: Kate Spade

Hope everyone's having a great weekend! xo

An almost unbelievable transformation

From tired and cranky New Yorker to 1920s bohemian party girl on the beach!

Before:

• jeans: Arden B
• top: Kookai
• cardi: Stenstroms
• sneakers: Champion
• sunglasses: Ann Taylor
• bag: Kate Spade

After:

• all vintage.... linen harem pants, beaded silk blouse, men's brogues, crochet beret, costume jewelry - most fun outfit I've worn for work in a very long time! Wish I could have kept the clothes! :)

Thank God for empire dresses...

Feeling super fat and bloated after having done three long days/nights on set with no sleep and nothing to eat but junk (yeah, you can only have so much fruit and veggies before you want something "real" and then you're stuck with all the stuff that is loaded with fat, sugar or sodium... ugh). Betsey Johnson to your rescue!!!

• empire dress: Betsey Johnson
• butterfly necklace: Mandee
• silk floral earrings: Pilgrim
• tote & shades: Coach
• shoes: fitflops (I have a 4 hour walk coming up, so I don't really have a choice!)

Happy Sunday, everyone. :)

Before and after

On the left: half asleep on my way out 6AM-ish yesterday...

• denim shorts: Miss Me
• top: Theory
• hoodie: Balettakademien
  
• slippers: Aldo
• bag: Longchamp

On the right: after the hair/wardrobe/makeup transformation at work.

• vintage, vintage, vintage

And I get to do it all over again today.... thank God I was not born 100 years ago, 'cause the 1920's look is really not very flattering on me.

Last day on Damages before summer

In other words, spending this beautiful day indoors. :(

• dress: gift from a designer, I think it's Uzi
• belt: Forever 21
• ballerina flats: Delia's
• bag: Furla
• shades: Coach
  
• earrings & necklace: gray pearls... what else?

One of those days

Studying voice over copy, juggling phone calls, trying out new recipes, selecting images from a test shoot, preparing for an audition... no reason to dress up today.

• shorts: Delia's
• top: Nanette Lepore
• necklace: Urban Outfitters
• bracelet: Snoe of Scandinavia
• earrings: diamond studs, got them as a gift way back
  
• bag & sunglasses: Coach
• shoes: golden fitflops

Also, I'm propped up with the latest Hollywood Reporter and my puppy Angel. I feel sorry for everyone who has to wear a suit today - it's 70ish in New York. :)

Castings on a Saturday...

... not sure how I feel about that.

• romper: Diane von Furstenberg
• belt: Filippa K
• heels: ShoeDazzle
• bangles: street vendor stuff
• necklace: A Bit Of Whimsy by Jillian Matney... I blogged about it here way back!
• bag: Coach

Oh, and that's my puppy in the background. :D

On- and off-duty

On the right: 6AM earlier today, on my way to my part time TV job. Refusing to wear a suit, as usual...

• dress: my very first LBD that I bought as a teenager at a small boutique back home... it's still looking pretty good! :)
• belt: Charlotte Russe
  
• heels: Steve Madden (I wisened up and changed into ballerina flats right after I took the picture - don't want the sound guy to hate me)
• pearl necklace: high school graduation gift from my parents
• pearl earrings: gift from my Mom
• bag: Kate Spade
• sunglasses: Coach
  

And on the left: later at night, on my way out to enjoy the evening with the boyfriend and our puppy.

• jeans: Arden B
• top: Filippa K
• sneakers: Champion - got to keep them after a runway show that I did... I'm aware that sneakers are frowned upon by fashion editors and their entourage, but guess how much I care? They're perfect for the doggie park. :)
  
• bag: same chain strap tote from Kate Spade that I used earlier in the day!

Also, I lost the pearl necklace but kept the earrings. Why not, right?

Trader Joe's bound

Dressing up for that endless line....

• denim cutoffs: a massacred pair of Miss Me's
• top: Massimo Dutti
• platforms: Elizabeth & James
• necklace: ShoeDazzle
• bangles: "forgot" to return them to the stylist after a job that I did... ooops
• sunglasses: Coach
• bag: Coach Kristin leather satchel in shell pink (seems like this one is becoming my signature bag this summer, so expect to see a lot of it in these posts)

Braving spring allergies in my namesake dress

No sleep last night... hello puffy eyes and stuffed throat. I almost feel like going out in my jammies (only getting ice coffee and a banana) but felt like I need to make some kind of effort in case the paparazzi show up...! :D

• dress: "Malin" dress from Delia's - yes, it was indeed named after yours truly and designed with my style in mind!
• shoes: DKNY
  
• purse: vintage find
• sunglasses: Coach
• bracelets: Judith's Jewelry
  
• necklace: bought it from a broke-ass girl who was selling half of her closet on Craigslist after she lost her job during the recession

Quite a mix-and-match... I hope anyone who's reading this is not feeling as crappy as I am right now! xo

I am back!

Today's outfit:

• Sandals: Elizabeth & James
• Denim cutoffs: Delia's
• Fringed top: Forever 21
• Sunglasses: Coach
• Bag: Coach
• Crochet earrings: my stylish colleague Nubia :)
• Bangles: cheap 14th St street vendor crap
  

Will keep the blog simple for now due to lack of time... more to come.

Prison fashion

Who said inmates can't rock pearl studs and golden handbags?! The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Center at Nassau County Correctional Facility just got a little bit more ritzy!

More jail talk right here. :)

I am back - what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Maybe.

So... my last post back in January was about the tragical loss (and much less tragical regrowth) of a couple of my eyelashes. Well, how's almost knocking out a couple of your teeth, as a comparison?! That's what's been the main item on my agenda with lately, not to mention NYFW a couple of weeks ago, which was also keeping me busy to some extent. This is not an entirely bad coincidence, though, as this is for sure the time when you want to be as skinny as possible - not exactly a problem, given the foods I am currently limited to eating.

I am on my way out to Brooklyn Heights to do yet another day on Gossip Girl, so this post will be nothing but a brief announcement that I have now returned to blogging on a more regular basis, in between visiting my dentist, popping painkillers and working, working, working. Not to mention eyeing some goodies on Madison Ave, that I plan to acquire as soon as the more substantial paychecks start rolling in again....

Last but not least: like my fuzzy vest in the picture? Support rural craftsmen of Himalaya, Nepal, and get your own at Nirvanna. :)

... and "see" all of you soon - if anyone's still reading, that is.

Don't try this at home!

I am as far from being a makeup junkie as one could possibly be. I am all about slathering on moisturizer and eye lotion after my AM shower, running a comb through my damp hair and moving on to something I find much more interesting and am willing to spend hours on, if need be - that would be picking out my wardrobe, shoes and accessories for the day. Because really, if you have good skin and look decent overall without artificial help, then why bother with shadows, foundation, powder and all that jazz?

I'm sure you all can hear that I am not very self-critical... let's just leave it at that! However, as much as I prefer the au naturel look, I do have one guilty pleasure: eyelashes. The darker, the thicker and the longer, the better in my book. Hence, there should be no surprise that Twiggy (collage below), Jean Shrimpton (pictured above: for Bazaar in the 60s), Edie Sedgwick and their likes are my lash icons forever and ever... and that I consume mascara like a fat kid scarves down McDonald's.




















I have favorites for every price segment and know exactly what to pick up regardless of whether I'm shopping at Bloomingdale's, Sephora or Duane Reade - I usually reach for the FiberWig or DiorShow, but I have tried a good couple of budget options with decent results too. However, I don't care much for what seems to be everyone else's cheapo favorite: Maybelline Great Lash. I feel like most of it always ends up underneath my eyes before the day is even half-way over... not exactly the look I am going for. Eventually, though, a makeup artist delivered the painful explanation as to why this under-eye smudging kept happening: my lashes are too short and hence the mascara comes off gradually every time I blink. Really....? And I thought it was because Great Lash is a cheap-ass drug store mascara that should not be expected to last throughout the day without a sufficient amount of clean-ups and touch-ups? My bad!

Either way, short lashes are better than no lashes, right? Imagine the trauma I experienced back in October, when I was dumb and lazy enough to make an attempt at waxing my eyebrows at home (it was raining and I didn't want to walk half a block to the nearest spa!).... and some of the wax accidentally dripped down on guess what. Never mind that basically all of my left brow mistakenly came off (I used those idiotic strips that you put on top of the brow to get your desired shape, and the wax kept running down on the inside of the strip) - what really made me freak out was losing half a row of eyelashes! Can you spell p-a-n-i-c?

Needless to say, during the weeks that followed, I was hiding 24/7 behind my bangs and sunglasses, and did absolutely no other work than movie/TV background: no castings/auditions are required for those jobs, and very often you can get away with doing your own makeup. Also, I was obsessively applying one of those Latisse knock-offs that you can get online for cheap... and to my surprise, it turned out to be money and effort well spent. By Thanksgiving most of my lashes were back to an acceptable length, and way before Christmas, they had grown into a fringe that was putting Bambi as well as Mary Quant to shame. Now, about two months later, I can't even sit down in a makeup chair without having the artist compliment me on my long, dark lashes - kind of a big change from a couple of months ago, when they used to pull the falsies out of their kits first thing as they saw me walk in. Who would have thought?! Let alone this new, lashy look of mine is all contingent on my addiction to a scary growth serum, the ingredients of which will probably kill me or at least make me blind long before retirement. Oh well... until then, I will enjoy the benefits of achieving a perfectly doe-eyed Twiggy look using not much more than a couple of coats of Maybelline Great Lash - no more smudging, and no more pricey FiberWig!

To conclude, you would think all this suffering should have taught me the hard way that DIY beautification is not for amateurs like myself. Well, not at all - I just took a stab at dyeing my hair at home in the sink last weekend.... with disastrous results that required a professional color cleanse, a new single-process dye job and a set of highlights to somewhat recreate the color I had in the first place. No further comments! Also, by the way, I still keep that jar of microwaveable eyebrow wax in the bathroom cabinet. You never know....

Everyone, do tell me about your DIY hair/skin/eyebrow screw-ups.... I can't be the only one who's guilty of doing them once in a while, right?

Other pictures in this post: Anja Rubik for Vogue Paris 11/2009; Gina Brooke mink diamond-adorned falsies; Vogue Australia spread 10/2009.