Latest Fashion Trend in Hong Kong

If intelligence is a determinant of one's sex appeal, then there is no clearer indication of one's brain size than the size of one's glasses.

While I am not a big fashion experimenter on a daily basis, sticking to slim-cut basics and 4-inch heels, the same way Tiger Woods stick to blond women, every once in a while, I go overboard experimenting with new looks.

A while ago it was the Blair Waldorf look, for which I bought a headband that came with plumes of feather and a ribbon so huge that it will put the headgear of a Qing Dynasty princess to shame. Even then, I only enacted scenes from the Case of the Siao Overaged Teenager within the confines of my own room.

In Hong Kong, it was the studious, preppy look. The main ingredient of this look: huge, thick-rimmed vintage spectacles. Students wore it, the working class wore it, bankers walking towards the Central subway wore it. The trend was said to have started in London, then spread to Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. While the geeky-specs appeal got picked up in Singapore, the more conservative local dressers did not adopt it in a big way.

So I while in Hong Kong, I went all out, and treated myself to a giant pair of cow print spectacles. And in my understated geeky glamour that is both intense and uncontrived, I reigned the streets of Hong Kong, charming people into divulging their most well-kept dimsum enclaves.

After all, like all things related to sex appeal, the bigger the better, isn't it so?

If I were a book...

If I were a book, I'll be one of those giant collection of short stories that begin abruptly, burn brightly, and end abruptly in unexpected ways. Every story would be somewhat disengaged, with different complex characters, yet strangely resonating with the previous. There will be unflinchingly sealed pages hardened with dried up glue, with secrets that no one other than the author would know.

It took me more than a week and 2 pints of Erdinger for me to see the simplicity of this question.

Check out my interview with Social PR here.

Yours Mathematically, Best Boy Slave

Sometimes in life, mathematics theories are applied to the most unthinkable of situations, like gambling, picking up chicks, shoe shopping, and rush hours in the morning. Over an MSN conversation on Sunday, it was a proposition.

I have a weakness for well-arched, painfully skinny 4 inch heels in a way as if my intelligence depended on them. Inevitably, I have amassed legions of Foot-philes with a soft spot for my well-heeled appendages. And what do they say about shoe-philes; is that beneath the heel of every successful Shoe-phile is a dedicated Footphile.

A Footphile, like people with most forms of philism, are attracted to feet, in the same way some men are to big boobs, rebonded hair and plastic nails. I wouldn't call a Footphile a Fetishist, because then you'd conjure up the images of strange men with froth at the corner of their mouth, wear their pants at chest-level, and who overdosed on colgate and peanut shells as an infant.

No, in fact they are well-heeled, god-fearing and normal looking professionals who would make my obsession with stealing toilet papers from library toilets look dangerous and abnormal.

So on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I was having a normal serious conversation with a Footphile when it expectedly steered towards him volunteering to bring me shoe-shopping. My dwindling collection of kick-ass boots and 4-inch heels has to be replenished just so that he can polish them for me. Talk about taking boot-licking to a whole new level, which I basically interpreted as:

"Free fashion advice, new sinful heels. Oh and being unconditionally worshipped."

With that part of the conversation starting with "You are the enigma of Goddess Isabelle", I was pretty much sold on the idea.

Footphile: I want to be your BBS - Best Boy Slave. That is how it's meant to be. Damn, maybe it shld be BBSF.

Me: Huh? What is BBSF?

Footphile: You know, it's like BBF, Best Friends Forever.
Mathematically, B(BS)F, where F is substituted by BS, and the outside B and F remain constant.
So that makes me your Best Boy Slave Forever.

Spotted: Sophisticated Executive Fashion Boutique at China Square

Blair Waldorf from Gossip Girl with the exquisite sense of style and a treasure trove of beautiful clothes will probably never have a case of "I've-got-nothing-nice-to-wear-for-work" (not that she has to work), but mere mortals like us with only a fraction of her clothing money would have lamented at the lack of non-mass executive wears available in the market at some point in time.

And chances are, at some point in time, we'd have experience the humiliation of turing up at work in the same blouse from G2000 as the office receptionist.

Sophisticate is a boutique tucked in a corner of the Raffles Place area that caters to the fashion needs of working fashion afficionados who loves to dress up in well-tailored non-mass dresses in rich fabrics.

Owner and designer of the label, Wendy, invited me to check out her new Spring 2010 collection, and I must say, that she has outdone herself again.

The tweed square necked dress that I was wearing in the photo above is one of my favourites in her new collection.

Exuding vintage glamour and feminine details, the dresses at Sophisticate are something that even Blair Waldorf would approve of.

You can check out part of her new collection on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#/album.php?aid=175467&id=785744851

From now till this Sunday, 17 Jan 2010, Sophisticate will have a booth in Isetan Parkway Parade. Isetan shoppers will be entitled to a 20% discount off the new collection, and a whopping 50% off Sophisticate's older collection.

PS: I had to sneak a photo of me in that dress in the dresser, so it's chopped off where my hand with the camera is. LOL.

Discounted Spinelli's Coffee

Spy with your little eye and see if you can spot me in one of Spinelli Coffee's promotional collaterals.

Successful spotters who can gobble up that in-store promotion card up can stand to get a discount on their Coffee.

PS: I am joking, just in case there are humourless and socially unaware people who actually gobble it up.

Don't okay!

Updates

I am a blogger who hasn't blogged for 2 months.

Guilty as charged, but with a reason.

There's been so many things going on with my life, both privately and professionally

1. I have resigned from my job as a Public Relations Executive in a global communications firm.
2. I went island hopping on a neighbouring island and OVERDOSED on gloriously cheap massages
3. I went to Korea and got caught in a blizzard, and contemplated getting a new nose the next time I go there
4. I am seriously contemplating going to New Zealand to pick apples/kiwis for a month before I start work again
5. I didn't make a list of new year's resolution because I know I won't stick to them
6. Started my obsession with black lacey stockings and ended my obsession on hunks with blue eyes and long fluttery eyelashes
7. Thinking of helping my friend launch a new project which I will sheepishly front

So here you have it, ther superficial mandatory, I'm-back-on-the scene updates.

Ironic as it may seem, I am not in the habit of posting my from-the-heart personal updates on my blog because people who don't get laid enough will always judge and will never be able to comprehend the way I chose to live my life.

PS: I'll be doing more regular updates since I am not working

PPS: Oh wait, I might not because my social calender is actually very packed.

We'll see. Till then....

A Quintessentially Singaporean Halloween

When I was growing up, Halloween was the kind of stuff that only existed in Enid Blyton story books and American TV shows. There was no dressing up as ghouls and the undead, and Singaporean kids did not go trick or treating. The only time that anyone would look like a goblin was if they were ugly, short, round and insisted on wearing green stockings.

But when it became legal for me to drink and enter clubs, Halloween morphed into a phenomenal costume party where men could make an appearance as Hooter girls with squeezable 38E boobs, and whales could go into town wearing, fishnet stockings low-cut corsets and micro mini skirts, without being tossed back into the zoo.

The scene at Butter Factory was riotous, not to mention hilarious, when my friends and I arrived at 12mn.

I was guilty of not dressing up in a theme because T refused to come as a toothfairy in pink tutu that showed his hairy legs and Cyn refused to turn up in public without her fake eyelashes that got lost somewhere in Malaysia.

And while I told everyone that I would be going as Lady Gaga, I had trouble finding a matching black granny underpants that matched my black corset - for some strange reason, they only sold those in granny beige. Plus the only silver wig that I found was from Toys'R'us that kept popping up on my head.

I was getting a lot of, "Hey why are you not dressed up!"

Me: "Yes, can't you tell, I'm actually a man in disguise?"

Here are some of the really cool (and funny) ones that I managed to capture before alcohol made everything so funny that all my pictures were a blur.

The Emperor whom I mistook for a Eunuch.

The girl with the missile boobs

Penthouse cover girl!

The O'Darling tissue with issues

There was also a pair of dudes who came as Emily Howard and Florence from Little Britain. Decked in Victorian laces, petticoats and parasols, they spoke in Little Britain-esque voice, and behaved just like any 2 ladies going about their normal "ladylike business", downing "lady drinks" and saying "But I'm a lady...I do lady things".


At one point, after being plied with copious amount of alcohol, I started prancing on the row of couches in FASH's VIP area, pretending to be Lady Gaga, totally disregarding the beat of the song that was being played. A waitress from Butter tried to coax me to come down before I told her this:

"Haahahaha...don't bluff. You pretend to work for Butter by wearing the Butter Factory Uniform, don't think I cannot tell."

Clearly she wasn't too amused.

In Singapore, instead of candied apples and carved pumpkins, we have lots of alcohol and drunk vampires; instead of girls dressing up as fairies and tinkerbells, we have men dressing up as centerfold girls or cleavage baring witches with garter belts.

Nobody really knows what Halloween is, or what it is about, as long as you get to laugh at people, be laughed at, have lots of fun, drink lots of alcohol and have a hangover the next morning. When Halloween comes to Singapore, it turns into a circus for adults to dress up in silly costumes, act stupid and get away with it.