8 Things I'm Happy About Right Now

Happy Hump Day!

Today's post doesn't have much to do with anything. This right here is just for sh*ts and giggles. Okay maybe just for giggles. With so much depressing stuff in the news (If I hear about one more corporate layoff -- geesh!) I have decided to post a list of things I'm happy about. Feel free to leave me a comment and tell me what is on your happy radar today.



1 - This is the time of year that everyone plays Christmas carols and I love it. I actually listen to them all year (my poor coworkers can vouch for this) but for the next few weeks I can play Little Drummer Boy without the funny stares.

2 - My first article has been published in Real Simple magazine. This is a big deal for me folks. Be sure to check out '7 Ways To Return Anything' on pages 71-73 of the January 2009 issue. Not just because I wrote it, but because there are some useful tips in it too. Remember, I'm a returning queen.

3 - I had the willpower to pass on the Tracy Reese sample sale this week. Gotta keep saving for a rainy day.

4 - Two stories that I wrote for the j-o have been very popular with readers this week. See for yourself here and here.

5 - Did you hear? We have a Black First Lady to be that isn't the pastor's wife. Still wrapping my head around this y'all.

6 - While I'm bummed about my throat being extremely sore, I'm thankful and happy that I have health insurance and can call my doctor to hopefully get some relief for tihs bug. Real talk - I've been without health insurance before.

7 - Last week I attended the Victoria's Secret store opening in NYC, got a cute little gift bag filled with goodies and bonded with my dear friend Mija. It was one of those classic Big Apple moments as we had no plans to go five minutes before we rolled up. Oh and the Ugg store opening last week with my friend Eddy was pretty cool too.

8 - I found my all-time favorite song sang by my church's choir on YouTube this week. You have no idea how much I plan to listen and watch this now. Everything in me gets right after I hear this.

Handbags, Voting and Other Randomness

I wanted to post my (long overdue) feedback to the Italian "All Black" Vogue today but no cigar. I'll try to get it up this weekend. I have an interview to transcribe for PPT that will post later this week, phone calls to return (MJ, are you reading?) and a lucrative but tedious freelance gig to work on. And I have fam (my mom!) visiting me from out of town this week. But this isn't a "woe is me" post. I'm actully feeling good, although VERY sleepy. I love having my fam around me, epecially the immediate folks. Love and my mother's potato salad (she made some for me Sunday) really does conquer all. Plus, I received the sweetest text message from Mr. TK on Monday. It was not too sappy but contained the perfect amount of sugar to make me say "Awwww!" outloud in public.

And then, I discovered the bag below. Isn't she a certified cutie pie? I think so too. She's one of my latest crushes. Surprising too since I'm not a female that typically likes pink. Actually, I tend to avoid it. But here, it somehow works for me.



The size is just right (roomy enough to hold all my stuff), the nickel hardware looks on point against the hue and the "is it or isn't it patent leather?" sheen adds the right amount of panache. I'm on a spending fast of sorts so I have no plans on purchasing this bag. Nada. But my mother taught me that it doesn't cost anything to look. For those of you who aren't fasting in the finance department, she can be yours for $450 bucks. Oh and she's only available via J.Crew's website or catalog. Like most crushes, I'll probably be over this very, very soon but in the meantime, I wanted to share. Cole Haan's accessories this season are pretty sick too...

One more thing before I go, I sincerly home all PPT readers in the U.S. of A. are registered to vote. Seriously. But just in case you aren't and/or know someone who isn't, click here. And to find out exactly when the deadline to register is for your state, click here.

Recession… What recession?

Let me guess, you have been under the impression our the nation’s economy is in a little bit of trouble, right? I thought so. What gave it away? Was it the rising cost of fuel that ultimately leads to the rising cost of everything from cereal at your local supermarket to the increasing advertising costs in your favorite magazine? Or maybe it was the alarming number of foreclosures that our country has seen this year or the fact that 80,000 people lost their jobs in March alone. It just might have been that startling figure of 47 million: the number of uninsured Americans. Well my amigos, we have all been bamboozled!

Clearly there isn’t a recession going on if homes are on the market for -are you sitting down?- $125 million dollars. Yes, ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. What the crap? I had to share this because it is so un-freakin’-believable. My office happens to be walking distance from Christie’s and I spotted this bargain courtesy of their window display the other day on my way home from work. Since this is so priceless (no pun intended) I needed to take a pic. It’s no surprise that the home/estate is located in Greenwich "mo money, mo’ money" Connecticut. And as if the pricetag itself weren’t enough, best believe the property taxes in Greenwich are through the roof as well. Oh wait, turns out this is Leona Helmsley's old crib so maybe the owners don't have to pay taxes? I'm just sayin'...


I’m just wondering if the $125 mil includes psychiatric counseling.

The Good Stuff!

High fashion can get downright boring to me. Everyone consults the same forecasting companies (I know, I interned at one.), no one wants to take chances and celebrities have become our trendsetters. Collections are dictated by suits who make decisions based on numbers versus creativity. The buyers play the same lame game. Can we say wic, wic WACK? Plus, knock-offs are produced at record-speed and quality these days so it’s almost hard to tell who’s who. Save for my perennial faves like Tracy Reese, Catherine Malandrino, Alice Temperly and a couple others, I’m rarely moved by the big dogs too much. Sure I am still inspired by a cool vintage find. But, rarely am I truly moved by current high-brow fashion.

Sooooooo, how excited was I to ooooh and ahhhh over the threads below care of last week’s WWD (Women’s Wear Daily) cover? This is downright sinful. Gee wiz. Proof that wearable doesn’t have to mean safe and avante garde need not equate to clownish. I don’t know what I’m feelin’ more. The forties inspired hair. The seventies inspired shades. Or the whimsical short/romper ‘vixen meets schoolgirl’ combo. The look is courtesy of Alexander McQueen. Those darn Brits I tell ya.



I so look forward to the days when I can really go to the European shows. (Gotta put that out into the universe.) I have attended London Fashion Week but I was working backstage and didn’t actually see any of the shows. American designers just aren’t allowed to create the same things on the same scale as our peers across the pond. That’s not just in fashion either - the same goes for music, film, yada, ya…

And speaking of high fashion - how sick is this bag? I gasped when I first saw it in one of my mags but last week I actually passed the real McCoy in the window of NYC’s Dior on 57th Street. I had a moment - it forced me to stop in my tracks. BANANAS. Believe me when I tell you it’s more amazing in person. Random, I know but I had to share.


P.S. - I do realize that Alice Temperly is British and Catherine Malandrino is French but they both show in NY which is why I lumped them with Tracy. I also realize that Tracy is considered bridge by many standards but she’s high-end (@ retail) according to my paycheck.

P.P.S. - I’ve been a very bad blogger and didn’t post for nearly two weeks. Tsk, tsk. Therefore, I haven’t had a chance to comment on the panel discussion I attended regarding the lack of Black models held at the NY Public Library last week. It was moderated by industry vet Bethann Hardison. Unlike the first event on this topic she put together last month, it was open to the public for fifteen bucks. Lots of folks came out including model/beauty maven Iman, designer Vera Wang, journalists Teri Agins and Robin Givhan, photographers Barron Claiborne and Marc Baptiste. As I mentioned before, Black models are virtually non-existent on the runway but adding more of them will not change what power Blacks have in the fashion industry. But, more Black owned model/talent agencies will. So will an increase of Black buyers, high-ranking editors, casting agents, designers and show producers. However, I must applaud Bethann for beginning this conversation. Her crusade has gotten coverage in The New York Times and WWD. Not to mention countless blogs. Every little (and big) thing helps.

A Rose is Not Just a Rose

I’ve been told on more than one occasion that I can be a bit of an enigma. Even those very close to me have expressed this. My mother says I’ve always danced to my own beat, even as a small child. So, when someone does something that immediately speaks (loud and clear) to my heart, I don’t take it lightly. Probably because it doesn’t happen too often. Which is why the flower in the picture above is so special to me.

Let me explain.

A few weeks ago at work, I was in a real funk. Just frustrated with some stuff that was/is ultimately out of my hands. A co-worker of mine picked up on this and gave me the beautiful rose in this picture. She and I aren’t close, we don’t even work in the same department and our conversations are non-existent outside of the office. But, she must have noticed my lip poked out while I was making photocopies and decided to cheer me up a bit. My mood instantly changed for the better. Just in that moment, I remembered how flowers can so easily do that. Normally, I would have put the flower in a fancy vase. But on this day, the cup seemed to work better. The simplicity of the paper juxtaposed with the red rose is special -- to me anyway. So I had to take a picture and share with you all. Now, I’m actually a tulip gal but this rose was right on time and it lasted for an entire week in that little cup! Pretty impressive, right?

Life is crazy; so we gotta make time to stop and smell the roses. Literally. Not solely flowers either. Stop and notice the fall foliage. Every year the leaves turn magnificent shades of gold, orange, red and burgundy but who has time to notice anymore? Listen to a toddler laugh. Watch an old couple holding hands. Observe a bird flying. It’s effortless and quite incredible when you stop to think about it. Even those yucky pigeons appear graceful when they fly. (Just as long as it's not over my head…)

I’m making an effort to smell the roses in my life a little more often these days. Life is too short not to.

Fashion Conscious

It might take a while but I’m going somewhere with this folks, hang on…

Sometimes when I speak with friends who have careers that are socially more "aware" than mine, I get a little confused about my passion for all (more like most) things style and media related. Example? My boy KZ teaches math to high school kids in his native Newark, NJ and mentors teenage gang members after work. He does this despite knowing that he could easily earn more dough with his undergrad engineering and graduate degrees in psychology. Knowing this has, on occasion, made me pause about my own aspirations as an editor. Another example is the time I had what I thought was a particularly rough week at work prior to going on a road-trip with some girlfriends. Right before I started to rattle off how frustrated I was about this, that and the third at my own gig, I asked my girl MoMo - who happens to be a pediatrician - how work was going for her. At the time, she was finishing up her last year of residency and had been assigned to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. She proceeded to tell me that her unit lost three babies that week. She ended her story by explaining that the hardest part hadn’t even been the actual deaths (although that was obviously heartbreaking) but having to tell the parents that their child didn’t make it. Needless to say, I received a healthy dose of perspective and everything I was feeling about my magazine job felt really, really insignificant.



But sometimes, I am reminded that style goes much deeper than most of us give it credit for and even I am surprised at how powerful it can be. This happened to me twice recently. A couple weeks back I wore a Barack Obama tee shirt (with a pencil skirt and heels of course) to work. By lunch, I lost count of how many times someone commented on the shirt. Young and old, male and female - the shirt garnered quite a bit of attention. Now while I admit that I am not *exactly sure who I’m voting for at this point (I’m not educated enough about any of the candidates yet) I am so excited that Obama is even in the race. Every time I think about Bloody Sunday (Goggle it), especially because I have so much family in Selma, AL, my pride for Obama running just increases. I’m reminded of how far we’ve come and how far we have to go. My $20 tee shirt sparked up many thought-provoking conversations - ranging from universal healthcare to the war in Iraq. Yep, sure did.



The second epiphany was just last Thursday, September 20th. I, along with countless others, wore black in support of Mychal Bell and the other Jena Six members. Now, in NYC, wearing all black is as common as yellow taxicabs but on Thursday it meant so, so much more. It felt good to see folks on the subway, on the block and even in the boardroom taking a stand against injustice in their own way. My girl CM couldn’t pull an all black ensemble together so she tied a black bandana around one of her wrists. Whenever she explained what her homemade cuff was about, as she was forced to do throughout the day, she informed someone else about the case.

So, God didn’t see it fit for me to be a teacher or a doctor. I do what I do for a living because (most of the time) I truly love it. I didn’t design that Obama tee shirt nor did I put out the mandate for folks to wear black on Thursday. Still, I have found and will continue to find ways to give back what I can, when I can, to those who I can because it’s my style. And style goes way beyond clothes or profession. I guess we sometimes have to be reminded of what we already know.

*Though I’m not exactly sure who is getting my vote, I’m definitely leaning towards Obama. I’ve heard him speak live twice, most recently last month at the NABJ (National Association of Black Journalists) conference in Vegas. He was informative, charismatic and didn’t at all appear to be a talking head like so many politicians. For those who are fearful that he lacks enough experience for the president slot; he posed the question, ‘Where has experience gotten us the last seven years?’

Exactly.