Muses

Celebrating Life at EVO 3 Fashion Show

Posted on Jun 19, 2012 in Fashion Reviews, Featured, Muses, San Francisco Bay Area fashion events | 0 comments

It’s easy to get lost in the glitz and glamour when one talks about fashion. But in EVO 3 Fashion Show, fashion gets reminded of its humanity factor; it celebrates life, courage, and beauty of inspiring cancer patients and survivors who never give up.

The bi-yearly Evolution of Fashion EVO 3 fashion show was hosted by Gail Shrive, Project manager of “The Hub” by Georgiou Studio and CEO of GB Shrive Designs. The theme was “1930s Old Hollywood, Made In 2012″ and her non-profit partner of choice is Heaven’s Door, a cancer non-profit started by her friend Daphne Evans. At St. Mary’s Cathedral Event Center, 1111 Gough St., the ballroom was slowly turned into a 1930′s night affair, with models and (some) guests outfitted in 1930′s inspired fashion. When we arrived around 6:30pm, Ava Byrd of the ByrdSong Production was walking around the room, scanning the overall atmosphere of preparation and readiness like a hawk, Charleston Pierce was still mentoring the models (some of them walked the runway for the first time that night), Zoë Hong was telling the models where to stop when approaching the runway’s edges, and Ken Chen was helping out seemingly everywhere at once and ushering guests.

My San Francisco City Hall Wedding Outfit

Posted on Jun 9, 2012 in Musank's Projects, Photoshoot Projects, Thoughts | 4 comments

It has been six months since we tied the knot at San Francisco City Hall. The practical city hall ceremony that I wanted, I got. Wish came true; thank you God. Since summer wedding is coming in full swing (and you’ll want to look great even if you’re not the bride), I’d like to share details of my San Francisco City Hall wedding outfit in which every piece was less than $100. Of course, it helped to have great friends, perfect natural afternoon light, and Arlene Coleman’s help in make-up and hair. They’re, naturally, priceless.

Interview with Bo Breda: What’s Next from AIC-San Francisco

Posted on May 31, 2012 in Art Institute of California - San Francisco, Muses | 0 comments

Over the past three years, fafafoom has been fortunate to see the diverse, energetic emerging talents that AIC-San Francisco Fashion School produces. This year, prior to the student fashion show, we did a short interview with with Bo Breda, the Academic Director Fashion Design, Art Institute of California – San Francscisco, who was recently featured in SF Gate “Chairs of 7 S.F. fashion schools tell what’s new”.

She generously set aside some time off of her busy schedule to correspond via email about this year’s student fashion show; the process (very elaborate explanation below — those of you who are curious about student fashion show production process will likely find this useful), students involved, what to expect, and more.

New Fafafoom 3.0

Posted on May 26, 2012 in Musank's Projects, Thoughts | 0 comments

When I was finally fed up with the previous server fafafoom was in, I didn’t realize how much work need to be done. For starters, fafafoom is very heavy on image attachments, and apparently moving to a new Cloud server, for this particular instance, required a database rebuild. That means, all of the images and their attachment ids from the previous fafafoom iteration didn’t mean a damn thing.

Determined not to let these kinds of problem happen again in the future, I was advised to use a photo album plugin and host the images somewhere else. I picked Google. So for the first one week and a half, after I get off of my day job, I re-upload all of the image albums on Google. 150+ albums, 100+ posts editing, and several mishaps later, there’s finally light at the end of the tunnel.

Fafafoom in 2010

Fafafoom Now

However, there were new events to review, new experience to be had, new pictures to be edited and uploaded, and new content to be written. Honestly, I don’t mind doing this because this is a “fun” work – building fafafoom, that is. So fast-forward another two weeks later, and fafafoom is ready to view with its latest four no-longer-in-queue posts: Academy of Art 2012 Graduate Fashion Show, Tuan Tran’s OriWear debut, Ahead of the Fashion’s May 8, 2012 event, and California College of the Arts 2012 Graduate Fashion Show. And what luck, this is a long Memorial Day weekend with lots of free festivals going about, the biggest obviously the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th Anniversary! What joy!

Ahead of the Fashion on May 8, 2012 Event

Posted on May 20, 2012 in Fashion Reviews, Fashion Start-Uppers, Muses, San Francisco Bay Area fashion events | 0 comments

I’ve been curious about Keiretsu Forum’s Ahead of the Fashion (AF) for a while before I finally got the chance to attend the AF event on May 8, 2012 at The Julia Morgan Ballroom, 465 California St. San Francisco is a truly unique landscape in which technology and fashion come together, and AF as an accelerator program for tech start-ups in consumer, fashion, and retail industries proves to be an effective mix of start-up pitching, fashion showcasing, learning, and networking. Thank you Sonja Markova (Managing Director, Keiretsu Forum) for inviting us, as well as the rest of the AF founding team Enrico Beltramini (Co-Founder & Managing Director, Naxuri Capital), and Randy Wiliams (Founder & CEO, Keiretsu Forum) for making these start-up & fashion-oriented gatherings possible.

My April (2012 Version)

Posted on Apr 25, 2012 in Thoughts | 0 comments

This is the 3rd annual occurrence of “My April” note. This year, I’m not going to say much because I believe the message I’ve been contemplating for the past few months is very clear: to not be a coward and not to underestimate yourself.

As we grow older, it’s getting easier for us to be “caught up” in daily routines. And if we’re not careful or stay aware in-the-moment, those routine tasks can devour our lives and we, as a result, can lose sight of our goals, dreams, and greater things that really matter. Now, of course we know this; it’s old news afterall. However, I believe it’s important for us to be reminded from time to time about the importance of staying aware of your goals and keep working towards the horizon you set your sights on.

To Be A Fashion Star: Rise of the Unknowns in Fashion

Posted on Apr 18, 2012 in Muses, Thoughts | 0 comments

The fashion reality TV show “Fashion Star“, which debuted March 13, 2012 on NBC has drawn mixed reviews. Complicated logistics issue, a fashion reality show game changer, and biased, rather demeaning comparison to Project Runway reviews have been published for the past month. Even now, after 6 aired episodes, speculations whether the show will get another season still rage on.

The future looks very uncertain for the TV show. On the other hand, the show reveals a brilliant, effective business model. One that creates immediate attention, interest, and buying capability right after the show ends; something that wasn’t introduced by other popular fashion reality show like “Project Runway“. And yet this show is just a fragment of the newest nation-wide (or global?) “trend”: Rise of the Unknowns in Fashion.