Thursday, August 12, 2010
This summer's art class
I took a fashion illustration class at the Art Institute because I missed all the fun from Parsons Paris, and although I was VERY rusty, my final turned out alright. I need a ton of improvement on faces, but I was happy for the most part! These are all designs from Lanvin RTW SS10. Love them all :)
Sunday, May 23, 2010
My Big Story
This quarter, the magazine writing students (like moi) chose one big story to work on instead of lots of little ones like before. I completed my first draft this week, and since I'm excited about it, I'm sharing! It's premature since I haven't even gotten feedback yet (eek!) and will be doing MAJOR rewrites, but since this blog is very much about my progress and what I'm working on, I decided it's alright :)
I absolutely love this woman I wrote about... it's been fascinating and exciting to meet such admirable people. Although I spat the words out in a day, the story took weeks of reporting (and I still have some holes to fill) and it's a pretty lengthy piece, - I guess it's up to you to let me know if you wanted to keep reading and if this works as a long feature!
The sky outside was graying with the onset of twilight. Four girls waited patiently to get fitted for their dresses of satin and tulle, unfinished seams and yet-to-be-sewn-on appliqués or rhinestone straps in the small 2031 S. Indiana St. boutique. There was a chill, but they were too preoccupied with their fascination with the shop’s boudoir décor or their clickity-clack text messaging to notice. “I like your boots,” said one, Tanisha Sampson, a tiny girl who sat a few feet from the white orchid on the windowsill. She had on multicolored Nike high tops and a beige flower headband, and she talked quietly into her iPhone headset. Unlike the others who seemed to come and go alone, Sampson awaited her mother.
The boutique, Bates Designs, is also a studio. The same gathered bronze taffeta that hangs as a curtain in front of the fitting area also hangs from the ceiling to section off the tailors’ workspace. In the back is a dry-erase board that functions as a calendar. Each box held a list of names – Wednesday, May 12: Akila Marshall 3pm, Lauren Johnson 3:30pm, Tanisha Sampson 4pm, Courtney Franklin 4:30pm. Thursday had 10 names and Friday had seven. And so on.
“Every year I say I’m not doing prom!” joked Barbara Bates, laughing. She had dyed her short hair a brownish-red. The sparse salt-and-pepper fuzz that was growing in after her last round of chemotherapy was finally ready for some color. “It’s a madhouse in here. But I just try to stay calm.” She was casual about the annual springtime chaos that falls upon her because of the letters she accepts from underprivileged high school students who explain why they deserve to have her custom-design a garment for their big night – for free. This is the basis of Bates’ eponymous foundation, started in 1999, twelve years after she began this gracious endeavor. She has always had a love for clothing and creating her own designs, and she believes that fashion can help young people whose lives are defined by dire, dismal circumstances.
Sitting behind an antique-looking wooden desk in her cut velvet-cushioned chair, Bates described her path to success – the life she lives now, in which she arrives daily to her office, the South Indiana Street store, where she dreams up silhouettes for the fabrics she collects and then sketches her ideas. She recently got a lot of materials from the closing of Maria Pinto’s business, including the purple silk with a cutout floral pattern draped over a metal rack near the door. On the nearby vintage Singer sewing table, business cards sit in a wire cardholder; these new ones are pink and say, “Barbara Bates, Breast Cancer Survivor…. EARLY DETECTION – ADDRESS IT NOW SO WE CAN DRESS YOU LATER.”
While Bates was born in Chicago and raised for most of her life in Garfield Park, an area that has transformed since her upbringing there from a safe neighborhood to one that reeks of peril, her talent and self-motivation propelled her beyond her modest roots. With her mother, a stay-at-home mom, stepfather, who worked in a factory, and four siblings, Bates lived in an apartment on Jackson Boulevard and South Central Park Boulevard. “We were probably just above poverty, but we never wanted for anything,” she said. She recalls the small wonders of childhood: how her mother and aunts were some of the most beautiful women around, and how she loved Barbie dolls, but even more than that, Barbie’s clothes. This last little luxury, Bates explained, was something she had to go to friends’ houses to play with.
Though her family was not poor, Bates knew the difference at an early age between her life on Chicago’s West Side and the life she enjoyed during the few years she lived with her Aunt Ethel in Pittsburgh. Having been born with club feet, Bates needed costly medical procedures which her family could not afford; at this time, her mother’s sister offered to pay for the surgery and care for her. Aunt Ethel and her husband had just built a new house, they owned a bar called Chappy’s, and their good fortune gave Bates a chance to see past her realm.
This other place, worlds away from home, included alligator purses and high heeled shoes, and little Bates could sense that these things represented something more than money. “You see things as a child and you just know,” she said, scrunching her nose a little as she spoke. “On the one hand, I saw drug addiction and I witnessed the pain and destruction this brought upon people. But I also saw, for example, family members who owned their own business and the joy that was in their lives. I saw devastation and I saw prosperity. Later, I had to decide which road I was going to take.”
Returning to Chicago as a six-year-old, at which point Bates had already discovered her love for fashion, she experienced culture-shock. She now shared a room with her three sisters, and as she matured, she saw the streets outside evolve from a haven for children to play till dusk into an incubator for the increasingly prevalent gangs. By 1968, when Bates started ninth grade at John Marshall Metropolitan High School, the German Jews who had happily resided on the same blocks had moved away, leaving the urbanity to the growing African-American population, much of which was living in greater degrees of destitution.
None of the students who come to Barbara during prom season through the Foundation are white. Most of them are black, some are Hispanic. Their stories range from having been teen mothers or being too full-figured to find a pretty dress to having lost a parent or not having a place they call home at all. Some have been shot before and others have been abused by drug-addicted mothers or abandoned by their fathers.
For too many of these youngsters, the sheen of the jacquard sofa and the flicker from the ornately carved mirror frames inside Bates Designs are the most they have seen of any kind of beauty. They are not as lucky as Bates, who, with a congenital physical deformity and a loving family with the resources to fix it, got a glimpse of what more was possible for her. They have been wholly left out of the sphere of the good and the beautiful – professional success, financial freedom, social mobility – and taught to believe that these things are neither meant for nor are accessible to them.
“They are aware,” Bates said, “even if just through television, that there is something else out there. But they are not aware that they have the opportunity to grab a hold of it. Some know the road to get there. Most don’t.”
In 1970, Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye, a novel about a little black girl, Pecola Breedlove, growing up in Lorain, Ohio who desperately longs for blue eyes. With the backdrop of an impoverished town in the heart of the Midwest after the Great Depression, the story painstakingly portrays Pecola’s internalization of American poverty, racism, oppression and self-image. This last element, which Morrison symbolizes with the iconic Dick and Jane Basic Readers that were an integral part of early education throughout the 20th century, perpetuates the erasure of poor minorities from the idyllic standard of Americanism.
Pecola’s dark eyes take in what she sees around her: the popularity and envy of certain peers, such as Maureen Peal, who Morrison calls a “high-yellow dream child,” the hatred and disgust exuded from lighter-skinned members of her own black community seeking to elevate themselves in a racist society, and the tenderness with which her own mother handles the preciously innocent blonde girl she cares for at her job in an upper-class white household. Pecola learns to equate her blackness with ugliness, worthlessness, and disgrace.
Morrison uses the point of aesthetics to illustrate the inexorable connection between the dominant ideology of what American childhood innocence looks like – glowing skin, golden hair, blue eyes – and the inherent flaws of our supposed national meritocracy. Our belief that, on American soil, all people can acquire wealth and happiness with a little sweat is ultimately ruinous to historically broken and subjugated communities. But, she pleads in her narrative, this fact is largely ignored.
The exclusion of children like Pecola from the bigger picture of American prosperity, opportunity, and beauty leads them to blame themselves for their degradation and keeps them anchored to their pervasive sense of hopelessness. Thus, the cycle of squalor and suffering, for many born into it, proves to be unbreakable.
“It was different because I got exposed to the good life when I was so little,” Bates said. “That always stayed in my mind: there’s another life beyond the ghetto. That’s the life I’m going to live.”
But Bates’ positivity and broad perspective did not protect her from some of the hardships associated with young life in deprived communities, such as adolescent motherhood. As a sophomore in high school who had always excelled academically and been a favorite amongst teachers, she found out she was pregnant. “I had to work up the courage to tell my mom,” she said. “She fainted. It was devastating for everyone, including myself.”
On top of the shock, shame, and fear that came with the news, Bates was faced with the decision to either drop out of school or attend an alternative school for pregnant teens. With a supportive mother who nurtured and raised Bates’ baby Eugene as if he were her son rather than her grandson, Bates was able to attend the alternative school and return to Marshall High School as a junior.
“Everyone was like, ‘she’s going to have another kid the next year and another the next year,’” Bates said. “But I refused to be a statistic. I had to prove them wrong. It was important to me to keep excelling even though I had made a mistake. My determination had to do with my upbringing – I was around people who were educated and I knew what comes from working hard and finding your passion. There was more for me.”
She graduated that June with honors, finishing high school in three years. After this, she moved out on her own, leaving Eugene with her mother, worked at Sears, then had a series of stints as a secretary at various corporations and universities, and later held a job at General Motors in Detroit. In 1981, she returned to Chicago to work at First Chicago Bank. Though her role as a secretary in the International Banking department was defined by her typing and communication skills, it was at this time that Bates’ fashion career began to blossom.
Never leaving her creativity behind, she had been sketching her own garments and finding tailors to make her designs. She had had no formal education in fashion nor could she sew, so her imagination and sense of style, which she said comes from her mother, were all she had. But her outfits turned heads in the office and women slowly starting approaching her to inquire about where she shopped. This led to Bates running a small business out of the ladies room at work, getting to know her colleagues with her tape measure and then paying tailors to construct original pieces. At the age of 30, she quit her job at First Chicago Bank.
At Bates Designs, a girl of average height and dark brown skin sat on one of the purple damask-print slipper chairs. “It’s so pretty in here,” she whispered to her friend, a skinny teenage boy in a striped cardigan sweater. Her name is Akila Marshall, and she goes to Neil F. Simeon Career Academy on Chicago’s South Side, a public school that is 98 percent black and known for its national basketball star Ben Wilson, who was shot and killed in 1984, the day before his senior starter game at Simeon.
Marshall tried on her fuchsia charmeuse strapless dress and talked to the tailor about a pleated train she wanted as he pinned and tucked the silk. Her prom was a week and half away. She had written to Bates at the encouragement of a teacher because she could not afford to buy a dress, but her letter didn’t include details about her home or personal life. “She was just like, ‘You can’t afford it? I got you.’ That was all,” Marshall said of Bates. She chose to apply for the Barbara Bates Foundation over going through The Cinderella Project, another organization that gives away donated prom dresses, because she felt special being picked to have something unique made just for her. “It’s valuable because it’s from her; I think what she does shows a lot of character,” she said.
As the cornerstone of the Foundation is education, Bates requires that the students she works with are ready to graduate from high school. Marshall plans to attend Northern Illinois University in the fall to study psychology and one day become a social worker, but the road behind her was hardly paved with the values that lead to what she has already accomplished. Her actions show a lot of character as well. Having lost her father in a car accident at the age of four, she’s been living on and off with a guardian in Evergreen Park with her two younger siblings because her mother is unable to care for her. Marshall said squarely, “My mother is not in the picture. She abuses drugs. She went away with that.”
But prom time at the boutique also means business from clients whose parents buy their dresses. “These students come from a completely different walk of life,” Bates explained. Still, these customers get deep discounts on what Bates would normally charge for the toil and craftsmanship that go into the garments.
Sampson, the girl in the candy-colored sneakers, approached the corner of the room where Bates and the tailors were taking measurements. She had one photo on her iPhone and another printed on paper to show them which elements of each design she wanted. “This is Roberto Cavalli,” Sampson said, pointing to the digital image of a voluminous white ball gown floating down a catwalk. “And this one is Rami Kashou. He’s from Project Runway,” she explained, holding up the sheet.
One of the tailors began to discuss what he thought was suitable for Sampson’s petit frame when a woman of equal stature but propped up in black patent peep-toe pumps came in. She touched Sampson’s hair with a look of disapproval, and her hand was promptly swatted away with a look of adolescent irritation and an “I know! I just came from rehearsal, that’s why I look like this!” Sampson’s mother’s arrival instigated a bout of “No, mom”s at the repeated insistence of a matching jacket or shawl, and Bates playfully threatened to throw her out of the shop.
But even minus the couture conflict, Sampson stood out from the other girls. It wasn’t merely her perfect posture or turnout from the Joffrey Ballet. She had known beauty in her life. And she knew she deserved to go after it.
Bates officially opened her studio space and boutique in 1986. She put some ads in the paper for tailors, and a friend who was also a designer took her shopping for sewing machines, equipment, and fabric and trimming supplies. “I knew nothing, I just knew I loved designing clothes, so I did what I know how to do,” she said, throwing up her silver-polished hands. “I still don’t know how I’ve come this far when so many talented individuals didn’t make it through these past two years. I know it’s a blessing.”
The next year, she got a call from someone who had seen a story in the Chicago Sun-Times that talked about a West Side girl who made clothes for Michael Jordan. Bates had, at that time, begun to take on clients like the Chicago Bulls star and others such as Oprah, Whitney Houston, and Mike Tyson. The woman on the phone believed that she and Bates had gone to high school together and was now working in alternative school. She asked Barbara to come speak to the soon-to-be teen mothers. Bates agreed. “But I had no intention of actually going,” she laughed.
She went, though, on a whim, and without a speech prepared. She had never told her story before, but when she saw the auditorium full of girls, it poured out. She saw herself in all of them. “I felt there was something I had to do for them,” Bates said. “I said, ‘This neighborhood you live in, there’s something else outside of it, and I want you guys to see it. Going back to school is the only way out. If you’re willing to help yourself, people will be willing to reach out and help you.’” That was in 1987, long before the Barbara Bates Foundation actually existed, but it was then that she started making the dresses.
Today, much of what surrounds her is in stark contrast with the penury that permeates Chicago’s depressed communities. When the harsh realities of some of these teens’ lives come into focus, the enormity of change that is necessary is overwhelming. A party dress seems like it would hardly matter.
But Bates’ vision, always inspired, always with a glint of style, showed her something different. “I had no money, so I thought, ‘What can I do in my small way?’ And it is really small,” she said. “I’m not giving them scholarship money or grants or sending them off on trips. But what I can do is take someone who thinks that beauty is just not even in their world, that their struggle is an ugly struggle, and give them a little beauty by making a dress for them that they couldn’t have afforded, and even if they could have afforded it, they wouldn’t have a clue what beauty is because they’ve never been told that they are beautiful or they’ve never been surrounded by it. They’ve been surrounded by so much hell growing up. That’s where the Foundation came from – trying to instill something positive into the lives of people who are lost or forgotten.”
The sky darkened behind the buildings across the street on South Indiana. The girls arranged times to come in for photographs for the Foundation website with Paula and Rayna, who work in the boutique. Bates scurried around in her black flats with ruffled leather on the toes, tape measure in hand, pins held between her lips. “Is this organza or netting?” she asked the tailor about a photo. As the last girl on the schedule, with a big smile on her face, stepped back behind the bronze curtain to slip off the shell of her sweetheart neckline dress, Bates yelled, “Last call for alcohol!” and chuckled.
I absolutely love this woman I wrote about... it's been fascinating and exciting to meet such admirable people. Although I spat the words out in a day, the story took weeks of reporting (and I still have some holes to fill) and it's a pretty lengthy piece, - I guess it's up to you to let me know if you wanted to keep reading and if this works as a long feature!
The sky outside was graying with the onset of twilight. Four girls waited patiently to get fitted for their dresses of satin and tulle, unfinished seams and yet-to-be-sewn-on appliqués or rhinestone straps in the small 2031 S. Indiana St. boutique. There was a chill, but they were too preoccupied with their fascination with the shop’s boudoir décor or their clickity-clack text messaging to notice. “I like your boots,” said one, Tanisha Sampson, a tiny girl who sat a few feet from the white orchid on the windowsill. She had on multicolored Nike high tops and a beige flower headband, and she talked quietly into her iPhone headset. Unlike the others who seemed to come and go alone, Sampson awaited her mother.
The boutique, Bates Designs, is also a studio. The same gathered bronze taffeta that hangs as a curtain in front of the fitting area also hangs from the ceiling to section off the tailors’ workspace. In the back is a dry-erase board that functions as a calendar. Each box held a list of names – Wednesday, May 12: Akila Marshall 3pm, Lauren Johnson 3:30pm, Tanisha Sampson 4pm, Courtney Franklin 4:30pm. Thursday had 10 names and Friday had seven. And so on.
“Every year I say I’m not doing prom!” joked Barbara Bates, laughing. She had dyed her short hair a brownish-red. The sparse salt-and-pepper fuzz that was growing in after her last round of chemotherapy was finally ready for some color. “It’s a madhouse in here. But I just try to stay calm.” She was casual about the annual springtime chaos that falls upon her because of the letters she accepts from underprivileged high school students who explain why they deserve to have her custom-design a garment for their big night – for free. This is the basis of Bates’ eponymous foundation, started in 1999, twelve years after she began this gracious endeavor. She has always had a love for clothing and creating her own designs, and she believes that fashion can help young people whose lives are defined by dire, dismal circumstances.
Sitting behind an antique-looking wooden desk in her cut velvet-cushioned chair, Bates described her path to success – the life she lives now, in which she arrives daily to her office, the South Indiana Street store, where she dreams up silhouettes for the fabrics she collects and then sketches her ideas. She recently got a lot of materials from the closing of Maria Pinto’s business, including the purple silk with a cutout floral pattern draped over a metal rack near the door. On the nearby vintage Singer sewing table, business cards sit in a wire cardholder; these new ones are pink and say, “Barbara Bates, Breast Cancer Survivor…. EARLY DETECTION – ADDRESS IT NOW SO WE CAN DRESS YOU LATER.”
While Bates was born in Chicago and raised for most of her life in Garfield Park, an area that has transformed since her upbringing there from a safe neighborhood to one that reeks of peril, her talent and self-motivation propelled her beyond her modest roots. With her mother, a stay-at-home mom, stepfather, who worked in a factory, and four siblings, Bates lived in an apartment on Jackson Boulevard and South Central Park Boulevard. “We were probably just above poverty, but we never wanted for anything,” she said. She recalls the small wonders of childhood: how her mother and aunts were some of the most beautiful women around, and how she loved Barbie dolls, but even more than that, Barbie’s clothes. This last little luxury, Bates explained, was something she had to go to friends’ houses to play with.
Though her family was not poor, Bates knew the difference at an early age between her life on Chicago’s West Side and the life she enjoyed during the few years she lived with her Aunt Ethel in Pittsburgh. Having been born with club feet, Bates needed costly medical procedures which her family could not afford; at this time, her mother’s sister offered to pay for the surgery and care for her. Aunt Ethel and her husband had just built a new house, they owned a bar called Chappy’s, and their good fortune gave Bates a chance to see past her realm.
This other place, worlds away from home, included alligator purses and high heeled shoes, and little Bates could sense that these things represented something more than money. “You see things as a child and you just know,” she said, scrunching her nose a little as she spoke. “On the one hand, I saw drug addiction and I witnessed the pain and destruction this brought upon people. But I also saw, for example, family members who owned their own business and the joy that was in their lives. I saw devastation and I saw prosperity. Later, I had to decide which road I was going to take.”
Returning to Chicago as a six-year-old, at which point Bates had already discovered her love for fashion, she experienced culture-shock. She now shared a room with her three sisters, and as she matured, she saw the streets outside evolve from a haven for children to play till dusk into an incubator for the increasingly prevalent gangs. By 1968, when Bates started ninth grade at John Marshall Metropolitan High School, the German Jews who had happily resided on the same blocks had moved away, leaving the urbanity to the growing African-American population, much of which was living in greater degrees of destitution.
None of the students who come to Barbara during prom season through the Foundation are white. Most of them are black, some are Hispanic. Their stories range from having been teen mothers or being too full-figured to find a pretty dress to having lost a parent or not having a place they call home at all. Some have been shot before and others have been abused by drug-addicted mothers or abandoned by their fathers.
For too many of these youngsters, the sheen of the jacquard sofa and the flicker from the ornately carved mirror frames inside Bates Designs are the most they have seen of any kind of beauty. They are not as lucky as Bates, who, with a congenital physical deformity and a loving family with the resources to fix it, got a glimpse of what more was possible for her. They have been wholly left out of the sphere of the good and the beautiful – professional success, financial freedom, social mobility – and taught to believe that these things are neither meant for nor are accessible to them.
“They are aware,” Bates said, “even if just through television, that there is something else out there. But they are not aware that they have the opportunity to grab a hold of it. Some know the road to get there. Most don’t.”
In 1970, Toni Morrison wrote The Bluest Eye, a novel about a little black girl, Pecola Breedlove, growing up in Lorain, Ohio who desperately longs for blue eyes. With the backdrop of an impoverished town in the heart of the Midwest after the Great Depression, the story painstakingly portrays Pecola’s internalization of American poverty, racism, oppression and self-image. This last element, which Morrison symbolizes with the iconic Dick and Jane Basic Readers that were an integral part of early education throughout the 20th century, perpetuates the erasure of poor minorities from the idyllic standard of Americanism.
Pecola’s dark eyes take in what she sees around her: the popularity and envy of certain peers, such as Maureen Peal, who Morrison calls a “high-yellow dream child,” the hatred and disgust exuded from lighter-skinned members of her own black community seeking to elevate themselves in a racist society, and the tenderness with which her own mother handles the preciously innocent blonde girl she cares for at her job in an upper-class white household. Pecola learns to equate her blackness with ugliness, worthlessness, and disgrace.
Morrison uses the point of aesthetics to illustrate the inexorable connection between the dominant ideology of what American childhood innocence looks like – glowing skin, golden hair, blue eyes – and the inherent flaws of our supposed national meritocracy. Our belief that, on American soil, all people can acquire wealth and happiness with a little sweat is ultimately ruinous to historically broken and subjugated communities. But, she pleads in her narrative, this fact is largely ignored.
The exclusion of children like Pecola from the bigger picture of American prosperity, opportunity, and beauty leads them to blame themselves for their degradation and keeps them anchored to their pervasive sense of hopelessness. Thus, the cycle of squalor and suffering, for many born into it, proves to be unbreakable.
“It was different because I got exposed to the good life when I was so little,” Bates said. “That always stayed in my mind: there’s another life beyond the ghetto. That’s the life I’m going to live.”
But Bates’ positivity and broad perspective did not protect her from some of the hardships associated with young life in deprived communities, such as adolescent motherhood. As a sophomore in high school who had always excelled academically and been a favorite amongst teachers, she found out she was pregnant. “I had to work up the courage to tell my mom,” she said. “She fainted. It was devastating for everyone, including myself.”
On top of the shock, shame, and fear that came with the news, Bates was faced with the decision to either drop out of school or attend an alternative school for pregnant teens. With a supportive mother who nurtured and raised Bates’ baby Eugene as if he were her son rather than her grandson, Bates was able to attend the alternative school and return to Marshall High School as a junior.
“Everyone was like, ‘she’s going to have another kid the next year and another the next year,’” Bates said. “But I refused to be a statistic. I had to prove them wrong. It was important to me to keep excelling even though I had made a mistake. My determination had to do with my upbringing – I was around people who were educated and I knew what comes from working hard and finding your passion. There was more for me.”
She graduated that June with honors, finishing high school in three years. After this, she moved out on her own, leaving Eugene with her mother, worked at Sears, then had a series of stints as a secretary at various corporations and universities, and later held a job at General Motors in Detroit. In 1981, she returned to Chicago to work at First Chicago Bank. Though her role as a secretary in the International Banking department was defined by her typing and communication skills, it was at this time that Bates’ fashion career began to blossom.
Never leaving her creativity behind, she had been sketching her own garments and finding tailors to make her designs. She had had no formal education in fashion nor could she sew, so her imagination and sense of style, which she said comes from her mother, were all she had. But her outfits turned heads in the office and women slowly starting approaching her to inquire about where she shopped. This led to Bates running a small business out of the ladies room at work, getting to know her colleagues with her tape measure and then paying tailors to construct original pieces. At the age of 30, she quit her job at First Chicago Bank.
At Bates Designs, a girl of average height and dark brown skin sat on one of the purple damask-print slipper chairs. “It’s so pretty in here,” she whispered to her friend, a skinny teenage boy in a striped cardigan sweater. Her name is Akila Marshall, and she goes to Neil F. Simeon Career Academy on Chicago’s South Side, a public school that is 98 percent black and known for its national basketball star Ben Wilson, who was shot and killed in 1984, the day before his senior starter game at Simeon.
Marshall tried on her fuchsia charmeuse strapless dress and talked to the tailor about a pleated train she wanted as he pinned and tucked the silk. Her prom was a week and half away. She had written to Bates at the encouragement of a teacher because she could not afford to buy a dress, but her letter didn’t include details about her home or personal life. “She was just like, ‘You can’t afford it? I got you.’ That was all,” Marshall said of Bates. She chose to apply for the Barbara Bates Foundation over going through The Cinderella Project, another organization that gives away donated prom dresses, because she felt special being picked to have something unique made just for her. “It’s valuable because it’s from her; I think what she does shows a lot of character,” she said.
As the cornerstone of the Foundation is education, Bates requires that the students she works with are ready to graduate from high school. Marshall plans to attend Northern Illinois University in the fall to study psychology and one day become a social worker, but the road behind her was hardly paved with the values that lead to what she has already accomplished. Her actions show a lot of character as well. Having lost her father in a car accident at the age of four, she’s been living on and off with a guardian in Evergreen Park with her two younger siblings because her mother is unable to care for her. Marshall said squarely, “My mother is not in the picture. She abuses drugs. She went away with that.”
But prom time at the boutique also means business from clients whose parents buy their dresses. “These students come from a completely different walk of life,” Bates explained. Still, these customers get deep discounts on what Bates would normally charge for the toil and craftsmanship that go into the garments.
Sampson, the girl in the candy-colored sneakers, approached the corner of the room where Bates and the tailors were taking measurements. She had one photo on her iPhone and another printed on paper to show them which elements of each design she wanted. “This is Roberto Cavalli,” Sampson said, pointing to the digital image of a voluminous white ball gown floating down a catwalk. “And this one is Rami Kashou. He’s from Project Runway,” she explained, holding up the sheet.
One of the tailors began to discuss what he thought was suitable for Sampson’s petit frame when a woman of equal stature but propped up in black patent peep-toe pumps came in. She touched Sampson’s hair with a look of disapproval, and her hand was promptly swatted away with a look of adolescent irritation and an “I know! I just came from rehearsal, that’s why I look like this!” Sampson’s mother’s arrival instigated a bout of “No, mom”s at the repeated insistence of a matching jacket or shawl, and Bates playfully threatened to throw her out of the shop.
But even minus the couture conflict, Sampson stood out from the other girls. It wasn’t merely her perfect posture or turnout from the Joffrey Ballet. She had known beauty in her life. And she knew she deserved to go after it.
Bates officially opened her studio space and boutique in 1986. She put some ads in the paper for tailors, and a friend who was also a designer took her shopping for sewing machines, equipment, and fabric and trimming supplies. “I knew nothing, I just knew I loved designing clothes, so I did what I know how to do,” she said, throwing up her silver-polished hands. “I still don’t know how I’ve come this far when so many talented individuals didn’t make it through these past two years. I know it’s a blessing.”
The next year, she got a call from someone who had seen a story in the Chicago Sun-Times that talked about a West Side girl who made clothes for Michael Jordan. Bates had, at that time, begun to take on clients like the Chicago Bulls star and others such as Oprah, Whitney Houston, and Mike Tyson. The woman on the phone believed that she and Bates had gone to high school together and was now working in alternative school. She asked Barbara to come speak to the soon-to-be teen mothers. Bates agreed. “But I had no intention of actually going,” she laughed.
She went, though, on a whim, and without a speech prepared. She had never told her story before, but when she saw the auditorium full of girls, it poured out. She saw herself in all of them. “I felt there was something I had to do for them,” Bates said. “I said, ‘This neighborhood you live in, there’s something else outside of it, and I want you guys to see it. Going back to school is the only way out. If you’re willing to help yourself, people will be willing to reach out and help you.’” That was in 1987, long before the Barbara Bates Foundation actually existed, but it was then that she started making the dresses.
Today, much of what surrounds her is in stark contrast with the penury that permeates Chicago’s depressed communities. When the harsh realities of some of these teens’ lives come into focus, the enormity of change that is necessary is overwhelming. A party dress seems like it would hardly matter.
But Bates’ vision, always inspired, always with a glint of style, showed her something different. “I had no money, so I thought, ‘What can I do in my small way?’ And it is really small,” she said. “I’m not giving them scholarship money or grants or sending them off on trips. But what I can do is take someone who thinks that beauty is just not even in their world, that their struggle is an ugly struggle, and give them a little beauty by making a dress for them that they couldn’t have afforded, and even if they could have afforded it, they wouldn’t have a clue what beauty is because they’ve never been told that they are beautiful or they’ve never been surrounded by it. They’ve been surrounded by so much hell growing up. That’s where the Foundation came from – trying to instill something positive into the lives of people who are lost or forgotten.”
The sky darkened behind the buildings across the street on South Indiana. The girls arranged times to come in for photographs for the Foundation website with Paula and Rayna, who work in the boutique. Bates scurried around in her black flats with ruffled leather on the toes, tape measure in hand, pins held between her lips. “Is this organza or netting?” she asked the tailor about a photo. As the last girl on the schedule, with a big smile on her face, stepped back behind the bronze curtain to slip off the shell of her sweetheart neckline dress, Bates yelled, “Last call for alcohol!” and chuckled.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
I Too Hate Hipsters
Ever since I met my very first hipster, before I was even aware of the spreading self-proclaimed subculture, I knew I had a strong repulsion to these self-righteous fools. In the interest of empathy, I get it -- no one wants to be boring, unoriginal, and not in the know about what's cool and under-the-radar, but come on, your desperate desire to be different is embarrassing and pretentious. So STOPPIT.
In addition to these wonderful lists that others have compiled and conversations they have started about how hipsters often trigger a gag reflex -- Top 10 Reasons, Die Hipster (I do not feel so strongly that I hope anyone dies, I merely think good points are made here), and Musings on Why I Hate Hipsters -- I thought I'd take some time to vent a little on my own. YAY.
Note: I do not necessarily agree with everything on those sites, for example, I do not like sports. My lack of athleticism and my pride in that is fodder for a different discussion.
I figure at this point, it's not worth mentioning PBR, cigarettes, Veganism, American Apparel or other fashion choices (especially since I do shop there and I also have been known to sport skinny jeans myself). My bigger gripes are less about me giving a sh*t about what hipsters do and more about the fact that they are so constantly perturbed by what other people do/don't do -- again, it's the self-righteousness that really irks me. I should note that the concept of disrupting the status quo is something I am all for and is in fact, something I very much believe I embody myself in many ways (everyone's norm is different, therefore, breaking the norm is different for everyone). I do support the original notion of what it means to be a hipster; it's this new representation of it predominantly through preferences on where to shop or drink coffee that I am commenting on here...
Alrighty, here I go.
~Stop thinking everything is "typical." You all look the same, act the same, like the same things, and truly typify a culture of people with similar beliefs and attitudes... not so different from other groups, eh??
~Just because someone else likes something, that doesn't mean it's uncool or more mainstream or whatever your issue is. I recently had someone imply that, by virtue of my knowing about and liking a particular bar, the place and its owner and patrons (including myself) are evil gentrifiers, unaware of the consequences of opening a new small business in an up-and-coming neighborhood. I've got news for you, all the new little places you like in that area did the exact same thing.
~On the topic of gentrification, you too are guilty of this process by the mere fact of your living or hanging out in an area. Please don't pretend that your biggest concern is not that "yuppies" are infiltrating your neighborhood coffeebar or that you are even aware of the displaced community that's been forced to move to a less desirable neighborhood before you ever heard of your new favorite geographical enclave. They are the ones living on the margins of society, not you.
~This might be a surprise to you, but liking stuff just because no one else does is as stupid as liking stuff just because everyone else does. This shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Don't being so hypocritical.
~If you happen to have spent time overseas, likely in Africa or Southeast Asia, this does not give you free reign to claim that you identify with the developing world or even understand another culture. You do not.
~Lastly, and this is a new one of mine, you're not the only ones who know that the word "political" refers to more than just Obama being president. We aren't stupid, we get that the social is the political. Stop assuming that you are more aware, more informed, more intellectual, or more political than your equally educated peers. You're not, you just like to shamelessly show it off more.
I think I'm done, although I can't promise that this won't be a recurring theme. Phew ;) Night!
In addition to these wonderful lists that others have compiled and conversations they have started about how hipsters often trigger a gag reflex -- Top 10 Reasons, Die Hipster (I do not feel so strongly that I hope anyone dies, I merely think good points are made here), and Musings on Why I Hate Hipsters -- I thought I'd take some time to vent a little on my own. YAY.
Note: I do not necessarily agree with everything on those sites, for example, I do not like sports. My lack of athleticism and my pride in that is fodder for a different discussion.
I figure at this point, it's not worth mentioning PBR, cigarettes, Veganism, American Apparel or other fashion choices (especially since I do shop there and I also have been known to sport skinny jeans myself). My bigger gripes are less about me giving a sh*t about what hipsters do and more about the fact that they are so constantly perturbed by what other people do/don't do -- again, it's the self-righteousness that really irks me. I should note that the concept of disrupting the status quo is something I am all for and is in fact, something I very much believe I embody myself in many ways (everyone's norm is different, therefore, breaking the norm is different for everyone). I do support the original notion of what it means to be a hipster; it's this new representation of it predominantly through preferences on where to shop or drink coffee that I am commenting on here...
Alrighty, here I go.
~Stop thinking everything is "typical." You all look the same, act the same, like the same things, and truly typify a culture of people with similar beliefs and attitudes... not so different from other groups, eh??
~Just because someone else likes something, that doesn't mean it's uncool or more mainstream or whatever your issue is. I recently had someone imply that, by virtue of my knowing about and liking a particular bar, the place and its owner and patrons (including myself) are evil gentrifiers, unaware of the consequences of opening a new small business in an up-and-coming neighborhood. I've got news for you, all the new little places you like in that area did the exact same thing.
~On the topic of gentrification, you too are guilty of this process by the mere fact of your living or hanging out in an area. Please don't pretend that your biggest concern is not that "yuppies" are infiltrating your neighborhood coffeebar or that you are even aware of the displaced community that's been forced to move to a less desirable neighborhood before you ever heard of your new favorite geographical enclave. They are the ones living on the margins of society, not you.
~This might be a surprise to you, but liking stuff just because no one else does is as stupid as liking stuff just because everyone else does. This shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Don't being so hypocritical.
~If you happen to have spent time overseas, likely in Africa or Southeast Asia, this does not give you free reign to claim that you identify with the developing world or even understand another culture. You do not.
~Lastly, and this is a new one of mine, you're not the only ones who know that the word "political" refers to more than just Obama being president. We aren't stupid, we get that the social is the political. Stop assuming that you are more aware, more informed, more intellectual, or more political than your equally educated peers. You're not, you just like to shamelessly show it off more.
I think I'm done, although I can't promise that this won't be a recurring theme. Phew ;) Night!
Sunday, March 28, 2010
My First Polyvore Experience
How did I JUST discover Polyvore?? Thank you Guter!! I seriously have a new favorite hobby aka obsession. The items used in the sets below were from a limited selection (hence the jade dress in the wedding ensemble which is nothing I'd ever choose if I had more options) because they were part of a contest, which Catherine Gutermuth kindly brought to my attention. Check out my virtual styling... I think for a Polyvore virgin, I did pretty well ;) Soon I'll be a Polywhore yaaay!
Items in this set:
Women's apparel: Tees and tanks | Piperlime, $48
Juicy Couture Bracelet Sleeve Moto Leather Jacket - Elephant, $700
Theory Bretta Poet Tux Jacket - Black, $385
Theory Melora Pants - Black, $295
L.A.M.B. Vail, $300
Women's apparel: Tees and tanks | Piperlime, $48
Juicy Couture Bracelet Sleeve Moto Leather Jacket - Elephant, $700
Theory Bretta Poet Tux Jacket - Black, $385
Theory Melora Pants - Black, $295
L.A.M.B. Vail, $300
Items in this set:
Twelfth Street By Cynthia Vincent Gathered Front Dress - Green, $295
7 For All Mankind Shrunken Blazer - Gravel, $275
Badgley Mischka Randee, $215
Badgley Mischka Randee, $215
Kate Spade Jane Street Maria, $185
Twelfth Street By Cynthia Vincent Gathered Front Dress - Green, $295
7 For All Mankind Shrunken Blazer - Gravel, $275
Badgley Mischka Randee, $215
Badgley Mischka Randee, $215
Kate Spade Jane Street Maria, $185
Items in this set:
LnA Lace Racerback Tank - Ivory, $84
J Brand 12" Pencil Jeans - Phoebe, $195
Rock & Republic Aria, $325
Marc by Marc Jacobs New Q Solid Groovee Bag, $420
Rebecca Minkoff Double Pyramid Bracelet, $78
LnA Lace Racerback Tank - Ivory, $84
J Brand 12" Pencil Jeans - Phoebe, $195
Rock & Republic Aria, $325
Marc by Marc Jacobs New Q Solid Groovee Bag, $420
Rebecca Minkoff Double Pyramid Bracelet, $78
Monday, March 8, 2010
Barely Breathing
Sometimes when I think of what I have lost, I feel that I need just one moment to stop and sit down and catch my breath. As I explained to Angela today the feeling of having to push my hurt and shock away constantly because I have class or an interview or a story to write, she said that I need to allow myself the chance to fall apart. I never did that. But now, I'm scared if I do, I'll never get up, I'll never put myself back together. I'm not sure which way to turn. And scarily, it feels completely out of my hands.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
McQueen's Sorrow
At 9:39 am my blackberry buzzed to with a Wall Street Journal news alert. At the same time, a girl in class, wide-eyed, turned to me: "Chaya! Alexander McQueen died." And sure enough, the little buzz was informing me of this very thing. As the fashion world reacted today, amidst the start of the New York shows, to the shock and sadness of this news, some in the media speculated that the death of McQueen's mother last week may be what pushed him to suicide. According to Tim Blanks at Style.com, "[The death] would undoubtedly have taken away his most vital support. It’s awful to imagine him trying—and failing—to cope, and one can only hope that, if he was looking for peace, he found it." While no one can confirm this is the case, it touches me.
I feel for his loss, and I feel for this new loss of a wildly free and innovative artist.
<3
I feel for his loss, and I feel for this new loss of a wildly free and innovative artist.
<3
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Some last memories of Kiran...
One year ago exactlyIn January, we went to Puerto Rico with my parents. In fact, my parents were just there last week and they told me that someone on the hotel staff asked about me and her. We were there last year around this time, lying on the beach, drinking daiquiris and other frozen concoctions under the sun as I spelled our love in the sand (literally, you know, "Babs + Bay Wee = <3"). We watched cheesy movies in the hotel room at night, and she always fell asleep and snored loudly. I shoved her and told her to shut the eff up. And in the car to the airport, we laughed non-stop at my parents and the ridiculous things they said. Like, "What is THAT?! A box of PIZZA??" and "What kind of light is THIS?" She'd understand why that's funny :) And for weeks after, we texted those lines back and forth repeatedly.
At my uncle's funeral in February, we cried a little together, but more welcomed the opportunity to be together, to laugh, and to share a weekend with each other and the younger cousins. We played with little Sachin and mocked my dad's concerned face. I always did things and Kiran laughed. I remember feeling the warmth of family in spite of the sadness, and I remember feeling my cousins looking up to me and her, though they made fun of us behind our backs for our ridiculous names "Babs" and "Bay Wee." And I remember she told me a secret, I wasn't allowed to tell anyone, but now I don't know what it was. It seemed important then, but now it does not.
She came back to New York in March. The weekend before she died. We went home to my parents' and sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea and making jokes with my mom. I remember saying, "This is madness," about... something, and she laughed loudly, with her mouth open. We had brunch at cozy barmarche on Spring Street and talked our usual talk. We had drinks at Thor and talked some more. I remember her vividly on Sunday morning, me looking down from the lofted bed in my tiny studio, her hair splayed out above her on the pillow, the blanket rising and falling softly, as she slept below me on the floor. She was the only person I have ever seen with my same long, thick, black hair. That is how I remember her last.
The night before she left us, she sent me a text, saying, "tell me something nice about me." I think I told her she was beautiful and funny and charming and unique and my best friend in the world. I was out at 205 Chrystie with the New York girls and some other Duke visitors. We were always in touch... But she didn't text back because she was at some underground bar with poor service, she explained in the morning. I think it was the last text she ever got from me.
I texted her on Monday evening, wondering why she hadn't responded to my emails or calls. I said, simply, "Azz?" I called her that too sometimes. She never got back to me on that one.
I think sometimes I am still waiting for her to answer me. I know I'm supposed to feel like she's here. And there are times when I'm sure she's trying to tell me not to worry and that she's watching out for me. But mostly, I am just left with memories. This is supposed to be a good thing; people say I have a lifetime of memories with her. But really, I always thought I'd just have a lifetime with her. It's really weird not having that.
Sorry for the rambling post. It's one of those weeks.
Monday, February 8, 2010
A pretty cool chick's first website
It's not done, and I'm sure it will be a work in progress for a long time, but if you feel so inclined, here is the link to my professional website, or what will ultimately be that. http://www.chayababu.com/
For now, it's a site for a project I am doing (the one I made the timeline for, which you will see there under "chronology"), but I plan to change some things around after the quarter ends to make it have more of my work. I'm particularly excited today because I just came up with the site name and I made the header image all by myself! I know it just looks like a blog right now, but after some customization (yes, I am learning to play with back-end coding in html and css like a real tech geek hehe), it will appear more like a regular website as opposed to blog-style. Anyway, that's how that's going! I still have a ton more to do even just for that project, so as the homepage says, don't judge me!
xo
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Teens too fashiony for A&F
There are a few defining things I remember vividly about ninth and tenth grade - parties in older kids' backyards, trying to go to every pop-R&B concert that came to the New York area (yea Bad Boy tour! God, we were so cool), passing one beer around under the table between 12 girls at Fridays, playing field hockey (eek, the mention of my days of pretending to be athletic make me laugh/cringe), mint chocolate-chip ice cream, those funky knit mittens and of course... Abercrombie & Fitch!
The sweaters, the long-sleeve cotton t-shirts that said "varsity" on the chest, the checked and striped button-downs (not flannel; flannel was sooo 7th grade), and more sweaters. We lived for this. By "we," I mean the Briarcliff girls, but I know this was also broader trend. Ladies, you know who you are. We'd talk on the phone and describe the new Abercrombie sweaters our moms bought us, and we'd plan to wear them to the next party in someone's backyard with our Sutters jeans (had to give Sutters a shout-out). The clothes even had a smell. It was woodsy and wintery and, let's be honest, it made us feel really cool. And occasionally, one of us would have the same item as some senior girl, and while this was a high school faux pas, it was inevitable because Abercrombie was probably the only place the entire school shopped. With the exception of Havana Jeans :)
Anyway, my point about all this is related to an article in the Wall Street Journal today about Abercrombie & Fitch's steep declines in revenues due to, well, their product. For Fiscal 2009, the Company reported a net sales decrease of 16 percent to $2.977 billion from $3.540 billion last year. Comparable store sales decreased 23 percent for the fiscal year. You don't have to know business to know that's bad.
I always find it interesting when a clothing brand begins to suffer after years of success because of a changing market. Although I'm out of their target age, I still have an inkling, when I walk past their New York store with bare-chested men standing at the entrance, that the brand and it's grand, dimly-lit Fifth Avenue home feels out of place. I think the sex-appeal marketing still has something to it, since sex never goes out of style, but it's their clothing that's off - no pun intended - as simple as that sounds.
Kids these days know and care more about fashion. Not just style (we all cared about our appearances starting at a very young age) but high fashion. I think younger and younger segments are conscious of what's on the runway, even if only subconsciously, from shows like Project Runway and The Hills. As it becomes more in vogue for mass audiences to be in the know about fashion, people overall want to have clothes with a bit more edge. And this applies especially to the teen market who was Abercrombie's bread and butter, the teen market in places like Westchester. At the price point they maintain, Abercrombie's worn-denim-and-threadbare-shirt kids are going elsewhere for their more sophisticated wares.
We watched Dawson's Creek; they have Gossip GirlIt's part of a larger trend in our economic times, in my opinion, with the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. When I was in high school, the Westchester Mall still had The Limited and Guess? (no, not Guess by Marciano, just Guess?), but now it has Barneys CO-OP, Burberry, and theory, just to name a few. It also had Abercrombie and we loved it. But today when the moms take their 14-year-olds to the mall, what's it gonna be: Abercrombie or Vince and 7 for all mankind? Kids know what's up, and that ain't Abercrombie anymore.
To circle back, I remember when I visited Briarcliff High School circa 2003 and Meri Lewis was wearing jeans low on her waist, her thong showing, and carrying a designer bag that I guarantee you I still would not be able to afford. We carried backpacks. And we wrote on them with white-out pens.
Things change fast; I'm surprised Abercrombie has sustained their momentum for even this long without evolving their look much. I think with the unfortunate numbers, they are rethinking how they do things over there. So maybe we'll see a more mature brand in the near future. And then the question will be who bites!
Moroccan Oil
Okay, so you should know by now that no matter how much I love to shop, I am generally not a product pusher. But I have to promote this stuff (the original oil). I came upon it by chance as I don't really spend that much time, money, or attention on beauty products, but this came in a gift bag at some event. I wasn't going to use it because I thought it was weird to put oil in my hair, but really it's so awesome with a little dollop (I love that word, and I never say it since my hair has never needed only a dollop of anything!). It adds softness - something that is not inherent whatsoever to my hair type - and shine. And if you, like me, have wavy hair but don't like using heavy, sticky hair products like gel or mousse or whatever, seriously, it's great. And it has a very unique, tropical-y smell; not coconut, but something that makes you feel like you're on the beach in some place like... Morocco. It adds a little exotic to my day. And no, I don't mean exotic in an idiotic racist way. Try the oil! And then thank me.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Chicago Fashion: A Snapshot of History
Hey people, I busted my little tush for three days straight on this timeline of fashion in the Second City. Please take a peek into the city's couture culture :) I plan to have the timeline live on the website I'm making in class, which will be ultimately be my professional portfolio site, but since I'm quite excited about this comprehensive look at history, I decided to just post it!
The majority of my research was done at the Chicago History Museum and through the Chicago Historical Society. The photos of dresses are credited to Irving Solero and the information about the pieces from the Museum’s Couture Collection is thanks to Timothy A. Long, curator and fashion guru. Other photos, since taken before I was born, are from credited sources in the timeline.
The pieces featured are part of the museum’s couture collection and were just a fraction of more than 60 pieces on display at the “Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum” exhibit. Worn by some of Chicago’s most prominent women in society, business and philanthropy, these dresses are significant to city’s fashion and cultural past.
PS – you can view it in full screen if you click "view in dipity" and then "full screen" once you get there. and the little "+" signs at the bottom of the timeline indicate that you should click to expand… so do it!
"In spite of its sinister reputation, Chicago is one of the most poetic cities in the world." -Christian Dior
The majority of my research was done at the Chicago History Museum and through the Chicago Historical Society. The photos of dresses are credited to Irving Solero and the information about the pieces from the Museum’s Couture Collection is thanks to Timothy A. Long, curator and fashion guru. Other photos, since taken before I was born, are from credited sources in the timeline.
The pieces featured are part of the museum’s couture collection and were just a fraction of more than 60 pieces on display at the “Chic Chicago: Couture Treasures from the Chicago History Museum” exhibit. Worn by some of Chicago’s most prominent women in society, business and philanthropy, these dresses are significant to city’s fashion and cultural past.
PS – you can view it in full screen if you click "view in dipity" and then "full screen" once you get there. and the little "+" signs at the bottom of the timeline indicate that you should click to expand… so do it!
"In spite of its sinister reputation, Chicago is one of the most poetic cities in the world." -Christian Dior
Saturday, January 30, 2010
By the waaaay
I want to say, since I haven't written in a while and I just feel the need to address something - I know I am very open in my posts about myself, how I feel about things, and some of the crazy shit I continue to do well into my late twenties. As I venture into the world of writing for the public, I want to practice being honest and frank in the topics I focus on.
I imagine that, here, accomplishing that won't be quite as much a challenge as, say, writing about race/gender/class politics like I hope to do one day, since it's clear up front that everything you see is from my perspective and had a twist of Chaya-ness. Still, even when it comes to personal matters, in fact, especially when it comes to personal matters, finding the "truth" really ain't so easy.
And, on that note, to the other young people in my position, ahem, amidst the quarter-life crisis (which, by the way, I consider myself to somewhat in control finally!), maybe think a little about truth yourselves. Discovering it within makes navigating all this bullshit so much less overwhelming.
Happy reading!
I imagine that, here, accomplishing that won't be quite as much a challenge as, say, writing about race/gender/class politics like I hope to do one day, since it's clear up front that everything you see is from my perspective and had a twist of Chaya-ness. Still, even when it comes to personal matters, in fact, especially when it comes to personal matters, finding the "truth" really ain't so easy.
And, on that note, to the other young people in my position, ahem, amidst the quarter-life crisis (which, by the way, I consider myself to somewhat in control finally!), maybe think a little about truth yourselves. Discovering it within makes navigating all this bullshit so much less overwhelming.
Happy reading!
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
I want it MINE!
I know it's been a while, but I'm obsessed with this. OBSESSED! SO, I just might have to take donations to fund the purchase. (Good idea, Susan!) Volunteers? Anyone?
I love you, Geren Ford. Really.
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