see you in a little bit

dear lace-up booties

we're going to have an amazing fall/winter together!

i found you on amazon.com

& you were an utter freaking steal.

#YAY.

#LOVE.

happy sunday!

love,

sunlovey

#LOVE is...

well, it's multifaceted. being thought of.

being understood stylistically.

being given this KILLER BAG... by your dad & brother!

India themed vinyl tote with fab fuchsia polka dot lining scored @ world market. oh the places it will go!

j'adore.

love,

sunlovey

It was a blazing hot south Florida summer day. Baby L & I were restless. So off to Wellington mall we ventured. Now you must know, baby L was born in a labor & delivery suite overlooking this very mall so I'm quite sure it's already near and dear to his heart. Ooops! I've digressed. So yes, we arrived at the mall and began strolling about. Funny, that term takes on new meaning when you're pushing a stroller about as you do it! He had finally gone from five-alarm screaming to peaceful zzz-ing when these insane zebra peep-toes caught my eye from the window of a shoe store I'd never considered entering, until right then.

I was greeted by a kind older man, and me just being me, within seconds, couldn't help but ask, "Where are you from?" (Note: this very question led me to meeting The German, in a nightclub, 1000 years ago.) I utter it without fail every single time I encounter an accent. This gentleman hesitated, as most do from his region, then said "I'm Palestinian."

"Ah! I just love Middle Eastern food!," I rambled on. We spoke of my travels, our favorite dishes and so forth, as I tried on the shoes I'd seen in the window. Instant #love. Yet, as I quickly scanned their box and the entire boutique, I saw no price tags, "How much?"

"Everything in the store is $39. But for you, $25."

FABULOUS.

Moral of the story, chit chat and get to know the sales people at non-chain boutiques & stores, you learn cool things and just might snag a sick deal. Just you wait, I'm going to rock the hell out of these peep-toes.

love,

sunlovey

#love

#love

#love

as i indulge in a piece of carrot cake

& an entire liter of perrier citron

i ponder the fact that i

covet & lust & need & want.

bad bad bad, but soooo good.

these things have struck my fancy in super recent days.

do they slay you? click on the #love below each for more info.

love,

sunlovey

i should be severely punished.

admittedly, should i dare purchase ONE MORE PAIR OF WEDGES this season.
seriously, loveys. name the punishment. (not joking)
then, hold me to it.
I NEED HELP.
scored these mantra wedges by carlos santana on hautelook this a.m.
they are utterly fantastic though, aren't they?
and for $39.
seriously.
punish me.

love,
sunlovey

oh, p.s.
listen to this:

but another anthemic, sparkling, gorgeous, emotional, #chillwave track from ernest greene also known as WASHED OUT. god, i love that kid. washed out's amor fati via pitchfork.
hint: this is a downloadable mp3 if you dig it.
love,
sunlovey

all you need is love.
all you need is love. all you need is love.
love.
love is all you need.
love is all you need.
(we could ALL use this reminder from time to time)

i recall when i first heard of them, THEN SAW THEM, no, not live, an image. one can imagine who i instantly likened them to physically. but their sound itself? well, it was very #LOVE/hate for me. but HOLY WOW, i play this new track of theirs for the 1st time yesterday and just like that, 'twas LOVE and only love. can't explain it. but it's melancholy and beautiful, uplifting and brilliant.

give it a go:

-the horrors-

still life

i. LOVE. this.

am now

SO DYING

for

"Skying"

the horrors' new album, coming out, in the magical month of july 2011. ;-)

love,

sunlovey

just when you thought i was done gushing and gushing and gushing on end about #UMF

IDENTITY FEST
came along...
and this, my loveys, is a nationwide tour.
so try to go wherever you are.
then, prepare to
DANCE
it appears there will be varying line-ups
so click your city for the details.
i'm so in: bookashade, kaskade, holy ghost!+
YAY YAY YAY!!!
happy friday.
love,
sunlovey

addendum: my brain is one jacked little place. i hesitate to drop $100 on a dress without carefully mulling it over, but a show goes on sale & $100+ is dropped faster than you can say 'excuse to dance my a$$ off'. conversely, i will dole out $50 at the drop of a hat for a killer top, but hesitate and think in great detail about spending the same on a $50 music compilation.
i don't get myself.

SHOPPING THE CLOSET

am truly living each day like it's a brand new fashion challenge as of late. considering essentially ALL of my jeans and pants are ruled out until further notice, getting dressed involves A LOT of scavenger hunts to recesses of closets. thank the fashion gods, i keep digging up old but perfect frocks. like this one from forever 21, say? 3 years ago? i have no concept of time. it's a bubble dress and i used to wear it with a belt. now, flowy and sensationally shapeless. ;-)

in an ideal world we'd all love to acquire something new and fantastic to wear daily, but that just isn't the case, kids. so keep digging deep. reinventing.

happy weekend! tear it up & sparkle on.

love,

sunlovey

WEDGE ISSUE

there's something about the onslaught of summer that forces a girl to stockpile wedges. but don't judge, 3 of the 5 styles above are not newly acquired. in fact, shoe #4, i've had since i saw the cure at #UMF ('twas 2007). what year was that? anyway, i wore them there. so, not much of an issue, huh? no, just a healthy little summer obsession. if all plays out right, i'll be adding a 6th style to this assortment, thanks to a twitter #mustlustespadrilles contest by nine west by tweeting this:

sunlovey sarah christoph

@NineWest i #mustlustespadrilles becuz am over 5 months pregnant & refuse to wear flats—so sexy, yet comfy wedges are where it's at! ;-)

24 Mar

am told i won a gift card...stay tuned!

hope you had such a brilliant weekend.

i did. albeit different from any weekend i've ever ever had, follow my other blog for an update on how so, shortly...

love,

sunlovey

All Things Swelle

BlogCrush: The Swelle Life & Swelle Boutique

Denise Grayson & I have become fast friends on twitter. Or maybe I should say, I quickly became obsessed with all things Swelle and sort of inflicted myself on her. Should you explore her online Swelle Boutique you'll likely find yourself coveting what you discover & frantically searching for a conversion calculator (Denise resides in England & I was NEVER good at converting pounds to dollars).

And then there's her blog—The Swelle Life, & grrr, it's hard not to hate her, it's that cool. and gorgeous. and... well, marie antoinette would approve. but so would vivienne westwood.

I tell you all of this because Denise has just launched the beginnings of her own Swelle label collection. And the images I've been privy to so far have me lusting and longing. Was delighted when I asked her if I could blog about her up and coming collection and she graciously obliged. Get to know Denise Grayson, the style maven behind the darling & cheeky dresses of the brand spanking new Swelle line.

What inspired your designs?

I love the idea of wearing dresses every day. Women dressed that way in the 50s and 60s and the aesthetics of those eras hold massive appeal for me, but their look was more fussy. Their faces were made up and their hair was always done (if Mad Men isn't lying to us) and the outfits accessorized and matchy-matchy, but you can take the 'proper' look and make it more modern, individual and relaxed. Dita Von Teese does the whole 'done to the nines' look, even for grocery shopping, brilliantly, but it's not practical for the rest of us. But simple, classic dress shapes are really easy and comfortable to wear, you can dress with a bit of charm without looking like you take it all too seriously. And they're very versatile. My motto for the past few years, especially since becoming a mum and wanting to look good with literally zero effort, has been that it takes the same amount of time to put on something pretty than something that looks like crap! If you have the right pieces in your wardrobe there's no reason not to look great every day.

I wanted to offer this kind of dressing, so ease and comfort was important and therefore the fabrics had to be soft and easy to care for, pieces that you look forward to wearing and can be in all day without tearing through the front door and ripping your clothes off for some relief.

And how did you go about getting them created, did you draw up sketches and have them made, did you sew them yourself?

I do sketches of what I want and with the first designs I started working from toiles of basic classic shapes such as shifts and trapeze dresses. I have the dresses made by a local seamstress who is great with detail and will take the time to do handpleated trim yet not really charge for it, which helps keep my price down. By doing it this way we can make each piece a little different and customize them according to individual requests. They are made to order with a very quick turnaround of 2-3 days. I had been trying to learn to sew, thinking it would give me full autonomy over the entire process once I got good enough to make my own samples, then a friend talked some sense by reminding me that if I don't have enough time to handle my workload now I certainly don't have time to make clothes on top of it all. Point taken and I'm happy to have talented others do it!

How long have you had your Swelle Boutique up & running?

I opened last June, it's still a baby.

Your blog?

The Swelle Life just passed its three year anniversary. That reminds me, I need to do a post on that!

What were you doing before this?

My BA is in fine art but I wondered what the heck I was going to do with that, so I went to school for advertising. The combination of writing and visuals seemed tailor made for me; little did I know that big ad agencies eat the souls of children for breakfast. I've worked in pretty much every incarnation of communications from copywriting to production to web content development and project management to marketing for a university and consulting. I never saw myself as being self-employed but when your life does a 180 and your priorities shift, you never know what will come from it. In the end I determined the office sucked and I hated working for other people. I never let myself admit that before because I didn't think I had a choice. I've never worked harder than I do for myself but I love it. I still freelance a bit when I can.

You grew up in Canada and now live in England, where about?

I grew up in Ontario in the Niagara Region (fun fact: Linda Evangelista went to my high school) and later moved to Toronto where I met my husband and had our daughter. We moved to coast outside of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in England in 2005 when my daughter was three months old. Fun! I miss my family and friends so much but it's a huge consolation to live in a beautiful area, just a five minute walk from a gorgeous beach on the North Sea with a 7th century castle overlooking it. We just don't have that back home! And the country side is stunning up here. Geordies are really lovely people, too.

Fave place in the world & why?

Definitely Paris. We lived there for a short time in 2009 and we're actually off for an eight-day trip next Saturday which I am hugely looking forward to. Sometimes you have such grand, highly romanticized expectations of what something you dream of will be like that the reality can be disappointing. But Paris was exactly what I had hoped. It's a place of such extraodinary, breathtaking beauty and history, yet there's a sense of calm that underlies the exhilaration you feel. Hard to believe, considering the revolution! It's like the essence of the city is in the air itself, and in its people. In Paris you can just 'be' and get so much from it without even having to do more than sitting in the park on a sunny day. My favourite place to just 'be' is Jardin du Luxembourg, we lived close by.

Fave band in the world & why? + fave live show ever
Fave band...I don't even know any more! I saw a lot of great shows in the late 80s and 90s - The Cure, U2 (Bono bugs me but the ZooTV tour was epic), Sonic Youth, Rage Against the Machine, Chemical Brothers, Prodigy, Tricky (love him but he sucks a bit live unlike Maynard of Tool who has an incredible live voice) among others and then really got into DJs later, mainly progressive house Brits like John Digweed and Danny Howells. I had 2nd row at Pink Floyd in 1992 I think it was my favorite show, that was pretty awesome. Being mature gentlemen now, the band was in dress shirts and pants with leather belts and shiny shoes, and being so close I could see that David Gilmour was scanning the faces of the first couple of rows to really see the people as they were experiencing the show. When he got to me I had the silliest grin from ear to ear because I was so thrilled to be able to see them and he smiled back with a little nod, like gratitude. I love old Red Hot Chili Peppers and nearly died at one of their shows where people got trampled. No music is good enough for that. Give me Don't Worry, Baby by the Beach Boys and I'm happy.

Fave indulgence?

Flowers. Once a month I will fill all of the vases in the house - on my little aqua French antique table in the front hall, the larger version I have of it in the living room by the window, and the deep window sills in the kitchen and on the way upstairs - so wherever I am in the house I can see and be around fresh flowers. (I have paper ones in the bathroom, I wouldn't put real ones through that!) It's too expensive to keep it up on a weekly basis but I try to have at least one bouquet at any given time to brighten the house. I'm insane for double peonies but thrilled with a small bunch of tulips, too. Seek pleasure in the simple things and every day can be awesome!

Thank you so very much, Denise, for filling us in on the magic & inspiration behind the Swelle label. Loveys, follow Denise's blog, The Swelle Life here. And without further ado...

darling confections

from Swelle are like

beautiful little cupcakes
you can wear, her 1st three designs:

lust this? click here.

covet this? click here.

simply must have this? click here.

;-)

love,

sunlovey

the ella bed-

in dusty teal velvet.

10 weeks...

and i shall be sleeping in a marie antoinette-esque heaven.

#love

& sweet dreams...

love,

sunlovey

ERDEM OBSESSION
i saw this coming. a couple seasons ago. it's only growing worse. i want it ALL. this particular collection, i've described as awesome cosmic love. doesn't it remind you of those brilliant snap shots you catch from time to time of our insanely vast and gorgeous solar system? Erdem is beyond #LOVE. get lost in space...
love,
sunlovey

WHO
are
YOU









MARY KATRANTZOU? your super skinny flower power pants slay me. hard. LOVE. And those gold glittery booties trimmed in nail heads = DESIRE.
love,
sunlovey

FASHION

MAKES MY

HEART BEAT.

a few more NYFW photos for your perusal. two designers. striking contrasts.

(1st four looks are marchesa, 2nd five looks are jeremy scott, last look is me, today, YAY!)

i'm in such love with each designer's collection for vastly different reasons. one appeals to the lover of all things period (i.e. victorian) in me — the other, my forever inner club kid.

love,

sunlovey

So. Much. Love.

i AM a lucky girl. people do adore giving me things. random acts of awesomeness. i.e. out of the blue, this Free People dress. it graphically blows my mind. sadly you can't see the beautiful lace straps. or the delicate antique-brass studs. it's so love. and i just had to take a second to be grateful & share said gratefulness. i want to give more, i MUST give more, in the same way people give to me. karma and kindness. feels amazing. #spreadthelove.

love,

sunlovey