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Fashion/Design

Project Repat: A T-shirt Revolution

Did you know that 95% of your old t-shirts donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army are shipped to Africa?

Yeah, neither did I.

Just think- tons and tons of our old high school glee club t-shirts or co-ed league shirts are sold pennies to the pound and shipped to developing countries where they’re sold in markets.

This is exactly what Project Repat founders Ross Lohr and Sean Hewens thought about. Launched in January of 2011, Project Repat travels to these markets, handpicks t-shirt gems and brings them back to America where they’re sold with 100% proceeds going towards non-profits in the developing world. Project Repat is already on the up and up with features in Good Magazine, Urban Outfitters, Thrillist and Fox News- to name a few.

So why Project Repat? Well, for one, buying t-shirts in developing countries helps to support their economy. Secondly, as mentioned above, 100% of proceeds goes towards charity. Thirdly, think about how many awesome hipster t-shirts are floating (more…)

November 29, 2011 by
Fashion/Design, Hipstercrite Life

How to Have a Hipster Thanksgiving 2011

Last year I wrote a guide on how to have a Hipster Thanksgiving. Reading over that guide, I kind of wish I could copy and paste it for this year’s post, but alas, I had to come up with something new. Last year’s guide talked about Amy Sedaris’ hosting book ‘I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence‘ and I pretty much just want to only write about that. That woman is the shit.

So it’s Thanksgiving. You’re young, you’re hip, you like making cool DIY projects and even though you’re not vegetarian you’d like to think of yourself as one in select conversations with select individuals that are vegetarian. This is a special time of year for you and you need to know how to prepare for it responsibly. Here are some hipsters tips and products that will enable you to do this.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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Make Tin Can Lights for the Turkey Table-
I came across this idea one day on one of those DIY pictorial porn sites- you know, the ones where you look at beautiful pictures of things (more…)

November 23, 2011 by
Austin, Fashion/Design

The Botanical Heavenliness of Big Red Sun

There exists in Austin a magical place called Big Red Sun. It is a “full service design/build studio specializing in commercial and residential landscape services.” I’d rather call it botanical heaven. For any design junkie, this store will make you drool.

Also located in Venice Beach, California, Big Red Sun carries innovative landscape and design products such as the French-made Bacsac– collapsible above-ground planters, and Woollypocket, wall planters that not only add a fun aesthetic to any inside or outside wall, but are great tools for helping kids learn about gardening.

Bacsac

Woollypocket

Big Red Sun is located in the heart of East Austin in an adapted rundown storefront. They were featured in the East Austin Studio Tour and I went to snap some pics. Take a look!

 

The first thing you notice in Big Red Sun is the knit, mutant-esque deer head plaques on the wall. Yarn tentacles from the deers’ head stretch across the ceiling.

Smack dead in the middle of the (more…)

November 16, 2011 by
Fashion/Design, Hipstercrite Life

85 Year-Old Fashion

My grandmother is the most fashionable lady I know. To this day, through all the aches and pains, she still makes sure to be completely polished and presentable. She owned a woman’s clothing store for 35 years so she is no stranger to women’s fashion. Her closet and basement is filled with wonderful articles from the past the six decades. Her house is equally stylized, almost museum-like. While I was home I took the liberty to shoot some photos of her home and of her. She will be 85 years old at the end of November. She speaks about how she is disgusted with herself: how she could let her body get old? She feels ugly. I wish I could make her not feel this way. How can she not see how beautiful she is? If only we could all look this good at 85. As for her secret? This woman eats like a bird, worries so much she barely sleeps and smoked for many years. She uses cold cream to remove her foundation and Vaseline to remove her eye make-up. I’m guessing it’s just good Eastern European genes.

November 7, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

My Boyfriend the Style Icon

As I grew older, I began to realize that the probability of me dating a man who is smart, funny, interesting, good-looking, has a good job, is close to his family, has his head screwed on tightly AND dresses well was very unlikely. I could have maybe 3 or 4 of those things and dressing well would definitely not be one of them. I’m convinced that 50% of the male population do not know how to dress themselves. Sorry guys, but until the day you stop wearing short-sleeved piqué polo shirts that are two sizes too big for you, I will firmly keep that prior sentence in place.

Imagine my surprise when I did meet a guy who had all those qualities who wasn’t a.) gay b.) had a girlfriend that dresses him.

My boyfriend has style. It’s a style I can’t classify because it’s simply his own. If I had to pick a type I would call it “nerdy cowboy”? He always keeps a pen in the pocket of his pearl snap shirt.

My boyfriend has entire closet filled with costumes. He has another closet entirely filled (more…)

October 12, 2011 by
Austin, Fashion/Design, Hipstercrite Life

Guess That This Must Be the Place

I have a new article up on Culture Map today that I wanted to share with you guys. Last week was my three year anniversary in Austin. I can’t believe how much time has gone by. It seems like decades ago that I moved here. I barely remember the time I lived in LA 🙁

Above are the first two pictures I took in Austin. The out-of-focus one was my Hipstercrite header photo for a long time.

Austin has become my home and I can’t imagine living anywhere else.

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Last week I celebrated my third year in Austin.

Well, actually, it kind of came and went without me even noticing. You see, Austin has become home. I no longer view it as this animate object that swept me up into it’s arms and saved me—I just simply live in it now. I’m an Austinite. I have a 512 phone number and I wear pearl snap shirts.

I used to romanticize a lot about Austin. Hell, I even drunk dialed her frequently. She was this near-mythical (more…)

October 7, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

Fashion: Too Damn Hot to Wear Suits

I truly hate this time of year in Austin. My sense of fashion flies out the window. Hats, scarves, cardigans- everything I love I can not wear unless I want to melt like this playground here:

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I’m from the North so my idea of fashion involves layers. I like sleek, tailored and imaginative. Actually, I really just like wearing suits. Full-on dude’s suits. Been wearing them since I was a little girl. Probably the first time I realized I loved wearing suits was the day I dressed as Rod Serling for no reason. It felt so good to put on a jacket and tie and impersonate my writing hero. Serling always looked so cool and collected up on the TV screen and that’s how I wanted to look.

This sounds like the beginning of a Born This Way blog post, the day I realized when I was a boy trapped in a girl’s body, but alas, it’s not that interesting. I just really like suits. Love them. Love the way they look on me and other women. I don’t just fancy suits either- ties, bowties (more…)

August 16, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

How To Stay Stylish in Clothing Melting Heat

While cataclysm of Waterworld-esque proportions keeps happening in other parts of the country, here in Austin, Texas we’ve been as bone dry as two teenagers humping after marching band practice. It’s also been a cool 104 degrees with a steady 90% humidity AT ALL TIMES. These two facts combined together make day-to-day living extremely difficult. Being from New York, my body can’t handle such zenith. Our bodies are predestined to be weak, capable of only handling such weather-related hardship as translucent skin and Eddie Bauer fashion. When my native New Yorker father visited me in Austin this weekend and ran across the molten blacktop barefooted, I saw his feet explode into an awesome ray of light while native Texans idly strolled by. I’m convinced that Texans are part of their own tribe, capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and skinning squirrels with their eyesight.

I am three years into living in Texas and I’m still sufficiently stunned when the summer approaches. I cry (more…)

June 23, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

Televangelism Fashion

In honor of the shitty week that Harold Camping must be having, I thought I’d revisit a post I wrote about the awesome fashion sense of evangelists….

Sometimes I think about turning my blog into a fashion blog.

Fashion blogs always seem to be the belle of the ball.
The hit of the party.
The slut of the kegger.
They always get the most traffic and the most comments.
Which is interesting, because they’re usually written by a doe-eyed thirteen year-old girl from Winnipeg who likes to stand pigeon-toed and wear her Grandma’s reading glasses.
Anytime I do write about fashion, it’s one of three things- vintage clothing, making fun of American Apparel, and making fun of American Apparel while forgetting that I’m wearing an entire American Apparel ensemble.
However, I thought today that I might write a fashion post for a dude named Oral.
Yes, Oral.
Oral died recently and I had no idea who the heck he was. In fact, I’m super hung-up on the fact that a couple decided to name their (more…)
May 24, 2011 by
Fashion/Design

The Rise and Fall of American Apparel

I have a secret to tell you.
I worked off and on at American Apparel for three years.

It’s true.
I was one of them.

I often felt this fact was a tiny mar on my resume and should be excluded from the story of my life. For a long time I simply didn’t tell anyone that I worked for the company. I was kind of embarrassed. I knew what many people thought of the company, but more importantly I knew what people thought that we, the employees, thought about ourselves. Which is that we are all stuck-up, pretentious hipsters who would rather stare at the ceiling and flash side-boob instead of smile at a customer. I mean, I think of ourselves that way sometimes. Having visited a number of American Apparels I can tell you that in some cases that statement is accurate. The company is not known for their customer service training. In fact, there is zero customer training other than looking “hip”. However, if the company is lucky enough to hire employees that already understand that greeting (more…)

May 16, 2011 by