Dior Addict Collaboration
Julie Sarinana of Sincerely Jules
Jenny Bernheim of Margo & Me
Aimee Song of Song of Style
Kristen Noel Crawley of KDIA Jewelry
Negin Mirsalehi of Negin Mirsalehi
Paola Alberdi of Blank Itinerary
daphne: street style in soho
Hello! It is a blustery Fall Friday here in Manhattan. I've had a busy week full of launching my newest and most magnificent product to date, the 2015 Art Calendar and live illustrating guests at the Piperlime Spring Preview.
I decided such a productive and exciting week warranted a $20 salad of gluten free, organic, free roaming chicken, home-schooled beets and arugula grown by school children in their collaborative garden on the roof of their upper-east side private girls school.
My favorite place to get such a salad is Cafe Gitane. They only take cash. They do not deliver. Only the finest salads come from establishments that set up such roadblocks. They'd never be caught dead on seamless.com... So off I went to get said salad.
And who do you think I saw posing on the corner of Spring and Lafayette with little dog at her side?
Daphne! She was posing for a photographer, in classic fashion-blogger pout/stance. Daphne is a fashion blogger!
How fantastic.
For those of you who may not recall, I've noticed Daphne about town here and there and have been captivated by her outfits. And now I know why! Fashion bloggers are always turned out from tip to toe.
Ok, back to work. Just thought I'd share this tidbit. I hope you have as well-styled a weekend as Daphne is bound to have.
Hayden Lasher + inslee
Meet Hayden Lasher!
Hayden is a new and exciting handbag designer on the scene in NYC. She's as sweet and kind as she is fashionable. Her signature grace comes through in her Belgian Bag, a retro-inspired handbag that speaks to me of ladies who dressed up to travel and changed before dinner and all of those other nostalgic things belonging to a bygone era of sophistication.
Hayden and I met while we were both fighting the good fight at a prestigious NYC fashion house, her in the shoe department, frenziedly trying to do three jobs at once and me uppercutting my way through mean streets of the PR department as a twenty five year old intern. It was a strange time full of strange circumstances, but I am happy to have met such a lovely soul in the trenches of fashion warfare. And I'm even happier to know that she's now "doing her own thing" and doing it so beautifully.
I was honored that she thought of me for a commission to help her celebrate her new brand. We strove to capture a quintessential New York City scene - a mysterious New Yorker stops to hail a cab in her matchstick stone-washed skinny jeans and electric red Belgian Bag and end up hailing a few admiring glances to boot.
Visit Hayden's new site and follow her social media presence... She just had a very exciting debut on fashion police after Taylor Swift was spotted carrying the Belgian Bag!
Huggies, Mom Trends and Inslee
Hello! In honor of Mother's Day being right around the corner, I thought I'd share some of my recent work for Nicole Feliciano of the MomTrends blog and Huggies Diapers . Nicole and Huggies teamed up on the launch and design of new wipe-pouches that double as chic little wristlet clutches for today's fashion-forward mom and I helped by illustrating for this MomTrends blog post on how these clutches work. 
Ahh, family togetherness and good clean fun! Don't you just love this all American commission? Happy Mother's Week to all of the moms out there (I think you get the whole week... and next week too!)
wedding shoes
introducing the SS 2014 Inslee 85mm collection. sold exclusively NO. WHERE. I am at my wits end.
If you were to track my browser history over the last month it would be a constant shifting cycle between evening wear and pumps on shop bop, barneys, saks, neimans, bergdorfs and the occasional visit to seamless web so that i don't expire while hunting for wedding shoes.
This is the hardest part of wedding planning yet! The shoes!!!!!! Oh the shoes. I have a very rigid set of requirements that most brides do not adhere to, so I recognized that I have made this a lot harder than it needs to be. Here are my requirements in no specific order:
1. must be 85mm or three inches exactly. any lower feels frumpy, any higher and I'll be uncomfortable
2. must have toe cleavage and a pointed toe.
3. the sole must lie flat against the floor when standing. I hate it when the sole lifts up in the front slightly and doesn't lie flush with the ground.
4. must not be slingback, sandals, strappy, have ties
5. could possibly be d'orsay
6. must not be covered in sparkles, glitter or snake skin
7. must not have red soles
8. must not be patent leather, suede or matte leather
9. could possibly have metallic patterning or embroidery or patterned silk
10. the stiletto must be thin and uniform in shape all the way down, and drop directly down from the farthest back most part of the heel, I can't stand it when the heel bows in and under the heel or worse yet - the new trend bows backwards. shudder.
11. must basically be these shoes, without the red sole and with a pattern that i have come up with on them.
12. does not exist and cannot be made before May 17th. Ideally the pattern from my botanicals. I will not be satisfied until everything on earth is patterned in my botanicals... I want to genetically manufacture a dog that is patterned in botanicals
Sigh... friends what should I do? Shoe designers do not like making 3 inch heels. Why is that? Four inch heels are such a struggle. 2.5 inch heels are such a let down. Where are the 3 inch wedding heels in beautiful brushed silk? If someone finds a way to locate THE shoes or wants to fund my new shoe company please be in touch. I must arrive on March 12th at my dress fitting with THE shoes. The time is now, we must hunt!
bey
So. I don't know about you, but personally, I don't love all the bey-shaming that's going on on Pinterest these days. At first I laughed when I saw that pin and thought nothing of it. But when my yoga teacher told us to meditate on it for a full 75 minute class, I realized I'd had enough.
"You have as many hours in the day as Beyonce" was probably meant to be inspiring. But, as someone who can't manage to get through a single to-do list ever, much less run a music empire, that statement is kind of defeating.
I mean, so what. 24 hours. We all have this gift every day. But you know what I don't have? Beyonce's talent. Time and talent are two things that exist in totally separate universes.
So I say, let's all take a moment to marvel at Beyonce, accept that none of us will ever achieve what she has and be happy that at least she exists to make our own average 24 hours that much more interesting.
That's my public service announcement, self-help mantra for the day. Stop beating yourself up on pinterest. Beyonce and I love you just the way you are.
Ps. a watercolor print of Beyonce would add a certain je ne sais quoi to that gallery wall you're working on
thoughts on being cryptic
Social media. It generates so much stress. Eating food used to be so much simpler before the issue of photographing and sharing it came into play. Weddings once could be declared legal in the sight of God and men without a wedding hashtag to prove it happened. (I've heard this is true, but historians could be misinformed)... but now... now every waking moment is an opportunity (at least in my world) for sharing, judging, comparing, improving. We have entered an age of not only social sharing but of competitive sharing.
And in the midst of all this competition, I am afraid I've become a bit cryptic. So, lets A. assume you follow my instagram account and B. dispel some of the confusion you may have about what I've been posting.
Starting with the above. Here is a sketch freely baring her breasts with the pride and confidence of a beast in the wild. "What is going on here?" you ask. "Where is the fashion?"...
Well, my friends, I am and always have been very into the human nude. As a art subject. Not as a sex addict. Just to be clear.
I love fashion illustration, but in order to make believable fashion figures, you need to know exactly where the belly button is beneath that statement belt. Or how the collarbone connects to the muscles of the neck.
Underneath your clothes there really is an endless story and it begins with how amazing the joints in your wrist are and how they create the most beautiful, bizarre line sloping and dipping and piquing just so from the tip of your pinky to the totally amazing and illogical shape of your elbow.
So, with all this in mind, I've started exploring painting nudes. And I want to sell them to you. But not until I'm ready. I've become something of an expert on selling my fashion illustrations. I've learned through years of trial and error, how to price this type of work, how to market it, how to present it, how to ship it to you... everything is running like a well oiled machine.
I'm still figuring out how to assemble the nude machine. (I could quit my day job and start naming alternative acoustic bands for a living, don't you think? #NudeMachine) And until I have the nude machine up and running, the only place to drink in the majesty of my painted human form will be on instagram.
I do hope to have these available for sale in the coming weeks and am curious and eager to hear what you think. So stay tuned, and get ready to get naked in 2014.