"a day in the life"

"thrilling time ahead"

thrill·ing

 [thril-ing]

adjective

1. producing sudden, strong, and deep emotion or excitement.

2. producing a tremor, as by chilling.

3. vibrating; trembling; quivering.

 

 

"Cuatro quesadillas, calientes por favor."

Career Blogs Need To Incorporate Sex And Swearing

Do business advice blogs bore you?

Yeah, me too.

And that's a shame because they are often packed with lots of great content! The trouble is they often pack that great content in a boring manila folder. And lets be honest, no one is ever eager to peek inside a boring manila folder.

So these posts get overlooked and their great advice goes unheard because the presentation and delivery are all wrong. They've failed to entice the reader and get them excited to read more!

Smart business advice doesn't vary much whether you are writing from an tropical island as a location independent entrepreneur, or from a corner office with a birds-eye view overlooking the island of Manhattan. It doesn't even vary much if you're writing from inside four dull gray cubicle walls.

The point is, from WHERE you write doesn't matter. HOW you write does! And personally, I would be more likely to read career blogs if they incorporated some sex and swearing. Anything to spice it up!

I don't write a lot of career/entrepreneurship advice here on my blog. Although I'm told I should. I don't write on the topic or even talk to my friends and family about business because quite frankly, at the end of a workday, I'm sick of talking about work.

Don't get me wrong. I love discussing business - hearing people's views, sharing my own, learning and applying new strategies. I just prefer to discuss it in a way that's more relaxed, more relatable.

Earlier this week I was asked to write a guest post for Brazen Careerist, a career-management site for high achieving young professionals and ambitious college students. I've had close to two dozen of my posts featured on Brazen Careerist in the past. So I'm guessing they like my edgy take on life and work.

Here is a nibble of my most recent one...

Giving It Away On A First Date and In Business
Ever notice that people who have a product or service of value are happy to give you a trial run or a money-back guarantee? That’s because they’re confident that once you get a taste of what they’ve created, you’ll come back for more. It’s the classic “try before you buy” concept. You hook them with that nibble.

It’s sort of like a first-date kiss. (Well, minus the nibble unless you’re into that sort of thing.) The kiss should be good, but small. Just enough to make them want more, to convince them to say yes to a second date and keep the thought of you lingering...

Click To Read The Full Post

Think of it like this. If you were standing on a corner with two men, one in a stuffy black suit and the other with a free-flowing purple mohawk, who would seem more fun to chat up?

Exactly! That's why I strive to write from a place inside myself that resembles a punk-haired businessman. Well, I'm currently sporting a fohawk undyed and missing a tie today. But close enough.

Hats: An Anthology at Bard Graduate Center (Part 3)

We had so much fun at the opening for Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones that we did not have time to see the entire exhibition, and simply had to go back last Sunday. Here are the pictures we took from our second trip, which we've incorporated into our third installment. (More about the locale of our photo below.)

Below is a hat from Tudor England. Since hats are made of soft, natural material that perishes easily (humidity and animals with various numbers of legs are often to blame), clothing that survives as long as this in a moist climate is very rare. (The feather and ribbon are both replacements, but the leather base is original.)


















This hat, open and box-shaped, is almost the anti-hat. Takes thinking outside the box to new levels!











A still from a wonderful video, Hat Modes (1941). In two minutes, we see how a single felt hat can be shaped five different ways (low over the eye, high toward the back of the head, pinned on both sides, encircled from crown to chin with a veil and decorated around the crown with a ribbon) for five completely different looks.
















The latest Marc Jacobs hat, making the rounds in several iterations.



















This hat was made and worn by Leigh Bowery, outre leading light of the '80s London club scene.



















Below is the entire outfit. This photo is also the cover of Leigh Bowery Looks, Fergus Greer's amazing compendium of Bowery's fantastical costumes.












What look could be hotter than a hat made of matchsticks?!

















A Gaultier hat worn over the eyes, with tassel tears.


















Another rare hat from the 17th century England, this one made of beaver fur. The 17th century hat box is also preserved.

















Stephen Jones often collaborates with fashion houses. This is a Comme des Garcons hat.













This feathered hat is a stunning evocation of a bird in flight.











It's WONDERFUL to see Elsa Schiaparelli's fanciful shoe hat up close. It's actually made of black felt, except for the heel, made of luscious red velvet.



















Stephen Jones pays homage to Schiaparelli's shoe hat with his own great design. The updated Jones version is made of sheer molded plastic black netting, with glass 'taps' at the toe. So playful!




















New York's own Bill Cunningham, a milliner before he became the iconic photographer for The New York Times, made a shoe hat using a real shoe.




















This hat in Burberry plaid belongs to Italian Vogue editor Anna Piaggi. The internet has endless pages of Piaggi in hats (more than 71 verifiably different hats, not counting photos too small to see and thoughtlessly, heartlessly, cropped photos). Where does she keep them all? DOES she keep them all? And none of the photos show this hat. Might Piaggi have a hat for every day of the year? If there were annual tours of private closets the way there are annual tours of private gardens in flower, the Piaggi closet tour would undoubtedly be the hot ticket of the year.


















We don't understand why anyone calls Andy Warhol's toupees fright wigs. The later ones were marvelous to look at, and beat hell out of baseball caps for the follicularly challenged.




















A third 17th century English hat - called an apprentice's cap. Gargantuan old English estates, with their endless storage space and generations of devoted caretakers, must have had something to do with the remarkable preservation of hats like these.




















This hat, by Kirsten Woodward, is entitled Sex on the Brain.







































Want still more Stephen Jones hats? We went to Comme des Garcons the other day (in the photo above, we posed in front of the entrance to their Chelsea boutique, bedizened with little Maos at the entrance), where there are several on display (hats - not Maos - and only a few - hats - for sale). We were not allowed to photograph, but we found the picture below from Fashion’s Night Out online on An Unknown Quantity, a wonderful street/fashion photography blog by Wataru “Bob” Shimosato. We HAVE to point out that the igloo hat, in the upper left hand corner of the display, is accompanied by a small Eskimo attached by a delicate foot long white strand.













By the way, Roberta Smith, art critic for The New York Times, has written a review of the show. Read her review here, and check out the reverence apparent in the clever title.

The Wall Street Journal also covered the show, rolling its coverage into an article about the upswing in the popularity of hats this fall. (Pictures in the article demonstrate [accidentally] that royals do not know how to wear hats. Or maybe they just don’t know how to match them to their outfits.) To see the article, click here.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

BONUS PICTURES

Since we're going on about hats, and since several weeks ago we did a posting about nothing but men's hats, we have to show you this great picture (below) of Vogue editor Hamish Bowles in a Philip Treacy hat for his recent appearance under a pseudonym on The X Factor. (You can see the full article in the October Vogue.)


















Click here for coverage of Bowles' adventure and more photos from racked.com. And we just HAD to show you a close-up of the Christian Louboutin shoes (below). Isn't it interesting that when a woman wears flats everyone says 'BORing', but when a man wears flats everyone gasps at how beautiful they are? These are FABulous, and we want a pair too!















But we have to end with these photos, taken only yards away from Comme des Garcons, because we came across the largest cocktail we've ever seen. LOL, as they say on Twitter, which we have yet to use!

Hats: An Anthology at Bard Graduate Center (Part 2)

You shouldn't ask 'why do you wear a hat?' What you really should be asking is 'why are you not?' - John Galliano



















As promised, since we were so blown away by the more than 250 hats currently on display in Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones at Bard Graduate Center, here without further ado is our first sequel. Second (and final) sequel to come Friday. The quotable quotes interspersed here are all from the catalogue that accompanies the show.



















Does this mean hats are only for those who want to be the centre of attention? Not at all, but they confer a sense of presence and poise to the wearer that, in my mind, cannot be achieved through clothing or other accessories. - Stephen Jones


















... a good hat provides an unending source of entertainment, glamour, amusement and inspiration. - Oriole Cullen



















...the lure of hats [in a shop window] ... lies in capturing the imagination and fantasies of the customer, while also assuring them that their choice will inspire admiration in the onlooker. - Oriole Cullen


















Why are [hats] remaindered to the Timbuktu of fashion when they are in fact its Shangri-La? - Stephen Jones













...once the person puts the hat on it becomes the focal point of the outfit; the hat explains your Look. - Stephen Jones


















If I were a psycho-analyst, I would go into partnership with a really smart milliner. Because if I knew my job as a psycho-analyst, I would realize that most inhibitions and repressions that afflict the modern woman could be cured quite simply by a new hat. - Milliner Aage Thaarup, 1936


















...the hat will serve to mark out the individuality of the wearer and separate her from the crowd. - Oriole Cullen


















...hats tell a story unlike any other. - Stephen Jones












Maybe it's because we communicate with our heads that anything that changes them in shape, colour or decoration is a striking statement. - Stephen Jones


















The millinery shop is a magical place, the site of transformation. - Oriole Cullen


















Choosing a hat is not always a straightforward matter... - Oriole Cullen


















When a brim shadows an eye seductively, or a feather exaggerates the movement of the head, this is when all the effort put into the hat has meaning. - Stephen Jones


















A hat is nothing until worn. - Stephen Jones













[Jones has said] the process of creating a hat is akin to turning a fantasy into reality. But the fantasy mutates as everyone takes their own personal interpretation from the piece." - Oriole Cullen












When the right hat meets the right client, the performance of wearing begins. - Oriole Cullen



















The wearer brings the hat alive... - Stephen Jones