Breakfast at Tiffany’s Not-So-Happy Story

Ever since I watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s one month ago I can't forget this fashion show for Givenchy, who designed Audrey Hepburn's costumes.  He was the first high fashion designer to break into film. I understand why this movie appeals to so many generations of girls. Myself, I preferred to watch Roman Holiday, a fantasy story of a princess who escapes from her life for a day - escape from responsibility and societal expectations. Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s is more down to earth, a wanna-be socialite who is trying to move ahead in life. While escaping from her past, ignoring lack of founds, she aspires to becoming one of the fabulous New York ladies. In fact, Holly is a high class escort, if not a call girl. I understand her aspirations, but I'm far from understanding the way that she chose to fulfil them.  The fact is the fabulous Audrey Hepburn represents the ideal of young women -  beautiful, feminine, and fun loving. 

'Hello Boys' Billboard Voted Most Iconic Ad

The Wonderbra's 'Hello Boys' billboard was voted most iconic ad image ever in a poll carried out by the Outdoor Media Centre, the British trade body for outdoor advertising. After Wonderbra had unveiled the campaign with Eva Herzigowa in 1994 it was acclaimed  a taraffic-stopper and I can imagine how much aditional buzz marketing it produced! It mast have been brilliant and effective campaing!
The Outdoor Media Centre has teamed up with Campaign magazine to identify the best 100 posters of all time. Over 10, 700 Brits voted for their favourite billboards and here are the selected:

The Top Ten British Ads Ever
1. Hello Boys/Eva Herzigova (Wonderbra, 1994)
2. Labour Isn't Working (Conservative Party, 1978)
3. Lord Kitchener Wants You (Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, 1914)
4. His Master's Voice (The Gramophone Company, 1901)
5. Management trainee aged 42 (The Economist, 1991)
6. Pregnant Man (The Health Education Council, 1969)
7. Araldite (Ciba Geigy, 1983)
8. Think Different (Apple, 2003)
9. Beanz Meanz Heinz (Heinz, 1966)
10. Dumb Animals (Greenpeace)

Click here if you'd like to see the winning ads.

Source: Daily Mail

Home on Wheels - Best Caravan Interior Design

Many times on this blog I emphasized how much I love to travel. And I really do! Since I've moved to Argentina, road tripsbecame my favourites. Car travelling gives us the flexibility of deciding our own route and travel times. We can also stop off wherever we want and it gives us the opportunity to see and experience more. In our times, we loose so much of the magic of travelling, that otherwise we would have experienced if we hadn’t travelled by plane.

I've never been a great fan of caravan holidays until recently, when I came across with this wonderful caravan manufactured by Caravanolic, a Spanish architectural studio. I was smitten with it's original interior design, functional and modern yet personal and cheerful. I dare to say it looks like taking your home for a ride! I love it!

Source: www.caravanolic.com/

The King’s Speech starring Van Cleef & Arpels

The King’s Speech won 4 Academy Awards 2011. It’s a British historical drama directed by Tom Hooper and written by David Seidler It is a wonderful movie and I enjoyed watching it a lot. There is however a scene that increased my enthusiasm more than others: it was during a party where Wallis Simpson (performed by Eve Best) appeared wearing the unforgettable aubergine dress. I literally hold my breath when I saw it! The draping around her neck and the fabric draped from shoulder to shoulder in a low scoop revealing her bare back and a gorgious Van Cleef & Arpel's Zip Pompom necklace. 'King's Speech' costume designer Jenny Beavan, a nine-time Oscar nominee, did a great job. The whole outfit including accesories (especially gold and diamond set Cadenas watch, and already mentioned diamond Zip necklace) represented the sophisticated, chic and timeles style… and timeless is why I truly enjoy fashion.

Givenchy Spring 2011 at the Oscar Night

Although I am not the biggest fan of the Oscar Night, what I truly enjoy is the red carpet celebrity arrivals. It's a glamorous night designed for gossiping, fashion commenting and showing off! I always have my own best dress winner. This year Cate Blanchett's dress was definitely my favorite. She was wearing Givenchy Spring 2011 Couture and looked sensational. I googeled the Givenchy collection and learnt that one dress,  with hand-dyed and hand-cut matte sequins, took 4,000 hours of handwork to assemble! The dress was made of lilac chiffon with pearls details and with shocks of bright yellow in the back. Sensational combination!
The collection’s designer, Riccardo Tisci, was inspired by Japanese robot toys and Kazuo Ohno, the legendary Japanese Butoh Dancer. It’s goes beyond fashion. It’s a masterpiece!

The 2010 Social Networking Map

Swedish summer escape destination

Among all the things I love most in life - I love Swedish summer! Summer days in Sweden are long and warm and charming... Most of  Swedes spend at least part of  their summer in traditional log cabins located along the vast coast line or on the shores of a tranqil lakes. The one that belongs to F.'s familly is probably the most luxourus place on earth if, just like me,  you consider luxury a perfect place to escape the hustle and bustle of the large city far from civilisation. During the long summer days we experience the midnight sun, savour the natural silence and enjoy the relaxing sound of water lapping on the shore. Just a familly and friends spending time together, sailing, swimming, sunbathing on the rocks, sitting around the table, chating, cooking, eating, playing games, reading... Oh dear I miss Swedish summer!

Stockholm-based Sommarnöjen is a company with the tagline of “Small house. Great architects.” Here are few examples of their works. More can be found on http://www.sommarnojen.se/.

Made in Poland - INGLOT Cosmetics

With today blog I want to start a series MADE IN POLAND about Polish brands and products that I miss the most while my travelling and living abroad. About brands with Polish origins that are expanding on the international markets and Polish brands with a great potential to once become successful abroad.

Just like Polish make-up brand INGLOT Cosmetics. I never leave the Warsaw Frederik Chopin airport without INGLOT’s nail enamels (my favourite no 082) and a bunch of sleeks lip glosses packed in a funny lab-like vials or samplers. And they smell really good! Nail treatment products is a must too. And there’s probably not even one Polish woman without INGLOT eye shadows. INGLOT has one of the most extensive color ranges of  make-up cosmetic  in the world and can easly compete with such known brands as MAC cosmetics. When being on a budget you can fill up your MAC eyeshadow palette with INGLOT pans.

What I find important is INGLOT products are high quality, safe, not tasted on animals and reasonably priced (really good value). What's more, all of them are produced in the European Union and over 95% of them in INGLOT’s own manufacturing facilities in Poland - they are all Fair Trade products than.

INGLOT store in NY; Photo: Tom McCavera

INGLOT is a Polish-based cosmetics company established 20 years ago with over 250 stores in Europe, Canada, Australia, Dubai, and Asia. Last year INGLOT opened their first store in New York City’s Times Square.

INGLOT offers a rainbow of hues of lipsticks and gloss, shadows, blushes, cover-up, mascara and pencils that are mesmerizing. Probably INGLOT’s flagship product is the “Freedom System”, a collection of more than three billion color combinations, allowing happy clients to assemble a palette of their own color preferences. This encurages mixing and matching and customizing to your make-up preferences, including palette sizes and shapes, choosing between round, rectangular or square pans in a compact. It's a Make-up Heaven!

Source: http://inglotcosmetics.com/

EURO 2012 Tournament Identity

Euro 2012, the European Football Championship, will be hosted by Poland and Ukraine from 8 June to 1 July 2012. Obviously, as Polish I’m enthusiastic about such a big event being co-organised in my country. However I’m also very emotional about the tournament’s logo design and its brand identification.
Official logo and brand identity were created by Portuguese agency Brandia Central.

The following is excerpted from the UEFA website.
Visual identity
The purpose of the logo is to give UEFA EURO 2012™ a personality of its own, with the visual identity to be applied across a range of promotional applications from tickets to web banners. The objective is to help promote the tournament – one of the world’s biggest sporting events – by providing an easily recognisable identity with a flavour of the host nations. The logo takes its visual lead from ‘wycinanka’, the traditional art of paper cutting practised in rural areas of Poland and Ukraine, as a tribute to the fauna and flora of the region.

EURO bloom
The ‘bloom’ logo has a flower representing each of the co-host nations and a central ball symbolising the emotion and passion of the competition, while the stem denotes the structural aspect of the competition, UEFA and European football. Nature has inspired other features of the visual identity, with woodland green, sun yellow, aqua blue, sky blue and blackberry purple being the crucial tones of the palette of colours to figure in official tournament branding.

Uniting ethos
The event slogan, meanwhile, is ‘Creating History Together’. The staging of the UEFA European Championship finals in Poland and Ukraine, a first for Central and Eastern Europe, will have a place in the history books, with everyone involved in UEFA EURO 2012™ – organisers, host countries, host cities, players and fans – contributing to another exciting chapter of European football.

On a Cannes Lions International site I found this project’s applications for this year Cannes Lion Award . We read there:

Description of how you arrived at the final design:
The starting point was blending Wycinanki, a common art form in both hosting countries, and football. The result is an identity which is original, genuine and has a powerful message: Make football grow in every way.

Indication of how successful the outcome was in the market:
Success in the market: - The work that was developed so far for the logo and visual identity of the UEFA EURO 2012 is very bold and represents a major breakthrough in these type of events. Many top design publications and personalities have shown an interest in what we did and gave us praise for it. Both host countries and UEFA are very excited about the brand and people around the world, football fans and others, have embraced it.

In the host countries though, the logo design has got lots of criticism. In Ukraine they say, it brings up an association with the “chupa-chups” lollipops. Polish fans are complaining about the colours of the “Polish flower”. They say it is necessary to swap the colours on it, because on the Polish flag white goes first and red is after it. It is also not enough Polish as this form of Wycinanki incorporated into logo has Ukrainian origins.

To me, incorporating Wycinanki (Papercuts) into logo design was a good direction and really great idea. But its interpretation is too much literal. It could look much more sophisticated. In present form the logo looks more like an illustration and it’s too detailed.

Empire State of Mind - New York

Today I live in Buenos Aires. But I would rather move to New York City on the next occasion. There's something magical about NYC. The City where you don't grew old. The City of dreamers, achievers, survivors and wanna-bes... The City where girls run in high hills all day long, where you wrap your hands around a coffee cup to warm up freezing fingers, where you look up to the sky, where the sky is the limit...

In New York, Concrete jungle where dreams are made of,
There's nothing you can’t do, Now you're in New York!!!
These streets will make you feel brand new,
the lights will inspire you,
Let's hear it for New York, New York, New York

One hand in the air for the big city,
Street lights, big dreams all looking pretty,
no place in the World that can compare,
Put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeaaahh
come on, come, yeah...

In New York...
"Empire State of Mind" Jay-Z | Alicia Keys

Sex Sells !!!

Diesel latest campaign for Spring 2010 is tagged "Sex Sells *Unfortunately We Sell Jeans". Maybe Diesel don’t, but someone else in the fashion industry does sell sex indeed. Designer and movie director Tom Ford is a man. He’s quite a brand building genius I must admit. He’s not just selling cloths, cosmetics and sunglasses, he’s representing and promoting a hedonistic lifestyle. His brand's modern design with sharp, sleek suits, appeals even to my boyfriend. He knows best how to shout for attention using sex and eroticism as an explosive marketing tool. Ford become one of most talked about designers of our times, his biography is impressive. He gave Gucci that famous eternal youth and the mysterious sexuality called the „Gucci sex factor”. In 2005 he created his own brand TOM FORD that became famous for stirring some controversy each time when releasing new ad campaign. His collaboration with a provocative photographer Terry Richardson resulted in “various fashion-forward, decadently deviant photographs”. And in 2008, Tom Ford outfitted gorgious Daniel Craig as James Bond in Quantum of Solace! Who can resist hot, steamy eroticism?! Sex truly Sells?