// Paris, Instagrammed
Posted on | December 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
In the beginning of December I did a partially work related trip to Paris. Yes, I did have my decent camera with me but it rained almost every day — so the few Instagram images are pretty much all documentation I have. Deemed from these it looks like it was my first trip there — all those tourist’y snapshots — but yes, Paris in the Christmas decorations, all those familiar landmarks dressed in sparkling lights, it was rather magical…
Pics: I did not catch the Eiffel Tower sparkling… …except from distance. The opulent Chanel window at Printemps. Dreamy Mary Katrantzou print at Le Bon Marché (my secret vice: visiting department stores for clothes I can’t really afford — less awkward than popping in upscale boutiques… …hmm), Champs-Élysées Christmas deco. Galeries Lafayette Christmas tree, scorched by the flashlights… Big Karl at LeWeb conference. Yes, I saw him IRL.
Biggest fashion related news was new Karl Lagerfeld line, debuting on January 25th, online only. The price point will be mid-range — sweet thing, will definitely check it up for sharply tailored jackets and crisp shirts…
Posted on | December 19, 2011 | 2 Comments
// Warsaw
Posted on | June 27, 2010 | 7 Comments
So… …I’m back from Warsaw. To be honest it would probably never been my pick for holiday destination — but now when I have been there I definitely want to go again on my own time. Although my trip was four nights the conference schedule was so packed that I had very little time of my own — but I tried to make the best use of it by spending the time with my favorite activity — wandering around the city, sitting and eating in cafe’s and restaurants.
The beautiful Krakowskie Przedmiezkie street and university campus gate.
Fashion blogs are all about fashionable people mingling in various parties, right? Nobel peace prize winner and former president of Poland Lech Walesa opened our conference — and happily mingled with university people from around the Europe.
My first impression of the city was the strong resemblance to Tallinn, scaled up to city of population of 1.7 million. The old buildings mix up to contemporary glass towers and grim soviet style colossae — in Warsaw this mix is further extended with numerous green spaces and Vistula river with vast park area on the east side with the bank that looks to be almost in its natural state. And compared to Tallinn — which is partially over-renovated to my taste, old Warsaw has definitely more rugged charm.
The mirror staircase in the university old library reveals the inner wounds of the building.
The dark history of the city is pretty evident with just a bit closer inspection, the old buildings are scarred and rebuilt partially or alltogether, a soviet style building suddenly pops out on a perfect row of old ones… The nazis demolished over 90% of the historical buildings and about 80% of the whole city on the WW2 — and the fate of the civilians of the city was unthinkably tragic. I’m definitely one of those boring museum goers and I feel almost physically bad for not making it to the Warsaw Rising Museum.
The beautiful old town. Soundtrack provided by numerous doves. I managed also to stalk this tailor on his work. The weather was horrid on my old town visit, I managed to get all wet and cold… …now I’m having a flu…
Anyway, the layout of the city is quite tourist-friendly — main street Nowy Swiat continues as Krakowskie Przedmiezkie and leads to the beautiful oldest parts of the town — and many of the historical buildings are at — or at very close proximity of this street. The “new center” with soviet era culture palace and numerous shopping possibilities begins from the opposite end of Nowy Swiat.
Schoolboys examining “Chopin bench” — these installations had information about the famous composer / pianist — and they played music as well. A restaurant musician on Nowy Swiat.
The overall atmosphere in Warsaw is definitely continental European — and live music is everywhere. From all the great men and women lived in Warsaw the Warsawians seem to love Chopin most — this might be partially explained by the fact that in this year they are celebrating the 200th birthday of his and the city is full of happenings and installations on a theme.
My new Inglot palette. Got two of these (Like I needed them — not using my current eye shadows either, duh! At least the stacking magnetic palettes (actually both new palettes are in the picture, just opened the top one for photographing) are easy to store… One palette like this costs about 25 €..
I did very little shopping in my trip, but here are some general impressions. There are several modern shopping malls in the city, Zlote Tarazy with awesome glass structured roof being one of the easiest to access with its central location near the culture palace, Arkadia another giant on the north with easy public transportation access via Jana Pawla II. Almost all European high street chains have made it to Warsaw from Topshop (only in Zlote Tarazy) to Zara, Bershka to H&M. A local equivalent in this class is Reserved — but to be honest I took just a very brief peek in so I can’t really tell much about the prices nor quality. The high street prices overall seem to be similar or slightly lower from Scandinavian ones. On Nowy Szwiat and its proximity there are options for high end shopping. I was hoping to run on some local boutiques, but that did not happen too much. I have to mention though Cafe Telimena with awesome selection from local independent jewelry designers and Kapela Folk Gallery (also at Krakowskie Przedmiezkie) with crafts with contemporary twist, especially their ceramics and embroidered felt bags were very beautiful. One Polish brand definitely worth of mention is Inglot — their makeup concept of DIY palettes is great, color selection incredible and at least the eye shadows, blushes and nail polishes are quality stuff (just haven’t tried the others…).
A bakery kiosk near the old town and the most delicious, crumbling piece of meringue cake I have ever tasted… …mmm… …meringue…
On culinary side the city was definitely a positive surprise. I haven’t heard much praise for Polish cuisine — but for omnivore with taste for simple food made with quality ingredients has nothing to complain, really. Traditional polish kitchen mixes Russian influences to simple, rustic continental European style with tasty and uncomplicated results and ample portions. Add the incredibly low prices to that and you can probably understand my happiness. We ate a three course meal with my two workmates, with a bottle of red wine on the table — that made about 200 PLN (under 50 eur) hole to our budget. The food was excellent and we enjoyed the live piano music during the dinner. Main courses are typically based on meat, but the traditional pierogi (Polish equivalent for dumplings or ravioli) have often tasty vegetarian filling options — just know that these are often served with lard and pork side cubes — so ask for butter or olive oil instead.
The city is a battle ground for western cafe chains from Wayne’s to Starbucks (none of them dominating yet) — but do yourself a favor and seek for traditional or French style independent Polish bakeries with cafe’s — the quality is excellent and prices low. In many places you can buy cake slices by weight — so you can adjust the portion to the severity of your sugar cravings and/or estimated energy expenditure.
The nightlife aspect I left (again) totally unexplored — but from my playlists in Last.FM I would guess that Warsaw might have a lively electronic music scene…
Posted on | June 27, 2010 | 7 Comments
// Off to… …Warsaw
Posted on | June 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
Time really flies — it felt that my Warsaw trip is somewhere distant future, but actually it starts tomorrow. The focus is on work, but I’ll bet that there will be plenty of time for wandering around. I probably can’t post much next week… …but after the trip I try to make it up for you!
Enjoy the summer!
Posted on | June 20, 2010 | 2 Comments
// Christmas wrapup
Posted on | December 26, 2009 | 5 Comments
How outrageous my previous “wish” posts were, the Santa lived out — or exceeded all my dreams.
Welcome, Lotta, you will be my dear friend in the future DIY projects.
What can I say, I’m speechless! I love London! (And could not resist arranging my cheesy tourist pics to an even cheesier postcard 
)
My new spiky friend will hopefully help me sleep better. Oh, it looks friendlier than the example here — but less photogenic… Image by Herbert Ponting.
Feeling: overall happy, stuffed, well rest, quilty for the carbon footprint expanding actions *sigh*.
Posted on | December 26, 2009 | 5 Comments
// Berlin
Posted on | December 7, 2009 | 5 Comments
Oh yes, I loved Berlin for sure! My three day visit included also participating to conference — and that took about seven hours away from my both two full days in there. But still I had plenty of time to wander around and do some shopping. I have to admit that the nightlife aspect I left totally unexplored. For me the going out thing is mainly hanging out with friends — so I don’t see much point of nightlife excursions when traveling alone. My taxi driver from the airport to hotel took a really nice route through Tiergarten, later via Checkpoint Charlie, so there was no need to run through the obligatory sights. I also opted for quick visits to small galleries instead of large museums…
I wish I had photographed more — but the conference was on daylight time, and evenings were quite dark. But here we go…
Weather was actually very nice — but as cold as here in Helsinki at this time of year. I love metros…
I really like to sense the feel of new cities, and Berlin certainly has it’s own characteristic: a fabulous mixed architecture, layered, varied, surprising — covered with additional layer of all sorts of graffiti, which is only adding the charm somehow. Streets and pavements are wide, trees and parks are everywhere; currently in gloomy romantic state of bare trees and leafy decadence. The two centers, eastern and western are within easy reach with U-bahn, in addition to these areas I mainly explored Kreuzberg where my hotel was. And still my feet were killing me — it might be a good idea to pack an option for 12 cm heels, even when traveling lightly.
The lovely Andreas Murkudis boutique was located in the eastern side, hiding in the corner of this gloomy romantic courtyard.
Small but well selected, second hand high fashion in Cash.
My favorite area was the eastern center, the concrete high built Alexanderplatz changes abruptly to the eastern side network of charming little streets lined with lovely boutiques, cafes and bars. I wish I could mention every little shop by name, but I’m afraid I can’t. Andreas Murkudis is a lovely boutique located in Münzstrasse (bit hard to find on an atmospheric inner courtyard of an old building), they had a great selection ranging from Kostas Murkudis to Yohji Yamamoto and Martin Margiela. Ulf Haines stocks for example Ann Demeulemeester and Helmut Lang. From the second hand boutiques especially unforgettable were Cash with limited but well selected collection of mainly high fashion brands and Made in Berlin with huge selection presented in very orderly way. Unfortunately I did not score any vintage finds this time, the pieces I loved were wrong size for me…
From more affordable options I have to mention German shoe store chain Görtz. They sure could refresh the company image, but I have no complaints about their selection (or pricing) — for some reason their online selection looks less alluring than the actual selection in the store. They had truly affordable own line called COX. In addition to suede booties I fell love in with, I also liked a lot of a pair of OTK boot with great wedge heel.
Lavish Christmas decorations at KaDeWe — and the substantial apple pie in the top floor with a great view… …mmm… …delicious… …had to skip the conference lunch, though…
Largest department store in Berlin is KaDeWe in the western side, conveniently located next to Wittenbergsplatz metro station. KaDeWe’s Christmas department was amazingly elaborate. Fashion selection was not that interesting, but at least you can find all commercially established German brands conveniently under same roof. A good co-incidence was that they had a small Christmas sale going on, and from several brands they had a limited selection of next summer samples available in bargain prices. I thought I got an amazing little piece of German fashion when I picked up a neat little dress from brand called Gustav… …just to discover at hotel a faint text on label: designed in Denmark. Ouch, Danish people are seriously invading the fashion business!
On Lafayette Berlin (Friedrichstrasse) I visited only very briefly. But next to Lafayette you can find Departmentstore Quartier 206, an exclusive shopping center with many high fashion brands well presented. Most of that stuff was naturally out of my reach, but on the basement floor they have the more affordable Cabinet with labels like Sass & Bide, T by Alexander Wang, Acne… …and the outlet stores for womenswear, shoes and menswear, all worth of browsing through. I was standing in the Cabinet for a while, stroking the Christopher Kane mushroom cloud T considering blowing (oops, no pun intended) my shopping budget there… …but then the recognizability-issues kind of prevented me making that move…
Just window shopping here, unfortunately…
And next to Departementstore I found Annette Görtz boutique with awesome selection of “window ware” in reduced prices. Considering the very grown up image of this company I really found lots of wearable stuff there… …wearable, what an understatement! The garments were beautiful, materials and cuts excellent and the finishing immaculate. I was especially tempted by one long velvet jacket with amazing pouf hem and lovely details, but I guess that the memory of origami jacket perfection prevented me actually making any other purchases. There was also one amazing dress constructed from silk grosgrain tape sewn on sheer silk chiffon, unfortunately in wrong size.
Shan Rahimkan is actually a luxury hairdresser and wellness center — but they had also very pleasant bar. I managed to take the picture just before it filled with Berliners enjoying their evening out.
In Kreuzberg a memorable place was Bergmannstrasse, a lovely street with charming little shops (especially antique) and restaurants. One amazing aspect in Berlin was that every cafe, bar or restaurant I went into, was at least nice — no murky outdated interiors or rude bartenders… Ethnic restaurants were amazingly affordable, too. With 7,90 € I got an excellent meal accompanied with beer in beautiful little Thai restaurant. In worst cases here in Finland you end up paying the same amount just for that beer…
Lively Christmas outdoor markets were actually nice places to just hang around — and taste some spiced hot wine…
If you love all that Christmassy stuff, Berlin sure is the place to visit before the holiday time. From the local magazine I counted ten (10) Christmas outdoor markets — even more here — and actually visited three: one in the west center, Kurfürstendamm, in the square next to “hollow tooth”, one in Alexanderplatz and one in the Mitte next to Deutcher Dom. It looked like those markets were not just tourist attractions, locals seemed to have a good time in the cute Glühweinhuttes and just wandering around in the shine of a sea of Christmas lights. One of the most interesting ones I actually missed, German young designers Christmas market opened according the paper on Saturday when I was already on my way home — but when checking the site it says on Friday… …grrr…
Thought that this church would act as a signpost when getting back to hotel… …but Germans are not as eager as us Finns to light everything up with million watt beamers…
Posted on | December 7, 2009 | 5 Comments
About
Location: Helsinki, Finland
Contact: kamicha (a) gmail dot com
I'm especially interested in young designers creations, non-established labels and indie fashion. So if you have something interesting to show, feel free to contact!
You can find Finnish design from both specific and some outfit posts - but both are tagged.
You might be also interested in DIY posts, How-to posts, DIY ideas - or my adventures in Etsy =).
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