Gaia Guarino, Autore a Nayla Carvalho - Italian Blogger - Web Editor

RECYCLED FASHION: IT’S TIME TO SCRAP

Every six months we browse glossy magazines, consult websites and fashion blogs looking for seasonal trends. Any news? Not always, almost never. We have seen the same collections over and over again, most of the times designers’ ideas need to be scraped and the result is recycled fashion.

Time goes by, the world changes and also the customs apparently evolve. Apparently, indeed. I was 12 when I wore my first flared jeans and then 14 when I decided to dismiss them forever. They were in when my mum was 20 years old and nowadays, in 2017, they’re in our closets again…you could even say they might be stalking us a bit. Recycled fashion is the only trend that is always in vogue. What happened to designers’ imagination? Collections on the catwalk are a déjà-vu, boredom overflows and the famous Sometimes They Come Back assumes a clear meaning. Baroque patterns, pointed toe shoes, accessories we have hated for ages, etc.: they’re all there, ready to come up again. Recycled fashion makes you regret even the moment in which you trashed the tricot jumper you bought in 1997, “I will never wear it again…”, you said. You made a mistake.

FASHION WEEK: WHEN FASHION EMBRACES MADNESS

New York, London, Milan, Paris. Around the world in 80 days, actually – since we are talking about fashion week – in 80 pairs of shoes. Not enough! Kilometers of runways that would be the envy of the best Himalayan Sherpas, many dresses, looks, trends and mainly curious characters.

Every year fashion world has lots of surprise in store for us: old trends become fashionable again, designers propose new fabrics and innovative items. But the parterre of ‘satellites’ that revolve around the fashion week never changes. Yes, because in addition to glossy models and celebrities, there’s a human underworld that face the fashion week with the same intensity of a crusade.

Take a look around and have fun! Crazed men and women crowd into the streets, events and fashion shows: fashion is a religion. Maybe. Sometimes it’s no more than the will to be there. So, here an overview about the characters you’ll meet during fashion week…what’s your category?

FASHION SHOW FEVER

Fashion week calendar, obsession with shows and sadness because they can’t be everywhere at once. No catwalk escapes from the fashion show’s maniacs! Often, they stand in the last rows but are happy to have got an invitation. They document every moment through social networks posting videos, photos and selfies like there’s no tomorrow. Each post is followed by the hashtag #MFW, ça va sans dire. They just need the opportunity to list the endless series of fashion shows in which they took part, it’s like a stickers’ collection: I got it, I got it, I miss it. Serial.

AN EVENT, A DRESS CODE

If you think that during the fashion week it’s possible to model only on the catwalk, you’re getting wrong. For all party addicts the real show is at the events. Their interest in fashion as art, creativity and more doesn’t exist, fashion is only appearance. So, each (exclusive and not!) party is an excuse to show off every night a different dress code. A drink, a bunch of smiles and the unavoidable Instagram stories work as an antidepressant too. The objective of people who belong to this category is just one: the camera! Their impossible dream is being in the shot of a paparazzo, even when they (unconsciously!) are the insignificant background of a more shining star. Meteors.

LOOKING FOR VIP

If on one hand there’s who would sale even the dignity to get an invitation for a fashion show (and I guarantee that they do it!), on the other hand there’s who, during the fashion week, has one aim in life: take a selfie with VIPs. Do you have in mind those people that smile and hug any celebrity just to post the pic on social networks with the tagline And then, I met Gigi Hadid in Monte Napoleone? Well, I’m talking about them. They are not interested in fashion and will never get an invitation for a party. They have the mind of a stalker (and probably got even a restraining order), map the hotel where the stars stay, lurk in the crowd, are ready to wait for many hours to achieve their trophy. Ladies and gentlemen, hunting season begins. Losers.

HASHTAGS: RAIN OF # AND OTHER DISTURBANCES

Twitter, Instagram and then Facebook: and it’s hashtags mania. Created to group together the posts related to a specific topic and make easier any social interactions, they became a trend that maybe exploded too quickly.

Fabri Fibra and Thegiornalisti sing “Adults that take selfies are upset, they don’t find the words even for the hashtags ”, and I want to say, FORTUNATELY. Because every day we see too many hash marks that are improperly used.

BIOLINE JATÒ: WHEN BEAUTY MEETS WELLNESS

What happens if you put together an autumn morning in Trento with the chilly mountain air, a good lunch just in front the cathedral and wellness? That’s the day with Bioline JaTò!

Who said that beauty is pure vanity essence? It’s an oversimplification to consider just the hedonistic side because the real soul of beauty is strictly related to body care. We could define it a travel towards wellness and that’s the main concept of Bioline JaTò philosophy.

As Mrs. Clara Macchiella Corradini – the owner of the brand that nicely greeted us – told us, the company was born almost 40 years ago. It’s was pretty casual. Bioline JaTò arouse from the failure of a project related to the creation of a product line for Comano thermal baths, in Trentino. Why to set everything aside? So, they decided to develop a pure line with natural extracts for beauty centers.

And that’s in this way that the story of Bioline JaTò begins, a family business strongly characterized by the personality of the people who run it. A mix of traditions and values that nowadays are internationally recognized.

Variation & Diversification

Two key-words that Bioline JaTò used to build its world. Everyone is different, each body is different too. Seasons change, and so even biorhythms and needs. To offer a standard treatment would be a mistake. For this reason, the company counts on the education of the beauticians, the talent of a professional is in her skills and in the ability to propose different products according the needs of the client, the period, etc. Her job is to lead towards a path that allows to consider the body not only a physical dimension but a mix of emotions and sensations. Who goes to the beauty center, doesn’t look exclusively for a solution to beauty problems, on the contrary she wants to enjoy a wellness experience that satisfies her senses.

Physical and emotional spheres are interconnected and well-balanced but sometimes, to deal with our body could be complicated. So, it’s fundamental that the beautician can understand what the final client asks for: not only a treatment but the will to feel good.

Bioline JaTò constantly pays attention to the skills of professionals that use its lines and opened a school to teach massage techniques, product management, beauty event organization and managerial hints.

Feel Good. Look Good.

It’s the mantra of the company and represents even the fundamentals of an innovative method based on VERSATILITY (final clients can be both men and women), PERSONALIZATION (specific treatments), SIMPLICITY (easy product classification), NEW COMPOSITIONS (cosmetology evolution, advanced technologies and more efficacy).

Bioline JaTò works in a dynamic industry that thanks to the research continuously reinvents itself and looks for new goals. More modern functional formulas are developed: they’re purer, essential and concentrated to guarantee higher performances and improve the sensorial side that, of course, makes the product more appealing for the consumer.

Relax

During our day with Bioline, we had the opportunity to try one of the professional treatments. A relaxing moment to totally regenerate our legs. The first product the beautician applied was a scrub (exfo marine) with salt crystals. After dead cells have been removed, drn cell oil was applied to make the skin more elastic and soft. The last product was a body lotion able to immediately soothe the epidermis.

If you want to know more, I suggest you visit Bioline JaTò website and follow the company on social networks with the hashtags #ungiornoconbioline, #bioline, #biolinejato and #blubeauty.

AUTUMN AND MELANCHOLY: END-SUMMER STORIES, MEMORIES AND DAILY ROUTINE

Summer, it’s a nice memory that slowly fades among the warm autumn colors. Days shorten, temperatures drop and melancholy could easily affect us.

Sea, beach, travels, summer loves, sunsets with friends…everything seems to be faraway and to come back to ordinary life appears difficult, almost impossible. Depression? Technically speaking it’s called Holiday Blues. And even if in autumn this pathology generally arises in a light and temporary way, sometimes it can degenerate.

Long-lasting holiday? To put bikini and sandals away could make you cry! You collected expectations, desires, need to relax and now you have no more than dissatisfaction and delusion.

Leaves turn yellow and your hormones go crazy: almost one week in which the autumn reveals itself in the form of loss of concentration, anxiety, sleepiness and nervousness. So, it’s the #NeverAjoy Fall/Winter Edition. Can we avoid this blue syndrome? Almost everybody is affected when it’s time to start again the routine and the stress of daily life arises.

And what happens when it gets dark early in the afternoon? The situation is about to deteriorate! In fact, it has been scientifically proved that lack of solar light negatively influences the mood. It’s enough to look at you to read a clear message in your eyes: Keep away from me, today – and maybe even tomorrow! – I could kill you. Or probably I’m gonna cry!

Our psyche flips out, how to survive? Here 3 basic rules:

Take some days of transition between holidays and routine, so avoid coming back home just before the last day of vacation!
Don’t give up good summer habits: go to the gym, eat healthy, reset the sleep-wake rhythm and reduce the number of cocktails. Goodbye Spritz!
Have short and frequent breaks during the day, and don’t study or work in the weekend.

What’s the secret of happiness? Any magic formula, it’s enough to stay focused on positive thoughts and follow your own aims. In the end, if we were always on holiday, we wouldn’t really appreciate it.

So, when during the autumn we’ll look at the pics taken in the previous months, we probably will be nostalgic but at the same time will feel the need to leave again, to think about a new trip. Summer is inside us. Summer is a state of mind.

FROM THE BUONDÌ COMMERCIAL TO THE POWER OF ADVERTISING

While the world is worried for nuclear attack in North Korea, in U.S.A. hurricanes devastate countries and Ryanair suddenly changed the carry-on baggage policy, in Italy we are hurt by the Buondì commercial. Is it politically incorrect? For sure it’s incisive.

What’s the power of advertising? Persuasion, participation, debate. And it doesn’t matter if the commercial is not so true or far from the reality, what really counts is to influence the consumers. We can say that Motta, thanks to the Buondì commercial, hit the nail on the head. The current polemic has arisen because of the asteroid that hit the unbelieving mum. Her fault? She denied the existence of a light and tasty breakfast. Same destiny for the dad that, because of his skepticism, suffers the revenge of the sky. So, the daughter is without food and probably not so much shocked.

It supposed to be an ironic commercial and became a national issue. Child care organizations, scandalized parents and even VIPs said their opinion. And so, the rapper Fedez, shared his viewpoint. He posted Instagram Stories in which he defined the Buondì commercial cruel but worthy of defense.

People talk about it, controversies catch on fire. Motta marketing department says thanks and calculates the return on investment. It was born as a normal commercial and became viral. I don’t like Buondì but it may be better if I try it again!

Being unconventional caused a stir.

No happy families, no smiling mums that clean dirty floors. The last time that snacks have been protagonists, it was because of the palm oil, but that’s another story. How many times are commercial incorrect and fake? The effervescent suppository, Mr. Buonaseeeera, Banderas and the hen, Giovanna paints the bird cage dressed in a sexy mini-skirt, Rocco eats chips and so on. Who cares if the Buondì commercial is considered inappropriate, it’s already immortal. May an asteroid hit me if this commercial will be cancelled…nevermind, it’s better to keep quiet!

INSTAGRAM STORIES: WINDOWS OF HAPPINESS

Twenty-four hours. Videos, photos, boomerangs: extemporaneous fragments of life. Instagram Stories, a tool that the famous social network copied from the less fortunate Snapchat, is a way to reply to the classic question What are you doing?

Why should we use only words when we can tell our life through the images? And why shouldn’t give, even to the most ordinary moments, a touch of color? To share photos and thoughts on social networks seemed an arrival point, but Instagram Stories changed something. Online contents last only twenty-four hours, small pieces of private life offered to the followers. Banalities? Never! If a friend calls you while you are getting a tan, probably you would say to him that you lay baking on the beach. But if you post a story on Instagram Stories, it isn’t the same old story. Even the most boring activities can be ‘sell’ in a hilarious and fun way. Add a filter, some hashtags and fancy stickers, and a cool geotag and it’s done.

Sometimes to exist on social networks is easier than to survive in the real jungle. And Stories in the end are just a window that, in a few seconds, allows you to show outside what you want to tell about you.

It’s a perception game, we want to look happy because being so is our only wish. A boomerang with a toast together with friends, a video with a crazy singing moment in the car, a shot with your favorite outfit before to go out. And then? What happened after Instagram Stories? Bottles empty, friends go away, make-up is removed and masks fall down. Framing becomes wider and real life arises.

But to dream is a right. A bracket that lasts a day to remember that something beautiful, in this hard world, exists. It’s important to share a tile of joy but it shouldn’t be ostentation. We could desire to plunge into a beautiful boomerang to live again and again those seconds that made us happy, but the biggest achievement is pushing play and go on in the real life.

Instagram Stories has the merit to make ‘more human’ even those incomparable stars that sometimes decide to show themselves in their real life, with their children, at the gym or in the morning without the make-up. And so, the window tips over and shows, for a few instants, that sincere and not glossy world that align us to the shining celebrities. It’s the social democracy.

FASHION: GLOSSY LEXICON TALKS ABOUT THE CATWALK

Dear fashion, “Speak simply”! Not so much food, not so much words. This one should be the rule of fashion system. But the glamorous universe made of glossy magazines and sparkling alphabets is always ready to create neologisms with an international touch.

If we should list every single entry of fashion dictionary, the list could be endless. Not only words universally recognized but even many other ones created to define a new trend or to make appealing something that wasn’t so. The power of fashion lexicon is the ability to give light and voice to something dull. It’s a spotlight that decides who and what to make protagonist.

Is it enough to call something fashion to make it really cool? Probably not, but for many ninnies obsessed by the sexy charm of the label, words are enough to characterize an item or a lifestyle.

Fashion dictionary victims? Often. Every year designers and experts coin words to define the news from the catwalks or to make politically correct and socially acceptable some standards of beauty that are generally relegated out of the shining kingdom of haute couture.

Let’s think for example about the word curvy and the well-built models, let’s think about the marketing and how it approached to this new aesthetic mood. Only few years ago, these girls were called just fatso. Fashion, thanks to its verbal range, gave them liberation.

Moreover, there are also interesting lexical fusions as jeggings and jorts. The first ones are denim leggings shaped as jeans, the second one are short pants…very short and completely homemade.

You know, fashion can give also immortality. Everybody dreams the Kelly, the most famous bag by Hermès dedicated to the legendary Grace Kelly.

Made in fashion, it matters! Linguists are absorbed in studying the meaning and the mediatic impact of these words, even if the enthusiasm is not comparable to the one of crazy women at Zara at the beginning of summer sales. Could we call it technical language? Yes, at least in part. In other cases, it is only very posh and exclusive but can generate long chats about nothing. If in front of a pair of flatform that your friends have seen on Vogue worn by Cara, you feel like a Martian, don’t lose heart. Remember that fashion legitimizes, therefore if you decide to go around wearing pajamas and a coat-gown, nobody will call you shabby but shabby chic.

ENGLISH, VERBAL OVERDOSE FOR COOL ‘N POSH ITALIANS

Italians, Anglophone people? Yes, and not because they are forced to be so. English is a hit but sometimes (many times!) is used improperly, especially in business environment. Because foreign words, in some situations, are an unavoidable must.

I’m pretty sure that you caught the ironic mood, so now (if you know a bit of Italian), try to replace ‘yes’, ‘business’ and ‘must’ with three synonyms made in Italy: ‘sì’, ‘professionali’, ‘tendenza’. Why, even if Italian is a very rich language, many people prefer an exotic lexicon? Because it’s cool. It’s trendy, fashionable. And so, it is common that you can hear someone who talks about business plan, meeting and coffee break. In the night, few minutes to make up the look, choose the best outfit and then ready to have a happy hour. Be careful to English overdose. Bacon, eggs and Anglo-Saxon phonemes can be poisonous.

Nobody objects to the usefulness of this language. Nowadays, just to go on using stereotypes, you need English to live. And it’s true. But I don’t understand why Italians are so fascinated by it. Many words belong to our vocabulary too, other ones are a clear stretching. International ambitions? Xenophilia? Inferiority complex? Ordinary idiocy? Whatever is the answer, it is sure that tricolor people like filling their verbal gaps with random loan words.

The result of this fusion between Italian and English could be a disaster as the one that happens in some fusion restaurants that are used to mix nothing and none. To touch lightly and go beyond the ridiculous is a trap. Often misunderstanding is around the corner.

Since in these days I’m in New York, I’ve wondered if the charm of a foreign language exists here too. Do Americans speak Italian? No, they don’t. Not even in Little Italy. The world ends after pizza, spaghetti and mamma mia! What a pity! It could be so posh to order ‘un cornetto’ and ‘un bicchiere di latte’! Instead I’ve banally to ask for a muffin and a cup of milk.

Anyway, Italians have a great talent: they speak English even if they don’t know it. Sort of genius? No, boaster. Of course it isn’t difficult to put two-three words in a statement, the problem arises when the level required is at least intermediate. Dear blowhard, in that case, ‘che Dio t’assista’…God Taxidriver!

RECYCLED FASHION: IT’S TIME TO SCRAP

Every six months we browse glossy magazines, consult websites and fashion blogs looking for seasonal trends. Any news? Not always, almost never. We have seen the same collections over and over again, most of the times designers’ ideas need to be scraped and the result is recycled fashion.

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FASHION WEEK: WHEN FASHION EMBRACES MADNESS