ADPOCALYPSE …NOW: FAMOUS BUT POOR. HOW WILL YOUTUBE CHANGE?

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Wannabe YouTubers? If you think that it’s time to count on your creativity and your supposed videomaking skills, unfortunately you are running out of time. To make money with YouTube is a good idea like to bet on the victory of the Italian team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup. Have you ever heard about AdPocalypse?

«Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others… even the opinions of yourself».

I decided to start the article with a quote from “Apocalypse Now” about freedom. Today I want to clarify what AdPocalypse is since, probably it is destined to revolutionize YouTube.

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LAST-MINUTE INVITATION: NO THANKS!

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How many times did you get a last-minute invitation? It doesn’t matter if it is for a birthday party, a press day or a fashion show, the rule is only one: you must say no. If you are wondering why, the answer is easy: be proud.

Whoever calls you at 7:30pm to attend a party scheduled at 8:00pm, generally doesn’t do it for love. We can say that you are the replacement (maybe) number 1 for a place that unexpectedly became available. The same rule is valid when a last-minute invitation is sent to take part in a press day or in any event that of course has been scheduled months ago.

Do you know how airlines manage the overbooking? It’s the same philosophy: there’s a main list and then there’s the one with the reserves. Nobody likes sitting on the substitutes’ bench, therefore, when your participation is asked with a ridiculous notice, remember to say no. If you are looking for a good reason to refuse, find it in your pride. That place wasn’t yours, someone is kindly proposing you to act as a stopgap.

As everyone knows, last-minute invitation is concealed like a forgetfulness, it could be both an e-mail and a text enriched with cute emoticons, or a phone call introduced by a fake “Daaaaaaaaaaaarling!”.

One of the most classic excuses is that your invitation probably got lost “because you know, there are many mail inefficiencies…” or that the e-mail service had some problems in the latest days “and so, you cannot imagine what a mess!”.

The point is that when you will understand (and it isn’t difficult!) that you weren’t the choice but the alternative, you need to decline. Cordially.

Think about how you would feel if the guy that you like decides to have dinner with you only because another girl gave him a flat refusal. The sensation is being a second-best, a not bad option that in any case could work.

It’s obvious that a last-minute invitation for a fashion show doesn’t have any emotional involvement, but unless you really consider it important or can take some economic and professional advantage from it, saying no will be classy and won’t make you look like a desperate that was anxiously waiting for that call. If it would be too difficult, at least take time and hesitate: pretend to check your planning, to have to reschedule another appointment…in other words, keep in limbo those who behaved in this way with you until the very last moment.

It’s a matter of principle, nobody loves a heated-up soup, even less if it’s the one that someone else rejected. Bear in mind that, it doesn’t matter the circumstance, those who want you will seek you, and will do it in advance. In this case, Miranda Priestly is a great example to follow: «I don’t understand why it’s so difficult to confirm an appointment. […] R.S.V.P. Yes to Michael Kors’ party, I want the driver to drop me off at 9:30 and pick me up at 9:45 sharp. Call Natalie at Glorious Foods and tell her no for the fortieth time. No! I don’t want dacquoise. I want tortes filled with warm rhubarb compote […] ». Devil wears Prada, docet.

 

VELVET TREND ?

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Velvet is fashionable again…seriously? So, if you don’t have a velvet item yet, in the future it’ll be in your closet. We are talking about a fabric that isn’t easy to keep clean, the lint brush roller will become your best friend. In any case it’ll be the must for the Fall/Winter 2017-18. Because, let’s be honest, it’s really hard to keep it immaculate and not everybody can do it. One of the things that I really hate – beyond the already mentioned velvet – is seeing hair/dust/lint/dandruff on the clothes. I always keep a roller in my car, in the bathroom and (sometimes) in the bag. Well, stop talking about my obsession for these small dressing good manners and get down to brass tax.

 

This fabric was appreciated by the aristocracy because the fiber used for the production was silk. In the past it was loved by the Popes and nobles, nowadays it’s everywhere, even on Zara’s shelves. Some items and accessories appeared already on the F/W catwalks 2016, from Tom Ford, to Valentino and Miu Miu. Seasons don’t exist (almost) anymore, trends aren’t real trends anymore and it’s impossible to distinguish a men’s collection from a women’s one. Didn’t you notice it? So, we can just pick up and personalize as much as we can what is proposed on the runways…

Velvet: top & flop

Over the years (in a distant age) there was someone who considered velvet an obsession, so were there fashion addicts even in 1300? It seems that in 1399 Richard II of England established that the only fabric allowed to touch his skin would be velvet until his dying day. And in fact, he was buried dressed in velvet.

And then, how can we forget about Gwyneth Paltrow at the MTV MUSIC AWARDS in 1996? She looked fantastic in her crimson velvet tuxedo designed by Tom Ford for Gucci. Simply divine, and she was blissful too.

Another appearance, but for sure less amazing, was the one showed off by basketball player Dennis Rodman. Absolutely less perfect and worth being immediately forgotten. He walked the red carpet while wearing a tied shirt that uncovered his abs and a pair of green velvet pants. Search him on Google and forget about him, please.

Velvet, not only clothing…

This fabric, because of its silky and bright tones, is used not only for clothing and accessories but also for furniture. For example, we can mention Marchesi and its famous green armchairs that contrast but at the same time create a harmonious equilibrium with marble tables. Opulence and elegance, if well balanced, will allow you to get good instagrammable results!

FASHION WEEK: WHEN FASHION EMBRACES MADNESS

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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

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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.

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SHIRT: HOW TO WEAR IT BACKWARDS

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The shirt? Wear it backwards!

Yes, you well understood. Trend or not trend, back-to-front shirt looks stylish. I already told you about how to wear both shirts and t-shirts, now I’m here with new fashion tips to put it on in the best way.

I love them, so I have tons of shirts in my closet. But the ones that I really adore are the classic white shirts. I think that’s the shirt par excellence. An iconic item that every woman and also every man should have in their wardrobe!

 

It was the paradigm-item of Gianfranco Ferrè and the city of Milan honored the designer with an exhibition called “the white shirt according to me” in 2015. The concept had the aim to highlight the sartorial and creative style of the designer.

 

It’s the starting point to “reread the rules of elegance”, an exercise to break up and build again the “various identities” that this item has.

 

Yes, because an “impersonal”  shirt can turn you into a stylish masterpiece.

 

Shirt: here some fashion tips

  • Let’s start from the ABC’s. If it sounds weird to wear the shirt backwards, begin with a basic style. Choose monochromatic fabrics and plain lines. One of the rules to avoid any fashion crimes is to choose the perfect silhouette. For this style, I suggest you pick a shirt with a loose fit, so forget about the slim fit!
  • Do you want to dare? Well, tie a knot in the back but don’t button up the shirt. Patterned and striped fabrics are perfect!
  • Do you prefer an (almost) innocent style? Button up only the first button, the one right close to the collar. If you like this style, I suggest you pick a Korean neck shirt and hard fabrics like linen, for example.
  • Sexy back but with class. For this style, you should button up all buttons except 3 or 4. The back will be uncovered but with a chic effect. If you choose a soft and light fabric like silk or chiffon, the result will be even better.

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

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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:

  1. Take some days of transition between holidays and routine, so avoid coming back home just before the last day of vacation!
  2. 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!
  3. 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.

 

 

 

T-SHIRTS TELL STORIES: HOW AND WHY A TEE CAN SAY A LOT ABOUT US

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Outfit and personality go hand in hand. In spite of what a well-known proverb says, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover and our clothes say a lot about us. T-shirts are the items that in a way mainly describe our character and make visible our thoughts.

Open your closet and count how many t-shirts are there. At least twenty, some of them are in the bottom drawer and belongs to the past. Do you remember when you were used to pile up the tees with the name of the cities you visited? I have at least five t-shirts from Paris.

Garments for the gym, to stay at home, basic, with colored patterns, with famous characters from cartoons, large or fitted. A very long list that can tell who we are. Except the easy wear items we bought just because they’re practical, the ones we carefully choose can deliver a specific message.

Many times we are attracted by a statement or a picture because they work as a mirror. It’s a mirror that interprets our forma mentis or maybe something that we’d like to shout out.

A t-shirt with Snow White means a back to the childhood, if you put on a tee that says I’m friendly, I can’t be also slim it’s a way to be ironic about your body. And when you go to the Hard Rock Café and buy another tee for your collection, it’s a way to keep with you a memory.

T-shirts speak, there’s no much to say about it. They tell a story. Also the most eccentric ones, the tees from the ‘90s that your mother has partially turned into dust cloth. Yes, also those ones have a past. I scrupulously keep them in my closet. Even the t-shirts I wore when I was a child, the first ones by Disney that someone distractedly ruined ironing.

Nowadays, vintage is fashionable again and in the stores it isn’t difficult to find t-shirts with names and logos belonging to celebrity bands like Iron Maiden and Metallica. The funniest side is that you see them in the hands (and then also dressed!) of callow guys that maybe are used to listen to One Direction. But in the end, this is a way to express themselves. Aspirational maybe.

One tee, one story. For this reason, I can’t throw them away. Today I have been in a department store and a nice lady asked me to translate the statement printed on a t-shirt «I mean, it’s a present and I don’t know if these ones are bad words…». It was in English of course. Live now. Good choice!

Gym and Fitness: 5 kinds of people you will inevitably meet

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The gym is the place for bringing up great expectations, good intentions and unkept promises.

Be honest, it’s easy to take out a membership! Some people buy expensive yearly subscriptions to force themselves to go there regularly. Unfortunately, many times the aim is losing weight but in the end only the wallet looks slimmer. In the meantime, there are also people who live at the gym, you meet them from Monday to Sunday and, who knows, maybe they sleep between the bike and the treadmill.

The fauna at the gym is varied, but if we want to be scientific and dare to do a classification, it is possible to identify 5 categories:

The dreamers:

The dreamers are those ones that are used to call workout activities as bench fit, aqua gym and stretching. So, I think that is fair to add to Olympic sports also fork lifting, vaulting on the bed and sloth on the couch.

The gossipers:

The gossipers go to the gym to train just a muscle: the tongue. They don’t sweat, spend time chatting and badmouthing. They know everything about all members of the club and inexplicably are always close to you. Don’t care about their questions, you risk to be…on the front page!

The seducers:

The seducers are always around the sexiest trainers. They generally attend zumba or pilates class and wear slinky leggings that draw attention to the unavoidable G-string. Of course, it peeps out at each squat. Crazed.

The know-it-all:

Also if you don’t know him, are lost in your thoughts and don’t care about the rest of the world, the know-it-all comes close to you and lists all the mistakes you are doing during the training. His ego is limitless, and so he seizes the opportunity to show off his culture about gym and workout. Try to play dead, it’s the only way to make him silent.

The lady-killer:

He considers himself the playboy of the gym and wearing a snug vest is sure to look as a Greek God. The lady-killer is very muscular, forever bronzed and foul-smelling because of a mix of perfume and sweat. According to him, the gym is a marriage agency. Between a deltoid and a pectoral tries to talk endlessly to you and, using the excuse to teach you how to do an exercise, puts his hand on your butt. There’s only one repellent: the Zumba class.

LINKEDIN: ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A PROFESSIONAL SOCIAL NETWORK

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Once upon a time there was a social network created to help people in building a professional network.

Imagine a big hall where tons of people introduce themselves and exchange business cards. A place where everybody have the opportunity to create synergies talking about their skills, education and job experiences. This web service was called LinkedIn.

Let it be clear that this far far away kingdom still exists, but as in each fable, it is threatened by something (or someone) and waits for a brave knight that can make it great again. Maybe the LinkedIn’s mission is not so easy! In fact, during the years, a social network mainly dedicated to the job market took a turn for the worst and became a hybrid platform that many people consider like Facebook or, even worse, like an online dating website.

It’s embarrassing, come on. Before the problem was being harassed at work by the boss or colleagues, now it seems completely legitimized in a sort of 2.0 edition.

Therefore, if in the past the advances arose only from known people, thanks to LinkedIn it’s possible to get unpleasant attentions also from random people ready to contact you without any professional aim. You can recognize them: they don’t do any job barely related to your profession, their profile is half-done and they generally start the conversation saying “Where r u from?”. No comment about the battered orthography and grammar. The rule number 1 is to not accept this kind of requests. Unless you are investor in Meetic, the online approaching is a skill that you don’t need on your CV!

LinkedIn goes beyond, also the escorts use it. Silence. Confusion. Perplexity. Someone could say that in the end also the escorts are professionals. Depression. Some of them write to be “models”. Unfortunately the services offered are not only photographic!

This digital jungle reflects the mentality of our times. I go around, meet people and who knows, perhaps I’m gonna find a girl who will put out. I won’t go in depth using Latin quotes about the decadence of manners as “O tempora, o mores” or about the shaky ethics that every day comes from the indiscriminate use of internet. I will regret no more than the era in which the resume was used to appear convincing in front of a potential employer. When it wasn’t used to approach a girl but in the worst case was a shield against little lies as the famous fluent English.

Probably any fearless knight will save the kingdom of LinkedIn but each of us could do something to make it a better place. Three little rules prêt-à-porter:

  1. Choose a serious picture. It doesn’t mean a passport photo or a sad one. A nice smile is always the best presentation. Avoid pics taken on the beach, duck face selfies and happy after party shots.
  2. Don’t lie. If it is not true that you speak Chinese and that you have been a volunteer in India, don’t put it on your CV. It’s better to talk about your internship in which you developed a great ability in doing photocopies than boast about your experiences.
  3. Don’t share personal contents. Shots taken on holiday, pics of your cat or good morning greetings can be posted on Facebook or Instagram. Thanks!