I've moved on...
...to a different domain. Why, what were you thinking? The truth is, I just woke up one day and decided it's time for a change—a metamorphosis, if you will; or, in layman's terms, if Britney can shave her head, then maybe so can I? Nevertheless, it's been a rather handsome 10 years of talking to you, and thank you for putting up with all my moodswings and terrible dad jokes. Fear not! The hormonal imbalance and jokes are more terrible on CUBICLE, see you there.

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Dress – Zara. Shoes – Kurt Geiger. Belt – Vintage LV. Coat – Zara kenzo-2 Thank you Kittykat for helping with the photos!

It happened a few weeks back when I was Whatsapping with my mother (who by the way is getting scarily confident with her phone, she types so fast I’m scared she may actually be 14 years old) (sometimes she talks to me ONLY in emoticons), I was whining about eczema and that I caved into using cortisone cream, which is when she dropped the doozy. Now, I’d been waiting for this day since returning from the honeymoon back in 2011, for the the third burning question in the tigermum series – ‘So what about that grandchild?‘ – to drop. I beat her to the punch by answering the first two (‘You are going to uni, right?‘ and then ‘Why haven’t you found a job already‘) with swift efficiency, so in all honesty I thought she’d badger me to ‘pop one out’, perhaps in a similar fashion to how I got the heck out of Warsaw after highschool graduation (ASAP) went to uni. But who’d have thought she’d wait until now, specifically when I tell her I was going to use something that is essentially harmful for my body in the long-run, and consequently my future child? She cautioned that I am what I eat, and junior too, will be what I eat (cute little Snickers ice cream chicken burrito, for now), and assured me she’d wait with the real nagging until the eczema is dealt with. So when Kenzo asked me to interpret the long-standing fragrance Flower by Kenzo in collaboration with the charity Every Mother Counts, it reminded me of my own mother, who has held a mop in one hand throughout my life – a terrifying symbol of discipline but also what I now realize to be, a saber to wield off harm from her daughter. I love you mummy I stole your blue burberry coat I totally love you!

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Uniqlooks March: One item, three looks – White denim jacket

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Look 1: White denim jacket – Uniqlo. Polo-neck sweater – American Apparel. Boyfriend Jeans – ASOS. White pumps – Kurt Geiger ‘ELLA’. White bag – MCM ‘Nuovo L‘.
Look 2: White denim jacket – Uniqlo. Raincoat – Muji. Dress – Issa London via MyWardrobe.com. Shoes – Reiss. Bag – JHYoo.
Look 3: White denim jacket – Uniqlo. Leather skirt – Vintage. Khaki stilettos – Primark. Furry bumbag – ASOS.

I have this thing every few weeks when I brew myself some redbull-coffee-crushed skittles concoction, sit myself at the computer, crack some knuckles, buckle my seatbelt (yes I have a seatbelt, it’s called duvet) and delve into the internet, determined I’d finally catch up on all the unread blogposts and saved bookmarks. Umpteen hours later I’d emerge with two PS11 worthy bags under my eyes and mystery gas emitting out of my ears, decidedly ‘cleverer’, after catching up on every single streetstyle blog in the universe, five or ten Michelle Phan wisdom tutorials, a whole gaggle of recipes where the only ingredient familiar is ‘salt’, and well, basically the entire internet. Sometimes I’d hit something like this and know I’ve come too deep. But lately, thanks to the previously advertised calamity known as eczema (aka f*kingbastard), I’ve been on house-arrest and therefore have been forced to take ORDINARY doses of said internet. And I don’t know what to do with myself, because you bloggers don’t post enough (!!!), my ‘friends & family’ don’t share enough on Facebook, and that Natalie Tran seems to have gotten a life? I refresh Bloglovin’, Youtube, Facebook every five minutes and confess to have screamed WELL IT’S ABOUT TIME at new updates. Sometimes when I feel extra desperate I read comments under some mega-instagrammer’s account and feel bad for all the stupid people in this world. Problem with this is, being under certain physical discomfort, doing anything productive (i.e emails & posts) is difficult, but balancing a bowl of popcorn on my chest while parkouring all over the internet is a piece of banana cake… apologies once again if you’ve sent an email and I’ve been quite an asshole about not replying it. Anyhoo, here’s my three ways to wear a Uniqlo white denim jacket, still sadly inappropriate for this weather.

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Picking berries atop a concrete jungle…Neeeoow Yooork!

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Times Square and its neighbouring corridors of awesome

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Sweatshirt – Masha Reva x SNDCT. Skirt – ASOS. Booties – Givenchy. Pouch – Kurt Geiger. Burgundy bag – Marc Jacobs Fulton; Thank you to Mathieu for the outfit shots!

If you followed the blog in 2011, you may remember the sad little tune on page-load that went a bit like ‘…but I would walk 500 miles for a visa… and I would walk 500 miles more… da da da undela undela la la la’. The first quarter of 2011 (around NYFW) I was on a crusade to attain a US visa, that eventually nobody would give, and since then I was genuinely convinced I would not set foot on American soil unless by sailing mistake. Veni, vidi… what’s Latin for ‘failed and cried over a tub of Ben & Jerry’? So imagine the excitement as I pass the ‘National threat | Just another Asian tourist’ threshold at the airport without incident – in fact, go ahead and pick one of these faces and stick it on my body as I’d be wearing it for the ensuing three days in the Big Apple.

It’s difficult to summarize, or even generalize, the effect of NYC to a first timer like myself. If one thing’s for sure, movies don’t spoil anything for you. The city is so awesomely grand that one could not easily fit a view within the scope of your eyeballs, let alone a camera lens, and the experience is composed of layers that simply can’t be bottled up and taken home. Little things like: the language of honks between the taxis (two short bursts mean ‘I had too much coffee and must go number one’ but unsure as I had an old taxi dictionary on me), the musty smell that rises from the subway vent, or how the sun sets in the MOST dramatic way possible; while on cloudier days, the sky looks like it wants to snack on Manhattan. Starbucks is ever-present (and surprisingly popular), yellow school buses (!) cruise the city around 3pm, and there are these random steam outlets along Fifth Avenue (can someone explain this?)… all of this fulfills my postcard expectations of New York and it makes me giddy. Three days was hardly enough though, just when I’d figured out the logic behind blocks! What an incredible city, I can’t wait to be back.

Thank you once again to Coty and Marc Jacobs teams for having me over! #MJDaisyChain

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Pleased to meet you, NYC

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Distributing fingerprints on every surface at the Marc Jacobs SoHo boutique

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Marc Jacobs Daisy

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Wearing: Shearling leather jacket – Muubaa Aurora. Contrast-sleeve jumper – Topshop. Quilted orange skirt – Topshop Boutique . Geometric print skirt – YesStyle. Bag –Kurt Geiger Shoes –Givenchy.

This post was drafted the day after I’d returned from a trip I still suspect was only a dream, one of those sickly-sweet ones you get when your bed linen are freshly washed and you’ve just jumped in from a hot bath. The photos were edited ten thousand feet above the pond, then strung together in a sequence once home, I was drunk with fatigue, but my head was still in the clouds with fresh giddines. I decided I’d leave it at that to pick up fresh the next day, which was the day I read the infamous piece by Suzy Menkes on the circus around fashion weeks and the general integrity of bloggers. Now, to be clear, this is not a rebuttal, or even a commentary. I’m not in the bleachers when it comes to  the street circus game – I’m neither a ‘peacock’ (not that I choose not to, but learnt early on that I do not have the tailfeather(x) -factor), or a ‘black crow’ fashion industry member shuffling through to do their job at fashion week. But it did make me halt because that blogger in paragraph twelve who accepts ‘trophy gifts and paid-for trips’, does refer to me too – in fact, isn’t this sort of post exactly one of the latter? A few days later Leandra wrote her two cents, and then Susie, both gracefully agreeing and disagreeing with Menkes’ points, but also undeniably displaying an attitude of self-reflection which I also found myself to adopt on reading the article. The only difference was, I couldn’t find a suitable response (preferably backed by stellar writing talent) or even the balls to ignore it completely, especially having this post lined up. So every evening since returning I’ve been arguing with myself whether to man-up and post, or seek refuge in the Winchester with a pint and wait for it all to blow over… and this went for two weeks. Who was I kidding, this was not going to ‘blow over’. Echoing what Leandra wrote earlier, we are indeed entering an era where bloggers will not be able to show preference without having our motives questioned. So here I am, withdrawing myself from behind the oh no, will they judge me too wall, with a small promise to you that I will be as honest as I possibly can when it comes to the content of this blog, and that quality control will come before any amount of kebab-money.

With that said, I’d like to thank the Coty and Marc Jacobs teams for the opportunity for an amazing first-time experience in New York, and a privilege to learn more about Marc Jacobs fragrances through #MJDaisyChain. Stay tuned for more!

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Uniqlooks January: One item, three looks – Dotted silk blouse

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Look 1: Dotted silk blouse – Uniqlo. Shearling leather jacket – Muubaa Phoenix. Khaki pants – Uniqlo. Shoes – Zara. Bag – 3.1 Phillip Lim Pashli. Hat – Gap.
Look 2:   Dotted silk blouse – Uniqlo. Sleeveless trenchYesStyle. Leather shorts – Vintage. Shoes – H&M x MMM. Puffer vest – Uniqlo. Bag – Kurt Geiger.
Look 3:  Dotted silk blouse – Uniqlo. Shearling leather jacket – Muubaa Aurora. Bag – Reiss. Skirt – ASOS. Lace-up booties – Sam Edelman. Headphones – Frends @ Avenue32

Hello, what’s up? My dog ate my keyboard. Once again I got an overwhelmingly positive response for a post and this time I just had to take a step back and bask in that momentary bliss, shedding the occasional hot tear that would fall in the wine glass that I’d drink from while bobbing my head to Alanis Morissette. (Fact: it is actually impossible to bob head to AM) Recycle-chic, you saw it here first. Let’s get back with the program, shall we – and what better way than to let trusty old Uniqlooks to press the resume button! Over to you, dotty blouse. Wish I could fake it and pretend this was shot relatively recently but snow in London – the kind that stays white below the ankles – is so rare that we all know these looks were shot that particular day over a week ago. Not sure which day it was, but I’m pretty sure it’s the one where lots of babies will be born exactly nine months down the line because heck I’ve never seen a city that doesn’t actually clean the snow. Hands up if you live in London and own a snow shovel? Of course, yours truly is out in the streets with the hubby only getting as intimate as getting a snowball in the face. Oh the things I write in this blog to keep it PG-13… (apparently thirteen-year-olds are the key to blogging success, hey)