Cousins Reunion at StyleWOW! Fashion Show

Last week was my school's student fashion show StyleWOW! To my surprise, one of the photographers covering the show is my cousin Stephen. We haven't seen in each other in about 10 years so it was an amazing reunion-moment.

The evening was wonderful - I was impressed with the production, the collections, the students and the overall energy of the show. Plus, I found this dress at a second hand shop in Marin for $28. Now that's StyleWOW!

My Fashion Interview in the SF Examiner.Online

Wow! My five minutes of Oakland Fashion Fame. Who knew that I was fashionable?

Q&A with Art Institute of California instructor, Amy Kweskin
By Moya Stone
Oakland Fashion Examiner

Winner of Cool Friend Award

My friend Laia in London is the winner of the newly developed Cool Friend Award. She generously skyped with my HR class and told them all about her career in fashion. My students were totally blown away. How cool that we were able to see and talk to her while it was 9pm in the UK and 1pm in California. At the end of our conversation she took her laptop and turned it to the window so that we could see the evening sky. There was my old street, as Laia was my neighbor when we lived in London. What was even better was that we could see our class' reflection in her window from the skype video image. Suddenly we all felt like we were with Laia in London and that gave us the giggles.

Amys are Fashion Mavens

I was actually mentioned in the same fashion article as Amy Sarabi of Project Runway! I've flown on the same plane as her and have been at two events that she has attended so clearly I'm in the fashion realm.

Read journalist Moya Stone's examiner.com article about last week's United Streets of Fashion event presented by the Art Institute of CA - SF. She and I sat next to each other, in the front row, ooohing and aaaahing over the amazing designs created by the talented students.

Mall Blindness

Growing up my sister Marlene and I coined the phrase Mall Blindness. It is the phenomeon that happens when you do enough shopping that suddenly all the outfits that you thought were hideous and not your taste are things you find yourself buying. The disorder lasts just long enough for you to arrive home, unpack your bags and ask yourself, "what was I thinking?" The illness hits twice as strong during sales season.

I suffered from Mall Blindness today but thankfully I wasn't at the point of sale. It was more a kind of mind-shift from hanging with my super fashion friend Nicole who is visiting from San Francisco. She is always dressed in the height of fashion and looks amazing. Over the past two days we hit all the shops that make me go "ick" but somehow she puts on the outfits and looks awesome. Today her friend Liz joined us from Barcelona and the two of them went back to the shops Nicole and I hit and they went sale-crazy. Instead of my normal "ick" reaction I heard myself saying that I actually thought their items looked good. You just have to widen your lense, take off your Amy-filter and it all starts to make sense. Oh wait, I'm back home again and it really is "icky" afterall. It must be a 24 hour virus.