Pink Rock Candy – Top fashion trends, news and shopping of 2010

When it comes to catching our eyes, and hearts for that matter, Diane von Furstenberg always seems to come out on top. Her Fall 2008 season was the perfect mix of old Hollywood glamour from the forties and chic international influences. It was smart, mature, and stylish as ever. Last week however, she decided to throw us a curve ball. For Spring 2009, her vision had an extreme child-like playfulness and was full of flirty florals, but the best part of the collection had to be the pretty flower princess headbands the models wore.

If I were to imagine the perfect headband, this is exactly what I would invision— an abundance of flowers, ribbons and feathers all intertwining with my hair. Its has a slight ethereal quality, but at the same time the flowers, leather strings and feathers make the headdress earthy.

Even with the very earth goddess-y headbands, the collection itself is reminiscent of something, famous 60s groupies and girl band, the GTOs might have worn. The dresses are extremely feminine and primarily diaphanous with a definite splash of badass.

Just looking at the picture at left makes me want to start singing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”, and frolick around my house in a flowy dress, swaying my arms and throwing peace signs.

This collection was my favorite from NY Fashion Week hands down, with the Marc by Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs collections coming in as a close second and third. What was your favorite collection from NY Fashion Week, and do any of you have any idea how to attach feathers and other non-bead bobbles to straps of suede like this?

Photo Credit: Style.com

It’s not secret— I love headbands! Most of the week my hair is spent tied under some sort of headband whether they’re to keep my hair out of my face or simply for decoration I have them on. Sometimes, I even wear more than one, and on the rare occasion when I’m not wearing a headband, one isn’t far from hand. I usually store at least one in my bag, but sometimes I’ve been known to tote around at least 4. In some people’s eyes this may be a problem for which I desperately need help, but Jen and Jamie the wunderkinds behind Ban.do, like me, understand, headbands are more than just accessories, they’re a lifestyle.

Jen Gotch, stylist/photographer/lover of pretty things, and her friend Jamie , who’s last name is yet to be known, recently started this new company called Ban.do, and everyone on this little thing I love to call the interweb have fallen head over heels (no pun intended) over their headgear.

Using new and vintage pieces including flowers, feathers, brooches, ribbon, and tulle, the girls create the most darling headbands I’ve ever seen.  I know a lot of blogs have been featuring these headbands as great finds for your wedding, but personally I  wouldn’t think twice about wearing any of them on a regular basis. If the adorable headbands don’t make you smitten in the least, then maybe the cute haiku poems will endear this indie duo’s headbands to you:

As you scroll through the pieces ranging from Cleopatra revived to Grecian goddess to Pocahontas’ little sister, you can’t help falling for every hair adornment, and you might even find yourself sending Santa frantic letters telling him how much you really need a Ban.do headband, and that stop making all the boys cry when you beat them at soccer on the school yard, or at the very least bookmarking your favorite headbands on your boyfriends computer under ‘she’ll love you forever’ so he knows what you want for your upcoming birthday!

For more information on Ban.do visit their website: shopbando.com. For more information on Jen Gotch visit jengotch.com.

Ever since I moved to the East Coast, I’ve been asked a baffling question everywhere I go, “Are you part Hispanic/American Indian/West Indian?” Back in the Midwest, the general consensus is if you look black, then you probably are and asking otherwise is a waste of time. My answer to this question is usually a confused look and a sweet “nope” followed by a girlie chuckle, if that’s possible. I’m starting to understand why people ask my heritage, because not do I usually wear my hair very straight, but I like to put fun headbands in my hair making me look more Native American, than I actually am.

Today, I decided to feed into my fake heritage (do you think I could start claiming American Indian? Ha!) and I fashioned a feathered hat pin into a clip I could latch onto my headband. I had actually broken the feathers a while ago, but I finally found my handy-dandy glue gun and fixed it so the feathers weren’t all limp and sad-looking.

After changing about a million times because its cold in my house and really hot and humid outside, I decided on this cute strapless number I got from Target last year or the year before. When I bought it, I wore it once and decided I didn’t like it, but now I’ve changed my mind once again and have decided its cute. What do you think, cute or not?

I’ve sort of been MIA lately because I think summer is making me crazy. My work schedule gets hectic, and when I’m not working, I just want to chill out by blasting music and dancing like I’m crazy— I promise its so much fun! Lately, I’ve been blaring a lot of old albums by the Fueled By Ramen artists, I have a bit of a fangirl affection toward them. Vain & Vapid tagged me a while ago and the task I have to do is figure out my favorite 7 spring/summer songs, and I promise I’m going to do it, but I’m not sure which songs are going to make the list.

I’m off to work— I hostess at a local restaurant— but before you head off to other blogs, I wanna know: what are your favorite songs are right now? Maybe this will help me with my list!

Ever since I was little, or when ever the Disney movie came out, I wanted to be Pocahontas. My parents bought me the cassette, yes, cassette, of the soundtrack and I would listen to it every night while I tried to go to sleep— I don’t think I ever made it past “Just Around the River Bend”. This little Pocahontas obsession has been in remission until recently when I saw pictures of Mary Kate wearing a feather headband, I think they were in Nylon a while back. Since then, I’ve been contemplating ways to make my own feather headband, and I just recently completed my mission.

The headband doesn’t really say Pocahontas, it kind of says “I’m a flapper”— but, flappers are definitely up there on my list of things I want to be, among hippies, pirates, old school groupies, and princesses.

I made it using an old headband, some ribbon, a feather patch, and some gorilla glue (I couldn’t find my glue gun). I just wrapped the ribbon around the headband and then slapped on the feathers. It sounds very nontechnical, and that’s because it was. The process was a very macho, fix it with duct tape, rub some dirt in it kind of thing, but it turned out very pretty and girlie. I’ve worn the headband with pretty much every hairstyle I have in my arsenal, and it works really well with everything, though because I have a side part, I do like it better when the feathers are on the side with no bangs.

If you want to see more feather looks, lc from Fops and Dandies just bought a really cute feather crown looking headband, that is much more Pocahontas-y than mine, or you can just etsy search feather headbands.

p.s. Since I’m name dropping bloggers, I just met with Secretista (if you haven’t visited her blog do it!), because we go to school together, and were starting this super-semi-secret project on campus that I think will be really fun, but a lot of work. I’ll tell you more about it when things start falling into place (I don’t want to jinx it), but what would you suggest as a good way to find people who are interested in fashion on a college campus (other than facebook)?

I’ve been lusting over this Jeremy Scott helmet for ever, or at least since I saw it float down the runway on top of multiple model’s heads during his Spring 2007 runway show. I either loved it due to it’s whimsical quality, or because it reminded me of my sister whom I lovingly call Minnie (its a long story). For some odd reason I thought it was the cutest thing since the Hello Kitty toaster (that doesn’t work very well mind you), but at the same time it was totally tomboy-ish, being that it’s a helmet. All the adoring feelings were repressed until a couple months ago when the Helmet popped back into my life in the March issue of ELLE.

Not only was the helmet in ELLE that month, I stumbled across a blog post from, teal-headed alt. model, Raquel Reed, talking about how show recently purchased the Jeremy Scott helmet, and was going to do a photoshoot with it. I’m not sure if she did, but I haven’t seen any pictures of it, so I doubt it, but every now and then I stop by her buzznet profile to check.

Seeing the helmet brought back tons of good memories of my lustings over the odd headpiece. I thought of the many weird functions I could use the mouse-eared helmet: while battling my little brother with fake light sabers, as my special master commander helmet only to be worn when losing dreadfully in HALO (as per usual), in case my home is ever under enemy fire, you know, the works.

Then I remembered a certain teacher I had last semester who informed my class that all inventions are leading toward “The Helmet,” which he defined as the ultimate virtual reality pleasure helmet. After the acquisition of said helmet, we as a people would end up doing nothing but living in our virtual reality world bringing upon the demise of civilization. I’m not sure whether this was just the ramblings of a questionable professor, or if his prophecy may in fact come to fruition, but if it does, I want my helmet to look like this!