月別アーカイブ: 2015年9月

Dressing well in New York is easy. Everywhere you go, the streets are full of people in spectacular clothes. There are models, fancy ladies with Birkins, actresses, singers in cool bands, fashion people, bloggers, and people who are just really, really, ridiculously good at finding designer vintage on eBay. It seems like everyone is trying really hard to look like their best possible selves, and in that environment it is only natural to want to take part. But what do you do when the vicissitudes of life lead you away from the 24/7 fashion show that is the L Train and drop you in a tiny little village in the middle of nowhere?

(Related: Late to the Party: How I Finally Came Around to Fashion Sneakers)

It can be tough to motivate to get dressed up in a small town, especially one where things run very casual. Once, not long after moving to a new town, I went to dinner with some friends and I wore a blue silk Equipment blouse with some dark jeans and ankle boots. That’s a pretty low-key outfit for most cities, but my dining companions acted as though I had arrived in a Philip Treacy lobster hat. If I wore a maxi dress to the grocery store, creepy dudes stared at me as though I were running around completely naked. (I still don’t know what they were looking at. I’m not even busty or anything.)

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As if that weren’t enough, my town was covered in beautiful, idyllic, old-timey cobblestone streets. They looked fantastic on Instagram, but they made it impossible to wear anything but flats. Considering that at the time I only owned one pair of flats, and those were sandals, that was infuriating.

I spent the next year or so feeling like it just wasn’t worth getting dressed in the morning because I had nothing to do but go out and wander around my tiny, extraordinarily casual little town. It was just a whole calendar year of jeans and T-shirts and unwashed hair, and not in a cool model-off-duty kind of way.

Dressing like that is just fine if that’s what you like, but for me it just made me feel crummy all the time. It was as though I were on hiatus, waiting for my life to start happening again. (I did not move to a small town because I wanted to be there, and I deeply resented every dumb cobblestone.) But that sort of thing can’t go on forever. I wasn’t on hiatus. Days were passing. Life is short. If I ever wanted to wear my cool stuff again, I figured I should just get to it now and ignore the people staring at me for wearing a vintage dress to the grocery store.

It’s still tough to motivate to put in a bunch of effort when nobody else is, but it can be fun to do it anyway. Instagram helps, but the real thing that did it for me was thinking that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow, what would I want my last outfit to be? If I must be hit by a bus, might as well have people say, “Man, that bus hit a lady who was wearing a whole lot of sequins.” (Heck, in this scenario maybe the sequins will make it easier for the bus driver to see me and thus spare me an untimely demise.)

Besides, if you treat an ordinary destination like an event, it does feel more like one. Just try wearing false eyelashes to the Starbucks and see if it doesn’t make that Frappuccino more fun.

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I still remember when the class clown in fourth grade called me a dyke. I didn’t understand enough English to know what that word meant at the time, and I had to look it up in the dictionary.

I wasn’t terribly upset about that word at the time, but I knew I looked different from all the girls in my class. I had short hair cut like a boy. I didn’t care about fashion, and wore oversized jackets and loose grey pants, even on free-dress day at a Catholic school. I never wore skirts, and I didn’t care for jewelry.

The experience taught me about what it’s like to live as a woman in America.

I had just arrived in the US after leaving China, and while I was getting by speaking English after just a few months in fourth grade, I didn’t know there would be even bigger cultural hurdles to overcome:

American women celebrate femininity differently.

After being called a dyke, I realized how much American women are valued by their looks.

That’s not to say the average Chinese woman doesn’t care about appearance. Beauty and youth are prized in China, and if you’re not married by a certain age, you are called a “leftover.”

It’s not exactly a feminist country.

What I learned in America, however, was that women were proud to be women.

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In China, there was always this undercurrent of women not being appreciated because families wanted to have boys instead of girls.

If you visit China, there are many women who rock the androgynous look with short hair and sporty outfits. Some women look less stereotypically feminine, and it’s a cultural norm.

I would like to assert I am not a lesbian, and I had no problems being called one. But after that incident, I realized how much the American woman had to measure up to in terms of femininity.

I realize the term was meant to offend, but I knew there was more to being a woman than just the physical appearance.

It’s okay to be the “unwanted” daughter.

My parents never got along when I grew up, and when my father left the family, I was incredibly angry and deeply wounded. I wondered what I had done to make him leave.

My family told me he was disappointed I was born a female, and I took it to heart. For a very long time, I tried to be a son. I tried to be as masculine as possible with my appearance, subconsciously wishing for some sort of approval.

Everything I did screamed, “Look at me! I’m just as good as what you want! Look how hard I’m trying!”

But, I soon realized it’s okay to be a daughter. It’s okay to be a woman. In fact, the female identity should be treasured.

The term that was used to “offend” me by the class clown was another woman’s identity.

In subsequent years, classmates asked me if I was a lesbian, and a friend just told me to say no. I really had no strong issues regarding the question, simply because my definition of femininity was very fluid.

I learned I was not only defined by my femininity or sexuality, but also by my personality.

You can’t make everyone happy.

One of the biggest lessons I learned in recent years was that people will love you for who you are. But people will also hate you for being who you are.

No matter how much you dress up, put on makeup, talk like they do or walk like they do, people will inevitably have opinions. And the more vocal ones will try their best to bring you down.

It’s not their fault; they are simply triggered by some inner insecurity and projecting that onto you.

There’s no point in addressing the negativity. You simply have to move on, be who you are, embrace those you love and do your best to carry on being your badass self.

I am grateful for that little, naive kid in fourth grade who taught me some very important lessons about being a woman in America.

It’s a lesson I would have never learned in any textbook, and it helped me to adapt to my new homeland, with my crappy fashion sense, short hair and all.

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LONDON — To paraphrase the Edwardian satirist H.H. Munro (better known as Saki, in one of English literature’s early feats of branding): They were good fashion shows, as fashion shows go, and as fashion shows go, they went.Hyped for days, previewed on Snapchat and mounted with the kind of pomp and security typically reserved for visiting dignitaries, the display of Burberry Prorsum’s spring 2016 collection on Monday was also a miniature concert, with a 32-piece orchestra clambering cautiously into a sunken pit at the center of the runway to back Alison Moyet, a former member of the 1980s synth-pop group Yaz, on four solo numbers.

Outside Kensington Gardens, the fans — but of what, exactly? — gawked and filmed and hashtagged through the transparent tenting as if it was their civic duty. Inside, the golden-haired princesses of Prorsum, Cara and Kate and Sienna and Suki, sat on their front-row throne-benches as the official cameras, one looming up like a periscope, captured footage for a live online broadcast to the commoners at 1 p.m. (That was 5 a.m. Pacific Standard Time, The Hollywood Reporter had breathlessly reminded its readers.)

Remembering with fondness being roused at such an hour as a young girl to watch the wedding of a real princess-to-be, Diana, to Prince Charles, I had no doubt this company and Christopher Bailey, its chief executive and creative director, would one day command a Tartan Jubilee.

The new rucksacks with gold monograms that bounced down the runway as Ms. Moyet sang were apparently a viral hit, the news of them transmitted by the iThings of the crowd, stacked half a dozen rows deep at its thickest point.

The Burberry raincoats remain relevant, as the London drizzle pelting the tent underscored. The black cage booties, so nervy-seeming when presented by Yves Saint Laurent seven years ago, also seem to have become a staple, despite the odd tan lines they must produce.

But will the ready-to-wear of Mr. Bailey and his creative team, sumptuous and well executed as it is, alter the course of fashion history, or even register in it? That deep-plunging dusty, nubby rose banded mini-dress, rendered again in café au lait? The aubergine bodysuit with Swiss-dotted cap sleeves and overskirt that would have coordinated so nicely with the red carpet at the Emmys the night before? (But hey, who needs a red carpet when you have the lush London grass?) That sleeveless black lace top worn, sans bra, over white silken skirt?

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I doubt it.

You always know when nipples are coming down the runway, by the way, because an extra-excited clicking, like a percussion section, will suddenly emanate from the photographers’ pit. (Occasionally one of them even will shout out his appreciation.) And the clicking and yelps were prestissimo duringPeter Pilotto’s show in the humbler confines of the Brewer Street Car Park early on Monday evening, thanks to a profusion of sheer smock tops in cotton, macramé and tulle.

Though it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as Burberry insists on pouring, this was a delightful and cohesive collection: Mediterranean-themed, with hues of white, blue and buttery yellow that summoned a villa kitchen in Greece with a breeze blowing through the window and a sturdy pitcher of retsina at the ready.

In recent seasons, the widespread promotion of culottes has recalled the ill-fated push of the midi skirt in the early 1970s, with women clinging to their “skinnies,” as they did then to minis. But Mr. Pilotto and his partner, Christopher de Vos, cut culottes with enough volume that they looked commanding, for madame to swoop into the kitchen on her way out. Safari-derived looks with geometric detail like children’s blocks and pocketed jackets were the only Pilotto pieces out of place.

For what has resonated most from the runways of London this week is not the Savile Row tailoring for which the city was so long known, but mishmash, bricolage: a crazy salad, to veer from Saki to Nora Ephron.

Though men can deliver the steak and sizzle, as in the piercing retro ofGareth Pugh, maybe women are better at making salad. You saw this in the almost painfully tactile frocks of Simone Rocha, assembled for the high-end Etsy crowd; in the clashing rose prints of the otherwise ladylike Emilia Wickstead; and in the complexly layered Starfleet uniforms of Mary Katrantzou. Lieutenant Uhura never had it so good.

And you saw it in the less-assured space age silhouettes from Thomas Tait, though unfortunately you — by which I mean me — saw those online, because of a long rain-induced delay in the schedule on Monday afternoon. Like Ms. Katrantzou, Mr. Tait favored a mod above-the-knee flare for skirts and tunics, punching out portholes at neck, shoulders and hem. On long trousers under the tunics the portholes were at the inner thigh or over the knee, where patches usually go, for more odd tan lines. Strips of synthetic fabric affixed here and there suggested an arts and craft project that could have used more craft.

Anya Hindmarch also went to outer space, tricking out one of the Royal Horticultural Halls with an origami puzzle of a set lined in mirrors on Tuesday morning. This offered the advantage of multiplying her graphic chevron handbags in triplicate. All the better to tweet you with, my dear.

Crammed into the front row, Maya Williams, a fashion blogger wearing fur and pink Wellingtons, who was covering the event for a magazine in Dubai, introduced herself to Natalie Massenet, the British Fashion Council chairman and departing founder of Net-a-Porter.

“I follow you on Instagram!” Ms. Williams said in a tone of worship.

“I have to come up with a new name for my Instagram,” ruefully replied Ms. Massenet, still @nataporter for now.

I imagine that leaving a company one founded, even with millions of pounds as cushion, must feel somewhat like losing a loved one, and the commemoration of such loss seemed unusually prevalent in London as well.

In her program notes, Ms. Katrantzou included a message to her and Ms. Rocha’s mentor, Louise Wilson, director of the Central Saint Martins’ masters program in fashion, who died last year. “I wish I could pop upstairs after the show and see you,” she wrote.Sibling’s show, though it proceeded with unnerving peppiness and leopard capri pants, was dedicated to Joe Bates, one of the label’s creative directors, who died at 47 of cancer last month.

And Christopher Kane and his sister, Tammy, continue to mourn the death of their mother this year, with a lurid collection influenced, Mr. Kane said, by John Chamberlain’s “car crash” sculptures and shown in the cloud-surrounded Sky Garden on Fenchurch Street.

“That can’t be comfortable,” I thought of the plastic zip ties closed tightly around the model’s necks; these also fastened some of the clothes. An orange shift dress was edged with a red Colorforms-like crumb catcher and different shades of neon lace were juxtaposed willy-nilly. Fringe and ribbons and jagged edges sailed by. Like the J.W. Anderson mutton-sleeved and airbag-bodiced collection earlier in the week, it was chaotic, and hard to imagine on the women striding over the streets below to their jobs or pub dates or children’s schools.

But outside the windows of the Sky Garden, 35 stories high, the thick gray mist blurring the edges of London felt very close to heaven. And the evidence suggested that heaven will not have Wi-Fi service.

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Wedding photographers would like to hold their clients — or would-be clients, for that matter — to certain standards. As a collective, we’d love to see them shop for the best vendors, spend good money on photography, and have unplugged weddings with nary an Uncle Bob in sight. The list goes on. It would stand to reason that most of us in “the business” would probably find the idea of a bride acting as her own photographer to be pretty abhorrent. We’d chalk it up to selfie culture run amuck or DIY gone wrong, wouldn’t we? Would you? I probably would have, if I’m being honest. However, we might be wrong.

Enter project manager and photographer Liisa Luts, an Estonian creative who recently did just that. When confronted with planning a wedding, Luts took the task of being the documentarian into her own hands.

“The idea to shoot my own wedding came quite naturally,” she said. “We knew we don’t want to ‘plan a wedding’ with all the wedding elements, including a wedding photographer, we just wanted to make it legal and celebrate a bit.”

Luts’ situation was unique since her wedding was less than formal.

“So since there was no wedding pressure I thought that it might be an interesting challenge to take some photos myself,” Luts said. “About a week before the special day I decided that I’ll take photos from the moment I wake up to really get the bride’s perspective of the whole day.”

With that in mind, Luts decided to use a FujiFilm X-T10 as her tool for capturing the day, citing the camera’s portability as the primary reason for picking it over a DSLR. She said she wanted to be able to show things as honestly as she could — for the moments to be documented just as she reacted to them.

It’s hard to argue with the results. She finds a modern aesthetic and shows an honest attention to both the moods of the day and the personalities involved. As a documentary of a wedding, I’d say that Luts’ project pays off.

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Still, this photographer-bride hybrid realizes that she made a very outside of the box decision that might not be suitable for everyone.

“The idea is not to prove a point and it most definitely isn’t a call-to-action to cancel the wedding photographers and to take your own photos,” she said, adding that she wanted to really collect a series of images that were true-to-self. Luts was willing to have a set of photos without bells and whistles, since the wedding matched that motif.

“For an example, if I had to take one photo that day, I’d probably have planned it in advance, cleaned the scenery and thought a lot more about the perfect angle, lighting, and composition,” Luts said. “But, in these series every photo was taken as the moment let me, nothing staged and nothing made look fancier than it really was. Overall I think that everyone should make their own decisions whether to get married at all, how to celebrate that day if they do and all other aspects in life, too.”

I actually found the idea of a bride committing to something like this to be refreshing. It might sound slightly insane, given that this is essentially a job that another photographer didn’t get. Still, you can’t deny that this is a far cry from putting disposable cameras on all of the tables or even settling for your uncle or cousin to stretch the comfort zones of their favorite hobby.

She did this very intentionally. Not to be cheap. Not to spite high-priced shooters. Not to make a statement. She did it to serve herself and her husband best. Who would have thought it would work?

It just goes to show you that no matter how many weddings you photograph, or how often you see things done the “right” way or the “wrong” way, you’re still just seeing them unfold from your own perspective.

Stepping outside of our own point of view can be a critical tool for creating honest wedding photos. Honest is certainly an adjective that I’d love my clients to use while describing my work. Luts’ collection reminded me of that.

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If Joanne Hong wants a new sewing machine, the couch has to go.

Near Times Square Theater District in New York City, Hong lives and sews in a pricey, 600 square-foot apartment that is filling up with fabric, and fast.

“All this fabric is just accumulating, and I keep having to buy garment racks,” Hong said. “So my living room’s literally just like a sewing area.”

Hong, 31, is an Oklahoma State alumna and women’s wear fashion designer who has worked for big names in fashion such as DKNY, Marchesa and Elie Tahari. A year ago, Hong quit working for other designers and began working for herself full time, designing children’s wear under the company name Joanne Hong LLC.

Hong’s children’s wear line will be displayed at 7:30 p.m. on Friday during Tulsa Fashion Week.

“I think it starts at 7:30 p.m. just because my models are like five years old, so I guess I need to have them done by their bedtime,” Hong said.

In Hong’s research, she discovered there’s more of a niche for children’s wear because there are not as many children’s wear designers. She originally transitioned from women’s wear to children’s wear because she followed the life paths of her friends, Hong said.

“After college I was doing a lot of bridesmaid and evening (wear) because all of them were getting married,” Hong said. “Then eventually they started having kids, so I would make them kid’s clothes for baby showers and birthdays, and I just kind of fell in love with it.”

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Her clothing line is inspired by women’s wear and reflects street fashion trends in New York City, Hong said.

“If you look at my collection, my aesthetic is very girly, feminine,” Hong said. “My taste goes into my designs. Lace and bows are literally almost on every single design. I guess I just naturally want to put lace on everything.”

When Hong graduated from Stillwater High School, she thought she would be a marine biologist. Hong was a self-proclaimed tomboy who didn’t enjoy dressing up in dresses or skirts, and her closest experience to sewing was watching her mom quilt.

“It’s funny because a lot of fashion designers, like you hear that when they were 5 years old, they were sketching or making clothes for their Barbie dolls,” Hong said. “I didn’t know what I wanted to do until freshman year of college.”

When a friend in the OSU apparel design program told Hong her homework assignment was to make a quilt bag, something clicked for Hong.

“Ever since I took my first sewing class with Diane, my professor, it kind of just fell into place,” Hong said. “It was just really natural for me. It was just kind of weird, because I really didn’t know I wanted to do this until I took my first class. I was like ‘Oh this is so much fun,’ and then I was like good at it.”

Diane Limbaugh, clinical instructor in the Department of Design, Housing and Merchandising, taught Hong in Basic and Intermediate Construction and Sewn Products Analysis.

“In the construction courses they learn how to use an industrial sewing machine and how to put together garments using these machines,” Limbaugh said. “She (Hong) was a very good student and was always concerned with perfection. She was a very driven student.”

Since Hong’s graduation from OSU, Limbaugh said Hong has been a guest speaker for several classes. Katherine Williams, apparel design senior, interned for Hong during the summer of 2013 and sees herself following a similar career path.

“We have very similar design aesthetics and I love designing children’s wear,” Williams said.

Since Hong began working for herself, she spends her days sketching designs for children’s wear, sewing custom garments, creating look books for her fashion lines, maintaining her website and networking to build clientele.

In the next couple of years, Hong hopes to sell her children’s wear line in numerous boutiques and potentially department stores.

“Both of my parents are entrepreneurs, so I think just being surrounded by that, it kind of just motivated me to really want to run my own business, at least try it,” Hong said. “If I didn’t try it while I was in New York City, I would regret it.”

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Just more reasons to love Helen Mirren: the Oscar winner is sharing her thoughts on love, marriage and what she wishes she knew as a younger woman.

In a new interview with Daily Mail’s You magazine, the septuagenarian revealed the advice she’d give herself if she could go back in time.

“At 70 years old, if I could give my younger self one piece of advice, it would be to use the words ‘f**k off’ much more frequently,” she told the mag.

The actress, who will soon be seen playing Hedda Hopper in “Trumbo” alongside Bryan Cranston, also advocated waiting until later in life to tie the knot.

(She wed director Taylor Hackford when she was 52 years old.)

“I think marrying late is a very good idea – it worked out for me. In general, I’d say it’s not a great idea to marry young,” she said. “And it’s a really terrible idea to get married for the [dress].”

Adding, “I was lucky because I’d worn so many incredible dresses as costumes. But girls nowadays have a princess complex – they’re longing to have the gorgeous dress, be the center of attention and live the dream for 24 hours.”

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Helen acknowledged that times are changing for women, but we still have a long way to go before reaching equality.

Women living in this era are stuck in an awkward transition period, where there is tension between independence and subordination.

“Women are still toddlers in this modern world, trying to find their position in the age of sexual liberation, birth control, education and financial independence. We’re still finding our path,” she said. “And yes, we’re making a lot of mistakes along the way.”

The actress also took issue with one form of PDA.

“It annoys me when I see men with an arm slung round their girlfriend’s shoulders. It’s like ownership,” she said. “Of course, when you’re young, you want the guy to take your hand and look after you. But when I see girls being leaned on, I want to say, ‘Tell him to get his damned arm off your shoulder.’”

“Trumbo,” based on the story of 1940s Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo and the McCarty era, will hit theaters on November 16.

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Pity the poor designer who shows at the beginning of New York Fashion Week. There’s so much competing action around — in culture (the Venice International Film Festival), sports (the United States Open, the start of football season) and national memory (Sept. 11) — that a label has to work very hard for attention.This isn’t necessarily bad. To justify their presence on a runway or in a wardrobe, clothes should offer something more than just a new print. They should offer a new take on female identity; a coherent and unadulterated idea about how women may want to define themselves next. The expectations should be high.Yet one of the strange realities of New York Fashion Week is that it starts awfully slow, with many of the “promising” American labels that are still groping their way toward a point of view. It makes for a weirdly tentative beginning, one that feels more like a warm-up act than the main event.New York Fashion Week is that it starts awfully slow, with many of the “promising” American labels that are still groping their way toward a point of view. It makes for a weirdly tentative beginning, one that feels more like a warm-up act than the main event.

Case in point: Creatures of the Wind, a label perennially on the shortlist for one or another of the big fashion prizes but whose ideas are still fuzzy around the edges. According to the show notes, the designers Shane Gabier and Christopher Peters were exploring “the cycles of time,” and “creating a new language out of discordant components,” which sounded kind of provocative, but in practice looked mostly like a vintage mash-up.

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There were punky fishnets under proper tea dresses, silver roses appliquéd on an Army green peacoat, and black leather rocker trousers paired with a square-shouldered little black dress, all in a palette that veered between monochrome and the 1970s (think burgundy, mustard and brown). It was all nice enough, but it also didn’t go far enough in embracing its own dissonance.The clash was more like a minor clang, as was that at Wes Gordon, another oft-nominated next-gen designer (twice a finalist for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund) trying to push his way out of a ladylike box, who roughed up his Le Cirque-ready linen trenches and chiffons with frayed seams and ropes of cording.

It was a subtle contrast, done with a certain finesse — unlike, but more successful than, a disco-ready silver chain-embroidered sheath (what’s that doing there?) paired with an office-appropriate black and white jacquard car coat. Not to mention the off-key mix of cutesy asymmetric ruffled hemlines with seductive cold-shoulder cuts.At least Jason Wu, who has been there, vaulted out of that “up and comer” category (thanks in part to a second job as artistic director of Boss women’s wear, not to mention Michelle Obama’s patronage) and displayed a certain consistency of line in his panoply of forest green, black and peach featherweight linen frocks, waists nipped in, skirts cascading into ruffles at the sides, short sleeves generously sized. Sweaters were small and cropped, as were silvery raffia suit tops, and slip dresses sheer and layered with lace and ostrich feathers.

Though Mr. Wu’s show was titled “Glamour,” his hand was lighter than usual, and the result had a surprisingly seamless sci-fi prettiness. It’s something of an oxymoron. But at least the combination made it harder to look away.

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Welcome to Wedding Guest Wednesday, a feature in which Solo-ish explores the joys and woes of attending other people’s weddings. Because it’s not all about the happy couple — it’s a big day for guests as well.

It feels weird to say this as a single man in his mid-30s, but I’ve been planning my wedding for years. Every time I come home from someone else’s wedding — and I’ve been to dozens in the past 10 years — I think about what elements of their celebration I would want to use at my own someday. And what I definitely do not want.

I’m not talking about clothing, flowers or table linens. For me, it’s all about the ritual parts of the wedding. Was there a chance for real connection between the couple, or did it feel like a show for the guests? Was the wedding an expression of the couple’s commitments and values? And what’s the community’s role in upholding them?

Planning a wedding in your head, without a partner no less, can be dangerous. Whatever “real” wedding I wind up having will look quite different from my current daydreams. Yet what I’m actually doing is spelling out what I’m looking to find in a partner, and more important, what I want us to build together.

The best weddings I’ve been to have been intensely personal. One of the most beautiful things was simply the moment my friend saw his bride step into the aisle to walk toward him. What made this so breathtaking was that the couple had not seen each other for the prior 24 hours. They each got ready for the wedding separately, and greeted guests at separate receiving areas. Even though they had been living together for a couple years, this separation and reunion made the drama of the wedding come alive.

The most intimate moment at many weddings is the sharing of vows. It can be incredibly powerful to hear a couple vocalize their love and commitment for each other. For example, at my uncle’s wedding to his partner of 16 years, each man peppered his vows with romantic lines from the show tunes they both treasure. In that moment, these expressions of love, often written by gay men for straight musicals, were reclaimed.

Rather than exchanging vows, personally I’m drawn to the model of the wedding contract, because it represents marriage as collaborative enterprise. A modern take on a traditional Jewish practice, this contract expresses the couple’s mutual commitments to each other, their possible future family and their communities. Crafting this document together gives a couple a chance to clarify their specific goals for intimacy and communication. For example, as one couple I know wrote:

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We pledge to love each other with tenderness and strength, with wisdom and understanding, respecting our differences and rejoicing in our commonalities. We will patiently support and challenge each other to become the people we are yet to be, and remind each other of the people we already are. Even as our intimacy deepens, we will encourage each other’s independence and personal growth. We will strive to be slow to anger and quick to forgive, to pursue a path of open communication, compassionate listening, and generous compromise.

This document also gives the couple a chance to spell out how they wish to be cared for in the event of illness or death. Most strikingly, it can also contain stipulations for how they will fight, and the processes the couple will go though if they decide to break off their relationship.

Signed by witnesses who represent the couple’s friends and family, this document is typically hung on on the wall of couple’s home as a reminder of their commitment to each other. These friends and family are tasked with helping the couple work through whatever inevitable challenges arise in their relationship. I’ve had the honor of signing a number of friends’ wedding contracts as a witness. I take this obligation quite seriously, and have valued the times I’ve been called on to support my friends in their relationships.

Another element that makes weddings incredibly personal is when the couple has a strong relationship with their officiant. Whether this person is ordained by an Internet church or a recognized denomination, someone who knows the couple well can really express the uniqueness of a particular couple’s relationship. This stands in sharp contrast to traditional weddings where you can substitute the names of the bride and groom for any other couple.

Finally, I have seen powerful moments arise when the community is invited to bless the couple.

I know one couple who, the evening before their wedding, invited friends and family to share stories, blessings and perform hilarious skits about them. It was like a rehearsal dinner, but without the expense of dinner or the limited guest list. Having a designated “toasts and blessings” event meant the reception after the wedding could be focused on dancing and celebrating, without lots time for toasts.

So, that’s what I’d want in a ceremony: a dramatic moment of reuniting with my bride; a public commitment to our vision for our collective life; an officiant who knows us personally; and a time (not during the reception) to receive blessings from the community.

As for the reception, as long as there is enough food, good music and room to dance, the celebration should take care of itself. There is no need for a seated dinner, a wedding cake, fancy flowers or elaborate entertainment. Because, in the end, loving commitment and community are all you need for a wedding.

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BAXTER – Kate Kuepers was doing interior design work, before going back to school to get a master’s in education.

She began a wedding floral business to make money on the side – never realizing how far her flowers would take her.

“That was four years ago, and by the time I finished my master’s, the business had grown so much that there was no way I could think about going into teaching,” she said. “That was really kind of a tough thing for me.”

She now works full time in running Bloom Designs from her home in Baxter. The secret to her business’s success is the trend of couples planning destination weddings at lakes area resorts.

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Bloom Designs

Location: Baxter

Number of employees: 1

Fun fact: Owner Kate Kuepers worked in a floral shop in high school and college. She got the idea to start her business after helping her sister’s wedding on Chesapeake Bay.

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“Ninety-five percent of my brides are from the Cities,” she said. “They’re looking for someone who can kind of take over and take care of it, get it done.”

Alliances with local resorts mean Kuepers is on their preferred list of vendors to handle weddings at their venues. The July 12 supercell storm that temporarily shutdown many area resorts moved a few weddings for Kuepers, but nobody canceled, she said.

The storm did disrupt the Bloom Designs itself, however. Kuepers’ house lost power, and having received a shipment of flowers the morning after the storm, her husband had to leap into action and get a generator in order to run the flower coolers to keep Kuepers’ blooms from wilting.

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“We didn’t worry about our food in our fridge or anything like that, we were worried about keeping the flowers cold,” Kuepers said.

Kuepers gets her flowers from a warehouse in Minneapolis that features both Minnesota growers and exotic blooms from places like Holland and South America. She also incorporates unconventional “flowers” in her designs – she opened her cooler to reveal a hops plant she plans on using for a wedding of two people who love craft beer.

Kuepers said her personal artistic style for weddings involves the use of textiles, and uncommon items like vintage and fabrics.

“I have tons of ideas that flow around in my head,” she said.

However, Kuepers is careful not to let her artistic vision cloud what the couple wants in their wedding style.

“I want it to be something that’s reflective of the couple, not reflective of me,” she said. “I think that’s a hard thing to do when you’re in this business.”

Encouraged by the flourishing of Bloom Designs, Kuepers plans to branch out into wedding styling – a service common in the Twin Cities but not around Brainerd. A wedding stylist is similar to the conventional wedding planner, except they focus the overall aesthetic of the wedding rather than practical organization and scheduling that a wedding planner would handle. Clients already ask her advice on things like what kind of napkins to use and how to get custom-made signs – so why not make it part of her business officially?

She also wants to expand by hiring workers, so she’s not Bloom Designs’ sole permanent employee anymore.

“All my help goes back to college the first weekend in August,” she said.

There aren’t many set parameters for the ideal candidate besides being reliable with a good attitude, Kuepers said.

She doesn’t mind the hours she works right now, but it can be tricky balancing business with caring for her kids.

“I’m getting up at 4 a.m. to answer emails, and when they get up at 7 I’m doing the mom thing,” she said. “Then we get them to bed, and I’m back to work.”

Still, Kuepers’ move away from the daily grind has paid off.

“I’m lucky. I don’t have to go to an office. I don’t punch a clock,” she said. “I can work as hard as I want to, when I want to.”

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At age 17, Frankie Harrer is already a two-time national champion in surfing, has set National Scholastic Surfing Association records for most competitions won, and is signed to major surf label Billabong. In other words, she’s kind of a big deal. But with her laidback style and easygoing attitude, you’d never know it. In fact, when she’s not traveling, you’re likely to find the teen cooking up healthy meals in her family kitchen or hiking in her hometown of Malibu. We caught up with the pro surfer in between trips to El Salvador and the south of France to talk all things beach beauty. Read on for her fitness, diet and product obsessions (spoiler alert: coconut oil plays a starring role).

Yahoo Beauty: So, how did you get into surfing?

Frankie Harrer: My family has a house in Kauai, Hawaii, so I took my first lesson there when I was about seven. I started surfing with some friends from school and it all started happening. A few years later, I signed with Billabong, which has been great.

What’s the best place in the world that you’ve surfed?

Tahiti, for sure. It’s so beautiful and the waves are really good. The water is so blue and there are crazy reefs underneath. There are huge mountains, and it rains a lot, so the beaches have this green, rainforest-y background. It’s amazing.

Let’s talk workouts. What does yours usually look like?

When I’m home, I surf every morning and then I do a workout afterward. A couple of times a week, I go to our family friend’s [Laird Hamilton] house and we have a whole crew that does pool training. It’s a bunch of different exercises underwater – working with weights, squatting, and breath holding. And then we do an ice tub and sauna. I also do gym workouts at home and swim a little bit. When the waves are good, I’ll surf twice a day!

And what about your diet?

I’m actually transitioning away from being a vegan right now. I talked to some nutritionists and they recommended that I incorporate a few animal products into my diet for energy. I’ve been experimenting, and doing it slowly. I think that’s better than just jumping in and having a big steak. But, I feel pretty good and it’s definitely easier to have fewer restrictions when I’m traveling.

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Most mornings, I’ll have a big smoothie bowl. I’ll put bananas, berries, some maca, spirulina, and other superfoods in. Sometimes, if I’m doing a hard workout, I’ll put some plant-based protein powder too. Then, I top it with berries or any other fruit that’s in season and some nuts too. It’s really good. I’m addicted.

For lunch, I cut up whatever’s in the fridge and just throw it together. It’s a kitchen sink salad. I do different dressings and try to incorporate good fats, like avocado. Now, I put some protein like egg or salmon as well. I still do vegan a lot of days though, so then I’ll put some beans to add substance.

My mom cooked for the family forever, but now it’s kind of a fun thing that I like to do with my younger sister. We take over the kitchen!

Do you have any favorite blogs for recipe inspiration?

There’s this blog called Oh She Glows, that’s sort of a vegan blog that I read. Mostly, I just look at healthy cookbooks and stalk people on Instagram and screenshot the dishes I like. I’m not good at following recipes exactly, so I read them and then create my own versions.

And what beauty products are you using right now?

I really like natural products. I try to stick with them as much as I can. I’ve been using some things from this Italian company called Radice, which are vegan and super natural. And I have some stuff from Simply Divine Botanicals that I found at this juice place in Hawaii. I really like their Rose du Jour cream and their eye cream – it’s called Pack Your Bags They’re Leaving, which is funny. They’re cool because they have very clean ingredients.

I’m also a big fan of coconut oil. I never use other moisturizers really. I just go to the store and get the same one that I use for cooking. I keep one in my bathroom and one in the kitchen. I put it in my hair too, just to help put some moisture back. I’ll do a little Argan oil too, but nothing fancy.

For sunscreen, I use an amazing one called Shade. A local guy from Malibu started the company and it’s so good. That’s all I need.

I don’t really wear makeup everyday, because it would be annoying to take it off and put it back on. But when I do, I like MAC. I use their tinted moisturizer, some powder, some blush, and a little mascara. I’m not so good at applying my own makeup, so I keep it really simple.

Being in a bikini is pretty much your job, how do you keep yourself feeling body confident?

I think every girl, regardless of age or what her body looks like, has some little things they would want to change. Nobody is perfect, so it’s important to be happy with what you’ve got. Be confident. That’s the most attractive thing you can do.

You’ve had an awesome career so far. What’s up next?

My goal right now is to qualify for the World Tour. That’s kind of what I’m working on for the next couple of years. But, I mostly just want to have fun. It’s important for me, and for everyone, to remember to live in the moment. I’m doing what I love, so we’ll see what happens!

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