Dreams do come and true and since I’ve been in London, more are unfolding. Aside from landing Thursday morning at Heathrow and then pumping to shows like Basso and Brooke and Eudon Choi, attending parties and living the quasi life of an American in London (although, if you’ve never been to London, it’s just like New York just colder), I had a major surprise in the form of Burberry yesterday. I recieved an invite to one of the best shows around fashion week, Burberry’s Fall 2012 show. To say I’m excited and thrillled is an understatement, it’s been one of my dreams to attend a Burberry show under the tutelage of creative designer Christopher Bailey.

Cheers to dreams coming true and pushing toward them!

x

jaredmichaelowe

Normally, I’m not the type to post my life on lowefactor but I’m very excited to announce that I am having a very fabulous 25th birthday party this Saturday, Dec. 17th at Le Salon Millesime in the Carlton Hotel 92 Madison Avenue, NYC (at 29th Street) along with some very chic friends @SandrineCharles and @KelsKalu. If you’re in NYC, I would LOVE for you to come out this Saturday and we can marry the night together. Please see dets above. Until then… xxo – Jared Michael Lowe

To many aspiring fashion and writing girls who move to NYC every year, Carrie Bradshaw maybe you’re ultimate tour guide to a life of complete fabulosity or the devil incarnate. Yes, her life is ultra glam; she has four best friends to cackle and down Cosmos with, a closet full of INSANE ready to wear and BIG. But before the book deals, freelancing for Vogue and the financier hubs, how the hell could Carrie, a writer, live this glamorous life in Manhattan and not be strung out on crack walking aimlessly in Chinatown today?

Fortunately, we aren’t the only ones who feel this way. Yesterday, while tolling through Refinery 29 we found The Frenemy’s post on Carrie Bradshaw’s extravagant lifestyle. “Carrie Bradshaw, you gotta be tripping balls to have us believe that you can sustain yourself that extravagantly on that one stupid-ass column. You lying bitch!” quote The Frenemy, which we agree.

Unless Carrie was a trust fund baby she couldn’t live the life of a columnist without daily trips to Hunts Point Ave in her tutu and come fudge me heels. Or maybe she could?

Patricia Field mentioned in Sex and the City: Kiss and Tell that she envisioned Carrie as this socialite who befriended designers, went to sample sales and shopped vintage, hence her clothing was discounted. We can see that. But the apartment? It was rent controlled and maybe she got it in the 80’s. We mean, the West Village (Get your facts together Frenemy, Carrie lived in the Village NOT the Upper East Side) was somewhat reasonable in the 80’s. Yet, is that still enough for Carrie to sustain this lifestyle? Perhaps, Carrie probably freelanced and the wining and dining? Friends probably paid and maybe she could rely on some dude at the bar to pay -if Samantha slept with him afterward.

Either way, Carrie lived an amazeballs life, whether what she did pre Season 5 of SATC or after. Maybe we should take a page out of CB’s life and live it to the fullest!

What say you?

Story: Refinery 29 & The Frenemy

Image: LulaHappy

Carmelita Martell-Carmelita Couture

Last Friday, in all the rain and cold, I was treated to a bit of Parisian life in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA) Fashion Show. Held at the Kimmel Center, the show was a mix of local designers and student design creations from neighboring universities  such as Drexel and The Art Institute.

Carmelita Martell-Carmelita Couture

Although I was blown away by the fashions from local talent – ranging from the avant garde to the flowy   and wearable – I was shocked to know designer, Chado Ralph Rucci was honored for the Visionary Award and was from Philly. Ralph Rucci has been a staple in the industry for his unique and innovative designs for quite some time, so it was encouraging to see him come back to his hometown.

Piece by Philadelphia University's Kaitlyn Doherty

Janice Martin Couture

Chelsea Rex-Student from University of Delaware

Bela Shehu-NINO Brand

Yet, it was great to see fellow bloggers and friends come out: Nichelle Pace of StyleMom, Curran Swint of Kings Rule Together, Fajr Muhammad of Stylish Thought and stylist, Naomi Williams.

L to R: I, Fajr Muhammad of Stylish Thought, guest and Stylist Naomi Williams

Nichelle Pace of Stylemom and I

Image: lowefactor & Rusty Kennedy

Cohosts from l to r: Glamazon's Andrea Arterbery, Cocoachic Beauty T Bernard, Radio Personality Angela Yee, The Fashion Bomb EIC Claire Sulmers, guest, and Jessica C Andrews from the Glamazons

Last Wednesday, I had the esteem honor in attending one of my blogger friends, Jessica C Andrews of the Glamazons blog, “Pretty Girls Rock Dresses” event held at designer Tracey Reese’s flagship boutique in the Meatpacking district in NYC. The event was hosted by Jessica and Andrea Aterbery of the Glamazons, The Fashion Bomb’s EIC Claire Sulmers, Radio Personality Angela Yee and T. Bernie of COCOACHiC. Check out a gallery of the images after the jump!

The event was a perfect chance for fashionistas and fashionistos to mix mingle and donate handbags to the Dress for Success charity while the lovely DJ Tyger Lilly kept the crowd bumping all night and Australian vodka Dot Au provided lush cocktails. The night was topped off by an impromptu fashion show of the best dressed ladies with one lucky guest walking away with a $200 Tracey Reese gift certificate. Sadly, I was not one of the best dressed ladies; hence I did not win coin to shop at Tracey Reese lol j/k

But, I had fun chatting it up with those in attendance, who included:  Sway of MTV, Elaine Welteroth of Ebony Magazine, Christian Law of Fresher Than Chris, Rae Holliday of Stuff Fly People Like and Christina Brown of Uptown Magazine and LoveBrownSugar, and PR pros Ebonie Dukes and Sandrine Charles.

[Show as slideshow]

Image: CocoaChic + Fashion Bomb

In the real world, when you demand sexual favors/ask employees to watch gay porn with you/make your employees pose nude for you, you get sued, fired, and possibly put on the sex offenders list. But in the fashion world, you are referred to as “edgy” and “eccentric,” and get a snazzy “bad boy” reputation. From Dov Charney’s sex slave accusations to Marc Jacobs CEO Robert Duffy’s employee pole dancing sessions to Terry Richardson’s notorious modelizing ways (including his most recent online debacle,) the fashion world has been rife with sex scandals, specifically involving powerful older men and young female employees. And while Galliano’s infamous racist rant brought about shock, heaps of backlash and (gasp!) actual potentially career-ending consequences, Terry and the gang just keep on making millions without a shred of negative reception. Why is this?

It seems that people in our beloved industry seem to see it as a given that models sleep with photographers, and see no problem with it. When Terry Richardson was accused of sexual assault last year, a fashion insider told The Cut:

“This is an industry filled with crazy people and big personalities. The boundaries are different than they are in a purely corporate enterprise. It’s not IBM, it’s a business with beautiful girls, sex, and malfeasance. To single out one person as some sort of ringleader is absurd. We traffic in women’s bodies.”

So basically, everyone in fashion sexually harasses their underlings, no one really cares, and no one is interested in doing anything about it because that’s just the way it is.

Any time one of these girls comes forward, the immediate reaction is to attack their character and paint them as manipulative, greedy, and let’s face it, slutty – just another girl trying to make a buck out of the poor, defenseless millionaire. And sure, this may be relatively accurate some of the time – but even if there are many models willing to sleep with photographers to further their career, does this completely exonerate these men from any wrongdoing? Many of these women start out very, very young, and become easily influenced by the industry. Doing this sets the standard that if you want to be a model, you have to sleep with a photographer, and if you don’t want to, then pick a new career. And the change isn’t going to start with the teenage models – it needs to start with the fashion industry itself, specifically the actions of the people at the top. Until our fashion culture starts recognizing that sexual harassment should not be a part of the workplace (even if it’s not at IBM!), this sleazy, misogynist standard will remain – because that’s just the way it is.

Images: Zimbio

Fashion blog prodigy Tavi Gevinson announced in an introspective, wise-beyond-her-years (as usual) blog post this past Monday, that she is kind of over the whole fashion thing. Wait, what? A fashion blogger, no longer into fashion? Apparently, the “aha” moment occurred while she was seated next to Anna Wintour at the Band of Outsiders show during New York Fashion Week, and was just too sick of it all to strike up a conversation with her. “So I let myself be kind of shy and quiet that night, to join the rows of sullen-faced people who looked as though they secretly wanted to be at home with their pets wearing comfortable clothing and eating fattening food.” Click ahead to learn why our favorite blue-haired teenager’s off the fashion wagon, and why we see her point.

Tavi mentioned: “Fashion Week is weird. It is very high schooly. Someone will take that and decide that it means Fashion Week highschooliness is getting me down hard without realizing how highschooly what they’re doing is. I love fashion but it’s disappointing when you have to sift through a lot of junk before you get to, like, the clothes, and the whole point of it all. It’s more disappointing when the clothes aren’t very interesting.”

We completely agree with this statement – fashion shows are exciting every once in a while, but at some point we look at our watch and shift our slightly uncomfortable feet and wonder why we are waiting in a line for a show we aren’t that interested in, why we are tweeting about the appearance of some girl who was apparently on a reality show we’ve never heard of, and why we aren’t at home watching reruns of Project Runway, in which we would actually be able to see the clothes. Especially when some of the collections we’ve seen have given us momentary narcolepsy instead of goose bumps. “None of this was supposed to dramatically hint at anything, other than maybe that my blog is turning away from fashion a little, naturally,” Tavi says at the end of the post.

Don’t worry guys – we still love fashion and we’ll continue slave away at Lincoln Center to cover all your Fashion Week cravings (at least there’s free booze, and maybe even a Kardashian), but we think this is some interesting food for thought. What do you think about the fashion industry today? Is it all much ado about nothing, or is there some substance still to be found beneath all the style? Sound off, do you agree-sies? [Style Rookie]

Photo: Nights in Middies

We all know that Bryan Boy and Brad Goreski competed as Tavi for Halloween, but what about your other favorite bloggers? I, Jared Michael Lowe went as a hooker this halloween (complete with sparkly gold booty shorts) with my friend Claire (pictured right) as my madam. Check out some of your favorite [other] bloggers Halloween costumes after the jump!

[Brittny Pierre of @lowefactor as Mario from Super Mario Bros]

[Mario Horne from @Leopard Milkshake as "The Shade" ]

[Molly Vu of @lowefactor and boyfriend Nick as a Harajuku Girl and LumberJack]

While we are extremely open with our unnatural fashion addiction, we occasionally have a bit of trouble admitting that we care about celebrities. For every annoying headline about Brangelina (“Angie tells friends ‘It’s over!’ Brad cries. Angie laughs”) we pretend not to read, there’s a god-awful celebrity fashion line we are just dying to make fun of. But what about the children of celebrities? When we learned that Jennifer Lopez was posing with her children for a Gucci ad (children are terribly chic – haven’t you heard?) we were immediately plagued with a series of emotions, most of them centered around disgust and disapproval. Celebrities are certainly considered public figures, but their kids have no choice but to be thrust into the limelight. But should we really judge J-Lo, or are we just behind on the times?

We imagine Tom and Katie expected some reactions when they sent baby Suri out of the house in heels, and we, who occasionally consider ourselves adults, just wrote about Willow Smith’s burgeoning music career. And how old is she, 10? She’s just a year or two shy of being a runway model! It seems to us that though children are all the rage, actual childhood is out.

Where do you stand on the ‘child celebrities’ debate? Let us know in the comments!

Image of J-Lo courtesy of The Cut.

Image of Suri courtesy of The Blay Report.

In a seemingly ongoing desperate attempt for attention trend, Número is showing off the latest blackface editorial, starring Constance Jablonski and shot by Greg Kadel. The question on everyone’s lips is of course, why didn’t they use a black model? Maybe they tried to find one but none were willing to pose in such a tacky editorial? Click ahead for more of our purely objective observations.

This kind of spread invites controversy, and we expect that after at least half the western world is sufficiently pissed off, the magazine will say it never meant to offend anyone, is so surprised by this reaction and thinks their editorial is somehow not racist but artistic and beautiful no matter what color the model is, insinuating that maybe everyone else is racist! Sigh… we think this routine is just tired and pathetic. We also think that no matter what ethnicity the model is, this editorial is just plain awful. How do you guys feel about it? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of The Cut