A Sweet Melody

As a person with a lot of respect for "streetwear," Karmaloop is a website I go to often just to take a look around. On one of my many trips to this website I stumbled upon jewelry designer Melody Ehsani's work.  Most of her jewelry is made using laser cut plastic and Swarovski crystals and her inspiration seems to come from some pretty iconic imagery that maybe wasn't iconic, at least to me, until I saw it in jewelry form. As always, here are some of my favorites:

Walk Like an Egyptian

Since I was a kid, I've always been fascinated with things about Egypt. From all the archaeology and artifacts to the Mummy movies with Brendan Frasier. The hieroglyphics, jewelry and coffins always show an extreme attention to detail and are ALWAYS visually pleasing. Egyptian influences are sloooowly making a comeback in fashion and I'm feeling pretty inspired by the mosaic techniques and symbolism used throughout ancient Egyptian culture. Expect to see some Egypt inspired fashion from me!

Above (from left to right): A look from the Spring 2004 Christian Dior couture show, Janelle Monae's album art for The Archandroid, and Kanye West wearing Jacob & Co. jewelry at the 2010 BET awards.

Stay tuned...

A Pairing for Style Champions

It's amazing the kinds of things you discover as you slowly finish finals and have this weird thing called free time. Like today I had time to go to Style.com and check out more Resort 2011 and fell in love with Proenza Schouler's collection. Later, my browsing brought me to Osborn, a company that makes shoes out of recycled materials. And in a wacky and crazy turn of events, the two go together perfectly! Both include ethnic inspired prints (something included in my senior collection) and remind me of something you could buy in Tijuana... and I mean that in the best way possible.

Vikram Ray's Other Job

It's no secret that I'm a big Wes Anderson fan. In fact, if you walk into my apartment I have The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou movie poster framed above my bed. So when I had been going through an old Vogue from last Fall and saw that Vikram Ray A.K.A. Waris Ahluwaria designs jewelry, I was pleasantly surprised. His company House of Waris is based out of India and he was a finalist in the 2009 CFDA/ Vogue Fashion Fund competition. You can see some of his jewelry under the Press section of his website and also here.

Above: Waris and some of my favorite pieces of his House of Waris jewelry.