Bregenzer Festspiele

The Bregenzer Festspiele (Bregenz Festival) is on my bucket list!


My friend showed me this image last week and I was blown away! The Bregenz Festival is an Annual Summer Festival at Lake Constance in Bregenz, Austria. The festival have become famous for having the most incredible productions on a giant floating stage.. so far the largest open-air floating stage in the world. The stage is 25 meters away from the shore and have 7,000 seats!

This summer, the Bregenz Opera festival will present the Opera "Andre Chenier" by Italian musician Umberto Giordanorom from July 20 to August 21st 2011. Based on a real story, the Opera is about the French romantic poet Andre Chenier (1762 - 1794) living through the French Revolution. Who’s up for a field trip to Austria?

Check out these images from the festival past production.. Just amazing!!!

In 2009, the opera show was called Aida:

These giant feet are 15-meter high feet and shoe size 2,400!



Here’s the set for Puccini’s opera "Tosca" in 2008. A scene from the James Bond movie Quantum of Solace was filmed here:

In 2005-2006 there was "Il trovatore" by Giuseppe Verdi, he was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century:



West Side Story in 2003:



La bohème by Giacomo Puccini in 2001-2002:



I keep the best for last.. how amazing is this squeletor stage! It was used in 1999-2000 for
Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, “A Masked Ball” :


www.bregenzerfestspiele.com

Cashmere/wool + hot + water = Fashion disaster!

Have you ever shrunk your cashmere scarf half the size or.. is your niece wearing your favorite wool sweater? This blog post is for you :)

This following post is dedicate to my good friend, Erica.

Erica had a romantic get away in Calgary/Banff and borrowed my cashmere scarf.. Before giving it back to me, she decided to wash it. Nice right..? The story could of end there with a happy ending but it doesn't. Erica accidentally put my cashmere scarf in the dryer and t's now half the size. Erica learned something that day.. Cashmere/wool + hot + water = Fashion disaster!

But.. did you know that there is hope for your favorite shrunken cashmere scarf or sweater.. Here is what you need:

You will need a few tick towels, hair conditioner or baby shampoo.

1) First you need to relax the fibers enough to allow for reshaping.. For this you need to soak your scarf/sweater in the sink/bathtub with warm water and about 1/3 cup of hair conditioner for at least 30 min. You can add 1/2 tablespoon of salt, this will help the color not to bleed. Then, try to reshape your scarf by pulling very gently while still in the water. Do that for an other 15 minutes. DON'T RINSE. Let the water drain.

2) ** For a sweater.. go to the next step. ** Hang the scarf on a padded hanger over the bathtub, so the water keeps dripping in the bathtub. The weight of the water will also help it stretch.

3) Remove the excess water and lay it flat on towels. You can roll your garment in a towel to get the excess water. Continue to pull on the sweater/scarf until it is almost dry. You can fold the sweater/scarf in half to make sure you are stretching it evenly. When it's almost dry, lightly ironed it, tell me if it worked and DO NOT EVER do that again !

Still a little crooked? Steam and iron your garment while stretch it. I swear it works!

I also know that professional dry-cleaner may be able to do something. They put it on a "blocking tool" and they stretch it for you..

Did you know that if you add 1 cup of vinegar to the rinse cycle of your washing, it will remove soap residue and it softens the fabric. Yep!

Use Woolite in the future!

Baby shower cake.. à la mode ♥

This next blog has absolutely nothing to do with fashion.. but it is about my other obsession.. cupcakes & cakes!

When I was younger, I would only finish my meal because I was told I would have dessert. I also have a recording from when I was 3 where my dad is asking me if I was excited to go fishing with him and I responded that yes, because I was going eat cake! My grand-mother said that the sweet tooth runs in the family since my great grand-father use to finish every meal with a teaspoon of sugar! Yes.. in my perfect world, we should start every meal with dessert :)

Because of this unconditional love for sweets, I have always enjoy baking. I have watch Cake Boss many times and I've always been curious about fondant but I never tried it. Because I LOVE what you can make with it.. I thought I would give it a try to create the perfect baby shower cake for my dear friend Joanne! I am now totally hooked on fondant and I can't wait to do more!

My cake got some much attention and I have gotten so many orders that I decided to share my cake with the world!

Here is my first personalized fondant cake.. It was a double chocolate chunk cake with buttercream icing!

Push Joanne, Push!! LOL

You can't really tell from this picture but I even added the highlight she has in her hair!

Joanne is a photographer..

and she wears converse running shoes :)

This is me, my good friend Joanne and her cake. She was very happy with my cake, it made people laugh and I love that! At the baby shower, we had this amazing photobooth service called Snapshot Photobooth and it was so much fun! It's available for rental in Toronto, they set up a backdrop, camera and guests can take pictures all night long! You should check it out http://www.snapshotphotobooth.com/

"Big girls need big diamonds."

Elizabeth Taylor
1932-2011

"I've always admitted that I'm ruled by my passions."

"Some of my best leading men have been dogs & horses."

"You find out who your real friends r when you're involved in a scandal."

"When people say, 'She's got everything', I've got one answer - I haven't had tomorrow."

Elizabeth Taylor

Ruins of Detroit.. Magnifique!

De si beaux bâtiment avec une si riche architecture! Mélancolique & saisissant! Que d'émotions! So much history, art and emotion is capture in theses photos! All the photography was done by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre. These two AMAZING French photographers beautifully capture the fragility of things.. It breaks my heart to think that such buildings would be left abandoned but the result also inspires me sooooo much! Is that weird? I would LOVE to do a fashion shoot in some of theses locations! Ana, Joanne.. Road trip??

We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes. Alcott, Amos Bronson

La maison de William Livingstone


Station centrale Michigan
Ok.. I can see THE most amazing fashion show happening in front of this station! With this amazing architectural backdrop in the background.. I see Valentino, Galliano, Lacroix gracefully making fashion history..

Atrium, Farwell Building/ Édifice Atrium Farwell

18th floor dentist cabinet, David Broderick Tower/
18e étage d’un cabinet de dentiste situé dans la tour David Broderick
Horror scene!!

Bagley-Clifford Office of the National Bank of Detroit/
Bureau Bagley-Clifford de la Banque National de Détroit

Wouldn't this be the perfect storage unit for my jewelry!! I love this room!

Théâtre des artistes unis
Amazing!!!

Horloge fondue, École secondaire technique Cass
How can I melt a clock like that?

École Saint Albertus Piano

Fisher Body 21 Plant

Room 1504, Lee Plaza Hotel/ Chambre 1504, Lee Plaza Hotel

Detroit's Vanity Ballroom with its unsalvaged art deco chandeliers.
/Salle de bal Detroit Vanity avec son lustre art déco.

East Side Public Library/Bibliothèque publique du côté est de la ville.
I LOVE old books stores!

The ballroom of the 15-floor art-deco Lee Plaza Hotel, an apartment building with hotel services built in 1929 and derelict since the early 1990s
A salle de bal du 15e étage de l’hôtel Lee Plaza.
Un immeuble construit en 1929 et abandonné depuis le début des années 1990

Théâtre Michigan
WTF Car?

Wanna see more?
I kind of wanna buy the BOOK
It would make an excellent coffee table book!

Denver Post article HERE.

Vous préférez en français? ICI

Savage beauty in New York!

How exciting!!!! About 100 SPECTACULAR pieces from the fashion legend Alexander McQueen are to be showed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art! Yes, 19 years of extraordinary vision will be displayed for us to admire, dream and to get inspire.

The exhibition will run from May 4 to July 31 2011. I can see an upcoming trip to the big apple in my near future! The annual Gala will be held on May 2 and Omg I would love to go to such an event! For that.. I think I need to make friends with a Met security guard and start sending him some cupcakes!! The gala is co-chaired by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, there is only 700 available tickets and it cost $6,500 per person. Yep! Pocket change right! ;)

Thomas P Campbell, director of the Met, said "McQueen's designs constitute the work of an artist whose medium of expression was fashion". I love that the exhibition is going to be in one the world's largest and finest art museums!

Did you know that McQueen had a tattoo on his right arm of a quote taken from Shakespeare? "Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind." Me like.♥

Here is a teaser of the exhibition:


L- Dante ensemble from his Autumn/winter 1996-97
M- It's a Jungle Out There ensemble from his Autumn/winter 1997-8 collection
R- Dress No. 13 form his Spring/summer 1999 collection


Dresses from the McQ Voss collection, Spring/summer 2001


L- Irere dress from his Spring/summer 2003 collection
R- Sarabande dress from his Spring/summer 2007 collection


L- Widows of Culloden dress from the Autumn/winter 2006-7 collection
M- The Horn of Plenty from the Autumn/winter 2009 collection
R- Plato's Atlantis ensemble from the spring/summer 2010 collection



Dresses from the Autumn/winter 2010 collection

McQueen was the visionary of our time and I miss him. Lucky for us, the McQueen label is still alive! Thank to Sarah Burton, his right-hand woman for 14 years, she is now the creative director of the Alexander McQueen brand. She did a good job finishing the Fall 2010 collection. I look forward to what she does in the future!

Alexander McQueen
Savage Beauty exhibition
Metropolitain Museum of Art, New York
May 4, 2011–July 31, 2011