New York Herald Tribune

Lately, there have been a whole lot of eurotrash happenings spotted on this famous parisian street. First Lindsay Lohan, hitting the boutiques one last time before she lost all fashion credibility post-Ungaro sfilata. And now, just this past saturday, while walking along the same street, my sister found herself being ordered to yield to two, large, wrought iron gates, opening upon the command of an ooh-la-la male specimen from within the confines of his sleek, black mercedes-benz s-class something. She continued to gawk at the scene as he removed himself from the subpar rue and drove right onto the glistening sidewalk until he reached the gates agape, and disappeared into the lap of luxury. The gates closed behind him, signalling to the pedestrians that the show was over and they could continue to go on about their window shopping. My sister obliged accordingly, but not without making an overseas phone call first, to tell a eurotrash girl that she may be onto something...

Fall Back, Spring Forward

This really should be the fashion industry's motto because it sure seems to be its M.O.

A eurotrash girl can make observations like this because she (like all of you temporally unprivileged consumers out there) is subject to the annual fall spring double whammy and more importantly, ALWAYS at the wrong time. After a summer abroad, where she got by on only two issues of italian vogue as vestiges of the fashion world she so readily abandoned, relying solely on her inner compass to concoct unforgettable outfits from the paltry vacation wardrobe she woke up to every morning, she barely sets foot on canadian soil only to be greeted by winter weather and spring clothes!

But spring is nowhere to be found amidst the dark, wet blanket that hovers over her, except, of course, on every single blog and website she visits in search of fashion inspiration. How can she be expected to rock out amazing outfits day by day in the fall when fall is already so passe'? All the cool kids are talking about Chanel's new spring clog and Christian Dior's bourdoir touches, meanwhile it's snowing outside and all a eurotrash girl wants to talk about is the Missoni snood as novelty, like she did in March. That's the sum of it, in the fall she is brought back to her summertime muses with a sad nostalgia and in the spring, she is urged to fast forward and start thinking about getting all warm and fuzzy and sipping hot cocoa by the fire.

Dear fashion world, will we ever synchronize our clocks?

Above, Denis Guidon's Ora ilLegale daylight savings clock.

Adventures of the Eurotrash iPod: Chapter 1.

Scroll, scroll.... click, click, cue Kings of Convenience playlist.

Those of you who have had the pleasure of perusing my iPod will be hard-pressed to put your fingers on what exactly a eurotrash girl's music taste consists in. Hints obtained by reading through past blog posts are of no help: Hed Kandi, bossa novas, Michael Jackson, Drake... Sounds like a mischievous game of 'all of these things don't belong'. Consider this, I recently had to get a new hard-drive solely to accommodate my, busting at the seams, iTunes library.

Other than her dashing ability to foresee burgeoning trends before they burgeon, eurotrash WAS one of the first girls to own an iPod, 1st generation with the 4 buttons on top, a touch wheel and brick bodice, because she needed a soundtrack to her life.

Her iPod has been a faithful companion, cueing in the right song at the right time, transforming ordinary life into a movie. She thinks there is something so eurotrash about living in her own personal movie, without the artifice of post-production; it is as real as Bazin could ever hope. Like that first time she sat poolside at the Villas in Ravello, high above the sea barely peeking through the valley, listening to Real Ibiza Vol IV; the music made that moment a moment. She remembers it through the music, through Abraham's "Magpie". Now when she walks down the gloomy streets of Toronto, one touch of the play button, and she instantly sees the culmination of her life moments in one. She is poolside in Ravello AND sipping a nonfat latte while crossing bloor and avenue. This summer she brought a bit of her city to the coast, blasting Drake's "The City is Mine" on board Big Poppa while looking out to the open water of the medi, not a city in sight. Is there any better explanation as to why the Hammond B3 organ takes her back to her childhood? Why she can't listen to Interpol without remembering? Why Subsonica is best listened to on long bus rides across Lombardy and Justin Timberlake has a special place in Londontown? Why Jazz fits on Sunday, why Turkish music reminds her of Las Vegas, why Mahler's 5th got her through her thesis and will subsequently never be listened to ever again? Believe me, the list goes on.

Her misunderstood iPod is eurotrash just like her. She'll postpone her life happening just to find the perfect song to make it happen. And with the unfathomable success that the iPod has had since she bought her first one for 600 dollars (a rarity back then), it would seem that she is not the only one making a mundane, perhaps even depressing, trip to the laundromat a little more eurotrash by pressing play.

AN OPEN LETTER TO DRIZZY DRAKE

Dear Drizzy:

you have been been making all of toronto bob its collective head since you positively busted out this past spring with your hit single best i ever had. you're sooo sexy, your flow is the smoothest and most irresistible we've heard since biggie and you're from the tdot. what more could we ask for? the answer is your new single killa. a fervent text message from my better half last night informed me that in the first verse you make a shout-out to the amalfi coast, la divina costiera where eurotrash spent 7 long weeks this past summer. coincidence or direct inspiration? we like to imagine it's the latter. but in any case:

drizzzzzzzzy drake, we adore you.

love, eurotrash

... but i got a new jacket.

First and foremost, it's a miracle that I was even able to summon up the tenacity to blog today after almost choking on my special k cereal this morning when I opened up to page A2 of The Star and read the following headline: "Lilo takes Paris plunge". Just when we thought that nothing worse could happen to the post-apocalyptic fashion world, Lindsay Lohan gets a job designing for Emanuel Ungaro. Yes, the house that eurotrash used to love so much for that little added touch of bright red shoes, so wizard-of-Oz-esque, on every model's feet. According to David Graham, who barely dodged fourth degree murder, the show got mixed reviews - some called it the future of fashion (as coco, louis, yves and gianni all roll in their graves) and others, whom i like to call the more astute critics, called it an embarrassment. My hat goes off to Lindsay who was seen shopping leisurely on the Champs-Elysees the day before the show; now, that may not be dedication, but it is definitely eurotrash. 

So, hushing her dwindling faith in fashion for the duration of this post, eurotrash must address the rapidly plunging temperatures and her need for fur. (Disclaimer: eurotrash wears fur). My better half, whose last post rocked my world, already got her winter jacket and I am starting to feel the pressure. I don't want to be the girl who finds her dream winter jacket in another girl's size, or heaven forbid, donned by another girl. I have to double back for a moment here to when wearing a winter jacket was uncool and then to the era of the tommy and polo bombers and lastly, to the deceased tna parka, in order to appreciate how far we've come in embracing the climate just to have an excuse for adding another piece to the ever-expanding, women's wardrobe. Nowadays, being caught scantily clad in the dead of winter is a sign of fashion ineptitude, pace Lilo. Instead, eurotrash approaches winter like the Czar's daughter, and indulges in designer goose down parkas with luscious, over-the-top, fox fur trimmed hoods and collars. I mean, if you really think about it, the winter jacket is the one piece that eurotrash is dragooned into wearing every single day for approximately 7 months, give or take. That's 5 dollars a day for a jacket that costs circa 1k. Hello, investment. 

Pair the jacket with Uggs or Moon Boots, Cavalli rabbit-fur earmuffs, LV "british royal guard" fur hat (only for the brave), seal skin gloves and an extra long, missoni scarf-hat; and you have not only a case for PETA, but an undeniable, knock-out winter gitch. This year eurotrash cannot disclose her final decision on a jacket, but is leaning towards Riccardo Fiume's Hell is for Heroes ski jacket. Originally designed for climbing the mountains of Tibet, the tag line for the collection reads: "When a mountain loves a woman". Needless to say, it is easy to see how my painstaking search for a functional, yet recherche' winter jacket could quickly end here. 

If this ski store that I've never heard of on Yonge Street doesn't have the Hell is for Heroes "Scout" jacket then I'm getting my partner in crime to bamboozle canadian customs once again on her way back from Italy next month and smuggle in both our winter jackets in one sitting. 

Il faut souffrir.... 

oh michael!

allow me to err for a moment from the official topic of this blog. i need to blog for a moment about MJ. it has been 3 months and a day since he's left us and i'm still not over it all. i've been watching the dangerous concert in bucharest from '92 this evening (i had already seen it in italy in july but who doesn't want to be dazzled by michael floating on stage as many times as possible?) and i, like every single one of the hundreds of millions of fans who have seen him perform, am left speechless watching him EVERY TIME. Michael moves in an explosion of energy, his every step super-charged and yet carefully controlled to be smooth and in total defiance of gravity. watching him glide across the stage doing the moonwalk is like watching a bloody miracle! you simply can't take your eyes off of him. its useless for me to repeat that his songs are irresistible. anyone over 22 and under 40: try to listen to thriller without getting up to bust a few moves. can't be done. the blasphemous naysayers will already be revving-up their response, i imagine: "he was a monster, a pedophile (which eurotrash doesn't buy for an instant), a messed-up boy-child" (i can't help but to borrow this technique of preempting the rebuttal of one's opponents from the ancient orators. its just so effective). but that's just it. eurotrash loves Michael because he was a superstar every step of the way, composing the beat to billie jean while driving around hollywood, transforming his face beyond recognition, dangling little blanket over his hotel balcony, blowing 6 million dollars in 30 seconds on gaudy furnishings in Las Vegas: never for one minute was MJ normal, never did he appear in the "Stars are just like us!" section of People buying a newspaper or picking his wedgie. and at the end of the day, none of his twisted behaviour really ever mattered because when MJ was up on stage, his raw genius just took over. Michael didn't need to constantly change his image or revert to doing stupid reality shows to boost his image (though i'd looooove to have seen him on dancing with the stars) because he was Michael Jackson, musical prodigy and cultural icon.

true to form, MJ went out like the superstar he was. the internet almost crashed the afternoon he died, with whispering rumours being passed by bbm, sms, email and phone calls and the subsequently fervent googling to find out whether the whispers were true. i couldn't get onto perez hilton or cnn that afternoon for hours. at the mall i was in people were exchanging looks of shock and disbelief. it really was a defining moment for our generation. its a blessing, i suppose, that the world will never have to know a Michael who can no longer dance or who doesn't have enough breathe to squeeze out his characteristically falsetto jamoooon! but MJ will really never really be out of our lives, as it were, or at least out of my life. i got two amazing local celebrity tees in commemoration, one purple with his unmistakable silhouette in a darker shade of purple and the other just with his black loafers ad chunky socks poised in a moonwalk on a background of orange stripes with RIP MJ: 1958-2009.

also: there's a brilliant site which has created a never-ending tribute to MJ by generating a constant flow of different people from all over the world doing the moonwalk at http://www.eternalmoonwalk.com/. needless to say, eurotrash will be uploading her moonwalk asap.

the sum of this post, i suppose, is this: MJ was eurotrash. he was raw, cutting edge and certainly MDF (ndr morte di fame = dead broke) despite the fact that he had sold 750 million records of Thriller alone. We are sure that he was sleeping at the Four Seasons, taking up an entire floor and eating wild chilean sea bass while the creditors were banging down his door. Moreover, just like eurotrash, Michael certainly had haters making snide comments at every turn. And just like Michael, eurotrash loves it. As a famous dandy once said, "the only things worse than being talked about is not being talked about at all"

Confessions of a Eurotrash Girl

One thing I am sure of is this: summer is over. No inspirations, save for roberto cavalli ear muffs, are to be found. What is a eurotrash girl to do? Let the quality of our posts plummet? Spend her days creating scenarios in her mind of all the things her summer was and could have been while listening to diluted bossa novas, swinging on a hammock, promising to quit smoking... 

One thing I am sure of is this: the summer is always better remembered than lived. Sure, there were moments this summer when being accustomed to the fast life succeeded in rendering the fast life slow. When being eurotrash became so ordinary that it was too ordinary to be eurotrash. But now, now that it's all over, all that's left is the aftertaste of salt on my lips, massive credit card debt and a heart that beats but forgot how to love.