The World According to Karl Lagerfeld

Anyone who loves Chanel or fashion, or both will agree that the name Karl Lagerfeld is not a foreign language. After collaborating on different sides of fashion, this Chanel helmer truly established himself in the industry.

Karl Lagerfeld on WWD CEO Summit

The problem with famous people like him in the fashion business is that they are mostly frank, and sometimes brutally frank, that anyone who is not settled on her identity and personal style will have inner-directed confusion. But you can honestly get tons of what there is to learn about fashion from them.

With fame attaches controversies. And Karl has not been an exemption. First, the annoyance he's given to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour in the Milan Fashion Week, to his seemingly indiscreet  statement about Heidi Klum, to his outright comments about Adele's mortal parts, to losing a horrible number of pounds in his weight, to his Siamese cat named Choupette. All these are to be perpetuated and spiced up in a book about a compilation of his most outrageous quotes. It is set for release by 25th of September this year, but available to pre- order now in Amazon.

The World According to Karl Book Cover

The book titled, The World According to Karl or Le Monde Selon Karl, in French will be published by Thames & Hudson in the UK with 50 accompanying illustrations by Charles Ameline. It's a handiwork of Patrick Mauries, Jean-Christophe Napias, and Sandrine Gulbenkian- a privilege which Karl receives for being reputable.

No topic seems to deserve a filter for him- something which undoubtedly will make the book an entertaining piece to read. Something which I don't see as redundancy or plain brandish of his vehemence, but more like a legacy. After all, his trademark white hair and black glasses look and his undeniably faddish collections make his name one of the most interesting people to publish about.

Here are few selections of his sharp-edged-but-somehow-true tongue as published on Vogue:

On unattractive and short people

Life is not a beauty contest, some [ugly people] are great. What I hate is nasty, ugly people. The worst is ugly short men. Women can be short, but for men it is impossible. It is something that they will not forgive in life- they are mean and they want to kill you. 

On his collaboration with H&M and relying less on cost and more on the individual's sense of style

Chic is a kind of mayonnaise, either it tastes, or it doesn't.

On staying healthy 

Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.

On interview etiquette

I had an interview once with a German journalist- some horrible ugly woman. It was in the early days after the communists- maybe a week after- and she wore a yellow sweater that was kind of see through. She had huge tits and a huge black bra, and she said to me: 'It's impolite, remove your glasses.' I said: 'Do I ask you to remove your bra?'

On phones

I send notes. I'm not a chambermaid whom you can  ring at every moment. Today, you know, most people act like they work at a switchboard in a hotel.

On smoking

When I was 14, I wanted to smoke because my mother smoked like mad. I wanted to smoke to look grown-up. But my mother said: 'You shouldn't smoke. Your hands are not that beautiful and that shows when you smoke.'

On Coco Chanel

What I do Coco would have hated. The label has an image and it's up to me to update it. I do what she never did. I had to find my mark. I had to grown from what Chanel was to what it should be, could be, what it had been to something else.

On his distaste for tattoos

I think tattoos are horrible. It's like living in a Pucci dress full-time. If you're young and tight, maybe it's ok, but...

I'm a fool for traditional box jackets so it's obvious that I'm his fan, too.






Reference:
vogue (dot) co (dot) uk

Photo Credits:
wwd (dot) com
vogue (dot) co (dot) uk 

A Gift from a Stranger

Strange things happen for some unexpected reasons. 

An old man in his 50's went towards me at the National Bookstore two days ago. He smiled coyly and asked me if I have ever read this book before [True Life in God]. 

He was unassuming. He looked professional in striped beige polo shirt tucked under a prim dungarees that most senior men wear. His ashen hair was far from empty though wrinkles turn up as he tried to open his mouth and explained to me how the book had amazingly "converted" his faith. That was the exact word he used. 

Those folds in his face however hinted me a contented man whose wisdom matured in the last 10 years. He gives me a quick look through the pages, which had me reassured is an action of a man who really knows what he is talking about. 

"To which Church do you belong sir, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I am a Roman Catholic" he said.

"I first came across this book in 1997 from a friend. It only stockpiled in my desk until six months later when I read it for the first time. Lord, why have I not read this book before? I muttered. This is a very good book. It is the type that will get you teary eyed-- perhaps out of guilt, or joy, or thankfulness. It feels like Jesus speaking straight to you. A real account".

"I can give this to you as a gift" he continues.

"No it's okay sir, thank you. I'll have it myself".

"No don't worry, I'll pay for it".

I took a sly smile. He went to the counter and paid for the book. The next thing I know was that I felt surprised. I was not sure if I made a seemly response. Tears (honestly) almost gathered in my bottom lids. It felt unusual but I did not think it was ever doubtful. 

"Why do you have to do this sir?" I asked.

"I just feel happy" he only puts it. 

His assuring smile greeted me for the last time. "Well thank you sir. God bless you" I replied and then he left.

Photo Credits:
google (dot) com (slash) images

Balik Tanaw: Favorite 90's Memories Part 2

The afterthought is endless. I was not born an expat so I have a somewhat serious mind for a lot of Filipino  memories in the 90's. Though I could also not afford to overlook the foreign ones. Some of my readers and friends' reactions after posting the Part I made me realize there is just too much I could look back on to.

And so I reckon more retrospection as something positively worth doing.

Ready for another journey down memory lane?

The Music

There was MTV before Myx hehe :D

You're a 90's kid if you can finish the song, "Ice Ice _ _ _ _" Alam mo yaaaannn! hahaha :D

You surely know Spice Girls! And almost all of their songs!

You can pretty memorize Barbie Girl by Aqua haha :D

You know S Club 7!!! :D

Very in ang BOY BANDS!!! N Sync, Backstreet Boys (Backstreet's back, alright! hahaha) , 98 Degrees, A1, Westlife, and guess what band is in the lower left? ------------- Boyzone! Squeals! :D

I almost forgot!!! Boyz II Men whew!!! I'd be cursed! haha

If today's decade has Justin Bieber, before we had Aaron Carter!!!!! I bet you are already  humming "I'm all about you, I'm all about us" in your mind right now noh?! haha

The Road to Holiness: Blessed John Paul II

He is more than a person in the history. A playwright, an artist, a sportsman, a scholar, a writer, a traveler, a speaker, a professor, a leader, an advocate of the youth, a Pope, a man who lived his life in holiness-- John Paul II.

Born Karol Józef Wojtyła on May 18, 1920 in Wadowice, Republic of Poland and whose birthday is celebrated on this very day. 

I wobbled my head as I take a brief look into how he led his life. As I flip through the pages of George Weigel's book The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II-- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy I get to come out with immense appreciation about how he maintained a holy life in celibacy despite catching the world in reprobate invasion. 

On Communism

It was mid 1920's when the Red Army invaded Europe. The young polish never had an idea that he would grow up in a rather unstable society. He was 18 when he moved to Kraków to begin undergraduate studies in Philology at the Jagiellonian University. A year after, Germany invaded Poland sending forth World War II, crippling a nation of mostly Christians into a helpless one. 

The shift in the lives of Karol's friends and relatives being murdered, and of few fighting Church leaders being imprisoned has immolated his aching heart. All human rights and hopes put in carnage, and the death of his father Karol Wojtyła, Sr. prompted him to take part in bringing back human dignity. 

Karol Wojtyła's vocational discernment was profoundly shaped by his experiences of the Second World War...his daily life amidst  brutality and random death; his resistance activities; his first experience of manual labor; and his first steps in Carmelite spirituality; the death if his father and the murder of his friends.

In late 1939, every man young and able in the family was forced to work for the Nazis (German invaders). Karol plied as manual laborer and began underground academic life and resistance activities. Eventually his name bobbed up in communist secret police records. He joined in student demonstration that attacked these communist secret police and internal security forces. 

On Priesthood

In between the years of guns and bloods Karol was accepted into clandestine seminary program. Archbishop Sapieha believed in his ability and heart to influence especially the young, in spreading the word of God and in fighting for the rights of human dignity. Sapieha ordained him as priest in 1946 and sent him for a higher theological study in Rome. 

He spent his first years in priesthood in Poland. He established to young men and women what he calls his Srodowisko where he took these young people into camping and kayaking as well as teaching and studying the words of God. He had unconfined appeal to the young people. Everyone who became part of his life gets enlivened. 

Young people were attracted to Father Karol Wojtyła for many reasons: his intelligence, his friendliness, his human sympathy--- "his permanent openness".

The late Pope kissing a baby

Father Karol who later on became Dr. hab. Wojtyla professor-ed in universities after being awarded the habilitation doctorate. He later became Bishop Wojtyla. The Second Vatican Council opened in 1962 and a year later, Karol was named Archbishop of Kraków by Pope Paul VI. In 1967 he became cardinal. He defended human rights of all Poles, believers and unbelievers. 

Human beings, he insisted, had a natural instinct for the truth of things, a built-in inclination to the true, the good, and the beautiful. Yet men and women were free to make real choices, choices that we can know by reason to be decisions between what is objectively good and what is objectively evil, between what is noble and what is base. To reduce those choices, as communism did, to expressions of class interest or other economic forces was to dehumanize the human person. And if communism misunderstood human dignity and human freedom, it also misunderstood human community and society.

Cardinal Wojtyla kneeling before Pope John Paul I 

After the short stint of John Paul I as Pope, Karol Wojtyla took over and became Pope John Paul II. He reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church from 1978 to 2005. He was the second longest-serving Pope in history and is undoubtedly the most-traveled one. 

His strong passion to spread the light and words of God led him to conduct Papal visits in many countries-- to the works of Mother Theresa of Calcutta in India, to promoting the essence of intact family in the US, and even to non-Catholics [Judaism religion for example], to Al Qaeda's Operation Bojinka's plan to assassinate him, supposedly in his visit in Manila in 1995 but was materialized in St.Peter's Square. He respected other religions including Islam. Most people in the world saw his spiritual profoundness through his undying passion for forgiveness and prayer. 

Pope John Paul II immediately after he was shot 

Weigel mentioned in his book that Pope now Blessed John Paul II gathered his largest crowd in human history on the world's least-Christian continent, when he celebrated the closing Mass of World Youth Day in Manila, Philippines on January 15, 1995. I feel honored as a Filipino on the vastness of warm welcome and support that my nation gave to the Pope that time.

Blessed John Paul II's message to the Filipino people:

God has given you two great gifts: the richness of your faith and the closeness of your family.

 On Love and Marriage 

He was not only a Pope concerned of life but of love, marriage, and sexuality. He wrote a book entitled Love and Responsibility in 1960 which speaks of work, philosophical in nature, on the human person, human sexuality, love and marriage which I will attempt to blog about in the next days.

Published in Polish in 1960 and in English in 1981

George Weigel's work for years paid off in fulfilling his promise to the late Pope to tell in complete detail the road to holiness that a man named Karol Józef Wojtyła did in the history of the 20th century. 

Pope John Paul II praying at the Western Wall 

In Weigel's parting words to the late Pope before his death:

The conversation over dinner was wide-ranging, and at one point, after the usual papal kidding about my having written "a very big book," John Paul asked about the international reception of Witness to Hope, his biography, which I had published five years earlier. He was particularly happy when I told him that a Chinese edition was in the works, as he knew he would never get to that vast land himself. As that part of the conversation was winding down, I looked across the table and, referring to the fact that Witness to Hope had only taken the John Paul II story up to early 1999, I made the Pope a promise: "Holy Father," I said, "if you don't bury me, I want you to know that I'll finish your story." 

It was the last time we saw each other, this side of the Kingdom of God.

Even up to now, I still find myself in tears of joy and admiration to this great holy man. 

Reference:

The End and the Beginning: Pope John Paul II-- The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy by George Weigel

wikipedia (dot) org

Photo/ Video Credits:

google (dot) com (slash) images

saieditor (dot) com- 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th photo

youtube (dot) com

What to Expect When You're Expecting

It's not another mom-to-mom coffee klatch on pregnancy tips and tricks. First is that I'm yet far from being a mom as far as civil status is concerned. But being a nurse and having few friends and relatives trying to ask about things to fear and cheer during pregnancy, it's interesting to gather some thoughts to give for thought.

Most mothers would agree that pregnancy is not entirely fascinating. When the baby bump starts to grow, other   manifestations seem to go with it-- tender breasts, lower backaches, swollen feet, morning sickness, frequent urination. You know they are quite disturbing.

Parents take offs from work but never in babying. So it's good to sometimes divvy up the sentiments with other people who will one way or another understand exactly how a parent feel or would likely feel.

Lionsgate and Alcon Entertainment is offering a romantic-comedy movie for the present and hopeful mom and dads this May 18th. The star-studded movie casts Jennifer Lopez, Cameron Diaz, Elizabeth Banks, Brooklyn Decker, Anna Kendrick and others.

The movie is a film adaptation of the worldwide bestselling book by Heidi Murkoff. It is directed by Kirk Jones of Walking Ned Devine and Nanny McPhee.

Watch Trailers below: