La Dolce Vita

One of the most inventive fashion designers from the 1930s is Elsa Schiaparelli.  In typical Roman form, she had fun with fashion and didn't take anything too seriously, often working with surrealist artists such as Jean Cocteau and Alberto Giacometti to create whimsical designs with a tongue-in-cheek appeal.  Perhaps most well known is the lobster dress, the result of a collaboration with Salvador Dali, and worn by Wallis Simpson (the future Duchess of Windsor) for a 1937 Vogue spread photographed by Cecil Beaton:

She made these quirky gloves, upon being inspired by a photograph taken by Man Ray of hands Picasso painted to look like gloves:

Schiaparelli also did some amazing embroidery and beadwork using metallic gold threads, mirrors, and sequins, which really inspire me:

embroidered Versailles cape

design collaboration with Jean Cocteau

I think Schiaparelli embodies the Roman design aesthetic perfectly - it's decadent, fun, and glamourous, with lots of bold color tinged in gold.  If anyone knows how to do over the top, it's the Romans!  

Her interpretation of the trends in art and culture during the late 1930s, along with all that intricate beadwork, really inspired my Rome collection:

Rome Necklace

Rome Drop Earrings

Rome Cuff

Hot Spots

It's cold.  Really cold.  Whenever it's this cold, I always start thinking about where I can go that's warm, sunny, and far away.  I grew up in Houston, and although I've been in New York for the past 10 years, I don't think I will ever get used to the cold.  Call me crazy (and many people have), but I actually like hot, humid weather.

During summers in Texas, it's so hot outside that every building you enter is air-conditioned as cold as the freezer section in a grocery store, and you have to wear sweaters inside.  After being inside such a cold place for hours, I would look forward to going outside and being embraced by a thick heat.  I had a ritual where I would sit in my car, all the windows closed, and absorb the heat until I got goosebumps and started to sweat.  Only after about 5 minutes of this intense heat would I turn on the engine and the air conditioning.

We've got a ways to go until it gets that hot again - at least 5 months.  Sometimes looking at photos of a warm place makes me feel better and forget for a second that it's 19 degrees outside, so here are some photos I took at various hot spots around the world.  Until I can get there again, I'll be dreaming about them...

Brazil - these were taken in Rio de Janiero, or on the beaches in Buzios, in 2006

Tulum, Mexico - these were taken at the Mayan ruins in Tulum, in 2004

India - these were taken last summer (2008), in Agra, outside of Delhi, and Bangalore

Go West

There's something so American about taking a road trip.  At the back of our psyches is a constant pull to run away, hop into a car and drive as far as the road will take us, to no where in particular, all our problems left behind in a cloud of dust, the empty road ahead a beacon of endless possibilities.

A real road trip must be driven west, through desolate deserts so flat the sky opens up before you like a giant fan and keeps expanding forever. In the desert colors come to life. Driving through Arizona, the sky bursts into a brilliant technicolor blue when contrasted with the orangey-red canyon rocks.

Dried golden vegetation, the color of angel's hair, along the back roads of New Mexico, plays against the purple clouds, which float effortlessly across the sky.

The sunsets are incomparable.

When night falls, blackness shoots across an endless sky filled to infinity with glittering stars and faraway galaxies.  You'd swear the sky would collapse from the weight of all the stars it holds.

I first went west when I was 17.  My best friend and I drove from Houston to San Francisco, stopping at various spots along the way: El Paso, where the blatant discrepancies between the wealth of the US and poverty of Mexico are revealed shamelessly across the width of a river; White Sands, New Mexico, where miles of alabaster sand dunes stretch out forever without an ocean in site;

The Petrified Forest,

Meteor Crater,

and the awe-inspiring Grand Canyon, which changed me by highlighting the insignificance of my life as a tiny blip in the eternity of time.

Driving through the Painted Desert and Indian reservations so secluded and removed from civilization, I was given a certain sense of peace, which I have not found anywhere else.  Although I recognized how small I was in comparison to the overwhelming landscape and canyons which record the history of the earth in their infinitesimal geological layers, I felt a true sense of belonging and oneness with the universe.

Lately I have been feeling an almost magnetic pull to go west again.  I was looking at a book this weekend with beautiful photos of Southern Utah and Arizona, and something in the pictures lit a spark inside, urging me to drive away.  A longing to escape this crazy, unnatural city life, a longing for centeredness, a longing for connection...

If I tried to convey my feelings about the desert through a piece of jewelry, my best efforts wouldn't do it justice.  I came as close as I could with the Sedona necklace.  The blush colored oxidized sequins try to capture the myriad of colors in a Sedona sunset.  The multiple layers of silver and pewter chains mimic the flow of water when the long-awaited rains finally come to the desert and cleanse the landscape, triggering a renewal and rebirth.

Paris

I fell in love with France when I was about 12 years old.  One day I woke up and decided I was going to be French.  Well, maybe it was that I was going to be a fashion designer...  Anyway, everyone knows that if you're a fashion designer you have to live in Paris, so naturally had to learn French.  

On the first day of French class, I was so excited - I was going to be a French girl!  I started doing everything French - wearing red lipstick, eating croissants, putting my hair in a French twist, flipping through copies of French Vogue...  

We started with the basics - Bonjour, je m'appelle Suzie, comment ca va? etc, etc.  Then came the first verb and its conjugation chart: aller.  Je vais, tu vas, elle va, nous allons....  What???  I was so confused.  What was a conjugation chart?  Why had I never heard of this before?  This wasn't what I bargained for....  I slowly started to panic - I would never learn how to speak French or be a French girl, and all my big dreams of becoming a famous French fashion designer started to crumble...

Thankfully when I showed up to class the next day, everyone was just as, if not more, confused than me.  After a few days, everything started to magically click, and I was again confident that I would one day be French.

That is, until the end of the school year...  I enrolled in French II, but there were not enough students signed up for the class, so they decided they weren't going to offer it.  I was crushed.  How could they not offer French II?  After I had learned all that vocabulary and those verbs, and - didn't they know I was going to be a famous French fashion designer?  I mean, this wasn't just a foreign language class; this was my life! 

I came home so upset.  My father finally calmed me down and talked to the school counselor the next day.  They were able to work out a plan so that I could attend another school for my French class the next year.  I had to get up at 5 am every morning to do this, but I was determined.  Sometimes I wonder what I was thinking...  I had magical images in my head.

By the time I graduated high school, I had completed 6 years of French.  I took two more years in college and spent a semester in Paris.  It was pretty amazing.  The first 24 hours in the city were like a dream.  Part of that was probably the jet lag, but it was my first time in a foreign country (besides the Texas/Mexico border, which doesn't really count), and I was overwhelmed with the sense of adventure.  It was a mixture of fear, anxiety, curiosity, and excitement - the same feeling I get today when traveling to a new place.

Paris is a city of quirky free spirits and artists, who sit in cafes in the Marais having intense intellectual discussions about poetry, literature, and art.  It's a city of elegant, wasp-waisted women riding their bicycles along the Champs Elysees, with the obligatory baguette and little dog in the front basket.  It's so tantalizing and appealing.  Who wouldn't want to be French?

There is so much attention to detail and beauty as a part of the French culture, and I think that's what I so strongly identified with.  I remember being in a cafe and looking at the intricate mosaic tile pattern on the floor - a fan of scallops, with ombre shading in copper and rose gold edged in a delicate line of pewter danced in front of my eyes.  The gradations in color were accented by the dim lighting in the cafe. 

This inspired me and ultimately led to the Paris collection:

More Color Inspiration for Spring

In one of my recent posts, I talked about color as a major inspiration for me.  Recently I have become obsessed with Ballerina Colors, but also mixing metallics and the mixture of metallics with a pop color.  This is very evident in my new diffusion line, Suzie by Suzanna Dai.  You can read more about it on my friend Erin's blog, Sugar Rock Catwalk: http://sugarrockcatwalk.blogspot.com/2009/11/preview-and-interview-suzie-by-suzanna.html

Two sets of necklaces and earrings from my new Suzie line, which mix metallics with a bright pop of color.

When I was younger, I thought mixing metallics (like silver and gold) was a major faux pas, but I've come to realize that they can look quite nice together.  For example, I LOVE the mixture of gunmetal, pewter/antique silver, and coppery rose gold.  It looks so new and refreshing, and I just can't get enough.  

Paris Cuff from the Spring/Summer 2010 Suzanna Dai line

I also do like the mix of gold and silver, in many variations: pewter mixed with antique gold and a pop of bright silver looks very edgy and mysterious.

Necklace and Earrings from my new Suzie line

Mixing bright silver with pale gold and champagne renders an entirely different look - very clean and proper.

Paris Necklace in pale gold and silver from the Suzanna Dai Spring/Summer 2010 line

I've always experimented with color, for as long as I can remember.  When I was six, I vividly remember wanting to wear red and pink together, but my mother wouldn't let me because she thought they clashed.  To this day, I still love the combination of red and pink and continue to experiment in mixing colors.  It's so exciting to me.  Luckily, a lot of the old rules no longer apply.  I love winter whites, so that rule about not wearing white after Labor Day?  Gone.  What about not mixing black and brown?  As long as it's done with intent, anything goes, although I have to say, I've never been a fan of mixing navy and black...

Bavaria

Aren't fairy tales nice?  Actually, now that I think of it, some of them are quite scary, what with all the witches, evil stepmothers, and old women who like to eat little children...

No, I like the kind of fairy tales that take place in a deep, lush German forest - in a place filled with tall fir trees, ornate castles, pixie dust, dragonflies, and magic.  Bavaria is the perfect setting.

There's actually a fairy tale road in Bavaria, which winds through medieval villages, romantic castles, and dense forests that were the inspirations for such tales as Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel, among others.

The Bavaria collection was designed as an homage to this land of fairy tales and fantasy -  a place filled with fairies and gnomes; a place far removed from reality, where a valiant prince searches for the beautiful princess who has been asleep for a hundred years, and will only awaken with his kiss; a place where when the sun sets, it mixes with pixie dust and casts glitter over the needles of pine trees.

That's the Bavaria for me.