Friday, November 01, 2013

Best Day Ever!

I wrote a bit about The Line recently -- and how impressed I was with their selection and philosophy. So imagine my thrill when I got an invite to visit their brick-and-mortar counterpart, The Apartment! Of course I immediately booked tickets to NYC and called Genevieve to plan additional activities. Last Saturday, we went -- and it was the best day ever.

First, The Apartment: it was glorious!



At the door, we were greeted by the very friendly Stephanie, who explained the concept to us: The Apartment (as the name suggests), despite being a retail space, is set up exactly like a very swanky NYC apartment, with the fire escape and all:



It has the living room, the hallway and the giant closet, the bathroom and the bedroom, the kitchen, and everything there is shoppable. Here are some pics:







Lovely stuff, right? But none as lovely as the closet. Believe me, I tried on a lot of things.







And then I posed next to this painting:



It was a lovely visit, and the concept is really wonderful: time spent there felt very much like visiting a very fancy friend, and getting to live vicariously through their maple closet.

After all this, we headed to Chinatown, to visit the Museum of Chinese in America (MoCA). The reason I've been so eager to get there are two exhibits they are currently hosting, Shanghai Glamour and Front Row: Chinese-American designers, the latter curated by Mary Ping, herself a remarkable fashion designer. Here are some snaps from the exhibits:

Shanghai Glamour!








Front Row!


(This is of course Phillip Lim, since I recognize all his collections by sight. I'm a sad individual.)









(Vivienne Tam, natch)


(Vera Wang)

But before we even got to the exhibits, the museum worker alerted us to the panel discussion in progress -- the aforementioned Mary Ping, architect Katherine Chia, and Chef Anita Lo were talking about Asian-American sensibility in food, fashion and architecture. (Disclaimer: I'm a huge Anita Lo fan ever since the Top Chef Masters aired and she won my heart by not taking any gaff from anyone.) The discussion was really fascinating, and I especially liked the Q&A that touched, in part, on the stereotyping and challenges (both external and internal) faced by Asian-Americans in creative professions. After the panel, I fangirled at Chef Lo and we got a chance to chat a bit, and it was amazing. She was also super gracious letting us take a pic!



Yeah, I'm pretty thrilled. Overall, it was an amazing day.