Russian Fashion designer Vika Gazinskayaha’s uses luxurious fabrics, with clothes that have architecturally interesting silhouettes, are often full of cheeky playful childlike qualities. Vika is wearing a pantsuit from her own collection.

Sculpture student Eliska is also a partner of a vintage boutique shop in Greenwich called Bee Hive, which recently started making its own clothes. Eliska is wearing a Bee Hive dress made from a reproduction of a vintage West African print.

remera: le coq sportif | chaleco: levi´s | campera: de feriacalzado: dr. martens | jean: sin marca | mochila: asos>> BuenosAiresStreetStyle onthecornerstreetstyle.blogspot.com

tapado y short: de feria | calzado: dr. martens>> BuenosAiresStreetStyle onthecornerstreetstyle.blogspot.com

During this past week, I have been roaming around the Bay Area visiting friends and family. While in San Francisco, I knew I had to track down one of my favorite style icons, Joy Venturini Bianchi. Joy is not only an international taste maker but also a philanthropist who has made it her life's work to help the developmentally disabled. 

Joy greeted me in an incredible Ralph Rucci jacket and her signature over sized black glasses. "I love your work," she said to me with a smile, "but honestly, I still feel like I'm 15!" Before heading out on a tour of the incredible vintage designer shop she runs on Fulton Street, Joy shared a bit of her story. She has been working with people with disabilities from a young age, volunteering with nuns at her school for an organization called Helpers of the Holy Innocents. Joy later took over as director, where she worked to house people with developmental disabilities in three homes on Fulton Street over the last four decades. Now, she operates the Helpers House of Couture which is a boutique filled with incredible vintage and designer clothing and accessories. Proceeds from the sales go to Helpers, a registered non-profit supporting grants to groups which assist the mentally disabled.

If you are in San Francisco, you must stop by this amazing treasure trove of vintage and designer duds and hopefully meet Joy along the way. If you have any donations or would just like to come in and shop, make sure to make an appointment ahead of time by calling 415-387-3031. If you can't make it into the shop in person check out some of their fantastic pieces on 1st Dibs HERE.

Helpers House of Couture

2626 Fulton Street

San Francisco, California 94118

I apply most of my makeup with my hands. I like to see exactly how much of what I am putting on my face, but I still rely on a few trusty brushes for certain products…

I have a powder brush (used daily for my powder blush), an eye shadow brush (two actually! one flat and one angled, but both are collecting dust…) and an eyeliner brush that I use about once a month when I feel adventurous. But I have a confession to make: I tend to neglect my brushes. When Brandi, our makeup artist to the stars/general beauty guru, stopped by the studio I began quizzing her on proper brush maintenance. Okay, get ready… BRANDI WASHES HER BRUSHES EVERY NIGHT! Every night?!?! Yep. Every night. Why?

If you don’t wash your brushes, you’re not getting the true color from your makeup product. Brushes can carry bacteria. If you’re using them when you are sick, those germs will stick around in the brush. Brandi uses Johnson & Johnson Baby Shampoo to wash her brushes, and on Sunday nights she conditions them with Johnson & Johnson Baby Conditioner.

It sounds like a lot of work but if you’re a daily brush user, it’s important!! How do you care for your makeup brushes?

I know, Caroline’s outfit is perfect once again. Don’t even get me started on girls who are so graceful like this all the time… pffff. But wait. Guess what I want to talk about?

I want to talk about the fact that her shirt isn’t tucked into her jeans. Man, that is one important conversation we need to have. It’s not tucked in perfectly like Meredith Melling Burke. It’s not tucked in up front and flowing out the back like Emmanuelle Alt. Nope, completely untucked. Does that mean Caroline Issa is a trend rebel? Or is this a new trend? Or does it depend on what the outfit is? How do you wear your shirts? Pssss: I may or may not have been seen at the Vogue Festival in London with my shirt totally out and free to move around as it wished – and to be honest, I wrestled with the question of whether or not to do it for at least two minutes. Yeah, I said it. It was a pretty intense two minutes. Translation : Tim Sullivan

Erica is wearing a vintage 60s coat with a matching 60s handbag. Shoes are from Mellow Yellow Paris.

I am currently staying in Tashkent to teach a class on street photography together with French photographer Cyril Robin, a joint project of the German and French embassies here. As I’d never been to Uzbekistan or any other Central Asian country before, I was beyond excited to come here and have been delighted ever since. This country fuses so many different influences – though the official language Uzbek is a Turkic language (related to Turkish, yes, but also Kazakh and Siberian dialects) everyone also speaks Russian, the food is a mixture of arabic, turkish and russian cuisine, as is the architecture, and Tashkent’s inhabitants descend from Uzbeks, Russians, Koreans, and Europeans. While I spend most of the time with my more than lovely students, I luckily had a little time off yesterday to do some sight-seeing.

The first thing that surprised me was how lusciously green the inner center of Tashkent is, lots of parks, trees, and perfectly cut lawns line the wide streets, giving the city quite a natural feeling and somewhat tempering the already very hot temperatures around 36 degrees. Although water isn’t a good that’s abundant in Uzbekistan, the city’s government obviously decided it’s important to have a very green city center and most of these parks are artificially watered every day. Most of it is also only meant to be looked at instead of used, so unlike in Berlin you won’t see families having a picnic, let alone a barbecue, or someone having an afternoon nap in the shadow of a tree or even walking past a lawn.

As I mentioned, the streets here are wide, humongous, really. Now, I expected to see wide streets — they’re a common feature of Soviet city planning and were implemented here after a disastrous earthquake in 1966 — but although traffic in Tashkent is quite busy, the roads are never filled to capacity. The few drivers around are not really concerned about pedestrians’ safety, but as most streets are not jammed, I’ve not yet encountered any seriously dangerous situations. There seems to be no alternative to either option, as both biking and rental bikes have recently been forbidden (!?). Illegal biking in front of a typical new building, of which loads more are currently built. Still, getting around is fairly easy, even for tourists: if you don’t use the beautiful and well working metro (where photography is absolutely not allowed), you can just wait on the curb for someone to stop (mostly Daewoo Matiz drivers), name your goal and price (about 3000 Sum, or 1 Euro) and the driver will decide if he can or will take you. Everyone does it, groups of people, men and also single women, Uzbeks or even the German and French women working at the embassy. It’s completely normal. Not a Matiz but a Lada in front of the History Museum (former Lenin museum). The center of Tashkent is dominated by the giant Amir Timur Square with the Timur equestrian statue in the middle, circled by Hotel Uzbekistan (my hotel — four stars that must have been mainly awarded to the beautiful facade structure) and the Timur museum. Amir Timur, a 13th-century warrior, was installed as a kind of forefather of the Uzbek nation at the beginning of the 1990s to replace the Soviet symbols and historiography. What also disappeared in the 1990s were most of the big trees on the square, turning it into a unbearably hot, and thus deserted, spot in summer months with little shadow. Except the few obvious tourists, there’s no one around. Amir Timur Square

The Broadway Departing from Amir Timur Square is “Broadway”, a wide pedestrian street lined with parks and trees that used to be filled with small shops and cafés and which was crazily busy until those mostly illegal businesses were removed 10, 15 years ago and the area was (once again) turned into a lonely street with only few spots to stop left. It left me confused why a city’s government would decide to re-design and clean up the city’s center only to leave it deserted and empty.

The main attraction, though, is Independence Square, a giant area with several ministries as well as the senate, and several crazy monuments. Another gigantic fountain (the city is full of fountains), for instance, a huge arcade structure topped with silver birds as symbols of independence, or the giant golden globe showing a map of Uzbekistan that replaced the tallest statue of Lenin in the Soviet Union (30m tall). Although the ever-present water features and fountains cool things down a bit, the heat is seriously too much without any high trees providing shadow and thus we happily fled to the Anhor canal just beyond the square.

The canal is used for swimming and is also a preferred spot for dating for the young people of Tashkent, with girls in nice dresses and make-up and boys trying to impress them. In summer, when temperatures here reach over 40, sometimes even 50 degrees, the canal and its bridges are crowded with students seeking some cool relief.

We ended our tour with a typical Uzbek lunch by the canal. Now, Uzbek kitchen is mainly focussed on meat and meat only. You get it grilled, mostly as a shashlik (kebab), either minced or in bite-sized piece. A national dish is plov, a mixture of rice, vegetables, meat, and boiled egg. Also served are salads, most of them with mayonaise, but then the fresh cucumbers and tomatoes with herbs are so delicious, one can well live off those alone. They are as fresh and tasty as the local strawberries and cherries, bursting with flavor, so sweet and enjoyable. Coming up: Chorsu bazar and many pictures of cherries, strawberries, mulberries…

Seda Domanic, Editor-in-Chief of Vogue Turkey Share/Bookmark

By Suzy After what seemed like an eternity, summer is here at last. This year’s Modern Sky Strawberry Festival was one of the first occasions to enjoy the sunshine. We will soon post more pictures of beautiful ladies and cool boys.

Afflux MCC is looking for a couple people to work in marketing.
We need imaginative, energetic, attractive, young thing who are very good at generating buzz. This is for PR and online promotion roles here in Beijing. The environment, team, and projects are fun and stimulating though the workload would be rigorous. Both foreigners or locals can apply but we need young people fluent in Chinese who don’t require visas. Salaries will start on the low side, as the business improves. Best are those with PR, event management, media, or online marketing experience.

Tasks will include the following: 1. Drafting proposals in Chinese and/or English 2. Compiling clippings reports 3. Building and maintaining relationships with media 4. Creatively increasing the online profiles of clients through social media, online forums, wechat etc. 5. Creating the best events in town Please connect me with anyone that might fit in this role! Thanks for your support!

I have to confess, I am not a huge fan of Cos – but since we don’t have it in New York, I can’t not go and take a look when I am in Paris. This time, I found something. I grabbed these rings without overthinking it – they’re pretty cheap so you can get a bunch. Ever since I’ve been wearing them on each finger or as first knuckle rings, and everybody’s been asking me where they are from. Okay, it’s not like they’re Balenciaga, but they look seriously cool!

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If I could do it to one celeb for the rest of my life, it would be Jimmy Fallon. I don’t know, man. He just does it for me. John Krasinski on the other hand. Not my cup o’ tea. He looks like what I think my brother would look like if I had one. Gross. Well, call me Bubba(or whatever name someone in one of those incest states would have) because my heart hasn’t stopped throbbing for the dude since I caught him in a lip sync-off with J. Fall via YouTube today. OH EM GEE Y,all. Lip synch porn – the next big thing. Jayyyyyyyyy-zus. His rendition of “Teenage Dream” is what got me. Fallon doing Das Efx was pretty hot, too. The rest was icing on the cake.

Here are am with a bevy of beauties at  the Orchard Grove Retirement Community. Aren't I a lucky guy?

I have a confession to make…

Lately, my weekend “off-duty” wardrobe consists mostly of gym clothes… If I’m headed to brunch or have real plans that are outside of my usual two hours at Sephora sampling bronzer followed by the farmer’s market, I put on real clothes. But for the most part, I’m running around in spandex pants and a half-zip (I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to put on a pair of jeans on a Saturday morning, but it is) and looking like I just came from the gym (the chance that I was actually at the gym is about 0.092%). I’m hoping people look at me and assume I’ve just completed a 10-mile run (with total grace and minimal sweating) and there I am, just picking up some bronzer on my way home. I would like to look a little more put together running errands while still creating the illusion that I am an Olympic track star. My inspiration? The new Theory 38 collection. I like the clean cuts and sporty vibe of the pieces. It is a solid step above my typical weekend uniform and one I will be adopting for all future Sephora trips. What is your “off-duty” wardrobe?