Viewing: Personal Style

Maternity style: Tropical edition

By the time I flew home for the holidays, I was tired of piling on ten million layers before going out. So I was looking forward to wearing my “real” clothes (which is how I think of my summer clothes) and feeling like myself again for three weeks.

What I loved about dressing for pregnancy in the tropics:

  • Getting to wear sandals. Pretty toes, yay.
  • Packing only two pairs of shoes, because staying with my mom and sister means a bottomless shoe and accessory closet—and a trip to Landmark means shopping for cheap flats!
  • Putting away my thick, woolly maternity tights and seeing my legs again

What I didn’t love:

  • THE HEAT. OMG. Being pregnant, your body temperature is already higher because of increased blood circulation and being plunged into tropical heat does not help. At all. On my last few nights, I couldn’t sleep unless I had both the aircon (set to 21 degrees) and the electric fan on. December showed no mercy to this pregnant mama.
  • Bloating and expanding because of said heat. I didn’t go up a shoe size, thank goodness, but I gained FIVE POUNDS of water—which I lost the day I returned to wintry Amsterdam.
  • Humidity-triggered frizzies. Good thing there’s The Twist!
  • Sweating your way to that dewy (read: oily), no-makeup look. I found myself quite startled to see how much makeup women pile on in Manila (some women really need to lay off the foundation!) until I remembered that it melts off in minutes.
  • Being forcibly reminded of how everyone dresses in the same preppy/simple girl uniform. I lost count of the number of neat ponytails, Longchamp Le Pliage bags and round pearl earrings I saw in my two weeks back home!

All that aside, what I loved most about dressing for the heat was getting to dig out some of my favorite outfits from storage—like the printed vintage shirtdress I hadn’t seen since August…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

and being able to wear my normal, non-maternity clothes… even in my third trimester.

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5 Comments
Posted on January 30, 2013
Category: Manila Girl at Heart, Personal Style, Pregnancy · Labels: , , , , ,

Maternity style: Welcome to the third trimester

What better way to start one’s third trimester with a 12-hour transcontinental flight? That’s what I always say.

Thankfully, the flight from Amsterdam to Singapore was surprisingly comfortable, for someone in her 28th week of pregnancy. Booking Singapore Airlines and having a prenatal shiatsu massage the night before (my neighbors are yoga and shiatsu therapists) definitely made a difference. I also walked around, did a lot of hip circles in the toilet, and packed a Ziploc bag with chocolate chip cookies and bananas, and checked my ankles every five minutes to see if they were still there (I’ve heard one too many cankles horror stories from pregnant flyers).

I’m happy to report that I made it to Singapore in one piece, with minimum discomfort and intact ankles. Hurray!

Asymmetrical dress by from Uniqlo’s Designers Invitation Project: Costello Tagliapetra, H&M copper headband, Ona leather camera satchel, Vincci patent leather wedges, and five-spike necklace from WeAreLabels.  

Heavy, clinging humidity swallowed me up the moment I stepped out of Changi Airport (a forceful reminder of why mentholated facial wash was created), but right now I’m happy to be dressing like myself again, minus all the winter layers. I’m glad to still be wearing my pre-pregnancy clothes, too. And sandals, oh sandals… what a glorious feeling.

I give myself two days before I start complaining about curly bangs and oily skin, and generally cursing this climate. But for now, the tropical heat and I are cool—no pun intended.

4 Comments
Posted on December 17, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy · Labels: , , ,

Granada: Carrera del Darro

Right on the doorstep of our hotel in the Albayzin, a UNESCO World Heritage district with a medieval Moorish past, was the Carrera del Darro—a narrow, scenic path that runs along the Rio del Darro.

Granada Rio del Darro

Lined with centuries-old buildings, punctuated by picturesque stone bridges and paved with cobblestones, the Carrera del Darro is a lovely place for a stroll—especially in that magic hour before sunset, when the sun bathes everything with a sheer golden coat. As you can see, quite a few people seem to agree.

Granada Carrera del Darro

Remember this dress from my first trimester? Something about the colors and print just made it seem like something I should wear in Spain. Thankfully, it still fits and the peplum falls right over the bump.

Maternity style Week 23 Spain

So, come walk along the Carrera del Darro with me! And let’s see what we can find along the way.

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2 Comments
Posted on November 16, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , ,

Hola from Marbella!

A warm hola! from Spain’s Costa del Sol, where I am playing the tag-along wife. Marlon had a work conference to attend in Marbella, and I was dying to escape the cold. I also didn’t want to be alone for a week, so here I am.

In the ’60s and ’70s, this was the summer destination for Europe’s wealthy and glamorous. As a kid in the ’80s, I remember going to a Batangas beach resort called Marbella, obviously modeled after this town. My mom caught the tail end of its heyday, but I never thought I’d get to see the real Marbella.

We arrived on Monday with just enough time for a stroll around the center before Marlon had to work. My impression of Marbella, at least from its old town, is more charming than glamorous, and I like that. Tourist season is over (though it’s still a good 8-10℃ warmer than Amsterdam), so the town is practically deserted. I like that, too.

I’m not really here to see the sights. If all I do is hole up in a nice hotel room, occasionally take some nice pictures, and spend time with my husband after his long conference days, I will be happy. Getting to eat churros con chocolate and wear sandals in November would be huge pluses, obviously.

They say the second trimester is the best time to travel, and so far I’m inclined to agree!

By the way, I’m trying two new things in this post. First is this Photoshop tutorial for vivid color photos from A Beautiful Mess. My photos sometimes turn out much darker than I’d like (especially in gray Amsterdam), so I like this quick fix. Do you like the results or do you find the images too bright?

Another one is a tip from The House That Lars Built. In her column called 15 Minutes to a Better Blog, contributor Tori Bowman suggests making all images the width of the post for a good flow. I like taking tall/portrait photos (vs the usual wide/landscape orientation) so I struggle with this a bit. I’m trying it out here, so let me know what you think: is the last image way too big or just right? If you have a good fix for these pesky tall photos, I’d love to know!

8 Comments
Posted on November 7, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy, Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , , ,

Brooklyn leather camera satchel

The best gifts come from people who know you best. Don’t you agree?

Take my husband, for example. He knows I’m always carrying around a DSLR with at least one spare lens. He knows I have a terrible habit of using my nice, “grown-up lady” bags as camera bags, which is great for me but not for the bags. (I once horrified a friend by taking my DSLR with the clunky wide-angle lens out of a buttery soft Bottega Veneta handbag.) He knows that I’ve been in the market for a sturdy brown leather bag for a few months now. Most importantly, he knows that I pin pictures of all .

This is how he completely bowled me over with his birthday gift: the Brooklyn leather satchel from Ona.

I absolutely love the vintage style of this bag, as well as the chestnut leather that’s just begging to get all nicely worn and beat-up. The cross-body strap makes it easy to carry… and it looks great with everything! I can totally see this becoming my go-to travel bag.

Not only is this a good-looking satchel on the outside, but it’s also a camera bag on the inside. Removable inserts (attached with Velcro) allow it to store a DSLR and up to three lenses. Generous padding cushions the whole kit.

As if this wasn’t awesome enough, tucked into the padded interior was another birthday surprise… a Canon 60mm Macro lens!

I discovered this lens at The Hive Berlin, when Yvonne of Fraulein Klein (who takes beautiful photos) used it during her photography workshop. Like my 50mm lens, it’s a fixed-focus lens with shallow depth of field. However, it’s a lot sturdier, more light-sensitive, and easier to use for macro photography.

I will post test photos when I’ve gotten to play around with it a little more. This definitely completes my photography wish list and I think I’ll be very happy with my current set of lenses—all four of them!—for a long, long while.

3 Comments
Posted on November 2, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy, Shopping & Finds · Labels: , , , , , ,

Maternity style: Halloween edition

Upon being invited to a toddler’s first birthday slash Halloween party, I was forced to ponder the question: what does a pregnant woman wear for Halloween?

Thinking of a good maternity Halloween costume stumped me for a while. My 21-week baby bump isn’t quite at pumpkin level yet, and it was too cold to bare the belly for a body paint job. With toddlers around, gruesome and scary was out of the question. My DIY pregnancy costume also had to be half of a couple costume, and be inexpensive.

I really, really wanted to be Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc., but we didn’t have time to do a proper Sully costume for Marlon… who absolutely refused to go as Boo. I hounded him for days (“It’s just a big pink t-shirt and pigtails! Pleeeeease?!”) but he wouldn’t budge. I also considered Pugsley and Wednesday from The Addams Family (my pregnant belly would’ve given it a whole other dimension of scary), but that was a bit too easy.

Finally, I had it. With two €5 t-shirts from the Albert Cuypmarkt, a few squares of felt in different colors, and some fabric glue, Marlon and I spent an evening DIY-ing our of his and hers Halloween costumes.

With a little something poking out of my winter coat, I got more than a few funny looks on the tram! Does this give you any hints about my Halloween costume?

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4 Comments
Posted on October 31, 2012
Category: Creative Projects, Personal Style, Pregnancy ·

Maternity style: The jeans experiment

I’m not a jeans kinda gal. I would wear dresses all year round if I could; it’s only when I need to brave crappy weather that I squirm into a pair of jeans.

With a wool coat or leather jacket, knit scarf and boots, jeans are part of what I call my “Dutch girl uniform”—a tried-and-tested getup inspired by the vast majority of Dutch girls who dress sensibly (if a bit all the same) for crappy weather. Though I never look quite like a Dutch girl in said uniform, I don’t feel quite like myself in jeans either.

Friends who know me well laughed when I bought my first pair of maternity jeans at Week 14. “You actually bought jeans?” one said with a friendly kind of snort. “I never see you in jeans!” Indeed. So I didn’t quite know what to do with the jeans until last week, Week 17. Dropping temperatures and a growing belly prompted me to finally take them out of my closet for a spin.

These jeans are from Mamalicious, a Danish maternity wear brand available in the UK and Western Europe. They have a dark rinse and a low rise, a bit of stretch, one button and no zipper, and a stretchy navy blue waistband that comes up high over the belly and feels nice and thick. As with all European pants, a good six inches had to come off the hems, a feat I accomplished myself with the help of this fantastic tutorial.

I seem to have been in a black-and-white graphic tee mood last week! To watercolor class, I wore the jeans with a gray wool blazer from Uniqlo, “I don’t speak Icelandic” tee from Dogma in Reyjkavik, fuschia suede hobo bag from a shop off the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, silver necklace from Topshop, and gray studded Balmain brogues.

To meet my neighbor Giova for coffee, I wore them with my sister’s black leather jacket from Lindex (size Small, yay! This didn’t fit me last year!), Audrey Hepburn graphic tee from a pop-up flea market in Cologne, and neon flats from Landmark, my Manila bargain mecca.

After test-driving these jeans, I think I’ll put them back into the closet for now. I have no complaints about how comfortable they are, but I’m just not used to such a low rise—I kept worrying that they were going to slide off! Maybe they need more of a belly to cling on to… and maybe this autumn weather will let me get away with dresses, tights and leggings for a little while longer.

2 Comments
Posted on October 10, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy · Labels: , , ,

Maternity style: Month 4

September—weeks 12 through 16 of my pregnancy—has been exciting because I’ve started to see more “proof” that I’m actually pregnant. I know that sounds weird (the pregnancy test and two ultrasound scans weren’t enough?) but I’ve had such a smooth pregnancy, I do sometimes forget that I’m pregnant. Well, the fog of unreality has cleared, thanks to two thrilling developments.

One: I’ve started to feel the baby move! The first time was at week 14, while sitting at the dining table talking to Marlon late one evening. I suddenly felt this subtle, unusual fluttering at the very bottom of my belly. It went on for about 10 minutes and was so unlike everything I’d ever felt… and I cried. The movements—which also felt like soft little taps on the inside of my belly, or like speeding downhill in a fast car—started to get more regular through the next week, but I could only really feel them if I sat or lay down quietly.

Now I can feel the baby move a little bit every day, sometimes even while I’m out and about. It’s a wonderful feeling, and when it happens, everything else just goes quiet for me. I can’t wait for the movements to get stronger so Marlon can feel them too.

Second: I now have a little bump! I find it so thrilling because I want to be showing already… I want to have a good excuse to have a big tummy! It’s not huge (heck, heavy meals have given me a bigger belly many times in the past), but it’s exciting because now I get to start dressing the bump.

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12 Comments
Posted on October 1, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy · Labels: , , ,

Fashion first: the one-piece jumpsuit

They say 30 is when you shed the insecurities of your 20s and become more confident and comfortable in your own skin. One way I’m finding that to be true is in my own personal style. Though I was much thinner years ago, I was too self-conscious to be adventurous. I secretly nursed many fashion fantasies; I would admire a piece of clothing in a store or magazine, try to picture myself in it, then tell myself I couldn’t possibly look half as good as other women would look in it. Then I would walk away.

The one-piece jumpsuit, or onesie, was one of these fashion fantasies. I always thought they looked fun and playful, but nothing I could actually wear. That changed when I spotted a cobalt blue jumpsuit in Zara that I thought would be perfect for a tall, blond, blue-eyed friend. When she didn’t bite, I found myself trying it on… and to my surprise, liking how it looked on me.

I chose to debut my one-piece jumpsuit in Venice. It was the perfect location for a personal fashion first—and to feel like, as Jason said, a 70s movie villainess. Like I had just arrived in Venice via private seaplane. Like I should have been slinking around with a crystal champagne flute, ivory cigarette holder, and entourage of assistants.

You know what they say about wearing something and owning it? I owned it all right, but not the way you’d think. It was more like wearing the jumpsuit made me feel like I owned… everything.

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51 Comments
Posted on June 5, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , ,

Marni for H&M madness

If you’re interested in fashion, you will know that the Marni for H&M collection hit stores today. I’ve never been the type to camp out for hours for any kind of retail launch (like the iPhone launches in Singapore), but I did have my eye on a few cute things from the collection. So I thought I would pop by the big H&M store on Dam Square at lunchtime, after my Thursday morning sewing class. 

Standing there with other, equally disbelieving female shoppers, I learned how to say “That’s it?!” in half a dozen different languages. We all circled these two racks like confuzzled chickens until it finally sunk in: This was it. 

This rather low-level commitment is exactly the kind of attitude that leaves one staring at two sparse, forlorn racks of clothing and empty shelves. I say “low-level” in comparison to the Marni diehards who, according to Dutch fashion blog Styletoday, lined up two hours before the doors of H&M opened at 9 o’clock sharp. The types who camp out, have a strategy and brave the chaos will always be the types who are rewarded with the good stuff. And they are exactly the types who cleaned out the collection in less than two hours. Good job, people!

I just can’t compete with those types, so I didn’t even try. Luckily, I saw a size 40 skirt being handed back to the fitting room girl, so I grabbed it before she could put it back on the rack. It fit well, feeds my love of sparkly things and is cut in a shape that I like to wear, so it was a clear yes.

(Apologies for the low-quality pictures, by the way. I had only my iPhone with me.)
I was also tempted by the matching top (I don’t know if I would actually wear them together), but alas, it was two sizes too small. 
After purchasing the skirt, I meandered down to the other H&M store at the Kalvertoren. Here, the women’s collection was in an even sorrier state—it was just down to one very sad rack. In contrast, the menswear was barely touched. There was one man (French, hipster) shopping the collection versus maybe two dozen women. 
This blouse is really funny. It kept getting picked up and put back on the rack by at least six different women. Every time it landed back on the rack, there was another woman waiting nearby like a shark to snatch it up and spirit it away to the dressing room. Eventually, I had my turn with it.

My first thought: “Holy crap, it’s a straitjacket.” And though I love prints, this one was a little bolder than I’m used to. But after I loosened the necktie in back for a wider neckline, it looked much better on me. The sleeves could be shorter, but that’s nothing my trusty sewing machine and I can’t fix. Sold!

I came home with my translucent green shopping bags (very cute, by the way), not quite knowing what hit me, yet feeling rather accomplished and happy. “Well, that’s that,” I thought, pulling my mental purse-strings tight. Little was I to know that the Marni madness was not over yet!

In the evening, I ran into a few Twitter friends who were still trying to score some pieces from the collection. One of them was , who told me to go to the H&M Netherlands site, which still had more things available than the UK or Sweden sites.

Patay!

And that’s how I wound up with these silver leather sandals (a true sign of optimism about the Dutch summer) and breezy top, while Kate managed to score a few accessories. 
Now the madness is over and it’s time to earn back every Euro I spent. Should I do a couple of outfit posts with my purchases when they arrive next week?
2 Comments
Posted on March 8, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam, Personal Style · Labels: , ,