2011: A Year In Review (and Thanks)

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2012 and I wish you all the best this coming year!

As usual, my first entry of the new year is a review on the past year I can proudly say this site has grown a lot in 2011! Here, I am going to share some highlights with you.

It was my dream to write for a big fashion house blog/online magazine and in January 2011, this wish was granted! I am now a contributor of Dolce & Gabbana's Swide Online Magazine. My job there is to scout for the talented artists around the world and I am thankful to know a lot of people love my discoveries. It was also very surreal that I had the chance to write about Alternative Fashion Week Toronto on this site and I hope this will let the world know about the Canadian designers. My job will continue in 2012 at Swide so keep an eye on the site to see what I will have in store for you this year!

Since January, I also started a project called 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors and I can say, this was a successful project. Each month, I collaborated. with different individuals to bring some fresh contents to the readers. From working with local bloggers, to Central Saint Martins graduated students, the experience was simply amazing. This project let me get to know more people in the world and also helped me to open my eyes to new things. I concluded this project with a special feature of 6 of my collaborators and I am very happy with the result. Anne, Lisa, Juilo, Justine, Septembre and Wendy, you 6 will have more than 15 minutes of fame, keep aiming for your goals! Thank you so much to all the collaborators and I wish you all the best in the future!

Thanks Mark Sommerfeld for this amazing photo!

Now, let's get to the slightly more personal part...

This past year was like an exciting roller coaster ride for me. I am very fortunate to be surrounded by people with positive spirit to keep me moving and working on new ideas. Here are some people I need to thank.

Lisa, thank you so much for trusting my vision in the past year. Your illustrations are really amazing and I am so happy to be able to work with you on the Holiday Card this year. This year, we need to invade NYC again!

Noëlly, thanks for keeping Fashion[Unfold] alive this year and I am very happy to see the fan base is growing steadily. I cannot wait to see what you have in store for this year! I know Miss Sly will continue to go strong!

Justine, Julio and Septembre, it's hard not to thank 3 of you all at the same time. Thanks for being so supportive this past year and you three are good team players. Please continue to surprise me and create some cool contents on your blog in 2012! (#KanyeForDior)

Anne and Wendy, you two are amazing in many ways and I really believe you two will go far in the future! Please keep doing what you are good at right now and I assume I will see both of you in the international scene really soon (in different ways of course) !

Yigit, thank you so much for bringing me to the Swide family this year. I will never forget all the good things you have done for me ever since I met you. You know, you are a rock star! Keep rocking on! :)

Ben, how can I forget this fun British man? You always entertain me with all your music discoveries and I cannot thank enough for helping me to upload the entry on Swide every week. You and Yigit are truly my "extended family members" in Milan!

Chris and Breeyn, two amazing people I have known since I first entered this industry in 2010, words cannot express how much I appreciate your unconditional support throughout this year. Thanks so much for listening to my problems. I promise I will continue to work on my goals and will not disappoint you two. Thank you.

And the list can go on and on...

For this year, my co-writer and I will continue to maintain the quality of the entries. There maybe a little change to the structure of this site but fear not, both of us are not going anywhere soon. Stay tuned for our exciting projects coming up!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - November- Wave 1

We did not expect November to be an intense month but right now we can confirm there will be 3 waves of collaborations coming at you.

Our first wave of [Pop Up] Flavors will be the final 10 pieces of Wendy Ding's Fashion Journal. We have seen them all and we can say the final 10 works will blow you mind and overall, all 30 pieces create a very solid series. The final series will start on Monday so keep an eye on this site! Here is Day 20 of her journal and click here to see the rest of he works!

While we cannot reveal the other 2 waves to you yet, we can assure you there is a huge surprise coming up (if you have followed us since the launch of the site, you will know what will be coming up). Stay tuned and let's all get ready for the Holidays (oops, we are giving out a hint already)!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - October

For this month, we are working on 2 collaborations and this is really exciting!

First off, we will be exploring the hairstyling area this month and we are lucky enough to feature a few cool hairstylists who have participated the North America Hairstyling Awards this year. Be sure to keep an eye on who we will have on this blog!

Then, I am sure a lot of you do remember the amazing Fashion Journal of Wendy Ding and this month, we are going to have the 2nd wave of this amazing project. You may have seen them on her website already but our entries will have some exclusive information which you will not find elsewhere. The 2nd wave will start next Monday so be sure to keep an eye on it!

This is going to be a very excited month!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - September

It's September and this means we are going to be collaborating with someone new again! This month, we are happy to announce that few of the [Un]Discovers will be on the fashion master graduates from Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp. As you know, we are always a fan of emerging designers so we are very happy to feature them in this month! Today at 5:00, we will have our first feature so keep an eye on our site!

Click here to see the works of the students from 2010-2011.

Below is a video of some of the works from the undergraduate students.

Source: Midola67@Youtube

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - August

It's August and we have a very nice treat for you this month! Here, we have a hint on what we are going to do this month: Edward Finney, Martin Lim and Alexander McQueen, what do they have in common? Ring a bell yet?

Yes, for these coming 4 weeks, we will be featuring 4 amazing emerging fashion designers. These 4 individuals are the recent graduates from Central Saint Martins and their collections have totally wowed us! Trust us, you will want to remember their names.

We are not going to tell you in this entry which designers will be on our features this month, but below is a video from the 2011 Central Saint Martins fashion show which you can take a look at the amazing collections designed by the group of graduates. Now, let the guessing game begins!

Hint: At least one designer in this video will be featured on our [Un]Discovers, good luck guessing!

Courtesy of BespokeBanter 

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - July

it's time to announce our collaborator for July!

This month, we will be working with Septembre Anderson, the founder and editor in chief of J'adore. For the rest of this month, she will be responsible for all the [Un]Discovers features and she might also write a few entries as well! The focus of our collaboration will be on minority groups in the fashion industry. Now, keep an eye on this blog and see when we will have those pop  up posts for you!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - June

This month marks the halfway point of our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors project and this month we are going to continue our collaboration with another amazing illustrator and her name is Wendy Ding. You may have seen our interview with her last week. For the coming 2 weeks, Wendy will be showing her fashion journal on this site. The idea about this project is to transform ordinary clothes into high fashion garments. If you believe this is an interesting idea, then you will not want to miss our entries next week!

Courtesy of Wendy Ding

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - May

It's May and this month we have a special treat for you!

You should be familiar with Lisa Nishimura, a talented fashion illustrator who has showed some great runway illustrations on our site and this month, we have given her a task. We have told her to illustrate 4 pieces of works by pairing up 1 Canadian fashion brand with 1 international fashion brand. After we pitched her this idea, she spiced things up by introducing 2 familiar fiction characters to the works.

These characters are coming for a very popular show and here is the hint: xoxo. If you want to know who they are, you will have to keep an eye on this site as they are going to invade the à la mode territory!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - April

It's no secret that this month our blog is all dedicated to |FAT| and Anne Cayer, the winner of the |FAT| blogger contest, will be joining this site to write some cool entries for us. At the same time, we will have 4 special [Un]Discovers entries (starting today!) to feature few of the hottest designers whom will be participating this event! If you want to know more about what we will be doing, then you will have to keep an eye on this blog as we may bring you more surprise than you will expect!

|FAT| will start on April 26 and end on April 29. We suggest you to hurry up and get your tickets!

Stay tuned!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - March

Today is the 1st day of March and we are very excited to announce à la mode is teaming up with FASHIONIGHTS for our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors series. If you are a reader of FASHIONIGHTS, you should know they cover some interesting things that sometimes do not show up on our site. Because of this collaboration, à la mode is opening the door and let our readers to learn other prospectives of the fashion industry. In this month, you will get to know more about models (their identities), LG Fashion Week (one of Toronto's major fashion event) and some other unexpected entries co-written by us and Julio Reyes Cocka, the master mind behind FASHIONIGHTS.

Now, fasten your seatbelt because this month is going to be a pure joy ride! Be prepared to expect the unexpected!

Game[On]: 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors - February

January is over that means our collaboration with Whatever...Eurotrash has come to a sweet ending. We had so much fun reading and commenting on the posts she wrote for us and if you want to read more Fashion[Re]wind, you should book mark her website and wait for the new posts!

As for February, we are excited to announce our new partner in crime is none other than Everyone Is An Artist (eia). As you may know, eia was the agnecy which sponsored our I Scream Awards shoot back in October 2010 so we are very excited to be working with them again. You will have to stay tuned on what is coming next, but for now, I can let you know all 4 [Un]Discovers in this month will be artists picked by Kyle Kofsky, the founder of eia.

Stay tuned!

12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors: Preview

We have been keeping this project as a secret for the past few weeks and now the secret can finally be revealed! With the success of I Scream Awards in 2010, this year we have planned to add another big project under our sleeves!

Have you thought about seeing a virtual pop up shop on blogs? No, you are not dreaming, because we are going to work on this concept. The only difference between a real life pop up shop and our own "pop up shop" is we don't sell physical products, but rather the strength of each individual unit we work with throughout this year.

Still find this concept to be very abstract? Let's see if this will let you understand the concept better. Each month, we will work with at least one talented unit and this unit can be a blog, an event, a fashion designer, or an artist. We will work closely with our guest and posts will pop up anytime within the month-long period. If our guest is going to have an event that fits our blog within that month, we will  as well inject a little à la mode element to spice things up.

We believe you should have a rough idea on how this project works now and we are so excited to work with a bunch of talented people this year! For this month, we will be working with Whatever...Eurotrash so stay tuned for some exciting posts! This will be a new experience for all of us and we hope you will be able to follow this amazing journey with us!