2015: A Year In Review

To all the Fusion of Effects readers, Happy New Year!

2015 was a fun rollercoaster ride as there were a lot of great things happened on me.

After 6 years of building this blog and 3 years on Draw A Dot., international brands started to take notice of both sites in 2015. It was a wonderful experience to work with brands I love such as Valentino, Delpozo, Viktor & Rolf and these opportunities have helped me to open more doors in this industry. Also, having Marc Jacobs and Riccardo Tisci to like some of the images on Draw A Dot. instagram account gives me more reasons to continue building the Draw A Dot. community.

Aside from working with some of the biggest brands in the world last year, The Rebellious Squad project was probably the other big achievement I have accomplished in 2015. Shooting this group of people was a dream and it took a lot of planning to make it happen. All of us in this group wanted to create something memorable and I think we have nailed it. To everyone who is part of this project, THANK YOU!

I cannot foresee what kind of opportunities will come at me this year, but I am positive that it will be another great run for both blogs. Let the new chapter begin now!

Also, be positive!

2014: A Year In Review

Happy New Year! I wish you all the best and hopefully you can achieve all the goals you have in mind in 2015!

2014 was the expansion year for this blog, and it was also a year I slowed down and rediscovered myself. I made a few difficult decisions and it looks like everything is once again on track!

One of the biggest changes last year was this blog. It changed the name from à la mode to Fusion of Effects. I am very happy to know readers are loving the new change and the new layout. The blog now also serves as a hub to connect 3 other blogs to form a nice blog network.

Another big change is having Stephen-Thomas Maciejowski as my blog partner. This person has taught me a lot in the past year and I strongly believe he is a great addition to the blog. He is the voice I had been searching for when I was a solo blogger, and now I feel the blog is complete as his retail background gives a new prospective on a lot of things. Stephen-Thomas, thank you for showing up at the right moment!

My favourite photo in 2014. Courtesy of Best of Toronto.

Draw A Dot. grew exponentially last year, and I am very lucky to have some great illustrators contributing to the site. At the end of summer 2014, I finally created the Instagram account for the site, and I am still very amazed by the growth of it! I am also very thankful to get the approval from Valentino on the 2014 holiday card. This definitely was a major highlight of my 2014.

Food Tour 101 is currently still in the works as I was distracted by other projects in the 2nd half of 2014. What I am hoping is to explore more interesting restaurants this year, and hopefully I can travel outside of Canada to show you what I discover in those cities/countries.

Last but not least, STM is the latest addition to this blog network, and it is a site created by Stephen-Thomas. One of my previous sections on this blog, [Un]Discovers, has reincarnated into #stmINTERVIEWED. I promise you will be read more amazing interviews by Stephen-Thomas in the future! The potential on that blog is unlimited and I am excited to see what kind of ideas he will have in 2015!

Once again, thank you so much for all your support, and I promise there will be more amazing things happen on this blog and the other 3 sites in the future! Stay tuned as I will share more fashion stories with you in this year!

One of my favourite songs in 2014 is this song by Beyoncé. It has a very special meaning to me, and will serve as a backbone of a soon to be released Draw A Dot. project. Enjoy this song and stay tuned!

2013: A Year In Review

Happy New Year! Hello 2014, and I wish all my readers all the best this year!

I wouldn't say 2013 was smooth as there were quite a few obstacles I had to tackle in the year. However, because of those obstacles, I got the chance to learn more things from different angles.

One of the major highlights of the past year was the creation of Draw A Dot.. I am very thankful that the site has taken off like a rocket and it has been recognized by so many people and brands. Thanks to all the illustrators who have believed in me since I launched the site and I had so much fun working on independent projects with different illustrators around the world. I believe Draw A Dot. will continue to grow in 2014 and keep an eye on some unexpected projects in the near future!

A lovely portrait of me by Roberto Sánchez (me in Dolce & Gabbana F/W 13)

à la mode continues to grow in the past year and I want to thank all the PR people who have sent me some amazing materials for me to write on this site. There might be a change in this coming year, so stay tuned to this site.

Swide continues to be my 2nd home and this past year I have featured some amazing illustrators there. I am very proud of the Dolce & Gabbana illustration projects I curated, and I just want to thank all the illustrators for letting me to show their works on the site. I promise I will continue to discover more amazing artists in this year!

Overall, I am a happier person now, so I am hoping to continue having this positive attitude and can spread it out to the people around me. Thanks for all your support and I promise I will continue to show you the best things related to fashion on this blog.

2012: A Year In Review

Happy New Year! I hope 2013 is going to be a fantastic year for all of you!

There were a lot of changes in 2012 to à la mode, but everything happened for a good reason. I was once again the solo writer for this blog as my contributors were busy with their personal businesses. Therefore, I decided to cut down the numbers of posts per month and be more selective on things I wanted to write. The change was good as people understood the fashion scope I was trying to present on this site. For those of you who like to look at new accessories products for both men and women, you will be happy to know that I am bringing those posts back in 2013.

It was my honour to continue writing for Swide in 2012. I had the luck to discover more talented illustrators and presented them on an international media platform. One of the highlights was the S/S 2012 illustration project and from what I heard, the response was better than expected.

An illustration that didn't make it to Swide, but I love it! (by Lisa Nishimura)

Another major highlight was the Diane Pernet project I curated back in June. It was my pleasure to be working for such a talented world known blogger and I was very impressed with the illustrations the artists created. It would be great if I could work with Diane again in the future!  

A lot of people maybe wondering why I didn't do any big project in 2012. Well, all I can say right now is there is actually a big project in the works and I will be announcing it very soon. If you are still reading this article, then I have a little treat for you. I have hidden the URL link of my new project somewhere in this article (hint: not the words) so take some time to look for it. :)

Thank you to all the people who supported me in 2012 and I hope you can continue to support me in 2013! I promise this new year is going to be amazing!

June & July 2012 Memories

We are currently enjoying our summer so we are actually slowing down at the moment. However, in June and July, we still have created some interesting entries for you to enjoy.

This month on [Un]Discovers, we have Maruka Caleis, a great illustrator who likes to use photos to complete her works. Also, we have Tara Krebs, a great illustrator whose works have amazed us. We believe fantasy is what made us love illustration and Tara's works are all about this element!

As for Swide, in June we have the amazing Malika Favre. Her works are in minimalist form but her contents are way more provocative than you could imagine. Jolene Lai is another great illustrator which we really like the girls she created in her works. Trust us, you will want to know more about them when you look at her works.

In July, we have Cristian Grossi, a great illustrator, and also a texture designer. We cannot get enough of his style as it is very simple, but haunting. Victor Castillo is a great painter and let us warn you, this interview is very personal and we believe this is one of our best features we have done to date on Swide.

May 2012 Memories

This month, we have 3 amazing original features and we would like to share them with you once again.

For our [Un]Discovers column, we have the opportunity to feature one of the new emerging designers Natalia Grzybowski. She is currently interning at Calvin Klein and at this moment, her graduate collection still mesmerizes our minds.

Then we have Alex Mathers, a very talented illustrator based in Japan. We really like his illustration style and his works always give joy to us. We are so looking forward to seeing more amazing works from him in the future.

As for Swide, this month we have Ruben Ireland, a very talented illustrator whom we have our eyes on for some time. We like his style as his works are always so mysterious, dark and beautiful. This is definitely a must read entry as he will let you understand his world more.

April 2012 Memories

It's a little quite this month but this does not mean we don't have quality original materials for the readers.

For our [Un]Discovers section, we have a very talented shoe designer Chi Yuen and also a menswear designer named Kay Kwok.

As for Swide, we are lucky to have Maelle Rajoelisolo and Joshua David McKenney as our featured artists and they are both brilliant illustrators!

Well recently we are addicted to a tumnblr site and we want to use this opportunity to show them to you. Lana Del Rey Dancing is probably one of the most random sites we have ever seen. The title speaks for itself so enjoy some dancing images of Lana Del Rey. If you are having a bad day today, we recommend you to give this  site a try.

March 2012 Memories

A few important things have happened in this month and now let's get to them!

March 12-16 was Toronto Fashion Week and we went to some shows to see the Canadian talents. Caitlin Power and Ashtiani were two of our favourite shows and we were fortunate to have the chance writing 2 reviews for them on Global News. Click here to see the 2 reviews!

As for the [Un]Discovers department, we have a very talented illustrator named Ryan Tandya. We are in love with his style and hoping to see more amazing works from him soon.

If you remember Erika Mizuno, the designer who created the bear dress, then you should know we are huge fans of her works. Recently she has teamed up with Yuta Yajima to crete a new brand called kielo; and the first collection is very dreamy and beautiful. Please take a look at the womenswear, menswear and our interview with the duo!

We also have the opportunity to feature an emerging menswear designer this month. His name is Six Lee and his brand SixLee has become one of our new favourites. Please click here to check out the interview!

Last but not least, Georges le Mercenaire is a very good illustrator whose works have completely blown our mind. His images consist of some iconic anime characters, but with a very surreal twist! We just can't get enough of them!

Gerardo Larrea is our star on Swide this month! We just love his whimsical and fun works! Please click here to read it.

February 2012 Memories

It's the last day of February which means it's time to review what we have done this month.

3 amazing artists are featured this month in the [Un]Discovers section and they are: Adamo de Pax, a really amazing emerging fashion photographer; Hana Pesut, a photographer with an amazing on going project called Switcheroo; Stuart McLachlan, a great paper art artist whose works will blow your mind.

As for Swide, we have released the 2nd part of the Dolce & Gabbana S/S 2012 illustrations and thank you so much for all the positive responses (We have received more than 3300 likes on facebook for this particular entry). Then on Valentine's week, we have created a special article for Swide which features works by Gerardo Larrea, Lisa Nishimura, Berto Martinez, Jennifer Lilya, Wendy Ding, Anja Van Herle, and Helen Huang.

Stay tuned to this site and see what we have in store for you in March!

P.S Don't forget to check out our Time[less] section to see some amazing watches!

January 2012 Memories

We can't believe January has gone by that quick as we are still warming up for this year. For this year, we are going to be more concentrated on the quality than the quantity of posts so you should start to realize we have cut back the number of entries in the weekends. However, this does not mean we are not working hard. In fact, because we have raised our bar, we have to spend more time to look for amazing things to share with you. Anyway, let's take a look at what we have done in this month.

[Un]Discovers is back and this month we have 2 amazing artists. First, we have a body art painter from Los Angeles and her name is Nelly Recchia. Then we have a great illustrator whose works consists of beautiful figures and abstract geometric patterns. Her name is Tran Nguyen.

We have started a new section called Time[less] and as you can probably guess, it is all about watches. Well Marcus is very passionate about watches so this section is about complicated and rare watches. At least this is an item we can always dream of owning in the future.

As for Swide, we are very happy to finally show you the project we had curated back in 2011. Few months ago, we asked a few of our illustrator friends to illustrate the S/S 2012 Dolce & Gabbana collection and here is the part 1 of it. Also, for the first time, we had an interview with a super male model and if you want to know who he is, you will have to click here to find it out!

This year, our mission is to evolve and continue to push the envelop, so stay tuned and see what we will have in store for you.

My Top Favourite of 2011

2012 is finally here and before I start any new contents, I just want to show you my top favourite things in 2011. The list might be a little random but everything is just very relevant to my life. Here we go...

Fashion

Best Womenswear Collection: Gucci F/W 2011
Best Menswear Collection: Jil Sander F/W 2011
Best Comeback Brand: Versace
NY Designer on My Radar: Joseph Altuzarra

Courtesy of Style

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!

December 2011 Memories

It's the last month of 2011 and we are very glad to end this year with a very cool project! This month, we have teamed up with 6 Toronto based bloggers and created the "15 Minutes of Fame" project to conclude our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors series. Thank you so much to everyone who have participated in this project! Please click here to read about the projects and the interviews.

We have also revealed this year's Holiday Postcard that we collaborated with Lisa Nishimura. The clothing is based on the Burberry Prorsum F/W 2012 collection and we hope you like it. Please click here to see the image.

As for Swide, we have featured on talented photographer named Seb Janiak and you can read it here. A very interesting photographer we must say.

Last but not least, we have created a little entry to talk about our top favourite [Un]Discovers entries. Please click here to read it!

2012 is going to be another great year for us so stay tuned!

November 2011 Memories

November is just another great month for us and we actually did not imagine so many things could happen at the same time!

With our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors almost coming to an end, we have teamed up with 3 different people to bring you some intense contents. First up, we have Wendy Ding to show us the final wave of her Fashion Journal, and we are in love with the entire project! So inspiring and we wish her all the best in the future! Then, our postcard project is on again this year and we have teamed up Lisa Nishimura to create another one of a kind Christmas postcard. If you have not received it, you will get to see the image sometime in December! Thanks for entering the contest and we hope you enjoy the card!

Last but not least, we collaborated with Miss SLY for an one on one interview. In this interview, you will get to know what she thinks about the fashion industry here and what brands she wants you to know. This is a very interesting collaboration and we hope we will be able to work with you more in the future!

As for our regular [Un]Discovers features, this month we have 3 talented artists and they are illustrator Marianna Ignataki, photographers Alexander James and Andrew B Myers! Now, our [Un]Discovers section will be on hiatus until January 2012, see you soon!

Of course, how can we forget Swide? For this month, we have 4 great features! The artists are: illustrator Jonathan Bartlett, and fashion photographers Dimitris Theocharis, Ashley Lebedev and Lucia Giacani. We will have 2 more features in December and we promise you one of them is one of our biggest features in 2011 (You will have to guess who is our last feature on Swide this year (hint: a model)! December 10 is when you will find out the answer)!

December marks our 2nd anniversary and we promise something great is waiting for you to explore! Stay tuned!

October 2011 Memories

We will admit, we were pretty much in all directions in October and we were having a blast! Now, let's recap what we did...

In this month, our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors was all about hairstyling and we were lucky to be able to interview some of the top hairstylists whom participated the Avante Garde in North America Hairstyling Awards. The hairstylists included Jake Thompson, Kris Sorbie and  Damien Carney. If you have read the entires, you should be amazed by their creativity on hair. 

There was actually a 2nd part of our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors and that was the second wave of Wendy Ding's Fashion Journal. In this month, we showed our readers her journal from Day 11 to 20. Every piece was stunning and at this moment, we are hoping to see more and know more about the up coming entries! Click here to read them. 

Also, after more than a year, we finally posted the shoot we did with ADO LES SCENTS. It was a very nice experience and we would definitely love to shoot again with this brand in the future! Click here to see it. 

Of course, how can we forget about Lisa Nishimura's works. In this month, she sent us the Marc Jacobs and Burberry Prorsum S/S 2012 runway illustrations. The illustrations were stunning and we can now drop you a hint, the best is yet to come... 

As for Swide, we had the honour to feature 5 talented artists. Some of the artists included portrait illustrator Anja Van Herle, photographer Kerstin zu Pan, and illustrator Berto Martinez. Since Halloween was in this month, we had done a 2 part special featuring 2 surreal illustrators: Madame Monique and Natalie Shau.

Last but not least, it was our pleasure to be part of the Global Fashion insiders for the LGFW and we wrote 2 reviews for it. The shows we reviewed were Mercedes Banz StartUp and Golnaz Ashtiani & Caitlin Power. 

Stay tuned and see what we have in store for you in November! 

September 2011 Memories

This month was jam packed with fashion shows in New York, London, Milan and Paris but we still managed to bring you some cool original contents in this blog! First off, we continued our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors by featuring some of the master graduates from Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp and they were Jantine van Peski, Leonneke Derksen and Karolina Piech. Since Ann Demeulemeester and Dries Van Noten both graduated from this school, in this month, we featured some of their F/W collections in this blog and we hope you enjoyed them.

Aside from that, we also featured a very talented illustrator named Dan Hillier and you should definitely check it out if you haven't done so.

Sadly, because for some unforeseen circumstances, we have to cancel the I Scream Awards 2011 but be sure to check back next year as we will continue the event. We hope to see your votes!

We have continued to discover some amazing talents and featured them on Swide. This month, we have the pleasure to interview illustrators Bree Leman, Gisela Balestrini, Laura Laine.

We are brewing more cool entries in October so be sure to check back our blog from time to time for the latest cool fashion/art finds!

August 2011 Memories

This has been a really amazing month as we have some really good original contents on the blog. This time around, we are very lucky to be able to feature a few Central Saint Martins graduates as part of our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors collaboration. The graduates we have featured included: Ivan C. Nunes, Flaminia Saccucci, Joshua Bullen, and Khrystyna Fomenko. Because of Central Saint Martins, we have also picked some nice F/W products from Alexander McQueen and Gareth Pugh (both of them and Sarah Burton are Central Saint Martins alumni) to talk about on our site.

Also, we are glad that Maxwell Lander has approached us and tell us her new group max & g.na. We are so happy to debut one of the group's editorial on our site and we have asked them a few questions as well. Click here to read it.

As for Swide, this month we have fashion illustrator Laura Wesson, Adrian Valencia and photographer Pedro Matos.

We are going to have more original contents for you next month so please stick to this blog and see what we are up to!

July 2011 Memories

Did you have fun in July? We surely did! Now, let's see what we have done in this month...

For our [Un]Discovers department, Septembre Anderson, the editor-in-chief of J'adore, has featured 3 amazing talents and they are: Renee Thompson (the founder of reel2runway.com), fashion designer Rachel Sin and Chinedu Ukabam. We are impressed with the entires and hopefully we will be working with Septembre again!

Aside from the 3 features, we did have John Woo for our first [Un]Discovers in July. If you know the He Wears It series, you will want to read this feature and get to know him more as a graphic designer.

As for Swide, we continue to have some cool artists to feature over there and for this month, we have fashion product photographer Massimo Gammacurta, fashion photographer Ben Cornford and duo AORTA, fashion illustrator Achraf Amiri, and surrealism artist Gary Fernández.

August is approaching and we can finally announce the beginning of I Scream Awards 2011! Stay tuned!

June 2011 Memories

6 months of 2011 have passed by and it looks like our momentum is getting higher and higher. Now lets take a look at what we have done in this month!

This month, we are working with Wendy Ding for our 12 months of [Pop Up] Flavors. Her fashion journal is simple amazing and we love the idea of transforming ordinary clothing to high fashion garments. This month, she has showcased 10 pieces of her journal with us and we are hoping to see more from this series in the future!

As for the [Un]Discovers department, we have featured 5 amazing artists and they are: fashion illustrator Wendy Ding and Lisa Nishimura, illustrator Nick Sheehy, fashion designer Michael Kampe and shoe company Kron by KRONKRON. We hope you enjoy these features as much as we do!

We continue to contribute articles to Swide this month and we have amazing fashion illustrators Jennifer Lilya and Tara Dougans and Ben Cornford as the feature artist of the week. Also, we have written a very cool entry about the material lace which you have the chance to see some emerging photographers and illustrators' works!

Last but not least, if you missed out the chance to see our the Burberry S/S 2012 menswear runway show live on our site, you can click here to catch the show!

Next month is going to be interesting and also, I Scream Awards is coming back soon. We can tell you this summer is going to be amazing!

May 2011 Memories

May has gone by so quickly and let's take a look at what we have done this month!

For this month, we have 5 [Un]Discovers and they are all very cool photographers. Their names are Ryan Szulc, Darryl Vides Kennedy, Todd Anthony Tyler, Nadia Cheema and Angela Y. Martin (remember her? She was the winner of our 1st I Scream Awards!)

As for our 12 Months of [Pop Up] Flavors collaboration, we have teamed up with Lisa Nishimura to create a series of 4 illustrations on the Gossip Girl characters. We have paired up 4 Canadian brands with 4 International brands and the result is very pleasant. The 4 illustrations are: "Fifth Aveune" (Pink Tartan & Marc by Marc Jacobs), "Frenemies" (Denis Gagnon & Alexander McQueen), "Belle of the Ball" (Lucian Matis & Marchesa) and "Back to the beginning" (Halston & OR by Angela Chen)

Last but not least, we have contributed some wonderful pieces to Swide this month and they are: FAT 2011 for Swide, Jan Masny, Dan May and Kaisa Bielska.

Stay tuned for more exciting entries from us in June!