NEW ITEMS!! Auction items for The No Plastic Bag Bazaar - now open for bidding!

The No Plastic Bag Bazaar

Aug 31st, 2009 (Monday)

12pm - 6pm

Noble Banquet, 235, Jalan Bukit Bintang

The auction items

interested bidders may email your bidding price & your contact to

soul.doc.lee@gmail.com

Xandria Ooi's babydoll blue dress

Starting price - RM 40

first bidder price (Rosheen) - RM 50

second bidder (SeeMing) - RM 60

third bidder (Celine Koh) - RM 80

4th bid (Rosheen) - RM 100

Xandria Ooi's maron cling dress

Starting price - RM 40

first bidder (SeeMing) - RM 60

Xandria Ooi's floral dress

Starting price - RM 40

first bidder (SeeMing) - RM 60

Xandria Ooi's pink tube dress

Starting price - RM 40

first bidder (SeeMing) - RM 60

Hannah Lo's mosaic art piece - "Prima Donna"

starting price at RM 300

Deborah Henry's Cole Haan white hangbag

starting price at RM 60

first bidder price (Jingnee) at RM 100

second bidder (Shareen) at RM 120

Deborah Henry's green stone pendant

Starting price at RM 35

Deborah Henry's Celine gold bracelet

Starting price at RM 50

first bidder (Shareen) at RM 70

Amber Chia's Stella McCartney Adidas jacket (pink)

Starting price at RM 100

Joyce Kirsten Wong's Aldo handbag

(unused & tag intact)

Starting price at RM 60

first bidder (Jingnee) - RM 100

second bidder (Najwa) - RM 110

Eco Accessory collection by Mah Su Sim

All items price start from RM 55

5 items - Stratum earrings, Fillament earrings, Stratum bracelet, Nova pendant, Flora pendant

Stratum bracelet, starting price RM 55

Nova pendant, starting price RM 55

Fillament earrings, starting price RM 55

Stratum earrings, starting price RM 55

Flora pendant, starting price RM 55

Soul Doc, tomboys & angels @ Annexe this Sat...

The Annexe Gallery presents

TOMBOYS & ANGELS
Fashion Show @ Art For Grabs Xmas Special
Sat 20 Dec, 6pm
The Annexe Gallery, Central Market Annexe
Jalan Hang Kasturi

+

THE HARMONY MUSIC FACTORY
featuring DJs Ribut 10:59, Bunga, Sarchan & JK
DJ Dance Party @ Art For Grabs Xmas Special
Sat 20 Dec, 7pm to 9pm

+ + + +

In conjunction with Art For Grabs Xmas Special, The Annexe Gallery presents TOMBOYS & ANGELS, a fashion show extravaganza that celebrates gender diversity and outrageous individual expressions of style.

The fashion show will feature clothes, accessories and works of art from over forty Art For Grabs arts & crafts stalls, with styling and make up by a team of some of KL's most vibrant emerging style-meisters led by Jun Kit and Ooi Ying Nee. The catwalk will be an installation that mixes politics and irreverence designed by Lainie Yeoh.

The fashion models will feature some of Klang Valley's most interesting everyday people with wicked sense of style and personalities, including:

1. Joyce Kirsten Wong - style blogger
2. Pang Khee Teik - gallery manager + photographer
3. Hazri Haili - biologist
4. Fahmi Fadzil - actor + director + writer
5. Myra Mahyuddin - photographer + publicist
6. Michelle Gunaselan - activist + writer
7. Ze - pop star
8. Bissme S - journalist
9. Sharon Chin - visual artist
10. Mien Lor - activist + filmmaker
11. Janet Lee - chanteuse
12. Sharon Bakar - literary queen
13. Shikin Eris - production exec
14. Davina Goh - actor + dancer

Come and be mesmerized.

+

To cap off the fashion show, everyone is invited to our twilight dance party THE HARMONY MUSIC FACTORY, which will feature the underground greats DJs Ribut 10:59 and Bunga (from Twilight Action Girl) spinning for the first time alongside Sarchan and JK (from WILD! and Disko Darurat).

Party on!

The Sky Is Crazy girl is BACK!!

Hehe, I always get a kick when I tell people that The Sky Is Crazy author Yvonne Lee is my sister, and they go like, "HAA? Really? I have her booook!!! Wow you her sisteeer???"

Well, if you have her first book, it's now time to go get her second book....now in major book stores :)

when she let me go through her manuscripts months ago, I couldn't help but smile and nodding to the stories she tells through those pages...as the title suggest, it's a book We women can relate too, and for the male species, something to understand us a little better.

Nice book for your girlfriends this Christmas!!! Hehe, wicked idea? Well, look out for its review in magazines & dailies :)

Book talk & signing session next Sunday at MPH Midvalley @ 4pm...come join us.

..at the bottom of the basket today....

I found my white pencil tube dress that was missing for months.

...and I didn't realise it was missing till I went looking for it to wear for a gig, and missed it dearly. I went out to Sg Wang with a heavy heart hoping to find the equivalent and found the SAME one in the SAME shop, so I bought ONE with a happppy heart.

Four months later, today, 5 minute ago, I found my missing dress at the BOTTOM of my laundry basket, untouched since the last time I wore I think...in March 2007.

Now I have two identical, very sexy, very cool, very tight dresses.

here, pictures of the dress...you must be wondering what super cool dress that will drive me to go out and buy the same one...the last time I wore the first one, for Magic Flute publicity shoot, March 2007.

and the new one I bought in June this year for the WILD (for Independent Pet Rescuers) fund-raising gig at Attic. pic by Andrew

and after these two huge bags come back from the launder shop next week, I will have a Big pile of `new clothes' to wear since I haven't seen most of these clothes since last year. I have forgotten I have that cool baggy read teeshirt with sequins, that chic secondhand-see-thro-boho skirt from Perth, that second hand chiffon pink blouse from Bangkok...

now smelly of dusk and very wrinkled...they are going to clean, don't worry
crazy comic pants from good old Good Sammy boutique @ Perth

Migod, I warn you, don't be my house mate, don't.

Yoga bliss...

whooohooo!!!

I'm going to this party next week!! My only free night from rehearsals too!

An exclusive star-filled yoga+dance gathering by adidas :) and check this out -- They are giving out more invites between now to next week!! Am already salivating at the thought of the goody bag worth RM 500 (of yoga gear & I wonder what else)...

read on - details on how to win an invite to this party

here you go...go for it!!

Strike your most creative yoga/dance pose, holding the adidas logo print out or to gain extra brownie points, deck yourself in your best adidas getups.

Simply send your photo to info@femmething.com by 7th September 2008, 11:59pm (Malaysia time). Picture size not exceeding 500kb. There are only 10 event invitations to give out, each comes with RM500 worth of goodies bag.

Am excited because I been wanting to sign up for yoga (I ended up in a pilates class now, so far so good so let's see how this one goes), get fitter and etc....

Anyway, all the best for your entry, grab your camera now and pose!

useful links :)

Street thing
Femme thing

In the spirit of Olympic 08 & French art song :)

ok, do you get the joke yet? look at this picture...
nope? look at my hair?

"Whats up with your hair janet!!!"

"Waaa, you trying to outdo the Olympic is it? Wearing the stadium on your head?"

LOL

I was in the mood to do something outrageous and different, for my look @ PHIL IT UP concert where I presented a Delibes art song about the beautiful Gypsies (Les fille de Cadix). I most certainly look different :) a bit weird but exactly how I liked it...

The price & joy of buying, owning and hoarding things...

I've done it, finally....I've created a photo catalogue of all my...erm, what I call the `gig wardrobe'. Took a few wee hours in the deep corner of two nights. Walking in and out of my master room, my bedroom, hall...hanging back all the dresses was a bitch. The dust from the dress protector was killing.

What a life I have....

I have yet to have rented out my empty master bed room in this flat which I rent. So the wardrobe in that room has been converted to my second wardrobe many months ago. It's a 4-door ceiling high wardrobe, curtest of the flat owner who's installed it. I keep all my handbags, knack sacks in two doors, and next to it I hang all my Cheongsams and some spare bed sheets
and pillows.
...then in the empty (not so empty at all now) room there's the spare mattress for my folks when they do visit and two big boxes of...more of my clothes, one for my shopping bags (I never really another shopping bag in my life). The other box house my more frequently used `gym clothes'...good for work out, dance class and theatre rehearsals.




So that's just the `empty room' and it's storeroom function.

Oh yes, the store room, the proper store room...of course, house MORE clothes. There is a little bag of all my `office clothes' - now `defunct' since I don't need them while I work from home. A box of clothes not worn for moons but not ready to part with yet, with some warm clothing for my rare trips to cold places. Then there's a container with roller for all my chunky accessories, hats, feather boas, more hats, hair pieces, etc. Piling up are also some random bags of clothes waiting to be altered, given away, etc.



Of course, then there's my bedroom where the the storage of `NOW clothes' is. Among the `NOW clothes' there are pieces that haven't the day light outside my flat for maybe a good whole two years. Cramped tightly in my main wardrobe is this...quirky array of colors, sequins, dresses, weird out numbers that I just don't have the heart to part with (little French-maid-like dresses I bought from flea markets, 80s Dianne Von cat suits). The towel hanger on the back of my door has been turned into a `gown hang-out place' where I hang some of my long gowns.














I have long grown out of this 4-door wardrobe in my room, I have been using the mobile clothes rack in my flat to keep my clothes in slightly better order. Recently the old one broke when I was looking for some skirts on the rack...too heavy. I left my room in a mess for one day while I went out and got myself a bigger & better rack.

While I clean and clear out my stuff in my flat, mainly the clothes...I never really stopped shopping in a period long enough for me to have worn all my clothes at least once. Also nowadays it's getting easier for a freak like me to get carried away in shopping, with the latest shopping culture in town - fashion flea markets & secondhand shops. So these days besides my human best friends, I have other friends with names in the likes of ThreadsZoo, Bijou, Scoop, ShowPink, Lapsap & Second Charm.














Speaking of clothes that haven't been worn...I also have books piling up from the floor that have not been read since they got into my flat. I used to picture my retirement days would be spent staying in in the house and have quiet days reading and finishing the books I collected. At the rate am going...it will take a miracle to finish reading all the books there, and of those that I keep buying when the mood comes or when I see something I cannot resist.

....ok, all this thinking and keeping record of what I own (some folks' ambition lie in owning properties...mine is just simpler) is giving me a migraine. I should get up and get dressed, time to go out for my dress alteration fitting, and off to rehearsal I go, in my gorgeous, second hand gym tights.

Tailors in Shenzhen

...for those of you who wonder about the tailors I went to in Shenzhen to make those qi-paos..here you go.

the four sequined ones are from -

Shanghai Longfa Fashion
Lot 5080, 5th floor
Luohu Commercial City (LCC)
Mobile - 13 80 2294 625
Email - hell83@163.com
(ask for Ah Xin or Mdm Yang Hong Mei the owner)

the two brocade-lookin' ones are from -

Joey Tailor Shop
Lot 5056A, 5th floor
Luohu Commercial City (LCC)
mobile - 137 141 2700
(ask for Ah Zen or Ah Fan)

cost / price

I asked my hotel receptionist (we stayed in Shanshui Trends Luohu Hotel - not bad) the minute I checked in, where to make qipao. She told me to go to LCC (this hotel also provide free shuttle service to LCC every 15 minutes from the hotel lobby) where she has gone herself to make some dresses. She said for about RMB 100 - 300 you can get a qipao. When I got there myself I realised for the drama-queen design (sequin, laces and the works) that I wanted, I had to pay higher than RMB 300 per dress.

At the end I spent about RMB 500 per qipao, that's around RM 240 each. Which is not bad, consider that in KL, you need to pay about RM 800 or more for a decently tailored qipao.

Bargain and agree on a price before you start ordering anything. Usually they will make you choose or indicate what material/textile you want before quoting a price.



What I learned / Tips
- bring a pic or a sample of what you want to make to show the tailors

I brought these pictures with me there
- be very specific on what you want when you order,

eg. how high you want your collar to be, I wanted the vintage look which is high collar, that's at least about 2inches for my measurement, 2-2.5 inches.

eg. how high you want the dress side slits to be. They will tell what the normal ones are like if you ask. I made a mistake for not asking for a higher slits where it would look nicer

eg. how low or high you want the lining-neckline to be for those who order the lacy/see-thro designs like three of mine (the black/purple, the gold and the white one)

eg. how fitting you want your qipao to be

- mind and consider which material might flatter your body more and what kind is good for which design. Mostly the shop ladies or tailors can advise you on that but have some ideas would help you cut down on decision time...if you haven't a clue on what you like or want when you get there, going to their textile shops might even further confuse you, coz the variety there is dazzling (can be a good thing if you are decisive). Generally the thin, lacy ones shows more flaws as it is more clingy to the body, the stiffer textile flatters more.

- do not get intimidated by those who grab your hand and insist on taking you to their shops for a look-see, just walk on or tell them you want to browse yourself, unless you want to be taken to where they take you. After spending about 15 minutes at the plaza you should be able to tell which vendor is more sincere.

- it is an advantage if you speak Mandarin, many of them at LCC also speak Cantonese. If you speak neither, they do have plenty of Caucasian clients but be prepared to do a lot of explanation until you know they understand you fully. They seemed to like me because I sound like one of them there...

I hope these information help some of you out there who are planning on a trip to China to make qipao...if I think of anything other useful information, I will update this post :)

the vain-pot,
soul doc