Fashionably Forward

It always seems to me that almost everybody’s New Year resolution is to lose weight like the flip of a calendar digit results in some magical boost, a new 12 months to try what you’ve tried and failed to do so many times before.

I understand, it is difficult when we live in a world where Dairy Queen will feed your entire family for under $20.00, every 5 minutes your favorite reality TV show is stopped to overfill your brain with sexy and suggestive advertisements of foods the human body is defaulted to crave and the cost involved with living a healthy lifestyle.

So I’m going to tell you how I did it, how I went from 239.8 lbs to 127.6 lbs and have kept the weight off since 2005.

Firstly where everybody always goes wrong is in the planning.

If you look at your weight and think “Oh I’ve got to lose 100 lbs” what will happen is you will feel overwhelmed at how big the task is and feel defeated before you even start.

We love to party. We love tradition. We love alcohol. We love fresh starts. We all love NYE.

But the age old dilemma is asked again, like last year – what do I wear? Well it simply comes down to what you’re going to be doing on this night of ends and beginnings, who you’ll be spending it with, what your budget is and what will be appropriate.

So I’ve decided to give you some ideas based on likely scenarios both for ladies and gentlemen on what to consider wearing on the biggest party night of the year.

Scenario 1. Young, hip night club singles NYE.

Aim of night: To party with friends and allow the night to take its course, potentially ending in someone else’s bed.

Fashion goal: To be individual, sexy, flirtatious and exert a sense of confidence and care-free freedom.

As I said “goodbye” I was handed the brochure from Banafshesh of the latest ‘looks’ from Canada’s numero uno sportswear manufacturer, and pointed out the similarities between Peter Nygård and Julio Iglesias (mainly due to the hair, an image of the singer deep-seeded in memory of my mother’s taste in music and off-key vocals).

Conscious of the graphic design of the printed material, like much of I’ve seen since arriving here - different to the standard I'm used to and transient of the 1990s, I walked home, making a stop at the library to check out some mags.

Then I arrived back home to click on the web.

I browsed over the e-commerce website, greeted by catalogue models and immediately opened the corporate profile.

Peter Nygård is one serious business man and self made. He works up to 16 hours a day and has annual sales in ready-to-wear women’s apparel “approaching the $1 billion mark.”

Wednesday Night 9^th of December, in the icy cold I trundled down to Chinatown for the Modline Spring 2010 Fashion Show at the Fortune Sound Club.

I was meeting a photographer at 7.30pm and as his bus was slack ended up back at Tinseltown Starbucks mediating over an Eggnog Latte and absorbing the irony of the mall’s name during the festive season and the neon lights adding to the impression.

Then making my way back up the deadly silent street, I passed the minutes lightly chatting with the security guard until Mark arrived. He was an Aussie like myself and it was nice to compare notes on Melbourne and the variance between Canada and Australia.

Your traditional artistically bent photographer Mark was slim with auburn hair to his shoulders, light blue eyes and that down to Earth surfer type personality.

We went upstairs where the show was being held to notice that we were obviously early. The crowd was eclectic, young and trendy.