karolina on the koma katwalk

After the David Koma show - my last, and perhaps favourite, of all of this season's London Fashion Week, at the Topshop Waterloo Station venue - I had the privilege of going backstage, to interview David Koma, who was lovely.

That post - and posts - will have to wait. Because I've waited long enough to start posting some of the delightful models I met backstage. The first was Karolina: she emailed me right away, saying this:

Hello, Jill!
Im that active girl with to an e-mail from you, in David Koma show and really cant wait to see all the pictures!!! :}}



I asked her a few questions, and her reply was so delightfully effervescent - so like her nature - that I have to quote it for you, in its entirety. I did the same thing when I started this blog - a model named Frida Gustavsson ('form follows function') and I predict the same level of stardom for Karolina.

"Yes, Im back now to my high school in Lithuania.
Well, I like school, there heppends most funny things (haha)
I like languages. English, Russian and lithuanian too. Really like history and maths too. I dont know i kind of like all of the subjects, they all are interesting and new :))
Last year I finished music school. Im singing, dancing, playing with piano, doing music stuff with notes, if you now what I mean..
Now im still singing there and going to festivals, contests other events :) and now started playing with violin, so its kind of bussy ;D
I love reading especially classic books, now its Ana Karenina, amazing book!!! Ofcourse I loove travelling, speeking with peoples, meet to ones, beeing out in nature, going out with tents, doing few days festivals, waching movies, eating delicious cookies/chocolate and that kind nice food. I should say that I love that eating process, its feels so good, thats why im eating too much ;DD
Im with Supermodels in Lithuania. I dont know, I love doing shows, its so active and cool, I love it :)
That dress is from Mango, haha ;DD

I think thats it :))









Not quite: what I love about this 'active girl' was her generosity of spirit. In these shots, for example. What was going on was, she was hugging the stylist for the show, Kim Howells, who was too modest to want to be photographed. Karolina kept urging her on. It was so sweet. My grandmother - my mother's mother - was born in Lithuania, near where Karolina is going to school now - and my grandfather was born near Kiev, not far away. So I feel a special kinship with this Active Girl, and admire the way she has the same enthusiasm for her life as a schoolgirl, as doing the catwalks.

Okay, that's it - for now. But next time, I want to show you the other models, and talk about the show!

happiness is contagious

What have you done so far today, to spread some around? Would you care to share it with the class?

Shot backstage at the fabulous, brilliant David Koma show, 20 September 2011, at the Topshop Waterloo Eurostar venue. More to come on this series, especially the delightful Karolina, who's been in contact - 'the active girl', who was infecting everyone she came in contact with.

Off to spread a bit of sunshine around on an overcast day. And to write, write, write! xoxo

what's legs got to do with it?

As per usual: please click on this great MTV video, for your viewing enjoyment.





At some point in my early 20s - after college, pre-meeting Mr. Dot - I was basically living a Carrie-esque existence in NYC. I didn't write a column (I was a freelance graphic designer & art director - I even worked on the early MTV animations) but I had this really fun, creative, and occasionally, glamorous life. My college friend, Dani, had a boyfriend - now husband - who was five years older, and their extended family of friends were just sooo cool. And amongst these friends was a really tall, skinny guy named Ed.



Now Ed - bless him - we were great friends. But he wasn't my type. I had a lot of boyfriends, but not Ed. He'd always say 'why not me?' and I'd say things like 'because you smoke' and he'd stomp out the cigarette, throw the pack away, do all these gestures.. no matter how many excuses I'd come up with, he'd always have an answer. He kept bring up that time, on the boat, when we were leaning on each others' backs the whole ride and he kept saying 'don't deny it, you KNOW there's a connection.' Finally, in desperation, I needed a reason that he could not change, so I told him he was too tall. Fair enough, but he never did stop trying. And then when I'd meet one of their friends, and we'd start liking each other, they'd invariably say 'I can't do this to Ed!'



Too Tall Ed used to sing this song out loud, but his version was 'What's legs got to do, got to do with it? Who needs a leg, when a leg can be broken?'



Which reminds me of something I read recently. They did one of those surveys. I forget the percentage, but a lot of women - a majority vote - wish their legs were longer. Apparently we women own, on average, something like 56 pair of shoes (which means - since I have far less - that somewhere across town, there is a woman with 287 pair, to balance me out). And, also apparently, most of our shoes are very high heels, because we think it makes our legs look longer.





As someone who is average height, or even small - 5'4" - I'm often told I have 'great legs'. I don't even know what this means! I think I have maybe a short torso, so my legs are proportionately longer? No one ever says, for example, that I have a great waist - altho this year it's looking flatter than last. My bum is nothing to write home about, unless you like pancakes. And no one raves about my breasts, which are somewhere between an A and a B - maybe an A+ - and which, for some reason, I've always been rather proud of. They're inoffensive, not very 'in your face'. And, while we're on the subject of perfection: if you scrutinise the photos of these catwalk models - these perfect beings - you'll find some little imperfections here and there. Proof that they're actually, you know, human, after all.




Maybe the thing about legs are, they're a part of our physicality that it's tricky to change, cosmetically. You can't- far as I know - get a leg job. Perhaps you can. Who knows. All I know is, I've been doodling those classic Court shoes - like the Louboutins shown here, at the Holly Fulton show last Feb - (other shots are David Koma, with the polka dots, and the knits are Mark Fast) - since I was a girl. I love the IDEA of wearing heels. In practice, I'm running round most of the time in flip flops, flats, and Converse. Maybe that's the secret to great legs: keep them moving, cupcakes!




And come to think of it: Tina Turner, bless her cotton socks, isn't all that tall, and her legs aren't very long. But they're certainly fabulous!

Must run: things to do, then Vogue's Fashion Night Out tonight. I get overwhelmed figuring out which invites to prioritise, so I'm going to just meet Sabine and we'll do a quick brisk run around for a short time - dressed for speed, not style. It's just a matter of choosing which Converse: the vintage blue or the less old, i.e. seven year old, cream ones.

All photos by me, at the Holly Fulton (Louboutin heels), David Koma (polka dots) and Mark Fast (knits) catwalk shows. Somerset House, Day Four, London Fashion Week, 21 February, 2011.

runway: juxtaposition koma.lynn.lilies

It helps that it's so not a beach day - I like the idea that the rain that's about to pour down on London is probably the tail end of Irene - but looking back on February's catwalk shots, I'm getting excited about fall 2011.

Still, I can't help but feel: it's not what you wear, it's how you wear it.

Waterlilies from Kew, 29.08.11. Catwalk shows Todd Lynn, and David Koma, both on 21.02.11. Photos by me, JC Adams.

like a rainbow

When it rains, it pours.

Having such a fun chilled night, multi tasking: Mr. Dot keeps trying to get me to watch Wimbledon with him, and my attention was diverted with tweets about Christopher Kane's 2011 resort collection, which got me so freakin' inspired I started playing around in photoshop some MORE. I'm grabbing the opportunity of him talking on the phone to post this, against the background of Wimbledon highlights, at high volume.

It's uncanny, actually: I SWEAR to you, when I started going in this direction with David Koma's line from last September last night, I hadn't yet seen Christopher Kane's rainbow designs - which I've then adapted to what I was already doing. Sorry if that doesn't make sense: the tennis is on really loud. Claps of thunder in the Centre Court, the roar of the crowd.. 'what a way to lose the game', as the announcer just said.





I don't know if they still do this, but when we were younger, we'd do these paintings we called 'scratch boards'. I started the day chatting on facebook with a friend from school, and another from work, about our favourite Crayola crayon colour (periwinkle, hands down) which led me to thinking about how we'd draw rainbow colours on white board with crayons, then paint them with black paint. Then you scratch away the paint, revealing the rainbow.

And lo and behold, I'm ending my day seeing it manifest before my very eyes, with these gorgeous lace numbers:





While I don't love everything in this collection - he's not a god, after all - I just cannot decide which of these looks shown here I love more. There is a genius to this man. But David Koma, for me.. oh, let's face it: both guys are simply wonderful. I tip my hat to you both.

pool math

This..



..plus this..



..equals this. Catwalk shot (& photoshop) by me, at Somerset House, September 2010 (David Koma show, s/s 2011). Pool shot of me, by Maryann, last summer, as before.

Rain, rain, go away. Little Jilly wants to play. What a wacky summer! Global warming, my foot.

pool koma

Hope David doesn't mind.. having Fun with Photoshop, using my shots from last September (S/S 2011, David Koma, Somerset House).