Learning to Wear Eyeliner and Life’s Other Little Road Markers

On October 14, 2013 By KathleenIn fashion, insights/observations, Uncategorized1 Comment

There are some nights I'm pretty sure I've gone out looking like this... — There are some nights I’m pretty sure I’ve gone out looking like this…

I am notoriously dangerous with eye-liner. Don’t hand me anything in liquid form because I’m likely to end up with a comma shaped black blob that transverses an entire side of my face. Despite an otherwise steady hand, pencils have been known to temporarily blind me. I’ll confess, thanks to a single brush and some guidance from the professionals at Laura Mercier, I’ve come a long way over the last two years. But that doesn’t mean there haven’t been nights were I everybody calls me “Left-Eye.”

“No, I didn’t get socked by an artist at a studio visit. I just had a fight with my eye-liner… it won.”

I started wearing makeup in the 8th grade. Like most adolescent females, hormones were kicking in and wreaking havoc with my complexion. Boys no longer had cooties. We had graduated out of training bras (this is where I’m clearly dating myself, because I’m pretty sure Pink makes padded bras for 10 year-olds nowadays). We were finding our identities and expressing them in outlandish nail polish shades while learning the subtle benefits of foundation and mascara.

This a caboodle, the girl's equivalent of a tacklebox — This a caboodle, the girl’s equivalent of a tacklebox

It was the 90s, and the caboodle was the girl’s equivalent of a tackle box — a feminine-toned, and often glittered, plastic case with little trays that folded out and mirrors that popped up. We filled it with all the tools of our trade: foundation, loose powder, eyeliner in every shade under the rainbow, eye shadow tones that complimented or clashed with our eye color, Tinkerbell brand blush, and lip glosses that tasted like cotton candy. We’d tote the box to sleep overs. A mini version lived in our lockers.

A few make-up consultations later and armed with lessons gleamed from manuals by Bobbie Brown and Kevyn Aucoin, I reconsidered my approach to “putting on my face.” I gave the caboodle the boot.

Here’s where I begin to make a leap into life’s more significant realizations…

There comes a point when you stop experimenting and settle on a signature style. I’m a black eye line and bold lipstick kind of gal

If in our teen years, we’re finding ourselves, in part through colorful experimentation, then eventually, there comes a time when we stop experimenting. Like learning to edit down word counts for papers and grants, we learn what we really need to make an impression. We find our perfect shade, our go-to routine and that’s who we are.

A Boy’s Weekend in Bulgaria

On September 29, 2013October 5, 2013 By KathleenIn AdventureLeave a comment

When it comes to bars, I have one simple rule: if its featured drinks are rainbow colored-shot flights, find another bar.

I'd come looking for a drink. I found rainbow shots... — I’d come looking for a drink. I found rainbow shots…

Sitting in the hookah-scented Graffiti Cafe, I saw a list of drinks I hadn’t seen since that college spring break on Playa del Carmen. I folded the menu and walked into a hotel lobby, scanned the scene and wandered into a restaurant. I ordered a bowl of cucumber-yogurt soup and a glass of rakia and made some notes.

I’m in Bulgaria.

Varna, Bulgaria, to be exact — a city perched on the Black Sea with a history older (and more complicated) than any other in the world.

No, seriously. It’s mad old.

Varna is know for it's spot on the Black Sea, and its 4km-long beach party — Varna is know for it’s spot on the Black Sea, and its 4km-long beach party

But that’s not the point — my interest, for the purpose of this post is in Varna today. Namely, in Varna as the party city of the Black Sea. Where dance clubs and open-air bars stretch for 4 kilometers across the beach, creeping up to the water’s very edge. It’s a city you go to to misbehave — a summer long spring break town where the drinks come in fanciful (unnatural) colors and the music blasts from every door opening (you never really know what euro-pop techno tune is playing in your club; it could just as easily be coming from next door.)

My first morning in Varna started lazily — I rolled out of bed at 9:15 and stumbled to get dressed, still “hungover” from the 2 days of travel it took me to get here. By the time I had my shoelaces properly (and safely) secured, I had 20 minutes left to grab my free Bulgarian breakfast.

I scurried down the hall, trying to ignore the South African-sounding man standing in nothing but his skivvies seeking direction on how to work his TV remote from the poor receptionist who had obviously accepted his demand for help unaware of what was awaiting him.

The hotel, an art nouveau gem, was reportedly full the night before, but joining us for yogurt and coffee were only a group of 50-something-ish British gents. Mr. Boxer Briefs joined them a few moments later.

“They’re Americans,” I heard one of them say, when they noticed I was laughing at their request for “brown bread” (meaning properly-toasted white toast).

“Yes, we are. I’m sorry.”

I learned the group of 10 burly British gents were on a weekend-long holiday. A sort of “let’s pick somewhere in the world to go and go” adventure.

They had go-karting in their future. I suggested the archaeological museum.

The exchange was short. I immediately began to fill in the missing pieces and write the screenplay…

I imagine it to be a sort of Hangover, Britainized, with a cast that includs Colin Firth, Hugh Grant and Ciarán Hinds (expected, I know, but easy sell). They come to Varna hoping for a taste of the Orient and the semi debauched, only to find they’ve hit it at the start of the off-season. Very few people understand any English. The only open bar on the beach is an underground gay dance club. The city that doesn’t have a wet season is all of a sudden hit with a weekend long monsoon. They go go-karting and discover the go-karts are decommissioned Cold War era military vehicles you push.

Hilarity ensues. They rediscover themselves. etc.

In short, it’s kinda like a Hangover meets Saw, but without the blood and sudden toddler cast member.

Obviously, I still need to flush this whole thing out, but if there’s one thing I have figured out it’s that Varna is a perfect backdrop for a Hugh Grant movie. Trust me. I’ll see you at the Golden Globes…

The rooftops of Varna as the monsoon approaches... — The rooftops of Varna as the monsoon approaches…

What I really Learned in Grade School

On September 8, 2013 By KathleenIn Bio PicsLeave a comment

As young ones, tots, and teenagers make their way through their first week of school, I wanted to take a moment to reassure them and their parents that their public grade-school education is worth every tax-payer dollar. The truth is, I learned more about life traveling through grades k-12 than in college, grad school, and “the real world” combined. Here are a few highlights of my suburban, middle-class primary education, wherein I learned…

fallout — Thanks to middle school, I learned where to go in the event of a nuclear attack — our choral room. #Glee

The choral room of my junior high school was in a subterranean, double concrete enforced room. At the entrance to the stairwell was not only a sign that said “Chorus,” but a yellow configuration of triangles signalling that the room was a remnant of the building’s Cold War construction.

2. Gym Class isn’t long enough and should be every day.

3. Nap time isn’t long enough and should be every day.

4. How to right a capsized canoe.

We had a pool. It was fancy and indoors and you could paddle around it in a canoe. During the swimming rotation of gym class, we had one day dedicated to water safety and water rescue. As a member of the swim team, I was made “captain” of a rescue team. 4 of us got in a canoe. Flipped it. Righted it. Then rescued the one idiot who got smacked in the head with the paddle when we capsized. This is a skill set that has come in handy more than once, I hate to admit.

5. Sumac that points down is poisonous. Sumac berry clusters that point up make great lemonade.

My 7th grade science teacher used to build bow & arrows and hunt deer with spears. He was the original Bear Grylls. As a result, our class curriculum was less NY State mandated and more wild-life survival.

6. Homemade cards for mom always trump something from Hallmark… even if they make absolutely no sense and look like something your dog painted.

I had an old school Bronx Italian English teacher for 2 back to back years. It was Romeo and Juliette year, so we watched West Side Story in class. He wanted to make sure we’d be prepared if we were ever in a rumble.

8. It’s not about what you’re selling. It’s all about how it’s marketed.

As part of a social studies project, I had to set up a company with a team of classmates. We made “organic, all-natural, handmade soap.” By handmade I meant we purchased bars of pre-made glycerin soap, melted it down and poured it into molds, with hand-selected trinkets scattered within the forms. Technically, we didn’t make the soap, but we did do 2/3 of the work by hand. Including the branded paper-bags I created by rolling brown lunch bags through my printer. We made a killing — at the end of the assignment, we had the highest profits. As CEO and Creative Director, I was pretty well convinced I’d end up with an MBA from Wharton before my 18th birthday.

9. Frozen pizza on Fridays is delicious, if not horrendously lazy.

10. Nothing holds more potential than the first page of a new notebook (let’s just say, I consider this a metaphor for life in general)

The Life of the Young and Fabulous? Or, #KeepingUpAppearances?

On August 13, 2013 By KathleenIn Bio PicsLeave a comment

“Promise me, Joe: when I get married, you’ll do my wedding.”

One of the great advantages to my job is that I have a roladex full of caterers, event photographers, and florists. When weddings happen, I’m your go-to gal for the essentials. When my turn comes, I won’t need a planner. I’ll just call a few friends and ask them to show up with their talents. Joe is a florist. A fantastic florist — the kind that takes you into Wonderland and deposits you among fanciful, gorgeous flowers.

“Of course! But don’t hurry to get married too fast. If your facebook is anything to go by, you’re pretty busy being fabulous and not married.”

It’s (mostly) true.

Artful adventures are just another day in the life

If you follow my (arguably) overactive (and private) instagram account, you’d say I was living the life. Roof-top, top-shelf cocktails. Midweek museum outings. Designer dresses. Center ice playoff tickets. Legends boxes at Yankee Stadium. Michelin star restaurants. Jaunts across Europe. Exhibition openings. Beautiful men always at my side.

You said it, Macklemore: We’re here to live life like nobody’s watching.

Are we, am I, really?

Maybe it’s more like everybody in the club, all eyes on us... and that club is our ever-reaching, ever-expanding internet audience.

When I was a freshman in college, facebook was still a kind of exclusive club. High schoolers and employers had yet to infiltrate it. I was the designated photographer at parties (this was largely because I didn’t drink and was, therefore, the one most likely to be sober enough to remember to take off the lens cap) which meant that, come Sunday morning, mine was the album holding all the documentary evidence. In those days, albums could only have 50 photos — so I was selective. 50 photos came to represent an entire year, not a single night out the way it does now for some college kids. Also, facebook wasn’t linked with our smart phones… in fact, there were no smartphones… my laptop didn’t even come equipped with WiFi. There was no instantaneous sharing. Everything was a #latergram.

That was then. Fast forward a decade, and I’m a curator with an instagram handle, 2 twitter accounts, a pintrest, 3 blogs, a vine, and a facebook. My internet imprint has grown ten fold. So what does that mean?

"I knew it was you!" Thanks to social media, people think I have style. — “I knew it was you!” Thanks to social media, people think I have style.

“I knew that post was from you, even before I saw the name!” my friend living the other side of the world commented on a photo I posted.

It was of a pair of high-heel peep-toe oxfords and my recent neon pedicure.

In thinking about my addiction to all things visual, I realized my decisions on what to share is dictated by a kind of personal branding. A kind of play at keeping up appearances. I guess I want people to see a picture of great shoes, intriguing art, foreign locales, and haute cuisine and think — Kathleen’s at it again!

It’s true that I think my life is pretty interesting — the people in it, the places we go, etc — and why not share it. But it’s also true that, believe it or not, you don’t see everything. After all, sometimes I like to see the sunrise through both my eyes.

40 Days of Dating, When Harry Met Sally, and Plato, or: Let’s Talk about Platonic Relationships

On August 4, 2013August 4, 2013 By KathleenIn DatingLeave a comment

40 Days of Dating is my new blog obsession. Get hooked.

If you haven’t caught whiff of 40 Days of Dating, then you’re probably living under a rock. It’s more addictive than Pringles. This is largely thanks to well-stylized type treatments, a highly readable format, and its extreme relatability — we’ve all been there, we’ve all had that friend we sometimes wonder if we should be dating.

A quick summary for those of you living under a rock: two designer friends, Jess and Tim, decide that their romantic lives have been an utter failure. They embark on an experiment. They’ll see each other every day for 40 days, as if they’re in a relationship, and see what happens. They keep a kind of diary. That diary gets shared with us.

What become apparent quickly to readers is that despite their compatibility as friends, and their genuine affection for each other, is that they really are like oil and water when it comes to love. Being in a relationship is hard. The things you can ignore when you’re just friends become deal breakers when you’re lovers. In short, at about the mid way point Tim decides that being in a relationship is killing their relationship.

Considering the Platonic “Problem”

For anyone that’s had a friend of the opposite sex (or same sex — yay death to DOMA!) this is what we fear most — taking a great friendship and killing it in the name of happily ever after.

Where's Bacchus when you need him? — Where’s Bacchus when you need him?

The stakes are higher when you get involved with friends… but of course, when the stakes are higher, so is the potential payback.

Shortly after discovering 40 Days, I picked up my copy of Plato’s Symposium — the slim book that’s supposed to define a Platonic relationship — wondering if I could find anything in it that applied to Jess and Tim.

“‘Love’ is the name for our pursuit of wholeness, for our desire to be complete.”

This is from a speech by Aristophanes, and if you read the speech in his entirety, that sense of wholeness comes from a relationship that transcends physical intimacy. The bond is greater.

The Mirror Has Two Faces

“You know what we need to do? Go back to my place and watch that scene in When Harry Met Sally. The one where he explains to her that men and women CAN’T be friends because of the sex problem. We’ll get a pint of Ben & Jerry’s.”

When you're talking about Plato, some how, Greek froyo seems the best side dish — When you’re talking about Plato, some how, Greek froyo seems the best side dish

Nothing beats best girlfriends. After they ask the tough questions you need to be asked, they always find a way to keep you smiling.

Pause. Rewind.

I had been talking about 40 Days of Dating with my favorite girl over meze and wine when she flipped Jess and Tim’s situation back on me.

“I just don’t get you two,” she had said earlier that night, part way into our bottle of wine. “You go out on dates, but you’re not dating. You wonder why you’re both single, and it’s never occurred to you that it might be because you’re not dating each other. Which one of you is scared to like the other?”

As someone whose relationship history is made up mostly of Platonic relationships, which always seem to inspire confusion, I was armed for this.

“The stuff he and I do together isn’t any different than what you and I do together. The only reason you think it’s a date when I see him is because he’s attractive. We work because there’s no pressure and no expectations.”

“That makes sense. I just don’t want you waking up one morning wanting more than he does. I don’t want you getting hurt… but I think he’s missing out.”

She might be on to something — one of us might get hurt and maybe he is missing out. But if he’s missing out, then so am I. I guess that’s why I applaud Jess and Tim for having the balls to make the leap to see if their friendship will lead to that wholeness. They’re braver than the rest of us. My fingers are crossed for them.

Anchors Away: We all have a type

On July 31, 2013 By KathleenIn Dating, LoveLeave a comment

These days, it takes a sailor or two to rock this boat... — These days, it takes a sailor or two to rock this boat…

Whether we want to admit it or not, we all have a type.

Tall + Dark + Handsome.

Architects.

Blonde hair + blue eyes.

Drummers.

For most women, it’s the wrong guy. For me, it’s sailors…

It used to be cowboys. Macho, wild-bull-wrangling types who lived by a creed and by their own making. Men with stetsons who wore their jeans like they were poured into them.

Yum.

This was mostly the result of what I can only define as my “John Wayne Phase” — a period in my life when I’d abandoned romantic comedies (I mean, how many times can you really watch Knotting Hill?) and turned to westerns. I queued up classics like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and contemporary remakes like 3:10 to Yuma (did I mention I was also going through a Russel Crowe phase… which I’m still in…) I even went so far as to stage a version of Othello set in the wild west. (Did you know I once wanted to be a screen-writer/director?)

As a result of this phase, I can single-handedly outfit the entire cast of Dead Wood.

But eventually, like Paul Cole* I came to ask: where have all the cowboys gone?

A light bulb went off: with the exception of the “supply-buying” round of Oregon Trail, they were never in New York.

Enter Fleet Week.

He mistook my RL Crest for my sailing club... I probably should have lied, but then I might have drowned... — He mistook my RL Crest for my sailing club… I probably should have lied, but then I might have drowned…

“So what club do you sail with?”

The question came from a tall, blonde, exceedingly handsome lawyer from New Zealand who was a good friend’s older brother.

“The Ralph Lauren Yacht Club.”

He had seen the crest on my blazer, and assumed I raced sailing vessels. He did. And that was kinda hot.

Shiver me timbers…

I did not race sailboats. I was simply embarking on my nautical wardrobe phase.**

I grew up around boats. Mostly speed boats and kayaks, but I had heard stories about my parents as a young, married couple learning to sail in Vancouver harbor.

This always appealed to me — the idea of working together to navigate around troubled waters… or to buried treasure. It certainly felt like a more appropriate metaphor for life than taming a wild mustang.

There’s that and then there’s the romanticism of the man at sea coming home to his loyal girl. A sort of Penelope and Ulysses. And then there’s the Navy uniform…

Yea, it’s really just about the uniform.

A girl is always a sucker for a man in a sailor's hat — A girl is always a sucker for a man in a sailor’s hat

*”This Fire” was one of the defining albums of my teenage years, along with Globe Sessions and Jagged Little Pill — both of which still have at least one song on every playlist I create…

**Apparently, the choices I make when I shop are completely analogous to the choices I make when I date (let’s not get me started on my “hippy” summer…)

Apparently my wardrobe choices and my taste in men go hand in hand... — Apparently my wardrobe choices and my taste in men go hand in hand…

An additional note:

My favorite Jane Austen hero is Captain Wentworth, from her final novel Persuasion. Not coincidentally, Wentworth raised himself from meager beginnings by distinguishing himself in the Royal Navy, where he eventually became, well, a Captain… and the object of every gal’s affection. Duh. Anne Elliot is the Austen heroin I most relate to. Over the decades, there have been several excellent screen adaptations of the novel… most recently starring Mi-5’s (or Spooks, for all you UK folks) Rupert Penry Jones as Captain Wentworth… swooooooooon. This might actually explain it all.

They Told Me to Find a Rich Husband

Author: Kathleen