My Heart

Photographer – Lindsey Englander

My heart seeks two things,

Absolute freedom

And divine love.

I think that love is misunderstood. The most important kind of love that I have learned over the past few years is self love. 

We are constantly reminded that we need one type of love and I disagree.

Because love is everywhere. 

The love you seek exists within you and all around you.

I’ve realized that love is not just the romantic kind of love that you see in films.

Because love has many facets.   

To me, love is a smile from a stranger, my mother’s laugh, moments when I feel my dreams coming to life, driving and listening to music, singing in the shower, dancing by myself, the sun rising, the chill of the wind, the act of creating beauty.

Love is letting go.

Love is running around in public acting like a weirdo with your best friend and not giving a damn about what other people think about it.

Love is so much more than needing a companion.

Love is so much more than comfort, it’s loving yourself enough to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Love is letting yourself live without seeking any kind of fulfillment from a lover. 

It is one thing to think something. It is another to feel it in your heart. 

Sometimes, I cry because amidst the cloudiness and dust of everyday life I have a moment of clarity,

Where I feel at one with the beauty of the world

And I feel sadness and happiness all at the same time,

That there is no division between the light and the dark,

And I see and feel everything all at once.

Act according to your heart and live the way your life should be, art.

Fashion –

“I love it too much that sometimes I drag my feet

Just to swim in the beautiful weight

Of what I’ve yet to create”

A Gift to Oneself

photographer – Lindsey Englander 

China Girl – David Bowie

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video captured by Lindsey Englander 

The Clutter and The Color

If someone needed to know me instantly, I would tell them to look at my room / studio.  In my place, projects and inspiration are scattered across all corners of the room. It is where I work and play and dance about to my favorite music. By living alone, I have outwardly manifested my vision everywhere. It is cluttered and colorful and it took me a while to learn to love myself for this. There is part of me that wishes I could be more minimal; less attached and emotionally connected to my possessions and to have a more simple atmosphere. I have realized I will never be able to live without the clutter because it isn’t clutter ~ It is collected inspiration!!! 

By living this way over the past three years, I have cultivated my authentic and artistic self. I live according to my own rules. 

I’ve realized that home is not a place, home is what we bring with us wherever we go, the books that we read, or music we listen to. Home is a certain kind of smell. To me home smells like a combination of sandalwood incense, tobacco/vanilla perfume, and pikake.

Sometimes here it becomes difficult to separate dreams from reality. 

I bought this dress at a vintage shop in NYC called Hamlet’s Vintage. I love collecting vintage pieces because it is always a treasure hunt. Usually when I see certain pieces I just know that it is already mine instantly upon looking at it. I could barely fit it in my suitcase coming back and now I can’t fit it in my closet, so yeah… it goes on display for now!

My favorite lighter has Frida Kahlo on it. My friend Andy Casanova gave it to me. 

I love belts and I keep my favorite ones on my chair because I wear them so often.

I still haven’t gotten around to hanging this picture up on the wall. It’s been this way ever since I moved here, but I kind of like it more this way. I like when things are left unfinished and not perfect. 

I have collected many books and they all sit stacked at the foot of my bed. 

I bought this vintage dress at Wasteland in Santa Monica. 

I appliquéd onto the front neckline various remnants of fabrics and trims that I have collected. 

It is quite a mystery to me how there can be no more room in the closet, but yet sometimes nothing at all to wear. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear” ~ The Smiths

I am a shoe hoarder and I have no shame. Oh and yes those are bowling shoes to the left. 

Next to my bed is my desk and I would say that the two are closely linked because both involve wild dreams. 

“En matière de dessin, rien n’est meilleur que le premier jet” ~ Pablo Picasso

When I was around 7 or 8 years old I made this framed piece on the right. I took scraps from magazines and candy wrappers and folded them into 12 dresses. I guess you could say this was my first attempt at a collection. 

In my room, poetry flows through me.

I call my kitchen the hippie kitchen because it is very unconventional. I am not much of a cook yet. 

Here are some of my favorite products. (I recently bought a moisturizer by Ole Henriksen called Sheer Transformation Perfecting moisturizer and it has tremendously improved my skin)

For the beach. 

Some collected treasures.

I bought this feather eyeball earring in a vintage shop in London for 5 pounds. 

Some art from my childhood.

I hope that you also find treasures in life. Not only things, but people, places, and moments. Collect them all. Be grateful. Life is short, but your soul’s journey is beyond time. Embrace yourself as you are with all of the clutter and color and always say yes to anything that makes your soul feel alive. 

With Love,

Hanna

Birds and Bees

Photos taken by the lovely Lindsey Englander featuring my drawings from childhood and now

Listen to this song by New Order as you look at the photos cuz this is my vibe xx

 

 

 

 

 

The Treasure State Romantic

Photography by Lindsey Englander

Location – Montana (The Treasure State, The Big Sky Country)

Romanticism is a trend that is constantly present in fashion. Many feel that it is cliche and overused, but when really looking into what it means in history I find it to be so intriguing. The Romantic era was an artistic and intellectual movement that began in the late 18th to mid 19th century that reacted against the Enlightenment age and significantly changed the way people viewed life.

What does it mean to be a romantic?

Romantics are people who love nature, old things, poetry and beauty.

Romantic is not practical.

Wearing boots from Sandro and a vintage dress. 

Romanticism rebelled against order. It values the freedom of expression. 

For a romantic, life is always idealized. Romantics get carried away with ideas. 

For a romantic, color is the life of a picture. 

Romanticism emphasizes the individual, the irrational, the imaginative, the personal, the spontaneous, the emotional, the visionary, and the transcendental.

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Romanticism introduced an interest in the exotic.

This curiosity opened the door to exploring the inner worlds of people and their emotions.

Romantic painters expressed people’s emotional states through their portraits. 

In romanticism, there is no exact truth, no right or wrong, things go by feel. 

“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.” – Henry David Thoreau 

Romantics longed for a simpler era.

“I live not in myself, but I become
Portion of that around me: and to me
High mountains are a feeling.” – Lord Byron (the most extreme poet of the romantic era)

Wearing a thrifted camouflage shirt, my gold vintage fish necklace, a fishing lanyard, and a free people bralette, clearly – ready to go fishing right here.  

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Wearing a vintage Burberry slip dress. 

The romantics were fascinated by wild animals and their relations to human behavior. 

Romantics have a love for the wilderness. They have a sensitivity to nature.

“The great object of life is Sensation – to feel that we exist.” – Lord Byron

“I am a wildflower growing freely in the vast meadows that ache my imagination.” –  (an excerpt from a poem that I wrote)

“I came to realize clearly that the mind is no other than the Mountain and the Rivers and the great wide Earth, the Sun and the Moon and the Sky” – Lord Byron

Wearing a vintage suede jacket from the 70’s, paired with a white t-shirt, Billabong romper, turquoise belt, and a pair of vans SK8-Hi. 

“They say that hope is happiness.” – Lord Byron

Romanticism is for the dreamers, the stargazers, the sun chasers, the ones with no fear of heights. While it seems easy to discredit Romanticism as being cliche, the key to it is a love of beautiful things; a communication of a feeling or idea – that is what the basis of fashion is to me. 

 

 

Sing Street

Tonight I watched the movie “Sing Street” on a whim. I think it is rare to see a movie that really makes you feel something (the chills). So here is a somewhat shit blogpost written after midnight, but I can’t wait because I am in love. 

It’s about a 14 year old boy who goes to an oppressive christian school in Dublin, Ireland, set in the 80’s. The girl across from his school was wearing too much makeup and pretending to smoke a cigarette. She said she was a model. He lied and told her he needed her in his music video for his band, which didn’t exist. So, all for this girl, he made a band. 

Thanks to my dad, I am a big fan of 80’s music. Sorry Mom!

The movie features music from The Cure, Duran Duran, A-Ha, The Clash, Hall & Oates, Spandau Ballet, and The Jam. 

This movie is driven by love and innocence. Follow your passion and you can be anyone you want to be.

Not only is it a love story between a boy and a girl, but a love story between a boy and music.

“Your problem is that you’re not happy being sad. But that’s what love is, Cosmo. Happy sad” – Raphina. 

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what love really is, because life is really crazy and its always teaching me new things, but thats for another blog post. 

“Darren: What does happy sad even mean? How can we be both things? It makes no sense.

Conor: It means that I’m stuck in this shithole full of morons and rapists and bullies, and I’m gonna deal with it, okay? It’s just how life is. I’m gonna try and accept it and get on with it and make some art.”

Despite all odds, whatever shit life may throw at you, you can overcome it, rise above and create beauty from it. 

“What if everything beautiful is fiction and this reality’s just pretend.”

Never blindly accept what is put before you. Do what you want. Take risks. Be crazy. Wear what you want. Be who you want. Find the light and become it. 

My other favorite movies are “Moonrise Kingdom” and “The Graduate.”Believe it or not, but I also love the movie “The Girl Next Door” with Emile Hirsch. I really just love when he gives his speech about moral fiber, so watch it here so you don’t think I am a complete weirdo. It might be cheesy, but whatever I like this idea of a guy risking everything for a girl, but then again I am a hopeless romantic. 

xx,

Hanna

 

 

Frida Maximalism

Photographer: Marco Malingambi 

Model: Alessandra Mendicino 

Here is the shoot from a styling course I took in Milan at the Istituto Marangoni. Frida Kahlo inspires me because not only was she an amazing artist, but she herself was art.

Frida lived in constant self expression. She was one who was not to be defined. She, as an individual, contradicted her femininity with masculinity. She accepted her imperfection, would dress in men’s clothing, cut her hair to be like a man, liked to drink, smoke, and speak profanely. In doing so, she in a way, blended and deconstructed gender roles. She lived life according to her own ideals, which was quite rare for women at the time.

Maximalism is a reaction against minimalism, meaning “more is more.”It is eccentric, eclectic, and fun. Frida, like Maximalism, was seen as shocking and even a bit vulgar. 

“I am my own muse, I am the subject I know best. The subject I want to know better” – Frida Kahlo.

One thing I have learned from Frida is that in life there will be pain, but you cannot hold onto it for too long; you must let it go. Anything you hold onto is a sinking ship.  

Frida lived a life with many tragedies, but she had a way of transforming her pain into beauty. Within her there is an inner strength and sadness. 

“Nothing is absolute. Everything changes, everything moves, everything revolves, everything flies and goes away” – Frida Kahlo. 

Behind the scenes photos:

“Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light” – Frida Kahlo. 

like a boy