SUVA! ON! SALE!

Yep the streets of Suva drew in a sea of crowd as the events began on the 20th and ended at on the 30th of May. Amazing how the country’s biggest sale event brought in a lot of atttention. Many shoppers were given the opportunity to purchase goods that could have probably earned them twice their pay check. Prices slashing down from twenty dollars to five dollars is what sale’s all about.
link: (http://promotingsuva.blogspot.com/2009/05/suva-on-sale-this-weekend.html)
But many of what people would call as the classy-shops also went on sale. Ironic how they define the word-SALE! My mom and I were strolling through town on the last day of the sale when we came across one particular shop that is best known for its line of clothing. On the window waswritten SALE in big and bold letters. So we decided to enter the so-called SALE shop. When we entered the shop in fact not so much of a surprise, we found clothes tha were still in prices ranging from 30 dollars to a shocking 90 dollars. I mean who buys clothes that can easily tear at the sleeve for 60 dollars! Maybe only the rich who draw their wealth at the expense and poverty of others.
Now when you wanna know the real definition of Sale go to New Zealand. I was watching the One News on Mai TV during christmas and I believe the name of the shopping mall was called K-Mart. Well, the price clothes and other materials were unbelievable. A 160 dollar party dress came down to shocking 30 dollars. Now that’s more like it! So why is it that businesses claim that they are sale when what they are really doing is ripping people off from their pockets. Jeepers talk about Misleading Advertising. Someone should report them to Consumer Council or PIB!

Pato all the way

You’ll see them walking down the streets, along the corridor and possibly in night clubs. These tom-dick-n-harry’s walking around barefoot with not a care in the world. Yep soon enough they might shock you with wearing a grass-skirt or something. Pato, as they call in Finglish is the in-thing now among teengers. One of ten are walking around the campus just dangling and flapping their bare foot against the grass, on the footpath and in the mud.
Put it this way, these fellas think that walking around barefoot could attract the opposite sex attention. Which could be true to a certain extent-if you were Dan Carter.
Each day as I pass the school library I notice a bloke or a lass walking around feet-naked. And in the most oddest sense-it actually is kinda cool and trendable. Imagine if everyone went pato. Think about it- the soles of our feet would be thick and you won’t be able to feel the pain if something poked your sensitive toes or something. Hey maybe we can all start firewalking and it wouldn’t be so much of a big thing to tourists who come every year just to witness the firewalking ceremony. Maybe we could even hold a competition or something!!! What I’m trying to say is pato is now in the fashion world-well not until it reaches Britney Spears or Lionel Ritchie or whoever’s famous for that matter. Who knows????Hmmm!!!!!!

Child Fashion Abuse

Hey you been to the shops lately? For those who haven’t well….you should try to get out of your comfort zone more often. I was walking with a friend the other day-window shopping. We were admiring the clothes that were displayed out in the hangers and the windows. What really brought drew my attention and frustration was the minitiature Kylie Minogue-Anna Niclole Smith type of fashion. These are short skirts, haltered neck, spaghetti tops and so much more. Is this really making money? Are parents really buying these clothes for their innocent little girls?
Whatever happened to the lovely pink and purple simple cute overrall? Why are clothing factories making these clothes in the first place anyway? Possibly left over material or something. Whatever it is it does not give them the excuse for clothe shops to sell these clothes. Don’t they know that this is the kind of thing that lead possible child molesters to put a cunning grin on their faces?
Ever watched Human Trafficking? There’s this scene where a ten year old girl is dressed up as a sixteen or seveteen year old. She is lured by an ally and then taken just meters away from the poor mum and dad. In fact the father had already told the wife to prevent the daughter from dressing up the way she is but as always the mum is one who likes to dolly up her daughter. So in the end the girl goes missing and the mum is left to bear the regret.
If you’re a mother-CAUTION- be careful, be smart and logical. Dress your child in accordance to her age. She doesn’t have to look like one of those Buunies from the Playboy Mansion.
Even in the mess of the global financial crisis, human trafficking has reached a turning point of unstoppable. Many women, young girls and boys are taken out of their will and traded as sex slaves. One of the reasons this is happening is because of the dress code of some. Therefore it is always advisable to watch what one wears-Hey prevention is better than cure!
link: http://sisyphe.org/article.php3?id_article=965

Second-hand outfits

Having a hard time choosing the great outfit but don’t have the money? Easy- go to the Second-Hand

Yea and no kidding. Its really amazing how these second hand shops can get clothes which are so off the hook and would have cost five pay checks if one had gone to Prouds or Tappoos.
Doce & Gabana, Giorgio Armani, Supre, Tiffany’s you name it! You can get these labelled clothes divide 10 times the actual price. And for what! Someone has just worn it a couple of times doesn’t mean that it’s lost its value- well maybe its scent but hey what the world and those fashion goers think about are what sort of labels you have on. So it wouldn’t hurt if you just bought something which someone threw in for charity. Put it this way-what’s one loss is another’s gain.
Hey think about your first impression when you make during an interview. Your looks and how you’re wearing yourself could sell and lend you a 5 figure salary.
Put it in another scenario-why go anywhere else when you can get all clothing under one store? They may be old and battered but whats the harm in using a sewing machine. For guys get into your Home Economics feminine side and ladies-c’mon I don’t even have to waste blog space on teaching you how to sew. Get your efficiency side and bring it to life. After all at the end of the day its not about how much you accumalated but how well you were able to make use of what’s in front you. You don’t have to be a Paris Hilton to look good. You can look great if you just used a bit of initiative.

It's cold but i'll take the risk

So i was walking back home from school just the other day and i happened to encounter a couple. I did not know them but they seemed to attract my attention, only because they were the only couple in my view. Okay, so the girl was average height about 5"4 and the guy was like 5"10. So this is me walking in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. It was pretty cool that day so i decided to use the former and latter to keep me warm. I was watching people-something that has just recently become a habit.

So the couple were right in my face. You know the guy had on a pair of pants and a t-shirt, but the girl-oh the poor girl. Imagine this, in Fiji and for us locals we all know that when it's like 30 degrees out there-well thats a bit cool for us. The weather can be harsh and there's always a 50 percent chance that it might rain. Again the girl-the poor girl was wearing what seemed like a spaghetti-summer-dress. You know the kind with the criss-cross at the back, and in the front it really outlines your cleaveage and all-oh and the dress was an angel white. She had this black thin tights knee-lenght but she looked COLD. Believe me i know because even the guy was folding his arms and tucking his hands under his pits.

Okay the girl was Cold. And what really confirmed my assumptions was that she admitted it hereself. While they were walking past me-or rather while we were walking past each ohter i heard her saying to the guy-i'm assuming that was the boyfriend-she muttered to the guy in an honest Indian Accent-'Aree yaar, I'm cold'. I couldn't help myself but laugh at her remark-well not letting them both aware of it.

So here's the thing-what's up with the idiom-'Dress to impress'. Why couldn't the poor girl just throw on a something a lot warmer instead of having to admit to the supposedly boyfriend that she was cold and allowing me the pleasure to eavesdrop and let me write about this in the end. Hey, lets be reasonable here, isn't it better to look aweful rather than catch cold or Swine Flu or what they have now termed as Influenza A H1N1? Which one of you would be sensible enough to choose the former and which one of you would choose the latter?

On a scale of 1 to 10, most fashion outgoing females (since they are the main victims in this case) would fall on 8. The number representing that they would go for fashion than comfort. This is now an evident perception with quite a handful of Pacific island women. And the number is still growing.

Whatever happened to preserving our identity and maintaining our integrity by covering our bodies? But this of course could be an argumentative point because history tells us that our great-great-bubu was walking around the village rara (grounds) in a just an above-the-knee grass skirt and going topless. But then again the pre-colonial period brought about many changes and some of these changes we have accepted and linked them with our culture. Which is where the issue of clothing and hiding our sacred bodies come in.

The western world has impacted our lives at great heights some of which we are not aware of. For instance, out of a Vogue issue-one sees the picture of say, Pamela Anderson, and her many times breast-implant bosom. She's wearing a low-cut spaghetti top and a mini denim skirt. She's looking FANTABULOUS. Hey if Anderson wee here in Fiji she'd probably rate what we locals call COLD as oven-hot. For you my fellow loyal and sane citizens-pliz listen to Mummy Nopa just this once-do the right thing and wear the right stuff where its convinient.

You can still be the prettiest and hunkiest bloke around if you cover your body especially if the weather is not really agreeing with you.

Bell-Bottoms

So let me take you on a retro tour. Ahhhh the 60's right through the 70's were the Days of Bell-bottoms and Afrodisiacs. Hey if you weren't wearing pants that were flarry at the knees right down, out on the streets or while washing your car-you would probably be called an outcast by your neighbours.

I mean come on people, these were days where even the most scandalous United States President-Richard Nixon was wearing b-bs and probably would have gone afro if it weren't for his position as the most powerful man alive (at that time of course); and if that was not enough, even the local Dailies deliverer would wear this ridiculous and yet intriguing pair of pants while on his bicylcle throwing papers on the path or in the bushes where the dog finds and buries in the ground in the backyard.

But I wouldn't know anything about the above of course except history has a way of repeating itself. I'm talking about back on the island. Now this is where the real flash-back's evident, the old ABBA, Eagles etc. wanna-be's you name it. You'll notice this-one thing that never ceases to amaze me is the time the oldies take to doll-up themselves. I mean Granny Queen Elizabeth II would probably sue bubu and tutu for taking more time to dress up than herself. As soon as they step out of their only-god-knows-what perfumed room, can you only guess that they probably had a week to think about what they were gonna wear that day.

Dressing for church becomes a great hassle for most of them. I once had this bubu who has gone to another dimension (God bless her soul) who one day went to church with a thigh-high dress. And i'm not talking about a knee-length dress-i'm talking about the want-to-turn heads-thigh-high costume (although at that time she didn't think so). Boy, you could only guess the amount of heads she was able to turn from the elders' seat and the village-gossipper.

But we were talking about bell-bottoms. Wow, i'll tell you this for reference but off-the-record as well. Ever watched the video-clip of Stayin' alive by the Bee Gees? Watch it then you'll get this. I once caught my tutu and this is only recently, wearing a pair of b-bs, holding a brush in his hand and staring into the mirror humming something through his nose. He had combed out his hair-which my bubu continuously maintained out of a pair of old-surgery scissors. I had just come out of the the rest room so i decided to peak into their room. As he reached the climax of his humming, i realised that he was singing an old number from the Bee Gees- Stayin' Alive. As he came to the chorus where Barry Gibb tenors 'Ah, ah ah ah.....' i realised that neither i nor the accessories and numerous tablet bottles on the dressing table were the audience, my bubu was all the while on the bed cheering my tutu on to reach the tenor voice as if his life depended on it. He was tapping to his imaginative beat, and the somewhat poor old, worn and torn out pants was swishing against his cuffs like the coconut leaves after the storm. You can imagine the excitement that merged inside me when my parents got home from work...hilarious!!! Talk of the century!!!

So lets come back to prospect. Yes if you look closely and observe the tutu's strolling in town you will notice that one out of ten is wearing that old flarry probably-older-than-i-am b-b's. And as surprising as it may sound, it actually suits them.

So now the world's fashion magazines are taking the 70's style in. The other day i was looking through one of Women's Weekly editions mag. and i happened upon the picture of Katie Holmes. Well low and behold-yep she was wearing a pair of b-b's and boy did she look ravishing. Even Hollywood's favourite teen rock band-The Jonas Brothers wear b-b's.

It's like the in-thing now!!. Not owning a pair of b-b's jeans could be a crime. Or maybe that was a little bit far too stretched. Only a fashion idealist and the Cosmopolitan Editor would only think that. But hey this is just how it is nowadays. The clubs are rocking with masses of people every weekend and you'll find some throwing on a halterd-neck top and a pair of this very comfortable, sylish slacks. Hey ask one of the girls who works for Jade or Joji's along the seafront in Suva and they'll tell that they love b-b's because it is comfortable and for-all-occassions outfit.

Thanks to the Just Jeans factory or whatever clothing line came up with the bell-bottoms style, we can now enjoy the 60's and 70's at present. Just hopefully our kids can write about this too andjust might earn a whole lot from it.