SENSE , RUNWAY AND SENSIBILITY ...^^

moolto sim _Axa party, originally uploaded by arialee miles.

What means sense of style?

I am simply a good average model, I am not a contest lover  and due to my private way of being I am too wild to be fully stylish , so for someone I could even be the less suitable person to talk about such this delicate question , but , notwithstanding , I have my clear ideas on it.

And as always I am going to talk about it, because too often I see some misunderstanding between sense of style and success and some major mistake between popularity and professional skills.

Sense of style is not easy to define but most of people immediately can distinguish who has well developed styling skills and who on the contrary lacks of them even if sometimes the difference is really small .

Like all the abstract, not definite concepts, to catch the full meaning of sense of style needs quite a mind effort.

I would define “sense of style” in its higher noble meaning, that quality which allows someone to be noticed for their elegance and class for the inner harmony irradiating from their person , the characteristic which allows to stand out in a crowd , without the people can explain rationally the reason their attention is captured .
Something like an intangible allure which surrounds that person like an invisible shine which hits directly the fantasy and the senses of the bystanders.

Those such blessed people could wear even very simple clothes but so well put together so underlined by an inimitable and unique shape a well chosen skin, perfectly appropriate hair, shoes and so exquisitely suitable accessories so that the person wouldn’t pass unnoticed . And yet people wouldn’t be able to explain why they notice, because of the inner invisible harmony leading the ensemble.

Everything so being part of the ensemble that every single item would seem made for the other like rings of the same chain .

Style in this meaning is even the skill of being able to give life and glamour to sometimes questionable clothes with unique details, chosen among many for their capability to attract the attention although never becoming excessive.

Because true style is never excess even when it portraits the excess itself.

Better said, sense of style is able to turn something that could be potentially excessive in a piece of pure elegance and in many cases in living art.

We all can see models ( and not only ) on runway but even in everyday life wearing daring avant garde outfits, incredible hair, hyperbolic accessories and excessive hats but most of the time we look at them with amazed admiration, looking at the grace and the poise with whom they portrait the otherwise inconceivable ....and at the same time we can point at once who has the style shine and who lacks of it.

In facts all of us (even not professional well trained eyes) can at once notice if the ensemble which is portrayed is harmonious, capturing, or on the contrary it is dangerously descending the slope of the excess and worse of the absurd.

In fact the very same creations, specially the most daring ones, can be extremely interesting and full of style , astonishing in their pure essence, absolutely haute couture or on the contrary almost disturbing , spoiled of every cultural meaning and reduced to a grotesque masquerade.

And here the good professional model responsibility, the well trained sense of style, the attention to the details are the requirements which prevent this last fateful eventuality .

In fact, sad but true, the different runway fate of these very same dresses is all a matter of the models’ good taste, attention commitment and sense of style in addition of course to the sense of the runway , intended like that mix of walk , presence and choice of appropriate poses .

A badly chosen detail, a poor or even worse cheap accessory , the lack of respect towards the balance in pairing the lines and shapes of a complex outfit , a not more than perfect editing, a shape out of proportions or even worse with gross or newbie features , the not measured tone of skin, the wrong colour of hair, to not talk of a bad chosen pose can determine the easy passage from the alluring haute couture to the plain average or worse, alas , to the ridiculous.




That’s why it is good and commendable ( and in this way must be understood and respected ) the effort of those agencies, or designers’ events organizations, to keep really high standards in models requirements and preserving themselves and their good reputation carefully not surrendering to the easy indiscriminate, opening their gates to the crowd of the new “models” that after few days of runway a somewhere beauty title and barely, if any, a quick school, think to know in depth how to master and tame a committing show.


Sad but true in my two years of running back and forth the catwalk I have seen more than one so called professional not being able to turn smooth , not being able to change their clothes technically and quickly, not adequate in their editing and with shapes and skins with more than one flaw.


I am not being snob nor mean here, and who knows me knows even I am neither snob nor mean, but only preserving the professionalism of the many serious model who take this career with the due commitment giving to it a lot of themselves and doing even some sacrifices and renounces.

Because I can sure you, it is quite different to work in a well chosen and high level environment where all is planned and checked twice in advance than in less careful ones where everything is let to the case , where models are not adequately instructed about the agency minimum runway criteria, where the production is not present with an attentive eye and the weight of its authoritativeness.

A well done show where the harmonic flowing of well trained models, able to face even the last minute unavoidable inconveniences, portraying impeccable well styled outfits and gracing the runway with their elegant and well chosen walks and poses is not only a joy for the designer, the audience and the production but is a source of pride for the models , at least for me it is , one of the best rewards this career can give.

But honestly I can say that the fierce competition in fashion environment , not only among models but even among the many fashion agencies, is raising the bar so that is brought in SL modelling an average good degree both among models and agencies, even reaching in some golden spots levels of excellence never seen before which easily cross the border of the live art performances .

These crisis times are difficult ones, but even times where the effort to professionally stand out and make the difference has brought to the scene a rare creativity, where luckily very few space is left to amateurs who can even have fast rises but that don’t last .

So back to sense of style , we can see some models walk with pride, pose with poise and fluently dominate the catwalk wearing clothes which scream mercy out loud ( it happens !) and other models that are literally eaten alive by otherwise majestic , beautiful creations of talented designer , killing themselves and the dress with a complete wrong styling.

And it is this last eventuality that serious academies and agencies should try to avoid insisting never enough about the importance of an hard, merciless and accurate work on oneself so that the complete mastery of technical aspects of the runway practice can allow to the model a more accurate work on her style and expressivity .

So in my not so humble opinion sense of style is a magic mix of many qualities, the uniqueness, the ability to find the right detail, the eye for the balance of shapes and lines, the good taste and the ability to always put together an agreeable outfit .

Sense of style in my vision is understatement and harmony, it is the inner class, it is the skill to create a dream allure around a simple pair of ripped jeans and it is, sometimes when the occasion is propitious, the courage to dare and explore with a foot in one owns culture and another in the realm of the fantasy .

This mix of qualities can be helped, cherished, refined with experience, even developed with hard work and practice but only if it is present at least at an embryonic stage since the beginning in the real individual before than in the SL model.

Sense of style can’t be created from nothing and main thing it can’t be created only in SL setting aside the cultural humus of the RL individual .

So if the real person behind the virtual model is not able to dress in RL , has not taste , creativity, sense of occasion , harmonic eye for colour and shades it will be very difficult that the pixel product will shine of its own light.

Because good taste and eye for harmony are a culture and like every kind of culture, they begin in our RL everyday life and only after develop in SL through the possibilities and the tools we have here to take care of them .

Obviously there are outstanding exceptions but they are exactly… exceptions.

Some rare people anyway are very good to pretend, although lacking of a well developed sense of style and in the awareness of that , with the guide of pre made outfits and following the latest newnesses on market , are able to stay in balance disguising personal lacks in expansive clothes.

That’s why in every good school the “freebie test” is always a good bank where the real sense style of the trainees is disclosed and tested .

But sometimes, for mysterious astral influences (and sometimes not so mysterious and not so astral…) someone lacking of sense of style thanks to this capability to disguise (even that is a skill after all ..) rise to popularity.

Pages and pages have been written in SL blogs about the equation professionalism and popularity in SL modelling scene and I don’t want add my two cents to it , mainly because being part myself of some contests , with alternate results, every thing I could say could sound hypocrite if not worse envious.

I have only to say that sometime the equation among popularity , professionalism and style is an equation that has its easy declination on the pageant’ stages but that can mortify and not make justice to the dozens of serious very skilled models who are committed but that prefer to work keeping and preserving their understatement.

I am not saying one choice is better than another ( I myself can’ t decide what side I want to be .. but that is a personal limit of mine I will have to deal with ^^ ), and I respect who has the cold blood to unceasingly bear with pageants and contests, I want just invite to not make easy equations, because if most of the time the aforementioned attributes ( popularity , sense of style , success and professionalism ) live together other times they don’t walk with the same step, and we can assist at some prodigious which make arise to the Top Models’ heaven some blessed lucky soul about whom is allowed to have some doubts . But we aren’t here to criticize anyone so lets go on :P

So we can say that sense of style is the natural skill to sparkle with harmony of moves, projecting all around a light , sparkling and glittering for the way one can compose their clothes , their accessories , their gaits and their attitude .

Now don’t laugh but even in a virtual world the way you move , the way you walk , the way you move eyes , the way you are able to catch the eyes, the way you find to stand out in a crowded casting can make the difference between a shining model ( I don’t like the word top model it is one of my many pet pevees ) and a honest runway employee.

In all our model classes we will hear teachers talking about uniqueness, well that won’t be the fruit of some well placed shopping of skins and hair, it will be only the consequence of a natural gift well developed through hard work and merciless practice .

The path towards our own uniqueness is a journey that never stops until we pursue this career, because in fashion world everything changes and evolves around us and we must be able to change with the world which changes.

Modelling schools teach us how to style an outfit , what poses is better to use and what is better to avoid , how to build and modify a model shape, how to select good quality hair and a flawless skin , but no school will teach us what is the right moment to make float a gown with a move , to make that little turn which captures an applause, to slightly shake the head to capture in that exact convergence of time and space the soul of the audience ... to tame the runway and the audience making them ours .

Yet that indefinite capability half charme and half spell that some of the models have to kidnap the soul and the imaginary of the audience is , in my opinion , the essence of the sense of style.

attenzione e nascondigli !

Mi piace certe volte prendermi alla larga , circumnavigare il corso dei miei pensieri soffermandomi .
Attendere ed osservare con pazienza , mentre il filo si tesse , autonomo .
Non scorderò chi sono nè dove vado . Mi raggomitolo nel mio pensiero e aspetto .
Il tempo all fine mi dà sempre ragione ...

PERSONAL RAMBLINGS

mystere, originally uploaded by arialee miles.

personal ramblings :)

This thought is about how to deal with our professional past and with the evaluation mistakes everyone more or less has done in past job experiences.

When the other day I was asked, all by sudden, why although the sudden and unforeseen way that one year ago they ended our cooperation , and moreover the fact that such a fact at the very end could bring me more damage than good consideration , I still keep in my curriculum some references to one of my former works with an organization that is frankly poorly considered in the fashion environment, seen almost as a synonymous of what not to do on a runway .

I thought a little about it and I put the same question to myself …” why the hell I do it? .. why I keep their references written there now that I am starting to be a well appreciated model and I have lots of other new and prestigious things to mention in my curriculum?
Am I so masochistic to the point , after such an hard work on myself I am doing to acquire a fine tuned professionalism , to expose myself , and my professional credibility to easy silly jokes about my past experiences?

I thought about it with an open and true soul , and the answer arose to my mind like an epiphany … I do it for my sense of honour I do it for loyalty .

Loyalty , not only and not mainly towards someone that anyhow and however it ended , at. my very .. very …very beginning, and with the professional tools they had , offered me a chance …

Loyalty first and foremost towards myself , my past experiences , my lived , the phases of my professional model path of growth , even and included my inexperience mistakes of evaluation about things, about this profession the way it needs to be approached and the related people who circulate around it .

Loyalty and respect towards my right to show myself true , without the need to disown pieces of my former experiences ( that would be anyway a very stupid move to do because everyone leave traces of their passage everywhere ), on the contrary admitting them and passing them openly under the lens of my acquired awareness to consider if and to what extend, such a past way of work has contributed to make of me a worse model or if it had not influence at all , or if even now that I can put everything in the right perspective , even that experience had brought something positive to my professional luggage contributing to make of me the one I am with my sensitiveness , my discipline and the way I face things .

Because what I am now comes from a sum of factors , and I can say without fear to be called liar that at the moment , several schools after and several different experiences in a wide range of fashion related fields , I can be defined a good level experienced model , even if someone, without being completely wrong, wrote somewhere a “not particularly shining one” .
( .. that in plain words means one that didn’t won any beauty or photo contest since now :P)

So , what I am now, the whole package of the “model Arialee”, included my reliability , my commitment , my hunger to learn always and from everyone , my humble determination in facing things , my true passion for the runway , my attention to the details , my styling skills , my experience that makes of me a quick problem solver, my accurate care about my professional training , my wish to help and mentor new models in my possibilities, ……. well all these traits of my professional portrait are the product of my whole past professional experience, the good and the bad parts , the more shining and the less shining organizations , without the need of lies and hidden pieces, without being exactly proud of everything but even without being particularly ashamed about anything .

Everyone is the product of one own past, and everything lie on us in progressive layers , and then when we bring in a work ( or in a social or love relation ) the whole of ourselves , we bring with us exactly what we are and what we have been . Something will need to be adjusted , something only fine tuned , something will be good as it is and something else will be even better , passing the expectations .

So lets keep high the right to be ourselves as we are without fear to be misrepresented by our past , of course always with the tension to improve and do better but never hiding anything of our former professional experiences ( unless the cooperation ended with a murder and we want avoid to be put in jail ..but that is another movie and we will not talk of that now :PPPP ^^).
That because the ones who should judges us only by prejudices, being influenced more by what we have been in past , than by what we really are now , maybe at the very last are not people worthy to work with. 

Namaste

*il burattinaio *

red dress, originally uploaded by arialee miles.

Sometimes I question myself about the extension and quality of our freedom . In those moment my delirium assumes its complete perfection and my ramblings become even more dissociate .
Here you have a product of my gallopping mental desease :PP

Il burattinaio

Lui manovra , lui sa , il burattinaio .
Tutte le pene che il mio stare al mondo
mi provoca , e l’angoscia di non essere quella che vorrebbe.

Lui mi tira, mi spinge mi seduce.
Di forme luccicanti mi riveste ,
mi fa essere bella, affascinante , mi fa essere quella che non sono.

Lui conosce la vita e sa i suoi passi ,
raramente si sbaglia o si confonde ,
la stessa sicurezza poi mi infonde anche se io sicura non lo sono.

Così passano i giorni sulle ore,
avvicinando il volto quasi annuso
lo scandirsi del ritmo che lui impone, la corsa verso il nulla e le ragioni.

Cosa fai lì nascosto dietro il vetro,
occhi grandi dilatati da una lente
osservi , tiri un filo , molli un poco, dirigendo quel che resta del mio arbitrio.

Fuggirò da questa gabbia, me lo dico,
aspettando con ansia l’occasione
poi rimando attaccata alla catena delle solite inespresse coazioni .

Lui le sa le cose, lui dirige,
i burattini stanno ad ascoltare
io li osservo e in loro vedo me , il mio specchio è dentro i loro gesti.

Si lo sono un burattino anch’ io
Sono nata da un gesto , da un capriccio
Gettata in questo mondo, sono sola a lottare mentre guarda.

Come insetto al microscopio
Lui mi studia aspettando un sospiro,
una reazione che giustifichi ancora un po’ la fune .

Mi rifletto nel sogno , mi dileguo
Mentre il sonno si stringe attorno a lui
Scappo in fretta in preda all’euforia mentre sogna tranquillo , lui non sa.

Corro , salto , mi fermo
Di assoluta libertà ormai ubriaca e vinta
Non ho legami , né padroni , non più fili che tirino di lato .

Di stordita contentezza,
Ingenua storditezza ignara ,
la sua lente è solo un po’ più in alto mentre il filo trasparente si dipana .

almost here !!

glamour style 2, originally uploaded by arialee miles.

It is lots of time that i don't post anything .
I am becoming lazy ..soon soon I will be back in myself . :)

THE BATTALION OF THE DEAD BUTTERFLIES ……

arialee sepia, originally uploaded by arialee miles.

We model are often very fragile souls, lovely and vain butterflies made to be admired, but sometimes to admire us better, they pierce us with a pin and put us in a frame so we are nothing more than died butterflies pinned in a box ; our vital essence has been drained away from some cannibal mysterious , inscrutable mechanism . And some victims are left behind .

How many people, often talented professional, we see quitting , or taking a “pause” or too stressed to continue modelling … Be sure stress is never for working too much , is always for working too little or for not being able to cope with the fact or the unavoidable frustration that despite our efforts to be at the best we are not considered enough.

Someone said once “ the power wears out the ones who doesn’t get it “. I can say in SL Fashion World the very same thing is transferable to the concept of popularity , too much popularity never stresses , is the lack of it that wears out .

I am not stating at all that popularity makes a good model, or even far helps to make a better model, I have my precise and personal ideas about it . And about what are the qualities which make a good model but …. As I said elsewhere time ago, “ popularity doesn’t make a “good “ professional model …. but definitely makes a working one..” .
So soon or later we all have to deal with this sometimes extraneous and someway, for some of us, disturbing concept of “ being popular “.

Let’s understand well on this point, I don’t consider myself neither detached nor superior , I like being popular as every model does and I have my good dose of daily frustration about it , because like every model I am narcissistic , otherwise I would have chosen to script closed in my virtual cave instead than waddling my ar..e back and forth on a catwalk :P

So in my opinion it is not “being popular” that is disturbing, is the fact that one “must” become popular in order to be a model who is called to work, at least at certain levels .

It is the imperativeness of the matter which is disturbing. Is being “forced “ to be popular that someway can counterfeit the natural rhythm of a career ( and of a mind ) .
Let’s say the truth, are very few , lets say ten , the models who can manage to work at high standards without go now and then under the “ forche caudine “ of some jury toothache .
And most of the time to win or to lose is not even the aim … the aim is being around , to make presence, ..make the name flow around .


Contests, pageants , finals continually try to build little stars, nano pixel divas , to consume in less than a season ( and it is only due to the inner mental sanity of most of the models that this perverse game has not even worst consequences ) .

Agencies and designers ( not all I must admit ) , pushed by this mechanism, like bees on the honey this way are always concentrated on the same 10 / 15 professionals, and strange enough this “collective crush” most of time is enough consistent but often lasts very few , creating expectations that often can’t be maintained. Consequently the frustrations and the dramas.

The best that a model can do to have a continuous fresh presence lasting in time , besides to stay updated , is not to burn herself . Like a video star she have to catch the good occasions for sure but try to not to be uber – present everywhere . Fashion like love likes to keep some mystery on the object of its passion. 

This same career , beautiful and rewarding , seems on the other side , made to feed our inner insecurities, as most of us (with very few happy and lucky blessed exceptions) spend half of our professional time dealing with rejections, wondering why we have been refused in this agency , eliminated in this contest or not chosen at that other casting ..and.. blah blah ..blah here and blah.. blah.. there , consuming time and energy in excruciating sessions of self analysis, thinking and struggling about if we have something wrong in ourselves, wondering where we have mistaken or worse thinking that the whole fashion world is against us. .

Wrong answer !! The fashion world is never AGAINST anybody, it simply most of time DOESN’T SEE somebody, fashion world ( considered like a two-headed and four handed beast )
never sin for commission , its sins are always sins of omission.

Fashion world never hates anyone, it is a too strong feeling for a so idle beast , it simply leaves you on a side without an apparent reason … …. Often wondering why.

And most of times there is not a rational understandable answer .. it simply happens, now and then , for long or short periods , it happens and it must be accepted like a collateral of this career. It should be part of our models professional training learning how to deal with that thing , how to keep ourselves strong and sane without surrender to some inner “abandon “ fear .

It is not a game, the whole matter must be handled with care, because behind the “pixel skinny divas that shake their tushes on the catwalk “ there are human beings with their inner world made of a million things sensitiveness and feelings , and where human beings are involved things must always be done carefully.

So to defend us better against this life drainer mechanism, to save our right to fly high and not be pinned we must become steel butterflies and iron flowers, developing the wisdom of a stoic philosopher and the patience of an old Tibetan monk ( only better dressed !)

We must put into gear “the zen mode on “, take part in everything without being touched by anything , being present and always reliable but someway detached , we have to put passion and commitment in what we do without put our own “whole life “ ( even if only the second ) in it .
We must develop alternative interests , to have alternative SL goals , and so when we don’t put all of us in it , when we ( metaphorically ) let the “beast” stew a bit in its own juice that is the time that things start to work right .

It is not easy, it is a damn trapeze job, sometimes it will seem you ‘re playing on a 3 circus rings, trying to please everyone without even please yourself … but it can be done I sure you , butterfly , it can be done . And it can be done damn well.

So girls never give up, put your best smile on and try again, and after you have tried one , two and three times ..well go home shower and eat to try the fourth ….the fifth …. 

And to close with a quote
Dadà ……. The wisdom pill of the day :


A style does not go out of style as long as it adapts itself to its period.
When there is an incompatibility between the style and a certain state of mind, it is never the style that triumphs. Coco Chanel

Rambling about a dress ..... eeekk

dress Azul
Hair Tukinowaguma LaSnob Cyber Gold


This was my outfit for MVW Live Audition ... I didn't pass and I dont complain .
I talked broadly about contests & judges tastes  elsewhere , it is normal sometimes win and sometimes lose.
The ones who were picked up were fantastic talented girls and I think judges had really an hard time deciding for the yes or the no.
Anyhow on the contrary of other times , when I always had the awareness of a dissonating detail, this month I wanted to show my outfit because I really loved it , I had great fun assembling it , fun modelling it at the audition and even more fun taking these pictures . And after all fun is what really matters , at the core it is all about fun . There is not bigger rewards that the joy of being aware to have built a good product . And in this case my product was me . :P
No worries if the box stayed over the shelves and none bought it , its lightening eccellence doesn't depend about the tastes of the buyers , I will never sindacate that , it is part of the game I deecided to play.
But hey it speaks for itself . I loved it and I loved to love me . What a narcisistic brat LOL !!!
Wow I was really proud of myself this time , and I continue to be absolutely content of what I did .
Others had different opinions , I fully respect them, I even understand their reasons if I think about them from an outer perspective , taking in count all the pros and cons, but acting in a way that not mirrors myself just to obtain something has never been in my way of being , I am what you see  ..... and  I can't stop to say " you rock girl " to myself !!! You did a great work be happy simply with that :)
Our value is the value we attribute to our actions and decisions , the self esteem is someting that is built layer over layer with an attentive and merciless eye on our acts; we have to live in a social world so we have to adapt to some convention but never the collective imaginary has to prevail over our true self .
As I said last night talking somewhere ...to win is nice ..but to lose is not a tragedy , and mainly is not the ruler with whom we have to size ourselves .
But now stop rambling about a dress

here a fun quote that I loved

I'm not that interested in fashion... When someone says that lime-green is the new black for this season, you just want to tell them to get a life.


Bruce Oldfield (English Fashion designer. b.1950)


eheheheh I share the feeling fully >LOL
yeap I am a living contraddiction but damn it ... I do love it !!

stop for now :P