So even though I said I'll be away for awhile, I just had to wish BG happy birthday with our traditional birthday post!
First off, a must-have for this season -booties! This lovely pair is by Christian Louboutin (thus obviously only possible for me to send her a pair via a blog post!) Booties are a bit last season and the new twist for the season are the peep-toe booties. But since we're both uncomfortable with peep-toe boots (imagine if it snowed,) this pair would be great!
As BG mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, she's been wanting a white coat. This coat by Mackage Elle is so cute and classic!
The Tudor Silk Dress was the first thing that caught our eye this season at FCUK. We love the folded bits at the top and the way the longer strips would move with the dress (we imagine.) This would be perfect for so many events -just think!
BG's been meaning to get a pair JBrand's Low Rise Cigarette Leg Jeans for awhile. We've heard great things about it and they look perfect to tuck into boots.
And a pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs boots to go with the skinny jeans.
A pair of heels, again by Christian Louboutin (-can't resist!) They look painful to wear, but fierce!
BG is constantly looking into which eye cream to buy next. Dr. Brandt's Lineless Eye Cream sounds good on the Sephora website (as everything does,) but the reviews over at MUA haven't been great. Has anyone tried it? Leave a comment!
Marc by Marc Jacobs had a similar looking dress in gold last year -remember, the one Blair wore in the Thanksgiving episode! Since it turned out to be so popular, the people over at Marc must have realised what a sellable merchandise this style is and made another one this season! Make sure to at least try it on this season, BG! (Although I am worried that it would make one look old -not everyone can carry it off as fabulously as Blair did!)
I would, of course, include a bag from our favourite accessories brand, Miu Miu. Even though I know BG is not into vintage styles, this bag looks very comfortable to carry around and the size looks just right.
BG never gets enough of eye shadow palettes so here's another one. But I don't think she's got a black and white one yet so here's one by Laura Mercier.
The Sprinkles Cupcake Tower is SO cute! It's such a brilliant alternative to the typical birthday cake (though I'm guessing way more expensive.) Make a wish and blow out your candles BG -happy birthday!
This week has been a relatively uneventful week for the economy. Not so much for the markets though- that was more of a roller coaster ride. Over the weekend, Britain and its EU counterparts announced a bailout plan to directly recapitalize banks in exchange for stakes. UBS has already done that with a 6 billion franc injection from the Swiss government in exchange for a 10% stake and the unloading of 60billion in toxic debts. The market responded positively and bounced back up.
On Tuesday the US government followed suit and announced that they were going to spend $250 billion to recapitalize banks, with $125 billion going into 9 major US banks (whether they want/need it or not..or so rumor has it). This directly pumps liquidity into the market and takes effect almost immediately to "unfreeze" the market, and indeed the market seems to be thawing. Banks are lending to each other again at least (also helps with the government acting temporarily as the insurer like the FDIC does for depositors). This will save many businesses who rely on borrowing to operate. So why didn't Paulson and Bernanke come up with this before? I'm sure they did. Probably because back then (has it only been 3 weeks?), with the public being so against the bailout of "Wall Street" such a plan would not have gone by Congress really well....... I suppose now it is ok since Britain and EU have announced it and it proved to be positively recieved. Just like in fashion, where the European runway leads, the New York runway follows.
Of course, this capital injection does not come freely. Not only do banks have to give the government preferred shares, but they will be more heavily regulated and they'll have to limit their bonuses and "golden parachute" compensations. Effectively, banks are becoming part nationalize (and to think Thatcher had to privatize sectors in her days to boost the economy- now we're going the other way and nationalizing everything). JP Morgan has already announced a 30-40% slash in bonuses this year (incidentally their quarterly report just came out and they had a 84% drop in profit- better less than none or negative!). Rumor also has it that GS is dividing their employees into four classes. The top percentile gets cash bonuses, the third percentile get stock compensation, the second percentile gets nothing and the last percentile gets fired! That's harsh! Sounds like it is no longer quite so lucrative to be a banker. While this plan temporary stops the bleeding, it doesn't address the heart of the issue though. The auction plan is still underway.
On Wednesday, the market plunged another 700 pts again on fears of a looming recession (aren't we already in one?). Job losses are up and it is not limited to the finance sector. And it's been predicted that holiday spending increased the least since many years ago this year. On Thursday, oil prices also dropped to $70, the lowest in a year! Hopefully this means more sales and lower commodity prices for us. The DOW finished off over 4% higher for the week though. Maybe more people are heeding Buffet's (who claims that for the first time he'll be buying American equities with his own account) words and snapping up "bargain" classic buys in the market. Smart shoppers.
Combine floral with steel, and chiffon with leather; people will tell you it's been done before and it will be done again. In my opinion, keep it going.
My own style doesn’t exactly incorporate the idea of “girly," however, I do develop the occasional crave to buy everything in powder pink. I love glitter and glam, but it's even better when you mix in some grunge, a little gaudyness (think Sonia Rykiel jewel studded bags), and a lot of black . Once you do that, you'll arrive at the whereabouts of what I'm drawn to.
I find that Balmain creates this fascinating balance between something macho but ever so complimenting to the female figure. Oh! Those studded heels!
And after seeing this magazine spread in Numéro, shot by Camilla Akrans, I want to dress like this everyday. So bring on the sparkles and the studs. I'd love to hear all about your style, so let me know!
This doesn't always come up, but one of the most interesting games within the game in football are the splits between the offensive linemen. Some teams use a lot of wide splits, with as much as three to even six feet between linemen, while others keep it closer to roughly a foot, or even toe-to-toe. But like everything else in football, what kind of splits you take is informed both by what the defense does and what your philosophy is.
To understand why splits matter, you need to understand how defensive fronts align. Typically, most defenses are taught to align on the basis of where the offensive guys align, which makes sense because those defenders are trying to get through or around the blockers to get to the running back or quarterback. So defensive linemen and linebackers were told from the earliest days of football to align "on the inside eye of the guard," "heads up the center," or "on the outside eye of the tackle." The linebackers had similar instructions, though they aligned behind the offensive line. Over time, defenses got better at mixing up these alignments, even before the snap. We've all seen linemen shift from the outside eye of the guard to the gap between the guard and center, or simply align late. All this is designed to confuse blocking schemes.
So as offenses became more complex, it became necessary to give linemen rules that would allow the run play to be blocked no matter what games the defense played, and to do that you needed a nomenclature that could be communicated via playbook as well as on the sideline (or at the line) in the heat of a game. This system became known as the assignment of defensive "techniques" to each defensive player. The credit for it is typically given to Alabama's legendary coach Bear Bryant, though he gives much of the credit to Bum Phillips. Below is an example of the numbering system.
Note that this is not the same as "hole numbering," because it is about where the defender aligns not where the run is designed to go. Although it looks a bit confusing, this system is used at literally every level of football, from pee wee football to the NFL. Below is another diagram with slightly different nomenclature, though it also specifies the "gaps." (Hat tip to the USC Trojan Football Analysis site for the image.)
So now that we know that defenses align based on where the offense aligns, and we know that offenses identify defenses based on the alignment, we can discuss splits. It's a bit of an oversimplification, but the choice is basically between tight or wide splits. I begin with tight splits.
Tight Splits
Tight splits are the most common. In fact, most people probably don't think of them as tight, but merely notice when they see "wide splits." Below is an example of a typical alignment.
The advantage of tight splits are easy to see: Linemen are close to each other so you can get good teamwork between them; there are few or at least narrow gaps between them; and the line is constricted to keep defenders away from outside runs and quick outside throws.
The teamwork part cannot be underemphasized. One reason that tight splits are so common is because zone running and slide protection is so popular today. Zone running requires linemen to step in a direction, double-team guys in their area, and then one of them works up to block the linebacker. If the linemen are too far apart, you cannot get a good double-team, and the play won't go. For slide protection, linemen slide into a gap, and work together to create a fence for the QB. Any unblocked rushers must come from the outside, as the priority is to prevent a blitzer or linemen up the middle.
The point about gaps is similar. But the point about constricting the line for outside plays is underemphasized. Most teams, when they want to run an outside option play or a sweep of some kind, will have their line condense in by cutting their splits. That way a fast runner can get outside quickly.
Wide Splits
Wide splits are more interesting. Traditionally, the teams with the widest splits were option running teams. That might sound surprising, but the reason was is that they used a lot of man blocking rules (i.e. block your man, rather than zone an area). More importantly though, by splitting out, because the defense aligned on the basis of where the offensive linemen were, the guy the QB was reading was split out. So if on the triple option you wanted your QB to first read the defensive tackle ("T") and then the defensive end ("E"), you'd split your linemen out to give him more time to make each successive read. (Hat tip: Hugh Wyatt)
You also simply created wide running lanes inside by having your linemen split out so wide. If you watched the old Nebraska teams, while they didn't take enormous splits, they did have wide ones for both their inside option plays and inside man blocking runs.
But there's a new trend for wide splits, and that's with air-it-out passing teams like Texas Tech. Traditionally passing teams took very narrow splits to stop inside penetration, Texas Tech takes exceptionally large splits. Their rationale is a few-fold: (a) make the pass rushers come from farther away and enlarge the pocket, (b) open up throwing lanes for the quarterback, and (c) because they throw so much, all they need is a block or two to have an effective draw play -- the defensive ends aren't even really a factor. They can do this because they are almost exclusively a "man" pass protection team, just as the old Lavell Edwards BYU offenses were. (Indeed, Mike Leach's offense is a direct descendent from BYU's offense, he spent time there as an assistant, and many of his other coaches had experience at BYU as players or coaches when Edwards and Norm Chow were there.)
The obvious concerns are that if one guy gets beat in pass protection then there is no help, and also that there are wide gaps for linebackers to shoot through. For the latter, Tech feels like they can hurt that in other ways, through quick passes, screens, outside run plays, and traps. And they also feel that they can simply teach their linemen to be smart and reactive, and still stop that kind of penetration.
For the former problem though, the answer is simply that they have to have good blockers. They freely admit that they put their linemen one on one a great deal of the time, but their philosophy is that if someone gets to the quarterback, everyone knows who got beat. More and more teams have been adopting this strategy.
As a side note, I observe that Leach went to this trend after he got away from having a two-back formation as his primary one for passing downs. With a two-back offense you can stop a lot of overload passing threats to either side, but with a one-back formation -- Leach's current primary version -- the wide splits were necessary to take those extra rushers out of the play. For more on all this, see my old article here. And you can get a flavor for what Texas Tech does in the video below:
Conclusion
So in sum, the choice of what splits a team uses will vary by play. Some will rely on teamwork and overwhelming force to overpower the defense, others will play games with varying them to set up the play they have called, and others, like Texas Tech, build it into their philosophy. As a final thought, many of you might think: Hey, if you always go tight splits for outside runs and wide for inside runs, won't the defense catch on? The response is the same one Bill Walsh would give when he heard this concern: If you have built a tendency (like running inside whenever you go wide splits), you simply self-scout, figure that out, and then confuse the defense by breaking your own tendency. Some of his biggest plays came when he broke his own tendencies.
So some of you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in the past two weeks. The truth is, we just graduated from University this July and the demands of the real world is taking its toll on us.
Moving forward, BG has decided to continue blogging while I have decided to take a break. Obviously I love I am Fashion (since I have blogged for almost 4 years,) but there comes a point where I feel that I should focus on other aspects of my life. Hence, I will be taking a break from the blog. It has been fun to share my thoughts on girly stuff with you all and hear what you've got to say about it as well. Hopefully I will be back soon!
In the mean time, BG will be blogging as usual and will be temporarily joint by E, who we've known since high school and is now based in San Francisco.
I am like 2 weeks too late, but it would be a great shame for me to skip over the Chloe collection, a brand which I'll always have a soft spot for. It would also be a shame to miss this collection, because this is Hannah MacGibbon's first collection at the helm of Chloe. Mr.Toledo finally gave the boot to Paulo Melim Andersson, who's aesthetics was clearly at odds with the classic Chloe girl. I shudder thinking about the last collection. Fortunately for us, MacGibbons seems to have a much better grasp of what Chloe is supposed to be about- and she should, having spent five years working at Chloe under Phoebe!A few things that stood out, that MacGibbon brought to the table. First, there is this very interestingly structured top design (left). I'm not sure how practical it is, but it is definitely cute, girly and innovative.
Then there were the scallop-edges everywhere (right). Not too sure how I feel about them though. They're feminine and very clever in that memorable way- next season when I see scallop-edged clothing, I'd definitely think of Chloe. On the other hand though, the scallop-edges around the shoulders and sleeves, kind of makes the model look as if they've been pinned up to an invisible wall. I much prefer the scallop-edges (or "dinosaur scales") at the Christopher Kane runway. These are refreshing, innovative but still very flattering and pretty at the same time. Back on the Chloe runway, I am finally seeing the Chloe girl. That relaxed and effortlessly chic girl on the streets. Personally, I am loving the richly colored, silky evening wear. It is evening but not overly formal- perfect for a fun night out. Very girl and definitely very youthful...maybe even a bit too youthful, what with the fluttering sleeves and poofy skirts (right). Nevertheless, I definitely see many starlets wearing it in the season to come. Lastly, let's not forget the shoes. I love how it is so simple and wearable-looking- which means I can potentially wear something similar next season! The shoes on other runways are so sky high that I trip even imagining myself in them!
Hi Guys & Dolls, I'm the new guest blogger on I AM FASHION. I'm extra excited to be given the opportunity to post on such a lovely blog, because I have been following it forever! Much love to BG & HG, you two are wonderful. My blog is over here, and I hope you enjoy my posts xoxox, E.
I used to not care about my underwear. No one saw it, so what's the big deal? I just didn't get it.
I get it now. All thanks to a trip to Italy, where women take looking good seriously, no matter what clothing article you're talking about. During my time there, I found myself getting hustled into Intimissimi by my mum. It was like Italy's version of Victoria's Secret, except it was beautiful, relaxed, and not eye blindingly pink. It was there where I found myself surrounded by dainty things of lace, satin, and ribbon.
I am now totally obsessed with lingerie in general. Slips, camisoles, etc, you name it, I wish I had it all. And while my wallet doesn't stretch to the lengths of La Perla, no one ever said I couldn't look.
And who cares if no one sees it, it makes me feel glamorous. And to have a drawer filled with pretty little things to pick from each day? I don't have a problem with that.
First off, a must-have for this season -booties! This lovely pair is by Christian Louboutin (thus obviously only possible for me to send her a pair via a blog post!) Booties are a bit last season and the new twist for the season are the peep-toe booties. But since we're both uncomfortable with peep-toe boots (imagine if it snowed,) this pair would be great! 
As BG mentioned in a post a few weeks ago, she's been wanting a white coat. This coat by Mackage Elle is so cute and classic! 
The Tudor Silk Dress was the first thing that caught our eye this season at FCUK. We love the folded bits at the top and the way the longer strips would move with the dress (we imagine.) This would be perfect for so many events -just think! 
BG's been meaning to get a pair JBrand's Low Rise Cigarette Leg Jeans for awhile. We've heard great things about it and they look perfect to tuck into boots.
And a pair of Marc by Marc Jacobs boots to go with the skinny jeans. 
A pair of heels, again by Christian Louboutin (-can't resist!) They look painful to wear, but fierce! 
BG is constantly looking into which eye cream to buy next. Dr. Brandt's Lineless Eye Cream sounds good on the Sephora website (as everything does,) but the reviews over at MUA haven't been great. Has anyone tried it? Leave a comment! 
Marc by Marc Jacobs had a similar looking dress in gold last year -remember, the one Blair wore in the Thanksgiving episode! Since it turned out to be so popular, the people over at Marc must have realised what a sellable merchandise this style is and made another one this season! Make sure to at least try it on this season, BG! (Although I am worried that it would make one look old -not everyone can carry it off as fabulously as Blair did!)
I would, of course, include a bag from our favourite accessories brand, Miu Miu. Even though I know BG is not into vintage styles, this bag looks very comfortable to carry around and the size looks just right.
BG never gets enough of eye shadow palettes so here's another one. But I don't think she's got a black and white one yet so here's one by Laura Mercier. 
The Sprinkles Cupcake Tower is SO cute! It's such a brilliant alternative to the typical birthday cake (though I'm guessing way more expensive.) Make a wish and blow out your candles BG -happy birthday! 
