LS MINI MAG: --------------------------------SPRING CHIC IN THIS ISSUE
Cover story by photographer Shweta Walavalkar
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COVER STORY:
22
CLEAN CUT:
28
FACE FORWARD:
34
BARE ESSENTIALS:
36
LIFE IN THE U.K.:
17 pages of spring looks from the mind of photographer Shweta Walavalkar
Evon of Armoire clothing talks with us about her spring 2011 design process Steven D. Hill brings “ArtisteColor” to our pages
Sareta helps you find that perfect skin moisturizer
A look into the life of an American girl overseas by our own Karen Knight
Bonjour! Spring has sprung, and so has another mini issue of LSMAG. I am sure most of you are already wearing your sandals and have some of the season’s hottest colors in wardrobe. Pantone’s color of the year Honeysuckle is a delicious vibrant fuchsia, which can lift those spirits from the humdrum of the winter blues. For our cover we feature the work of Shweta Walavalkar , a photographer from India. Shweta graduated from Bombay based art School and her work has been featured in a variety of fashion publications. Working as a freelance photographer has given Shweta international recognition and now in the States in LS Mag.
SPRING MINI MAG cover by Shweta Walavalkar Models: Danielle Bowen (Purple Model Management) and Carol Humtsoe Introduction by Isha Mantry Styling by Isha Mantry and Parul Das Hair by Zing (Zido Salon) Make-up by Zahabia Lacewalla (Zido Salon) Post Production and retouching by Shweta Walavalkar
In closing I wanted to send out a big congratulation to our photographer Steven D. Hill on the launching of his new makeup line Artiste Color. This vibrant make-up line is a great addition to any make-up bag for Spring and Summer, check out his interview in this issue. - Angela Clay, Editor in Chief
LS MAG Angela Clay EDITOR IN CHIEF CREATIVE DIRECTOR
Joseph Young FASHION EDITOR
Arushi Khosla FASHION EDITOR
Alexis J.
BEAUTY EDITOR
Sareta Gabriel EDITOR AT LARGE
Steven D. Hill CONTRIBUTORS
Karen Knight ByronGeorge Niki Marshall Shweta Walavalkar
Photos and make-up by Steven D. Hill
Photos by Shweta Walavalkar Models: Danielle Bowen (Purple Model Management) and Carol Humtsoe Introduction by Isha Mantry Styling by Isha Mantry and Parul Das Hair by Zing (Zido Salon) Make-up by Zahabia Lacewalla (Zido Salon) Post Production and retouching by Shweta Walavalkar
| SPOTLIGHT |
CLEAN CUT [ BY ANGELA CLAY ] [ PHOTOS BY ARMOIRE ] Fashion Designer Evon Tan has been inspired to build her fashion career based on life experiences and her love for beauty. Evon’s fashion business under the name of Armoire has a stellar Spring 2011 collection. The strong points from her collection, is the minimalist trend that embodies many of her pieces. Armoire’s Spring 2011 collection is not about busy vibrant prints and complicated patterns. The design of this collection has clean cuts that give each piece a more versatile look. Let’s take a look behind the scenes.
T
ell me a little about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your educational background? What are your general professional and nonprofessional interests? I’m Evon from Malaysia, who have spent some quality years in Melbourne Australia studying Bachelors in Chemical Engineering. My bachelor’s degree developed my inert need for structure and consistency. My love for designs My love for designs were cultivated were cultivated since I was since I was young young but never but never truly truly bloomed bloomed until until I entered I entered an an established established garment garment manufacturer manufacturer and exporter Evon after returning to Malaysia. There, I learned many great skills a fashion designer would be entailed to know at the front line. My curiosity and love for beauty led me to study fashion designing on
my own free time. Especially after my interest manifested, when I was travelling around Europe, where fashion and style is infused into everyday life. Fascinated by the beauty of traveling, the beauty of the fleeting clouds and the mere sight of passing strangers; I take photographs with my handy iphone. What does fashion mean to you? Fashion means eternal style – an expression of personal imagination speaking in the form of fabric which translates to different times. What is the driving force behind your designs? I wanted to engineer the perfect dress for modern ladies of today who are able to wear their look to work and all the way after - for a corporate dinner or a cocktail with her girlfriends. Every Armoire design is about providing confidence and embracing the comfort fit and versatility. I was intrigued by the perfect fold of the origami swan; by infusing the collection with a range of structured, flow and streamlined pattern and
| SPOTLIGHT |
adding along with block color such as Honey Suckle, Jade Green, Coral, Grey and Black. I have wrapped the collection with the punch I’m looking for. What do you believe makes a quality article of clothing? I believe fabric, workmanship and fit is the perfect marriage that makes a quality article of clothing. Do you consider yourself an artist, or something else? A little, mostly I consider myself more of an engineer. What matters to you most as a fashion designer? That the world sees how important the depth in my designs translates from visualization to great fit. What’s your favorite part about conceptualizing a design? When my designs satisfy and appeal to the audience I am speaking to. Springs fashion trends are… Fun fabulous bold color, sexy low back and stream lined body lines.
Get more Armoire at: armoireapparel.com
FF
| BEAUTY |
E C A
ORW ARD
[ BY MASOOM RAJESH MINAWALA ] [ PHOTOS BY STEVEN D. HILL]
Our beloved Steven D. Hill is back and doing what he does best - make-up that is. So it seems only natural that the man of many faces would put out a line of his own face shadow for the new season called “ArtisteColor”. With raw beauty and powerful hues behind it, Steven’s new line of make-up is on going to be on the list of any fashion insider.
Photographer, Graphic artist, Make up artist, how did it happen? I started Graphic designing when I was 14, in my freshman year. It was something I did for fun as a teenager until I went on to working in the field in 2006, when I finished high school. By this time I had taken my classes in interactive media, decided to put all of this together and that’s when I branched into photography. It was a choice I made because I felt I could express myself more. I believe that the art of make up was already within me, but I actually picked it up from my mother. So, in the beginning of 2007, I went for it. Since then I have been doing make up and now I’m just a visual guru (I must say.) The use of bold colors is very prominent in your work. Could you tell us why? Color is photography. I don’t mean to put black and white on the back burner, but COLOR is our way of life. The colors are present, but my choice of bold colors is like telling the story twice : LIFE is full of color but why not bring color to LIFE! All of the bold colors are added during postproduction
because the actual photograph color doesn’t come in that form. Your launching a make-up label, how did the idea come up for you intially? I’ve known Amber Rose for about two years now. She’s a Licensed Esthetician through the state of California, along with being the owner of Spe3ctrum Cosmetics. Spectrum Cosmetics is a line of cosmetics that supports Autism Research and Education.
(LEFT) THE ARTIST STEVEN D. HILL DEBUTS HIS OWN LINE OF MAKE-UP THIS MONTH. (ABOVE) LOOKS FROM ARTISTECOLOR, STEVEN’S NEW MAKE-UP LINE.
She proposed the idea to me the beginning of January 2011. She stated that she wanted to give artists the opportunity to create a line that’s inspired by them. Hence I created my line sheet, sent all my information to her and she started the process. I have 18 colors, 16 actual eye shadows, one pigment that’s a mix between a matte black, lime green shimmer, 5 powder blushes, and 10 Lip Glaze. How do you think your make-up label is going to be different from others? There are so many ways that my make-up line is going to be different from others. I offer some good colors that are matte. Not too many
labels offer Matte Shadows in colors that people would actually love to use. What is the most exciting part about being a make-up artist? Being able to transform. I love the power of transformation. Where do you see yourself professionally in 10 years? I don’t think about tomorrow, I live for today. All I know is I would love to be SUCCESSFUL! Where does your inspiration come from? Sometimes I’m never inspired by anything but most of the time it comes from the person or the energy in the room at the time of the shoot. It’s said that you’re the missing link between the past and the present - that you’ve managed to create work that sits in neither realm. How do you manage to bring this? This question is something that was already put together from a pervious interview and this is what the writer came up with based on my answer. How did you come up with the name ArtisteColor? Well I am an Artist that loves Color, so there you have it -ARTISTECOLOR… Describe your make-up line in 3 words. Bold, Playful, Colorful What audience specifically are you looking to target with ArtisteColor? I didn’t set it to be for a certain audience. I believe this label is for whoever is interested. Get more Steven at: hedidmyface.com You can buy his line at: artistecolor.com
| BEAUTY |
l e i r b a G a t e r Sa MAKE-UP ARTIST
OGSPOT.COM
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TOP TIP! Drinking water, eating plenty of fruit and veggies and getting at least 8 hours sleep will help maintain beautiful glowing skin all of spring!
| VIEW |
Soft Boiled T [ BY KAREN KNIGHT]
oday, I was talking to a couple of work mates about the crazy things we all did when we were small and ignorant of our pain thresholds. My colleague, Jack, described how he somehow got himself wedged inside the gaps of an ornate stool. My husband, Andy, has a similar story about getting his head stuck between railing bars at a train station. He also, as a toddler, spent a good ten to fifteen minutes jumping head-first from the third or fourth step of the staircase in his childhood home and banging his forehead on the wall at the bottom of the stairs until his parents, wondering what all the racket was, found him resembling Dr. Galen from Planet of the Apes. “What were you thinking?!” I howled, laughing and holding my sides. What were we all thinking, must be the larger question. It made me reflect on a childhood of experiences that would never be visited upon the youth of today. As much as I hate how dated it makes me sound, I am quite sure that parents didn’t used to care as much about whether their children survived to make ill-informed financial decisions or not. And though we have never broken any bones, my younger sister and I have had our share of dare-devil moments. I list them here as proof that I survived childhood as opposed to having lived through it.
KAREN KNIGHT
As children, my sister, Shari and I were often left in the care of our Philippino grandmother, who, from what I remember, was always old. Tiny, old and never able to quite keep up with our boisterous enthusiasm for adventure, Mamang chided, coaxed and pleaded with us to take our afternoon naps and, in her words, “be estill.” We were horrible children who didn’t mind until we were threatened with our father and the occasional “bitting.” “I will bit you,” she’d say and we giggled at her pronunciation despite the danger of the physical harm she promised. We’d be in hysterics if we were lucky enough to get her to use the word ‘beach.’ Poor Mamang. It was Mamang’s job to feed, corral and keep us from breaking the house, which we attempted on a regular basis. There was the time we took turns swinging gaily from the clothes bar in our bedroom closet. It was Shari’s go when the whole bar ripped from the wall and she landed like a cartoon at the bottom of the closet with the
bar and all the clothes that hung on it piled on top of her. As old as she was, Mamang was fast. She raced up the stairs and was in our room screaming “Hala!” as I looked dopily back and forth from her to my sister. I should have hidden under the bed. As she would repeat the story over the years and up until fairly close to her death at ninety-nine a couple of years ago, it always ended with the proud recollection, “I bit you!” And the memory left us unable, for once, to make fun of her accent. The care of our paternal grandparents proved to be just as much adventure sport as living under the rule of Mamang. Grandma and Grandpa lived on the farm in Richmond County, VA where my dad and his four siblings grew up. According to my dad, we were spoiled and had no idea what hardship was. Our existence was Easy Street compared to the back breaking, child labor he and his brothers and sisters were subjected to. Up before dawn to feed the chickens, slop the hogs and whatever else seemed filthy and thankless before it was off to a full day at school. Summertime offered little respite as they usually spent the days bent over a field of one crop or another, picking, weeding, planting . . . you name it. It was a world I couldn’t imagine; something ripped from that movie with Sally Field and Danny Glover. My dad and his siblings thought our characters would be strengthened by a week or two spent “back home.” But, by the time we started spending a portion of our summers on the farm, our grandparents’ hands were tied by child labor laws, so we passed the time complaining about the lack of air-conditioning and wind on the few thousand acres of dusty farm, marking mosquito bites with calamine lotion and making an occasional foray into the life and workings of the farm for unsupervised games of our own invention. There were around ten of us grandkids stuck in what we considered a barren wasteland, with
grandparents who didn’t really understand the concept of play. Boredom fueled a lot of our ideas. Shari actually attempted to mount a confused pig like a toy horse. We spent one afternoon swimming through a shed filled with feed grain, somehow escaping suffocation only to be riddled with angry little bumps from whatever country bugs made their home in feed grain. We constructed a see-saw with a board so long it left whoever was on the lifted end of the game dangling at least ten feet in the air. We played Hide-and-Seek in the cornfields, where my sense of direction could have had me stranded until helicopters were called to lift me out. A tried and true favorite was “Tempt the Turkey Buzzards.” Portions of the two-hour drive to the farm from our home in Virginia Beach were spent spotting the vultures circling in the air; a sure sign they had sighted a weakened or dead creature to feast on. Our father told us that they went for the eyes first to ensure that any fight left in an animal was a blind one. It gave me the heebies, but didn’t stop me from lying on the tarmac drive of our greatuncle’s home (down the road from our grandparents) after a splash in the pool and waiting with my sister and cousins for the harbingers of death to come close. We’d watch one speck begin to circle and it would soon be joined by similar specks, growing as they got closer and closer . . . to our eyes. The game inevitably ended with us waving our arms and shrieking as we ran around in dizzy circles to let the carrion lovers know that we were indeed alive and able to defend our sight and flesh. And this is just a glimpse of the ways we endangered our lives on what seemed like a daily basis. This is not a cry for less supervision; to hearken back to a time when kids were made of stronger stuff because they weren’t protected from themselves. Watch your children. Look for them when they’ve gone quiet. Keep them on those leads some criticize as inhumane. Kids are not fully cooked humans. Revisit this story, lest you forget.
Follow Karen’s blog: howcouldanyoneeverknow.blogspot.com