Raamenchan

This is my personal blog! Now that I’m away from home I figured this would be the best way to keep people updated with what I’m doing from day to day.

I have another blog at stylexplained.com that’s dedicated to the stylist work I do. The goal of that website is to explain style and fashion in a way that’s easy to understand for anyone who wants to learn! You can have a look at the About page there to learn more about how I decided to become a stylist.

And if you’d like to find me elsewhere, here are my social networking sites:

Twitter   /   Facebook   /   MySpace   /   LinkedIn   /   Mixi   /   Ameblog

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Since I don’t have my stylist blog actually up and running yet, here’s the introduction that I will have there later.

I am an American born Hong Konger. I spent my days growing up mostly in the San Francisco bay area, but I also lived in Hong Kong for two years and Dalian, China for three years. I studied somewhat hard, played as a hardcore gamer, and made my way into the University of California, Berkeley as an economics major. But I didn’t like numbers, so I instead double majored Chinese and Japanese language, graduated, and then decided to become one of the greatest image stylists in the world.

Doesn’t really seem to fit together, does it?

I never had any interest in fashion at first. Nobody believes me, but I made my way through high school wearing oversize Wolverine hunting boots, thermal underwear under size XL t-shirts and jeans, long unkempt hair, and two backpacks (one for books, and one for papers since I didn’t bother with binders). Oh, and a VERY colorful long-length ski jacket. I think it had bright blue, green, red, and purple on it. Wasn’t quite the most fashionable guy at school.

Things changed halfway through college when I started on a quest to improve myself. I decided that it was just as important to improve the outside appearance as it was to improve on my personality and learn to get a life. But it wasn’t quite so easy as I thought it would be. As far as I was concerned (incorrectly), having a sense of fashion was exactly that: a sense. I thought that you either had it or you didn’t. And if you didn’t have it, you’d have to somehow get it through osmosis. So, I asked some of my girl friends to go shopping with me and help style me in clothes that looked good. But things didn’t quite turn out as I expected. I kept getting the same answer to my questions: “well, it depends on what you feel comfortable wearing.”

Unfortunately, what you’re comfortable wearing is the same as what you’re used to wearing. And that wasn’t going to work for me. I did manage to get them to find some things for me, though, so I came out ahead with a dress shirt, jacket, and pants that fit! After that, I mainly added to my wardrobe by asking for opinions from the female staff in clothing stores. This continued for about two years or so, but I still didn’t really have a grasp on what good style meant. I thought maybe it was simply a mater of having enough nice pieces of clothing in your wardrobe.

Everything changed during the summer of 2006. I was in Hong Kong at the time, and I met one extraordinary woman. She was the owner of a clothing store that was filled with clothing that I didn’t particularly care for. In fact, I was just in the store to browse and kill time. But, after chatting for a short period of time, she pulled me aside and said that I was smart and had potential. What she meant I didn’t quite know, but she pulled some pieces of clothing together and told me to put it all on.

Personally, I didn’t think the clothing was all that great. But since I had taken the clothes and gotten myself into the changing room, I figured I’d put the clothing on to oblige the lady. So I put on the green-white jeans and the black knit tee. Nothing extraordinary. On goes the light green dress shirt… wait this isn’t so bad. Next comes the black light blazer… black belt with antique gold buckle….. geen-black shoes……. wow……… I was transformed. It was exhilarating. The shapes and the colors of the clothing all matched together perfectly. Now THIS was an outfit! I was amazed. Later, when I went back to Berkeley and met with my friends, I was complemented on my outfit for the first time in my life.

But back to the dressing room. I exited and told the lady exactly how great I felt. She smirked at me and said “of course!” Then promptly said “let me show you more ways that you can play with these pieces. You just put on the black-green setup, now here’s the green-white setup…” Outfit after outfit, all of them looked spectacular. But two things she said struck me in particular. She said that gold equals brown, and white equals silver. She also said that the belt is important because it forms a boundary between the upper and lower body. The message came across to me clear as day. Style has rules.

Further developing those rules has become a large part of why I decided to become an image stylist. Going back on my own experiences, I wish that there was a set of easy-to-follow rules for me when I decided to upgrade my sense of style. And I feel that I wasn’t the only one who felt the same frustration with style.

But more importantly than that. The excitement of finally learning that “sense” of style; the ongoing joy of looking for new outfits to create — I want to share those feelings with others. That’s my driving force.