BOOKS AND BEAUTY

Balance is everything in life. It's that season again for 19-hour days.

March madness is coming, but really, it started in February... with a hectic but completely satisfying New York Fashion Week walking for Callula Lillibelle (the designer William will go places as his attitude is just right) (more NY blogs coming soon) and doing fittings with the dame herself, Helen Yarmak, which included, wait for this, a 450,000 Euro jacket, having a chat with Rachel Roy backstage and sharing a drink in the success of fellow Indian Bhibu Mohappatra at Mercedez Benz Fashion Week, New York was a dream come true. No rest for the wicked, as they say… right after I went into fittings for New York Couture Week and walked for Berry's couture, from Abuja, Nigeria. My doctorate major is in International Psychology and with my fashion chronicles both fields complement each other perfectly, an assumption not shared by many! Never knowing for whom and where I will be walking next, my passport and I are at the steps of many consulates/ embassies. 

The highlight of NY Couture Week was bumping into my pal Aminat, third runners up for America's Next Top Model 2009. A towering beauty, Animat is the only one who can make me feel short! It's good to see the same faces on the circuit in New York; it makes it feel less vast of a terrain. My professor, Michael Morris of Columbia University, is the social intelligence professor at Columbia Business School. You know you have a supportive group of people around you when your professor, after a stimulating lecture, asks how fashion week is going and if I am recovering, with no hubris at all that I had to miss class. Luckily, for me, the upcoming Lakme and Dubai Fashion Weeks will fall over spring break. I will be the one backstage reading a book or submitting a paper from the business centre of the Grand Hyatt! I will return at the end of Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week in April and return to New York. 

My program for the doctorate is absolutely perfect as it will take me to locations around the world working with refugee, underserved populations and receive training to apply psychological principles to assist individuals and organizations of diverse cultural populations and all levels of international organizations. Between the two nine-day international field experiences I will squeeze in London and Paris fashion weeks... What can I say? I see beauty in books and the global transmission of culture and ideas through fashion. It's all about perspective!

27-FEBRUARY-2011