if you know cleveland fashion, you know kim crow

The Cleveland Plain Dealer is Cleveland’s number one newspaper and the owner of Cleveland.com. Big time doesn’t even describe it. When I thought of the Style Editor for such a widely known paper, I didn’t think that Kim Crow would be as sweet as she is. I communicated with Kim over several months during my senior year at Kent. She gave me great career advice and was so good at keeping in touch with me. It was wonderful to see somebody at the level of her career taking time out of her day to connect with a student. Down the road, Kim asked me to jump on and help her with The Plain Dealer’s spring fashion photoshoot. I took the day off of school and work and ran my butt off by Kim’s side. It was the dream styling assistant photoshoot job and I only had to drive 40 minutes to experience it. I not only absorbed an incredible amount of advice, but Kim also took some styling tidbits from me. I’m going to feature some of Kim’s articles on AK2NY to not only honor her great work, but to show my appreciation towards the time she took out for a student to get a step ahead.

By the way, if you are a fashion student at Kent, please leave a comment if you would like to assist Kim on a photoshoot. I’ll give you my email address and I can refer you to her. She does a couple large photoshoots per year and would love one assistant on hand. The experience is so worth it.

Here’s one of Kim’s latest articles on holiday fashion:

Not all fashions this holiday are sparkly, but we sure do like the glitz

By Kim Crow, The Plain Dealer

November 23, 2009, 8:19AM

Merry, varied looks for the holiday season

Something about the idea of a holiday fashion section always puts me in a bad mood.

A photo shoot is an enormous undertaking, a carefully crafted feat of logistics, diplomacy and brute force of will, veiled in a gauzy sheen of “collaboration.” And the holiday theme always comes right on the heels of our fall shoots, when my energy — and enthusiasm — is at its lowest.

“Holiday! There aren’t any special holiday trends ever! Red dresses, black sequins, silver and gold metallics,” I sniff to my editors, co-workers and husband. “It’s a journalistically invalid enterprise!”

This ill humor persists until I step into the first store and see the sequins.

Then the creative side of my brain stomps a delicate stiletto heel on the rational side, and a “MUST HAVE SPARKLES!!!” mind-set keeps that heel tapping a steady mambo beat, suppressing Ms. Rational through early January.

Yes, I did find plenty of red dresses, black sequins, and silver and gold metallics. But just because a garment doesn’t advance fashion by 10 years doesn’t mean it’s not worthy of celebration. It’s what people — including me, most definitely! — want to wear at this celebratory time of year.

But realizing that not everyone wants to wear a red dress for a Christmas party, designers have embraced a wider color palette this season. Shoppers will see plenty of blue and purple, fuchsia and pink, and gray and cream parked right alongside the usual gold, silver and black.

This is not to say that metallics and black are dull choices, never that! This season, knowing that shoppers are looking to get more out of every purchase, retailers are showing more separates — great jackets, sparkly skirts, lovely blouses and sleek trousers — that offer terrific options for the holidays and beyond.

Speaking of beyond, we’ve stretched the scope of how we define “party” for this issue. We realize that not every reader has formal galas on her calendar this month and next, so we’ve suggested looks for various types of parties with their own mysterious dress codes — the office party, the neighborhood get-together, the cocktail event at your stuffy in-law’s house, the “dressy-casual” fund-raiser, etc.

As it turns out, I greatly enjoyed the shoot that I had dragged my feet to — sort of like some parties — and left it eager for the holidays, richer in spirit, if a little poorer in the wallet.

The sparkles won, you see.

I couldn’t resist buying the blue-sequin sweater jacket, a glittering chain and a rhinestone bracelet you’ll see on these pages, promising myself that these early presents to myself would be my only indulgences this season.

We’ll see how that goes, hmm?

To visit this article:

http://www.cleveland.com/holidayfashion/index.ssf/2009/11/not_all_fashions_this_holiday.html

If you would like to visit the style section for The Plain Dealer:

http://www.cleveland.com/style/

The photo gallery to the shoot I worked on:

http://photos.cleveland.com/4501/gallery/Spring%20Fashion/index.html

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