When Nutella, donuts and muffins meet, it’s easy to feed your cravings and forget it’s even vegan.
Denser than a donut, but still light, sugary and perfectly sweet, these quick and easy treats will give your cravings a real farewell. For now, at least.
Jump over to my Vegan This column on Ecosalon for the recipe, and enjoy!
{Photo compliments of Organic Girly}
Vegan cupcakes based on Sex and the City’s famous Vanilla Vanilla Cupcake recipe.
From New York City to Dubai, we’re living in a sugar coated world of cupcake mania. Many reports (like this one from the UK Telegraph) put the addiction blame on the famed Magnolia Bakery.
What started 16 years ago as the tiniest of local cupcake spots on Bleeker Street in New York City’s West Village, has now become an over-heated sensation. Sex in City, followed by Saturday Night Live’s “Lazy Sunday” and The Devil Wears Prada, have all been accused of instigating and spreading the cupcakes-gone-wild craze. Flash through old episodes ofSex in the City and you’re sure to find the one where Carrie and Miranda munch on frosted treats outside the original Magnolia Bakery – back in the day before lines circled around the block.
“I have a crush,” Carrie confesses to Miranda, lips lined with pink buttercream frosting. Was it a cupcake crush? Tourists who happily fork over $48 and more than three hours of their time to take the official Sex in the City Hotspots Tour in New York City- including a stop at this very spot – can answer best. Walk inside the flagship Bloomingdale’s, or simply follow the trend from New York to Chicago, LA to Dubai or the 120 new locations in the works, and you’ll see that a bad case of the Magnolia cupcake crush is taking the world by sweet-toothed storm.
My memories of Magnolia Bakery go back to those one-location wonder days, post Sex in the City. As a transplanted New Yorker, I recall once dedicating an afternoon standing in the Magnolia line – for what felt like hours – simply to snag a cupcake for a friend’s birthday. Five years later, I tasted a tiny crumble of the infamous Vanilla Vanilla Magnolia Cupcake.
Fast forward to today where I’ve masterminded a vegan, gluten-free edition – starting with the original Vanilla Vanilla Cupcake recipe, compliments of Magnolia Bakery and the Food Network. While this is no baking adventure for the weary, the results are well worth it.
For my complete article & recipe, please jump over to ecosalon…
{Photos compliments of me, Organic Girly.}
Enjoy!
Forging a new fashion trail with Suzanne Rae’s Fall/Winter 2012 collection.
There’s a new frontier in fashion – a glamorous harkening back to the simply beautiful and designer Suzanne Rae is the perfect pioneer. She’s personable, a true philosophizer, a family girl and constantly evolving toward what she calls a “higher consciousness.”
It’s this clear consciousness that came through her Fall/Winter 2012 collection showcased at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in collaboration with the W Hotels Fashion Next Showcase. In her fourth season showing here, she’s no stranger to hard and high fashion. And, it shows.
The impeccable detail to pieces like her fur print bias gown with “Suzanimal,” as Rae affectionately calls it, (see below), is silk screened to look like real animal fur yet she assures, it’s entirely fur free. The “Suzanimal,” a wolf pelt stole, follows the same silk screened printing process and is then layered on a bed of wool – all sketched out pre-production by biologist-turned-artist Sam Dakota.
For Rae it’s each little element that makes a piece, which is why we couldn’t stop staring at her cowl backs, fringe backs and cotton tails, nearly more riveting than their front-facing counterparts.
Titania Inglis, winner of this year’s Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design, gets street cred with her first New York Fashion Week show.
The show started early for Titania Inglis. Bedecked in black – lots of stylized black – guests waited upbeat, mingling behind black curtains. It was Inglis’ inaugural New York Fashion Week show, made possible by her recently announced 2012 win of the Ecco Domani Fashion Foundation Award in Sustainable Design. It was clear that something award winning was about to take place. And, it felt as if we were part of Inglis’ cheerfully somber production. So, like good cast members we waited in the entryway of the Eyebeam Art & Technology Center, a non-profit enterprise and one of the country’s leading media art centers.
The stage was set for Inglis’ own shade of black, uplifted and far from bleak – a seamless blend of preppy plaid and gothic darkness. It was as if two, vastly separate, high school cliques instantly merged into one, very cool and non-cliquey band of fashion mavens. So, it came as no surprise when I overhead Inglis characterize her collection as “My So Called Life all grown up.”
Street-tough models bedecked in vegetable tanned leather from a farm in France, (where they guarantee the entire cow has been used, from food to fashion), in herringbone, recycled cotton plaids, asymmetrical skirts and soft fabrics like raw Japanese silk and Cupro glided by effortlessly.
For the complete article and snapshots from the show, please visit my post on Ecosalon…
(Photos by Jennifer Barckley of Organic Girly.)
Thank you to the fabulous (and did I say fashionable?) team at ecosalon for including Organic Girly in their “From Eco to Vintage to DIY, 20 Fashion Sites We Can’t Live Without” round up.
Here’s what they had to say about this blog:
“Organic Girly founder Jennifer Barckley is not only one of the nicest people we’ve ever met, she’s also a fantastic resource. Utilize her “Ask me anything,” button and she will get back to you quickly. Check her site for periodic updates on vegan and sustainable fashion forays that sometimes even lead her to chicken sitting.”
It’s so beautiful and humbling to be included alongside 19 other incredible women and bloggers. We each come at eco- and ethical- fashion from a special place. Please check out their sites and blogs too. It takes a community…
Thank you ecosalon!
(Image courtesy of ecosalon & Shandi-Lee via Flickr.)
Pratt fashion alumni celebrate timeless fashion for a new exhibit.
Pratt, one of the world’s leading design institutes and the oldest in the U.S. (this year marks its 125th anniversary), kicked off its retrospective “Principles of Design: Pratt Fashion Alumni,” on Fashion’s Night Out (September 8th), exploring future-facing lessons from past and present design talent.
Pratt is home to cutting-edge, cosmopolitan design from the likes of Mabel Julianelli (BFA 1927), Samantha Pleet (BFA 2005), Ariana Bohling (BFA 2005), Laurel Mae DeWitt (BFA 2005) and Siobhan Barrett (BFA 2009), all talents among the 19 on exhibit at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery from now to October 8th.
Samantha Pleet’s Shadow Cloak (on sale this Fall at Anthropologie.com)
At the opening night gala, I caught up with Sarah Scaturro, Textile Conservator for the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and guest curator for the Pratt exhibit. “There is such incredible design all around us tonight,” says Scaturro. “My main work [for the Cooper-Hewitt] is to preserve clothing and fashion that lasts, so I’m clearly interested in timeless fashion – something strongly reflected here, tonight.”
Please enjoy my complete coverage at ecosalon.com! Thank you!
