Fashion Slow Lane!

I like older people, ever since I was a very young person I enjoyed the company of people over the age of  80.   The older they were, the more I wanted to hear their stories and be their friend.  When I was a 21 year old college student,  I met an elderly woman at my church that was about 90.  I started to talk to her and she told me her husband at home was 99.    That was interesting..I had never met a person that was almost 100.  So I started to go to her apartment and hang out...I became friends with her and her husband.   Her eyes would light up when she opened the door for me.   Her husband died a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday.   She started to call me more often, I remember some of the calls were,  "Tara can you stop by, I am so lonely"..and her voice would break.  So I would come over and she would tell me about her mother and her life.   When I went to Thailand to work as a travel writer, she would wr...

Thai baby & Pug.  Perfect. SEVEN years ago I went to Thailand to adopt my daughter from an orphanage in Bangkok.   In less than two weeks from today we fly back to Bangkok to show our daughter the country of her birth.   I am excited to show her the different parts of Thailand that I have loved over the years.   I love Thailand and now that I am better off than your average backpacker, on this trip I have booked "better" hotels. (When I used to travel to Asia I stayed in $20 a night cheap hotels)  However,  I really want to show my daughter what its like to live in the average village of Thailand. We currently live in La Jolla, CA which has some of the highest costs of living in the United States and the highest home prices nation wide.  We can't afford to buy the houses here that average about two million dollars so we rent a nice apartment.   My daughter is not spoiled, but by default she has every creature comfort of...

Miu Miu whimsical jewelry If you follow my blog you will notice I am a little neurotic.  That is just me.  The things I blog about can vary from a heavy bare your soul topic to a  blog post about my crazy travels to Third world countries where I picked up lice.   Yep... just me.  Crazy. Real. Honest.  I love travel, fashion, business and Miu Miu. On a lighter note today I want to talk about my favorite fashion brand. EVER .   That is Miu Miu.  The average American has never heard of it but most of my fashion friends know and love Miu Miu.  Its the younger sister of Italy's Prada, same designer just more whimsical.  Miu Miu is know for its fun, trendy, embellished statement pieces.    I used to collect their shoes when I lived in Los Angeles and there was a Miu Miu flagship store in West Hollywood.  That wonderful store closed a long time ago, so now I only buy Miu Miu when I go to Bologna, Italy for the Linea Pelle...

What a great video for women in the workplace.  Do you need to learn how to negotiate a better salary? Do you need to learn how to negotiate better with your clients to get what you need?  If so, please check out this video! It is totally worth your time if you are a person working in the modern workplace. I share only the best! Ciao, Tara

In the fashion industry negotiation is a fine art that takes years to develop especially with factories and suppliers.   As a freelance consultant I often run into an issue where a client does not want to pay me to negotiate on their behalf instead they just want to be introduced to a factory and they want to handle it on their own.   Normally this is not the way I like to work, but once in a while if client insists I will go this route. Recently a client wanted me to just hand over the initial introduction and they wanted to take it from there.  Yes, this route would save them money but not in the long run.  Why?  Because he did not know how to negotiate with the factory.   A few months later I get a call.  This particular client was handling their own production with an overseas factory and they were upset they were not getting the results they wanted?  Why?  Halfway through the production process they had informed the factory they had ...

I am headed to Beijing, China to meet up with a Chinese-American business woman that I have known for about a decade.  She is going to introduce me to luxury department stores in China so that I can gain a better understanding of how to bring American better brands to the growing Chinese middle and upper class.   One of the fastest growing consumer purchasing powers of luxury goods is China.   China has a huge population and a growing middle class with huge purchasing power.    Many European brands such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Burberry and many others have already successfully entered China and have many profitable stores.   My goal is to be able to help smaller brands expand into international markets, not only China, but other Asian countries as well.    In the past my consulting has been focused on design, product development and production.   In the future I would like to be be able to be an expert in sales and marketing not only to...

Life in the Barrio A young American woman views on life in a remote village in Southern Davao, The Philippines  (Disclaimer:  I wrote this when I was 25 years old and this story is based own personal experiences & travel journal entries at that time) I have traveled to the Philippines three times. I always go to the same place in Southern Davao on Mindanao Island. Life in “the barrio” I visit there is very interesting.  The barrio consists of a group of houses in one area of the province, like a subdivision of the main town. In Southern Davao, most of the families live in the same general area. When a couple gets married, they build a house on their family plot of land, so everyone in the family lives closely together.  Gossip.  Everyone knows what everyone else in doing; gossip is the mainstay of life. Because there are no telephones and no jobs for...