one night in bangkok makes a hard man humble

On my 24th birthday at the end of December, I flew to Bangkok for a two-week tour of Thailand. I spent around four days in Bangkok and went south to experience some amazing beaches. I managed to go to the famed Khao Sok national park--the oldest evergreen rainforest in the world. In Bangkok I was stunned by the Grand Palace and Wat Pho, home to the giant 24k gold plated Buddha. Stepping inside the Grand Palace was like shrinking and walking into a jewelry box.







I am seeing some of this preciousness in Oscar de la Renta's and Dries Van Noten's Spring 2008 collections and I can't quite get over it...





You can see that the design influences of Oscar de la Renta and Dries Van Noten are different. Yet, there is this common thread of exotic primitivism and dainty exquisiteness that joins them together. It is much like the architecture in Bangkok, which gets in influences from eastern neighbors like China and western neighbors like India.