Eva Franco on the Design Process from Eva Franco on Vimeo.

I’d like to welcome a guest blogger, personal trainer Danny Bergen. He’s here to share some great tips on how to start out the New Year healthy!
Eva

Well, here we are ... the end of yet another year. As the holidays come and go, many of you will be putting your New Year’s resolutions into action. You’ll be hitting the gym (or even joining one for the first time) with a renewed sense of fervor ... an absolute determination to better yourself, to lose weight, to feel better.

So, as your friendly neighborhood Personal Trainer, I thought I would list a few fitness tips that may help you along on your journey to better health and a greater well being.

Have a happy and healthy new year!

—————————————————————————————-

10 Easy Tips to Improve your Health and Fitness

1. Be a smart consumer and read labels carefully.
Fat free products are loaded with sugar. Fat does not make you fat – SUGAR DOES! When grocery shopping, buy nothing with over 9 grams of sugar.

2. No overcomplicated routines/no overcomplicated diets.
They have the highest failure rate because they don’t teach you how to live in the real world. Get back to the basic, common sense principles.

3. Never skip meals.
Obese (and even overweight) people have one thing in common – skipping meals. The moment you allow your blood sugar to drop (when you feel hunger pangs) you become a fat storing machine. You must eat small meals or snacks every few hours.

4 . Sugar is bad.
We all know this, but we don’t realize just how bad it truly is. Sugar throws our body into an immune suppressed, non-working state of chronic fatigue, depression, and hormonal imbalance. It is the leading cause of disease and depression in this country. To break the sugar addiction, get rid of refined sugar (anything that isn’t fruit or veggies).

5. Clean House - Remove ALL junk from your kitchen.
Stop buying addictive junk foods, then hating yourself for not being able to resist.

6. Deprivation does not work.
When starting a diet, for the first two weeks add healthy, nutrient filled foods (low sugar fruit/veggies/lean protein and a multivitamin). Your body will begin to naturally reject sugars and processed foods.

7. Crunches are a waste of time.
Unfortunately, we cannot ‘spot burn’ fat - meaning we can’t choose specific areas of our bodies that we’d like to burn the fat from.  Crunches are inefficient in burning calories, and can also lean to injury if done incorrectly.  The way to get those lean abs is to be focused on eating as naturally and healthy as possible, and to exercise in a way that increases your metabolism.

8.Drink water.
Sounds easy enough, right? We are all made mostly of water, and drinking it is the most important thing we can all do for our own health and well being. Drinking water has a host of benefits: including aiding in cell functions, lubricates and cushions our joints, eyes, spinal cord, and vital organs.  It promotes healthy waste elimination, keeps our skin clear, detoxifies our system, etc. Generally, the minimum amount of water we should be drinking is about half our body weight (in ounces). So, if you weight 160 pounds, then take half that (80) and drink 80 oz. of water per day minimum (that would be eight 10 oz. glasses, or ten 8oz glasses).  Remember, drink even when you’re not thirsty. If you’re thirsty, then you’re already slightly dehydrated.

9. Eat natural foods.
Only buy foods whose ingredients you can pronounce. If you have trouble saying it, then it’s not a real food and should be placed back on the shelf.  Many processed foods have increased amounts of chemical additives that can increase your cravings for sugars, salts, etc. 

10. Don’t be afraid to lift weights.
Cardio is the slowest and least efficient way to lose weight. It’s all about resistance training. This will burn more calories faster, and also add much needed muscle to speed up your metabolism. Working out the body’s bigger muscle groups (like the chest, back, gluteus, and legs) will more efficiently include using the smaller muscle groups, and make for more efficient, and time saving workouts.

To find out more about how you can reach your own personal fitness goals, contact me at Danny Bergen Fitness and ask about my Special New Years Package.

As our calendars fill with holiday parties and glamorous occasions that call for us to look our finest, it seems the perfect time to share some of the inspiration behind our holiday collection. The dresses are very much inspired by the period between the 1900s and the early 1920s. Think of the artwork of Toulouse-Lautrec, of cabaret dancers and romantic French boudoirs…think luxury, glamour, with a hint of sexy Moulin Rouge.

The color palette incorporates the dusty pinks of vintage lingerie, champagne-bubble polka dots, beautiful coppery tones and metallics, and a jewel-toned fuchsia. The lace was inspired by a beauty mark. Velvets add a rich texture that’s always right for the holidays.

We had everything on our Christmas list; we wanted dresses for girls looking to be sexy and for those looking to be sweet. (In Santa lingo, that’s naughty or nice.) So there are bows, but there are plunging necklines as well. There are see-through nettings and laces, but the silhouettes are fit-and-flare and always flattering. We want you to feel comfortable as well as beautiful! A couple of my favorite designs are the Eliza Dress with kitten lace (meow) and the Claudette Dress with the twirly pleated skirt and faux leather bodice.

Cheers to you all! Thank you for a wonderful year, and may you dress in holiday style all year long.

I had the pleasure of going to the Hussein Chalayan exhibit in Paris recently. Chalayan is a phenomenal fashion designer and conceptual artist. I discovered that when he was studying design in London, one of his projects was to bury a dress that he had made. After a certain period of time, the oxidation of the cloth and the minerals and elements in the soil turned the dress a certain color. It was his way of dying the dress and making a social commentary.  A collection he did in (I believe) 2007 included garments with robotics built inside—a dress could completely change from long to short, morphing into several different designs.

I have tremendous respect for the way Chalayan is always pushing forward. He bridges the gap, making commercially viable products that are still really innovative. I love his modern take and his complete understanding of his time in the world. How inspiring!

I’ve been working on my Spring 2012 collection for six months now, and one of my favorite things is the crane print we developed. It came about via a vintage needlecraft I bought at a flea market. I hired an artist who translated it into a print, and now we have a gorgeous, really rich photo-printed fabric that I think is quite stunning.

The collection has a lot of color, and I’m continuing with some of the color blocking I started in the fall. But now I’m doing softer pastels and the blocking is in organic curved shapes. And I’m playing a lot with pleatings, one of my obsessions.

It’s interesting; after I finished my collection I saw what Prada had done. Wouldn’t you know it—they are doing a lot of beautiful pleatings, too. I feel like there is a collective consciousness that artists can tap into, and that so many factors often sway us in the same direction. It makes sense that designers in Europe are on the same page as those in America; we all constantly seek out beauty, and what feels right is often a collective movement in one direction. It’s a mystery, but I love the fact that it’s ever changing and morphing into different matter.

We’re getting a great reaction to the spring line at the shows. So exciting!

My number one stress-reducing activity (in addition to running) is playing squash. After a day when perhaps things didn’t go so well, there’s absolutely nothing like the feeling of whacking this little black ball against the white court. Smack!

Squash is basically tennis combined with chess combined with racecar driving. You have to be constantly aware and thinking—and be able to make these sudden darts to get to the ball.

It’s great that there’s a sport for me that reduces stress, which the fashion industry seems to generate quite continuously. I even find squash inspiring! There’s this beautiful red line that marks the court. It has me thinking about doing something with a red stripe on the front of a dress or on a sleeve. It’s such a pretty shade of red . . . Hmmm . . .

One of the things I’ve learned, during my evolution as a creative human being, is that fear is a depressant to creativity. Fear causes paralysis, so I try very hard not to feed into fear when I’m designing.

In the studio, there can be a mental showdown between The Desire to Make Things vs. The Fear of Failing to Make Something Beautiful. I used to be an actor, and one thing I learned from my teacher, Jeffrey Tambor, is that if you try to do something perfectly, the fear of imperfection gets in the way of your creativity. Your creativity is always there; you just need to access it by pushing fear out of the way.

One way I give fear the heave-ho is with humor. I joke around with my staff as much as I can. It’s especially helpful in those moments when we realize we just spent considerable time and effort designing something that is really, really ugly. (Thankfully that happens less often the more experienced I get . . . but, hey, it does happen.) Instead of fretting about it, I just step back, look at the design and say, “Wooooooooooah” and laugh. When I give myself permission to fail, it’s very liberating.

I try to be creative in everything I do, including how I run my company and solve problems. I’m ordering a sign for my office that reads “Creativity Can Solve Anything.” That’s my mantra, and I’m living proof that it’s true. It makes me happy to know that if I give myself freedom to explore different ideas there is always a solution out there. Cheers!

Fall designs from Eva Franco appear twice in the oh-so-fabulous People Style Watch! Our Barnaby Dress is spotted out for its classic fit-and-flare style. The Ruckus Cape is the perfect dramatic alternative to a fall jacket. 

Images: Courtesy of Josue Peña, People Style Watch