March 14, 2010

Behind the Scenes: Cover Shoot with Kelly Killoren Bensimon

Credit: Jami Kandel

While many students were packing up their bags and shuffling back home in the rain on Friday morning, several of us at Hoot — Noel Duan (CC ‘13), Michele Levbarg-Klein (CC ‘12), Jina Lim (CC ‘13), and Sharon Shum (CC ‘13) — were shooting our Spring/Summer 2010 cover feature with Kelly Killoren Bensimon (GS ‘98), one of the stars of ‘The Real Housewives of New York City’ and the founding editor of ELLE Accessories. She, along with her publicist, Jami Kandel of B|W|R, and her personal assistant, Jessie Bandy, graciously allowed us into her beautiful downtown apartment for an intimate photoshoot.

Credit: Sharon Shum (CC ‘13)

The photographer was Jeffrey Zhang and the hair and makeup was done by Bradley Irion and Quinn Murphy, respectively.

Credit: Noel Duan (CC ‘13)

Kelly’s dogs were incredibly adorable — so adorable, in fact, that we decided to shoot one of the looks with them!

Credit: Sharon Shum (CC ‘13)

One of our favorite looks was a simple concept with a knit sweater from the Columbia University bookstore, Kelly’s own leggings, and Kelly’s own boat shoes. We all thought the sweater would be too heavy and bulky to look fashionable, but Kelly made it look good! Maybe Hoot will be rocking Columbia couture soon?

Credit: Noel Duan (CC ‘13)

Apparently, one of Kelly’s daughters has the same giant Chanel doll — retrieved from the Chanel store — as Michele, our Style Director! You can be a fashionista at any age, no?

Credit: Noel Duan (CC ‘13)

And yet, while it looks like fun and games in retrospect, we wouldn’t have been able to complete the photoshoot successfully without some old fashioned steaming and ironing. Every fashion intern knows how important it is to have wrinkle-free frocks. The camera hides nothing — even though Photoshop can work its wonders!

We finished shooting fairly early, and we had enough time to interview Kelly before lunch. She was terribly excited for the opportunity to appear on our cover — so excited, in fact, that she blogged about us on her blog! Click here to read the post.

Make sure to check the premiere issue, Spring/Summer 2010, when it comes out, to see what Kelly reveals to us in the interview! While we can’t reveal much to you right now, we hope our first issue will inspire you to look past misconceptions and preconceptions in both the Columbia University community and the world beyond.

Noel Duan
Co-Editor in Chief

posted by Noel Duan @ 12:41 pm Comments (0)
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March 6, 2010

Hello World, Again!

Columbia Daily Spectator did it. Now we’re doing it.

We’ve revamped our blog in anticipation of our new website and first issue, and we’re determined to bring you better and more content related to fashion at Columbia University. We, members of the Columbia community, whether we’re students, faculty, or alumni, are more immersed in the sartorial world than we may care to admit — and we at Hoot hope to prove that fashion is intellectual, creative, and worthy of deep discussion and exploration.

Here are some major changes that we have made to the blog:

  • We’ve moved servers! We are no longer residing on Blogger’s site and have moved to our own dedicated server. Due to this and in anticipation of our full site that will be launching soon, our URL has changed to http://blog.hootmag.org. Update your bookmarks and feeds!
  • Like Bwog and Spectrum, Hoot will have seven daily editors — one for each day of the week. We are deploying our team’s most dedicated bloggers and writers to bring you the best daily content that we can offer.
  • Our content will be more diverse and relevant to the Columbia community, with more “newsy” posts, coverage of events around Columbia and New York City, Hoot behind-the-scenes coverage, and everything and anything that the stylish Columbian would be interested in.
  • We’ve replaced our old blogging platform with WordPress, making our blog more robust, reliable, and easily readable.

Because of these changes, we feel like it’s best to start off with a clean slate. Our content is going to be of a slightly different style and tone than that found on our previous blog, so we’ve decided not to import our past posts. However, if you wish to view the archive, you can still find them at http://hootmag.blogspot.com/.

So, tell us what you’re interested in and what you think! Our goal is to bring the fashion-driven community at Columbia together, and we hope you stay with us on this journey–whether you’re a Balmain diva or a vintage vixen.

Bisous,

Hoot Staff

posted by Hoot Staff @ 12:02 am Comments (0)
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