Iulian is a talented illustrator that I got to know recently. He made two drawings of myself, for my birthday. I wanted to share them with you because I am actually quite excited how they turned out. I have no idea where he gets the patience to draw like this, I personally don’t have it, even if I did study drawing all through high-school and the at the Art University.

Anyway, whenever you want to make such a special gift to someone, do contact him, as he is a freelancer. You can see more of his work here.

For this drawing he used and old picture that I had posted a couple of years ago on my ever growing tumblr account. Do follow me if you have a tumblr account, so I can follow you back!

I was fortunate enough to be fully supported by the lovely people around me, who first thought it was crazy to make this project happen in a couple of days. But we managed to get everybody together and besides the fact that we froze during the couple of hours in which we ran around the city like rebel teenagers, everything went well.

I thought of the dress, Flo styled it, Florina made the Josephine necklace, Cristina Radonici was the bravest of us, wearing this outfit at -9 degrees Celsius, Adriana Unguras made her face look like a very angry but chic clown and Vlad Gilcescu & Ale Flamy where there to capture everything. Lots of ‘thank you’s’ for all the support.

I am so lucky to have creative and amazing people around me who say ‘yes’ most of the times to all my crazy ideas. And if these pictures spark any kind of commentary or motivate you to protest in your own way, for what you believe in, well then all the work and freezing was well worth it!

And he came early this year and he got me an amazing present. A seal with my name/logo on it. I am blown away and can not wait to be able to actually write real letters to people, only so that I get to use it. <3 It also matches my fingernails, ha!

Flamy cam over yesterday and brought us some presents. I am not such a big fan of the Christmas celebrations, but this weekend I will get to spend a quite weekend with my mom and dad, reading and sleeping, so I can not wait to get home. I will follow up with a post about the plans I/we have for next year.

Have a relaxing holiday season!

I love to go to markets or second hand stores because of the thrill of finding something amazing for a very low price. I usually don’t care whether I will wear any of the items I find, but from time to time I find actually pretty amazing things like this dress for example. I know how long it takes to hand-sew, so of course I appreciate the workmanship that went into producing this dress. I do have to ‘restore’ it a bit, as there are some sequins missing, but other than that I just need a very black tie event to wear it to. Or maybe I’ll just go to the supermarket wearing this dress and secret-tape people’s reaction – would be certainly entertaining.

This year for my sister’s birthday we took a trip to Budapest to see Rihanna in concert. Flo is a big fan, we grew up with her music and although I mostly listen to different types of music right now, I enjoyed the show a lot. And I wanted to share a few pics of her outfits: they were extremely colorful and shiny and the whole show was an explosion of color and energy.  I rarely see my sister sooooo overly excited, so I guess the 5 hour train ride from Timisoara to Budapest, very early in the morning, was worth it.

Anca decided last minute to join us and although it was pretty exhausting to stand in a crowd for about 4hours, we had fun fun fun!

This summer was exhausting. I was so stressed a couple of times, that I thought I would literally explode or go crazy. All the deadlines and details and constant phone-calls and fittings overwhelmed me. One of my seamstresses quit, so I was left working with only one lady who helped me with the sewing part. I woke up one Monday morning and realized that about 25 dresses needed to be finished that exact same week and none of them were cut. I got so anxious that I went outside and started crying (Kelly Cutrone would be proud ). I had the first breakdown because I was overwhelmed by the situation. It was humanly and physically impossible to finish everything on time. So I started crying and called my mother. In this exact order.

Oh, but I knew it was the beginning of a hard summer. I knew I had to stay focused and very concentrated, so everyday I had fittings and client meetings until 8-9PM, when those were finished I started with the sewing, because my employee could hardly keep up. I used to work until 2-3AM, when I was so tired that I could not see the sewing needle anymore. My sister helped a lot to get me through those crazy weeks. It was like nothing else existed – my life was overwhelmingly and exclusively about my work.

October is almost over, the wedding and event season is almost over, we started making coats and wool dresses for fall/winter. There is still work to be done, but once you have to cut,sew, fit and finish 25 dresses in a week with only little (but extremely appreciated) help - well, nothing seems impossible or too hard anymore.

Yesterday I was walking in the lovely city I live in – Timisoara – and felt the sun on my face. I actually realized I felt it and smiled. I know happiness is in the little things, but once you live 6 months for work, it is pretty hard to appreciate the little things again.

Like getting flowers.

I appreciate getting these flowers a lot! So have a great autumn appreciating small gestures and wearing cozy wool coats.

I have been working very hard for the last six months. There were days when I kept on constantly pushing my limits as to how much pressure I can take. While I do have two full-time employees right now and also the help of my sister Flo, some of the orders and deadlines were so crazy that at one point I literally thought my head would explode.

Fortunately it did not and my health is pretty OK, I also had the chance to travel a bit, even if it only happened during weekends. But it made me think about life a bit differently. I saw buildings, art, sculptures, I noticed other ways of life and so many chic people both in Amsterdam and of course, in Paris.

I want to be more creative. I want to make things that last. Shirts and dresses from the finest of silk to make you feel comfortable every day. I want to work with handmade appliques to make each and every dress unique. I want to paint and to meet interesting and creative people so they leave a mark.

I want to read and read some more. I want to work and learn and grow as much as I can. Hopefully you will, also.

A building in Prague.

Impressionist painting.

My ‘comfortable’ look in Amsterdam.

Graphic buildings and houseboats.

It was my first trip to Paris, so I HAD to have a picture with the tower.

With Florina at a fashion trade show.

Rue Cambon.

With Florina at an antique market in Paris, on Sunday morning of course.

Impressed by the magnificent buildings…

…and sculptures.

The last couple of weeks, actually months, were hectic. I was crazy busy with the work I did, for all the clients I was lucky to have. Truth is, I worked my ass off. But now when I think about it – about all the deadlines, all the stress, all the running around trying to please everybody – all I feel is excitement. Genuine and pure excitement. My sister, Florina Bobar, helped me a whole lot in the last couple of months and hopefully we will get to build and grow the Diana Bobar brand together from now on. She positively surprised me with her sewing skills lately and she was and will be my most trusted consultant when it comes to all the crazy ideas that I have in my head.

I am lucky to have amazingly talented people around me who got to be part of my evolution, part of my story. My collaborations with Florina Erimescu – Josephine (fine jewelery), Coca Zaboloteanu (shoes), Andi Popescu (photography), Reverto (natural cosmetics) and Prospero (cakes&bakery) are very well documented by now. So I can add another great team to this list: the X3 design team and the Space Rabbit programming team, who both worked on my lovely new website and blog. I could not be more happy with the result, could not be more excited than I am right now.

Hopefully now you can better enjoy and follow my work – collections on the website, client work on the blog – I will do the best I can to keep you as updated as possible. And hopefully I’ll see you at our atelier soon, to celebrate with champagne and cookies from Prospero.

I felt I needed to give an explanation regarding to why I haven’t posted anything in a while now. The truth is that, a month ago, I planed to hire a second seamstress to work for me and it did not work out well, so I had to (and still have to) work overtime for the last three weeks to successfully finish all the orders that I promised to finish. I am currently still looking for a person to hire, so that I have more free time for the fun part of my job: planning new collections and photo shoots, editing client photos and updating the blog, overall communicating more.

Also, lots of talented people worked on my new blog and website design for the last two months, so I am super extra excited to have it launched sometime next month. CAN NOT WAIT!

That is why I ask for a little bit of patience, please. I would love for everything to grow faster, to have more people to work for me & so on, but I am doing the best I can with the budgets that I have and try to use my time as efficient as possible, so that I get there as soon as possible. We’ll see afterwards what ‘there’ means.

Andi Popescu photographed me for the new website that will soon be launched; make-up: Anca Mihalache.

Meanwhile you can still check out my Tumblr account here and my Facebook page here. They are updated more often because I love to take and post phone pics of things that inspire me.

I love this pink summer hat, tried it on and had to share the pic. I would wear it in a very black-leather-with-studs-and-a-funky-twist-kind-of-way, but Florina did not let me get it, because she said it was too over the top.

What do you think? Yay or nay?

I would accept the challenge of building a look (or more) starting from this pink hat. Nothing is impossible!