Kat's Adventures: New York City Tour of the Garment Industry (Day 1)

Take it in everyone, the face of adventure

Right here. Yep.

That’s Tia and I preparing our game face for a truly unique experience of New York City. Having the exclusive opportunity to meet, chat, and ask about the many aspects of the fashion industry.

I have been to New York before back in the 7th grade, but only for a short time. I didn’t nearly have as much fun as I did when I traveled there this time around! I had a bigger purpose, bigger reasons, and most importantly I was traveling with some really awesome people.

The plane ride began at around 11 am and the flight was about two hours long. I didn’t bring any form of entertainment with me. I somewhat regretted doing that to myself, but at the same time I figured I could have just talked to the friends around me as a form of entertainment. It did give me the chance to mentally review what kinds of things we are going to see and do while our stay. Well, I tried at least. My brain was still frazzled from the end of the school year.

After landing and recovering our luggage we drive through Queens to our hotel. The first thing on my mind while riding the bus was looking out for street art of any kind (I did, however, ignore the graffiti because to me that just represents gangs with their symbols and territory markers). I made sure to take pictures of anything that interested me. Something I noticed while sitting in traffic was that all the white moving vans was vandalized in some form covered in paint. You would think someone would catch you in the act while spraying someone’s PURE WHITE van. . .

We finally arrived at our hotel, which was just a few blocks away from Time Square, the PERFECT location for this trip! I mean, it was a small town designer’s dream to be staying in the area we were in. As you will read you will find out why it was so awesome!

Anyways, the first thing we did was go to the subways to get our Metro Pass. It was just a little flimsy scan card that allowed the user to use the subway at any time of day for a set amount of time. That pass was so hard to keep up with, let me tell ya. . .

Again, because I have been to this city before I have already had so much experience with subways. But something I did not experience was trying to read the subway map and trying to figure out how to get to this street to get to another using this colored train path and and and just holy shit! I knew I was bad at directions but this was crazy to me XD

This is me litterally getting as close as possible to take that shot.

It was too close. I almost killed myself ------->

We went straight on the subway and went down to one of the most popular tourist shopping areas Soho. This area had many shops, but almost all of them did not interest me. It was difficult for me and my group to find a shop that peak our interest. All the apparel shops were . . . just. . . not for us. We searched for something different, unique, and crazy! That’s the definition of NYC isn’t it? We did find one place called Kiki Riki. This shop was crazy! The style was very rave, street, cute, and somewhat exotic. I saw giant tulle dresses, fishnet jackets, faux snake skin jackets, and some other looks that came across as tacky. It was my kind of store!

I liked Soho despite the fact that the shopping was not for me. It was a wonderful area to walk around in. The buildings around me photographed brilliantly as well. The community was interesting. While waiting for the rest of the students to regroup on the street corner we encountered a lot of activity, such as a classic street basketball game tournament and someone was selling old records and art work on the street.

The day ended with an Italian dinner at Chelsea Ristorante were I had a $40 fillet minion, a side of vegies, potatoes, and finally with a chocolate cake dessert (AANNDDD not to mention 3 glasses of white wine. IT JUST KEPT COMING AND I JUST KEPT DRINKING! I was pretty. . . hilarious that night).