Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, this week's subjects: The future is Arabian, Sustainable and recycling are the latest hypes, The longest catwalk, To have guts or to be guts and Full moon

The future is Arabian. Tima Abid's avant-garde aesthetics collection showcased at Saudi Arabia Fashion Week 2024 represented a bold and innovative exploration of modernity intertwined with cultural narratives. This collection was characterized by several striking elements. Design Elements: Architectural Silhouettes: The garments featured sculptural shapes and structured silhouettes that challenged traditional forms. This included oversized, asymmetrical cuts and layering techniques that created dynamic visual interest. Futuristic Fabrics: Tima utilized cutting-edge materials, including high-tech textiles and sustainable fabrics. These materials allowed for innovative draping and an ethereal quality, giving a sense of fluidity and movement. Bold Colour Palette: The colour scheme incorporated deep jewel tones alongside stark monochromatic contrasts. Rich emerald greens, sapphire blues, and bold crimsons were juxtaposed with black and white, enhancing the avant-garde feel of the collection.
Intricate Textures: The collection showcased a variety of textures, integrating elements like metallic threads, 3D embellishments, and unique fabric treatments that created depth and dimension in the garments. Check the next post for traditional incorporation with futuristic aesthetics.

Sustainable and recycling are the latest hypes. The onslaught of Shein fast fashion, with disposable brand new T-shirts for less than 3 Dollars (for the developed world that is very cheap) has brought the pollution effects of fast fashion to the forefront, and sustainability, reuse and recycling are now trending. Ghana is not doing badly when it comes to recycling, majority of our clothes are secondhand (from Europe) and nothing that somehow could be used is thrown away here, empty bottles for re-use, car tires for Chale wotes, iron scraps for remelting, and even T-shirts with big holes have been fashionable here, years before fashion with holes became fashionable in Europe, but unfortunately for the very poor amongst the poor here. So sustainable is the word, and if we could find a solution for the heaps of discarded, imported clothing now starting to fill our beaches we could well win the Guinness price for most sustainable country.

The Longest catwalk. Soon we'll get our Rhythm on the Runway fashion show (30th November) here with the theme “Kente Edition” followed by the Accra Fashion Week (18th-22nd December), this year at Ghana Dubai, Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra, last year it was at the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum, with maybe the longest runway ever? Not so, The Busselton jetty in Australia recently hosted a 3.6km catwalk showcasing sustainable fashion, to raise awareness for the eco-fashion movement. More than 50 models showcased ethically and sustainably sourced handcrafted outfits from Australian and international designers. The event marked the start of a month-long Sustainable Fashion Festival.

To have guts or to be guts: Believe it or not (your choice), once we were only intestines, guts. Today's scientific research holds that life began around 3.5 billion years ago with single-celled organisms, such as bacteria, over time cells evolved to form multicellular organisms, including simple gut-like structures and around 600 million years ago animals evolved bilateral symmetry, with a distinct head, tail, and gut.
To take it a bit further, and to today, the human gut microbiome (the community of microorganisms, bacteria living in your digestive tract) plays a crucial role in our overall health, influencing our immune system, brain function, and behaviour, and the gut and brain communicate through the vagus nerve, influencing mood, cognitive function, and appetite. This guts-brain relationship currently is a popular area of scientific research, and the latest I read is that beneficial bacteria in the intestines affect the brain development of the baby a woman is carrying, and there is much much more. So you need a healthy gut with a healthy gut population. How to achieve that? Number one, I would say, is very regular stooling, and this can be achieved through eating fiber-rich food, so that you stool once a day, or even more. What foods are rich in fiber? Not white rice and not white bread, but rather brown bread, beans, bananas, yam, maize (kenkey), oats, cassava, veggies and fruits. But don't change your diet too abruptly, especially beans can initially cause a lot of gas, so just add a little in the beginning and slowly increase the quantity. To be continued.

Full moon again this Friday, when I am writing this the prediction is cloudy but no rain, so I am not sure that you can actually see that moon. But how accurate are weather predictions? Some talk of 80-90 % up to 5 days ahead, but I rather think it is less than 50 %.

Lydia...

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