Welcome, welcome, welcome! This blog is all about creating an oasis of style, joy, and authenticity through beautiful photography and heartfelt writing. This is a place to rest your head, imagine, reflect, have fun with style, and most importantly, live a freaking. Joyful. Life.
Philosophy:
While fashion is a visual art form, for me how I look is the least important part of what I love about it (although between you and me, I do enjoy looking cute). Clothing is sculpture that you inhabit with your body. How it makes you feel as you move through your day is so important if you’re someone who connects with clothing on an emotional and creative level as I do. What we wear and how we wear it creates the link between our personal space and the rest of our environment, the link between ‘me’ and ‘everything else’. It is a way to communicate to ourselves how we want to be in our lives. Style evolves as we do, and it’s a beautiful thing!
You Should Know:
Like fashion, blogging is an art. As such, my goal is to provide the highest quality writing and images as possible. This is ALWAYS a learning process!
That being said, I am all about transparency. Taking and editing photos is such a fun, collaborative process. My rule of thumb with programs like Photoshop is to never make alterations that couldn’t have been achieved with lighting or make-up. Picture ruined by a weird shadow? Totally ok to change that. A sa-weeeet filter? Go for it.
Wishing my eyes/waist/buns looked bigger/smaller/ bouncier? Nope. I get to keep what Mother Mary gave me and I get to love it the way it is. In my photos, changing quality of light, sharpness, contrast, fixing wonky makeup and shadows, etc is a-ok – but changing body shape and/or size is off limits.
The goal with editing is not to deceive, but to better communicate to the viewer how it felt to be in a specific place at a specific time. So when you look at photos in this blog or in any other blog, social media account, or magazine, remember that there is a lot of effort both in preparing for the photo itself and in editing. I can’t emphasize this enough!
Remember that picture above? Here it is in its raw, unedited form:
Not a great photo, but not terrible either – and this came after an embarrassing number of failed photos. You’ll notice that my childhood teddy bear in the corner didn’t make it to the final cut. He’s very upset.
So this is just to say, remember what’ you’re looking at – a lot of planning, effort, and fine-tuning.
Now for some basics:
I live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my (sweet + earnest + smart + sassy + hot) husband, Rodrigo.
I am American by nationality and part Portuguese by heritage, which is why my site is accessible in both English and Portuguese.
Stig is not my real name, but my nickname from childhood that has followed me into adulthood.
Interested in how and why I started this blog? Read here.
And ……… Rodrigo and I have an amazing dog, Sici (short for Khaleesi because duh) and I feel it is my duty as a good citizen of the world to show you her picture:
Questions, suggestions, concerns? I’m just an email away: stig@stigmendes.com
LOTS of love,
Stig.
PS. Pssst! Want our site’s privacy policy? Click here.
