July 10

So we went to Belgium for the day. We met at Luxembourg metro station at 6am and took the metro to the train station, then a train to Brussels, then another train to Antwerp. Our tour guide in Antwerp, Karen, took us to a diamond factory/museum and a fashion museum. The diamond factory was just a few people using strange looking tools to cut facets in a diamond - a brilliant cut has 57 facets - and polishing the diamonds. We learned about the 4 C's of diamonds: cut, color, clarity, and carat. The fashion museum was really cool because the exhibit we saw was on Veronique Branquinho, the designer whose show I dressed at the beginning of menswear shows. There were outfits from each of her ten collections on display. One room had two paintings of Eve - one very old and one recent - with a mirror in between. Another room had shoes on a platform that walked around in a circle on their own. There were silver birch trees around and shoes hanging from the ceiling that were all very fairytale looking. Veronique even had her own jukebox made, and all the song titles were made up by her, based on what she associated them with or what she felt about them. Meredith chose a song called "Abuse Me" and it was "Sweet Dreams" by the Eurythmics.

We had to meet at school at 7pm to hear a speaker. Madame Marion Dufour has been a fashion and beauty editor with Marie Claire for 20 years. She helped launch Marie Claire in several European and Asian countries. Madame Dufour taught us about the history of fashion and fashion magazines.