Nick Verreos at UCLA for OUT FOR WORK this Saturday!!!

Dress For Success....with a little help from Nick Verreos!Nice Tie: Nick Verreos will meet-and-greet the future LGBT leaders of America this Saturday at UCLA

Well it seems that I am going back to my alma mater this weekend. On Saturday, I will be hosting and making a "special appearance" at the University of California, Los Angeles /UCLA at the "Closing Night" events for the Out For Work Organization. I graduated from UCLA and got my Bachelor's Degree in Political Science/International Relations (yes, kids, I got my education!) before I decided to pursue my real love of fashion design and now I will come back to my old Westwood stomping grounds! Out For Work/OFW functions as a complimentary component in the total educational experience of LGBT students, primarily in the development, evaluation, initiation, and implementation of career plans and opportunities. They provide assistance to students in the cultivation and enhancement of skills to explore career options, master job search techniques and strategies, and research employment opportunities. They are holding their 2009 West Coast: The LGBTQA College Student Career Conference at UCLA and having a weekend long event filled with workshops, activities, seminars to help LGBT college students make the transition from Academia into the workforce and help them with such topics as building their resumes, being OUT in the workplace, being OUT and a minority and much more.

I will be speaking this Saturday April at De Neve Building, Plaza A & B from 5:30-7 PM and talking one-on-one with interested students wanting to know how to appropriately dress for interviews and when they finally get that great for job; what's appropriate for a corporate position as opposed to a more "creative" one.

Come by and say Hello; I will be there to meet and greet and maybe even take a Facebook photo or two!

Click HERE for all the details and hope to see you there!!!

2 Bad Girls: Ripsi & Perez

Recently, my friend Woody sent me a photo that just made my day!! It shows him with my favorite cast member, Ripsi of Oxygen's Bad Girl's Club, one of my favorite brain-cell killing TV-watching indulgences of last Winter.

"Tipsi Ripsi" instantly became iconic, even though it was for all the wrong reasons. She would wake up and instantly have a shot of Patron instead of a bagel as her breakfast of choice, and her day would quickly descend from there. Ripsi's infamous drunken smack-down of a fight with some of her roommates then took her to another level. After the fight seen and heard round the world, Ripsi was quickly kicked out of the Bad Girls Club house and I stopped watching the show. So it was to great delight when I received a photo in my email "Inbox" from Woody showing him and Ripsi holding up a sign saying "We Love Nick". Nick "hearts" Ripsi too!!!!!

And finally, just a few days ago, I also received this other photo that appeared on PerezHilton.com, showing me with a group of UCLA students holding up a sign saying "We Love Perez Hilton". In case you have been living under a rock in Siberia, PerezHilton.com is THE celebrity gossip website that has revolutionized the industry with all those scandalous photos showing the likes of Britney and Lindsay doing things they should not be doing. It is, yet, another secret indulgence that I cannot go to bed without! About a month back, I hosted and judged a "Project Runway" Design Challenge event at UCLA, and afterward, some of the students decided this would be a perfect opportunity to give Perez a "Shout Out".

Nick Hosts UCLA's Resident Runway

Go BRUINS!!
Last Thursday, I was invited by UCLA to judge their first ever, "Resident Runway", a take-off on "Project Runway", where residents/students of the UCLA residence halls held a fashion design contest in the same vain of the Bravo show. It was a nostalgic visit for me since I am an alumni of UCLA and had not been back since I graduated A LONG TIME AGO. It had been so long ago, that in fact, the building where the event was held, Covel Commons , was not even there when I attended UCLA! How sad is that? Boy, did I feel old!

I spoke for about 45 minutes about my time at UCLA and how I wished there would have been something like this when I was there. I also took questions from the "sold-out" audience. Some were great, ranging from "What is your favorite drink?" (Cadillac Margaritas), to "Who was your inspirational muse when I was a very young kid in Caracas, Venezuela?" (Empress Farah Dibah of Iran).

For the contest, there were over 15 designers (working in teams sometimes), all UCLA students-- freshmen, sophmores, juniors mostly. None of which had a fashion design major, since there is no such thing at UCLA. But all with a great drive and (obvious) design talent to create wonderful garments out of nasty ones.

On that note: The challenge they were given, only a few weeks ago, was to create an outfit out of thrift-store garments bought at Goodwill. Each of the designer students/teams were given 4 items such as a dress, jacket, pants and an accessory reminiscent of a bag lady and then they had to re-create it into something original, chic and stylish. I was amazed at what they did, especially since most of them had never sewn before and some of the outfits were hand-stitched together (not glued, thank you!) The winning ensemble was stupendous! They somehow made a fabulous hoodie jacket, shorty-shorts and a sexy stretch knit top out of bad "Golden Girls"-looking thrift store garments. The re-created outfit looked like something you would see at "Club Monaco" or "Banana Republic". (Picture of winning design is on the right. The designer modeled her own outfit!) It was impeccably sewn and stylish at the same time. Congratulations to the winners!

The night of the event, they also received a surprise challenge: They were given a T-shirt and had to tear it up, and create something else out of it, in 15 minutes! The results of that surprise challenge were also fun and innovative, ranging from a winning sexy mini-dress to an actual purse! I had so much fun coming back to UCLA and being part of this first-ever "Resident Runway" event.

All the students should be incredibly proud of themselves and I could tell that they all had so much fun, just by the huge smile on their faces. They needed a good fun break from studying all night for their Midterms!