Wednesday, November 04, 2015

Dreaming In Cuban with Emily and Mukta

Emily and Mukta two talented, gorgeous ladies packed their bags with some summery Family Affairs pieces and went on an amazing adventure to Cuba and documenting it for us!
It turned out as a delicious editorial, a high five to summer and Cuba travel inspiration guide all shot in 35mm- a dream!

Here is a link to the "Dreaming in Cuban" collection with all the styles Emily and Mukta are wearing:
http://lovefamilyaffairs.com/collections/dreaming-in-cuban
If you enter "coconutandicecream" at check out get an additional 20% off these styles!

In Emily's words:

Cuba felt like being in a strange fever dream. It was so, so hot, the only way to keep cool was by drinking mojitos and eating ice cream!
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Emily wearing the Crimson and Clover dress 

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Visit the Hotel Ambos Mundos, where Ernest Hemingway stayed during his time in Cuba. You can visit his room and drink a mojito at the bar. Coppelia is the place to go for ice cream. Located in Vedado, it's probably the closest thing Cuba has to Disneyland. Even Fidel Castro recognized that ice cream is a universal right when opening state run Coppelia in the 1960s. 
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Emily wearing the Clyde dress
 photo 06540014.jpgThe best way to see Old Havana and the surrounding towns, besides walking, is with a car tour! For two hours before sunset we were chauffeured around the city in a 1956 Violet Chevy. We'd been driving with the top down until it started torrentially pouring when we got to the rainforest. On the banks of the river running through the forest we happened upon a traditional Santeria ceremony, which included three chicken sacrifices! You can recognize the Santeras around Cuba with their traditional all white ensembles. 
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Mukta wearing the Frangipani kimono 
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Emily wearing the Sound and Vision dress
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To get away from the hustle and bustle of Havana, and to see more of the country, we took a bus to the colonial town of Trinidad. Not much has changed since it was colonized by the Spanish in the 1600s apart from an awesome discotheque located in a stalactite cave, where we danced until the wee hours. The beaches there are everything a Caribbean beach should be. We swam in the bath like water, drank out of coconuts, and ate lobster on the beach!  
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Emily wearing the Frangipani kimono  photo 06730003.jpg
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Back in Havana, we made a point to visit the only record store in Cuba, since they stopped producing records in the 1980s. It's located in a dingy warehouse space, but the owner has a true love for music and shared his favorites with us, from Benny More to songs of the Revolution, as well as stories of musicians that had been kicked out of the country for playing rock and roll.
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Mukta wearing the Little Edie dress
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Cuba's complicated history is ever present, and sometimes ominous. It's written onto the crumbling facades, faces of its people, and literally written onto signs and billboards that read "Con tu Permiso, es tan Facil!" or "Revolucion o Muerte."  We arrived in Cuba the day that the US Embassy opened after 60+ years, and every time we would say that we were from the United States, people would let out a Fonzie like "Ayyy!" 
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Walking along the Malecon in the evenings, the sky would frequently become illuminated with purple lightning striking over the ocean. The trip itself in many ways seemed like a flash of lightning; beautiful, exhilarating, magical, and over much too quickly.
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