Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Truth Hits Everybody

There was a time when I was Brave; it was around when I was 13 (I feel that 13 is the best age to experience anything, and the things you experience then will be with you always). Being 13 is being old enough to gain entry into the world of the grown-up, but still having youth's insolence such that you foist every new discovery onto the world as though you were the first to find them. I wore big shades from Delia's, bigger JNCO flares, carried a jumbo vintage Dior doctor's bag, and proclaimed Radiohead the best band on earth. I was roundly mocked for all pieces--your glasses make you look like Elton John; nice pants, you could fit immigrants into the back pockets and carry them across the border; nice bag, Mary Poppins. Eventually the balance shifts, and the world beats you down, and you come to discover that nonconformity is a method of conformity, too, and telling the world about your discoveries, even silently, no longer seems gainly, and you shuffle off to work in black pants and a button down.

I was Brave once.



Nothing really going on in this pic, I just felt like I owed y'all some visual proof that I'm not really a long-distance trucker with an overweening obsession for ladies stockings. Also this picture is to catalogue the one and only time I've ever had "glowing skin", as noted by both myself and my boss. Probably because I puked up everything inside me this weekend. Also to note my sorry-ass Paint editing skills, haha. Snake-print top from Express.

Monday, September 29, 2008

Tighten Up

I feel stupid in capri leggings; I feel stupid in footless tights. Maybe because I only have a 29" inseam, or because I can blame nature and say that Florida heat is not conducive to an unsweaty legging experience. I prefer socks, knee-highs and thigh highs, cos you can toss some baby powder in your kicks and continue your business. I've been peeping at the selection at Celeste Stein, but have to take a break every so often due to the overwhelming selection of patterns and prints. So you get to help me decide:

Kitties
Doggies
More Doggies
Pucci-style

Vote now! I'm thinking thigh-highs for the kitty print, and ankle sox for everything else. I have a sick addiction to photo prints, I don't know why.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Home Roundup

Do you know Nagel? If you are reading this blog, you probably do, and if you've ever gotten your nails done at any number of cheapy beauty salons, you do. His devastatingly sexy (and really, when I was a young'in, I figured those Nagelesque Robert Palmer girls were the absolute toppermost of femininity and chic) ladies are now being led to their logical conclusion, with Nagel Leia:



I have barely seen Star Wars (only the first half and then I went to bed), and between my boyfriend and me, we have three Nagels, but dammit I want this one too!

Comprar aquĆ­.

After reading this on Art Brut(e), I have had in my mind's eye an Ikea filing cabinet used as a nightstand, with Thompson Twins stickers all over it. Because I am lame.

I am expecting some goodies in the mail; decants from The Perfumed Court: Costume National, Vivienne Westwood Boudoir, and (this is the one I'm most pumped about) Balmain Ambre Gris, as well as some hair stuff from Mixed Chicks so maybe I can get my mop under control. Also weekend pictures of a party bus that may or may not have a stripper pole. Stay tuned!

Monday, September 22, 2008

Maybe it's because I've lived in Florida my entire life, or because Florida only has one season (hot), or because my combo of flat and wide feet conspires to keep me out of enclosed footwear for longer than a couple hours, I pretty much only wear flip flops. The only shoes that can daily grace my Cinderella-like piggies, besides my scant few pairs of Ferragamos (seriously, the only high-end shoe worth the money--but mine are all from thrift stores), are Keds. Keds don't get nearly as much love as their scruffy, meth-addicted sibling the Converse All-Star. But Keds are wholesome, Dean's List, apple pie sneaks that add just a touch of innocence to the most hard-boiled ensemble. Here are a few reasons why Keds should be your shoe of choice:

1. They are only $20 a pair at Sears
2. Not owned by a multinational syndicate (yet)
3. When they get dirty, you can write Korn lyrics all over them
3a. Or put them in the washing machine
4. You can design your own, and put pictures of your dog, your friend's dog, the Jonas Brothers, or even the Bonus Jonas on them
5. Much lower profile; make your feet look petite as opposed to the massive sole of a Vans slip on.

That's it really. You know I couldn't find any pictures of outfits con Keds on Flickr (though to be fair I didn't search too deeply), only Mischa Barton ads, and sketchy, stomach-turning fetish shots. So I went with the former


I picked this one mainly because I felt Tillman was robbed!

Of course if you want to go really old school (1830s in fact), you can get yourself a pair of Plimsolls, the idea of which we apparently ripped off from the Mother Country. But I don't like that rubber toe cap on there.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Up on the Catwalk

If you listen to Them*, they are saying the Little Black Dress is back. Unfortunately for you and me, we won't see it at an affordable price point til sometime next year, and only then in cotton jersey. Where is wool-mix? Where is knit? Being the world's foremost proponent of the LBD (what other item can take you from the Kentucky Derby to Kentucky Fried Chicken to a funeral to a party at David Bowie's house?), it is deeply, personally sad that I just can't drop $300+ on one of these little gems. Luckily we have the internet, and our limitless imaginations, to fuel our shopping daydreams.


(left to right, top to bottom)
1. This isn't technically a LBD (obviously), but this Anglomania dress would pass the derby>KFC>funeral>David Bowie's house criteria that I put all my clothing purchases through.
2 and 3. BOATNECKS! Gimme a break, Alexander Wang and Willow! So chic!
4. This Opening Ceremony schoolgirl shift is so desolate, destitute little Gabrielle Chanel, left to her own devices at the orphanage, pobrecita.
5. Wool shift, with exposed back zipper??? Be still my HART, cos it's by ERIK HART! HA HA HA HA just give it to me already
6. Twenty8Twelve brings you a Built By Wendy rip-off, complete with Sienna Miller's initials on the back. Recommended if you want people in the street to blame you for wrecking Balthazaar Getty's marriage.
7. Opening Ceremony yet again, with a vaguely Balmain-ish little shift. You could make this too, pretty easily I'd reckon. I love dresses with little details like this. That's where God is, you know.

*the shadowy, non-elected elite who control all our lives

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Let me just preface by saying I love ebay. In fact, I shop almost exclusively at American Eagle, American Apparel, Old Navy, thrift stores, and ebay. If you don't mind a bit of sport, and the blatant repurposing of thrift store goods and/or frumpy dresses recut to mod-dolly-emo-go-go proportions, you can score some terrific stuff. But what am I telling you that for, you probably outbid me today on a Pucci dress I wanted.

Being a petitely framed person, I sometimes find that regular-sized clothes are too big, and I've had great success in the little girl's department of any thrift store, because they have a tendency to put tiny grown-up clothes over there. On ebay this takes a bizarro turn, as often dresses described as "WIGGLE! TINY FIT! XXS!" are nothing more than children's dresses/coats/blazers what have you, dolled up with Kanye West shades and pigeon-toed stances. As egregious as that was, and is, today I found the following auction, described as "DROP WAIST SHORTS ROMPER":



THIS IS CLEARLY LYCRA-MIX!
THIS IS NO JUMPER!
THIS IS A BATHING SUIT!
Can I be any more greiged??

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

In keeping with yesterday's post, and in a desperate attempt to combat my homesickness, we will now discuss a particularly collegiate preoccupation:

Halloween costumes. On October 31, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a slutty bumblebee, slutty Albert Einstein, or slutty nun. It doesn't seem fair that whatever we ladies dress as, it has to show some kind of skin or we are made to feel awkward and/or unfeminine. I tried to combine the grotesque and the gorgeous (?) last year by dressing as Alice Cooper in Wonderland:



Did you guess? BECAUSE NOBODY LAST YEAR DID

The year before that, though, I got as slutty as I will ever and have ever gotten:

vintage dress and shoes, Prada socks

I don't know what I was supposed to be though; little girl? Lolita? I mainly use Halloween as an excuse for wearing false eyelashes and conning someone into curling my hair. This year I will be Pocahontas (warrior, princess, erstwhile Christian), with a 2 foot long feather headdress. Pictures to follow.

So what are you going to be for Halloween? I know you're reading, I can see you doing it!

Sweet Southern Comfort

There is a time in every girl's life when her thoughts turn lightly to tailgating, drinking beer in the shower at 10 am, and screaming warchants with 80,000 of your closest friends. I am talking of course about college football season, and I am desperately homesick for my alma mater. It is in trying times like these that the Victoria's Secret PINK Collegiate Collection seems a worthy investment. If I was still an undergrad I would probably buy the tote bag, but if I ever get back to Tallahassee (stay tuned for next week's episode, where I reveal my bank account number), I will most likely buy the underwear, which are not available on the site.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Kick In The Eye

Some other fashion bloggers are lucky (?) enough that their daily lives consists of investigating abandoned churches and serving milk tea to the mice that live in the basement, and are afforded a wardrobe of silk stockings, bubble skirts and tattered blouses in which to do it. Unfortunately, I have to work for my supper and have Work Clothes to do it in. Luckily my office is business casual casual, so I can wear t-shirts and jeans to work. This means that 50% of my closet is plain but necessary deep v's, jeans, and tanks. The other 50% is all manner of impractical high-waist pencil skirts, vulgar t-shirts, floofy dresses, too-short minis, etc etc. In short, clubwear.

I've never been tempted to check asos.com, I think because I believed that it was the same clothes they sell in the supermarket in England (but I think that's actually Primark? Someone correct me if I'm wrong), but I have and it's clear that I probably shouldn't have. Of course I'm still not necessarily condoning it, because I believe we are all better dressers, and shouldn't be trying to emulate exactly Peaches Geldof and Whosits, because we are better than that. Let's say it together!





Two ways to get the Gothic Lolita look without someone asking you if Halloween is early this year.


Silk t-shirt dress! I'm for it!


Were this not $160 or so, I'd so buy it. T-shirt not included, which just makes my brain swell with possibilities. I think those are possibilities.


Some dresses don't need witty captions


However, they have an incredible selection of Terry De Havilland shoes. If there's a celebrity to wish to imitate, be certain first that they have worn a pair of TDHs at some point. Then you have the green light for emulation! Maybe when I pay my credit card down I will buy a pair of $600 shoes. I am feeling faint, must lie down now.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

High Times

I resisted high waisted jeans for a long time, because they give you mom butt, and front butt, and no mass market retailer is willing to source a long enough zipper, and instead they choose to just slap some dreadful buttons on an extra strap of fabric that make you look like you're wearing a denim cummerbund. I can no longer resist.

The night began as most other nights do, with rum and diet cokes and conversation about how poorly dressed all the other patrons were. Until a girl walked in wearing The Jeans.

I really only noticed her because she was wearing everything I own: American Apparel deep v gym shirt and black studded sandals from Old Navy. But the jeans! High waisted, ankle zipped, and they made her butt look like a million bucks. I am not usually the kind of person who goes out of their way to ask someone where they bought something; I assume that stylish people are snobby and/or bitchy, and will shut me down faster than ...a Woolworths going-out-of-business sale? Enron?

This time I decided that my civic duty (to you, dear reader) would trump my babyness so I walked right up to her and asked where they were from. Funny I should find the only kind-hearted person in the place, who practically drew me a map to Urban Outfitters so I could get my own pair.

Next day, I marched into Urban and asked the girl working where the high waisted jeans were. "Really high waisted jeans aren't in this year," she sniffed. I wanted to say "When were they ever?" but I didn't and found them on the clearance rack, for $10 a pair. So I bought two.


They are not really high waisted. That girl was a dolt. And for the record, they do make my butt look fabulous.

When I recieve my vintage Tears for Fears shirt from ebay, I shall show you. I promise.

Mind the Gap

This is why I shall never be a fashion editor; I get too involved in grocery shopping or Greatest American Dog, and I neglect the constituents and forget what I wanted to say, which is



Usually the Teen Vogue spreads with celebrity spawn make my piss boil for two very specific reasons. First, 12 year olds really have no idea who Barry Levinson or Barishnykov (except for a certain set of 12 year olds, and then they don't care about his weird-faced daugter) are, and secondly, showing 12 year olds wearing "oh, just a Chloe lace mini with Wolford tights and this 30 year old Rolling Stones t shirt that my godmother Jane Birkin gave me, a ha ha!" is demonstrating a knowledge too dear for girls who should be out in the garden with the fairies. And celebrates the very materialism that magazines like that purport to destroy.

But when I was a little one, and chanced upon the editorial of Carine Roitfeld's chubby lovely daughter Julia, I was smitten. They (Carine at least and with a mother like that you practically have no choice in being stylish and beautiful) embody the sexy, eye-baggy gothic elan that we all work so hard to achieve. And now in the Gap's cropped-sleeve peacoat (cropped sleeve! PEACOAT!), we have no choice but to follow, zombie-like, to the mall this fall.

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Things to Want and Buy

I bought the old American Apparel boatneck dress because I believe that boatnecks confer a certain je ne sais quoi a la petites jeunes filles. c'est chic! I am returning it though and I bid you not buy it, since it only comes in size Medium, so if you are smaller than that you will be depressed at how unfortunately batwing-y the sleeves are, and if you are larger than that you will be depressed at AA's bizarro vanity sizing and throw the thing out the window.

With the money I get from its return I shall buy any or all of the following. Or not since some of them are imaginary or 30 years old


My fall look is dying without a pair of high waisted jeans. These are the J Brand Bardot, but they are $200 some-odd dollars. Why, J Brand? Why not send me a pair and let me test them for you? I have nothing to wear my little 40s tops printed with hunting dogs and suchlike, without your Bardot jeans. Size 26 please


New Sounds, New Styles magazine. I mean, give me a break!


Am currently besotted with crappy film Heavy Metal, its fin de siecle/Beavis and Butthead/really horrible 80s-style animation, and most of all this girl's boots, which are like those really gross ballerina fetish heels, only sexy, wearable, cool, and imaginary.

I have an embarrassing, abiding love for Old Navy; they consistently have the best basic tops and tanks, ridiculous sales, and of course their flip flops. I liked going to college up north because our Old Navy had the lovely wool coats and sweaters that down south locations wouldn't dream of stocking. I suppose this is why I missed out on this little number:

From the girls department, only left in gray for a size any of us could fit into. But jiminy crickets! They have this one now, but you better not buy up all the XXL's before I get my hands on one.