Busy, busy, busy...

Obviously. Currently, it's 5:52AM, the morning of the first day of school. I think one of the reasons why I am awake is because of nervousness, though I really can't feel it unless it's that nausea in my stomach. My bed is hot and itchy, but I'd like to think if I was completely calm, I'd still be able to sleep. Oh well, I'm planning out my day.

The past 2 weeks, I've been orienting for school. There's so much covered that I'm just tired at the end of the day. I'm going to try to blog at least once a week though. If I don't, it'll consume my thoughts. I need these outlets, you know.

Times like these is when multitasking is of the utmost importance. I bought some shoes that I've been testing out over the past week. In shoe stores, I don't think anyone really stays there 15 minutes just to walk around in a pair of shoes. Therefore, if a pair really has potential, I buy them, and bring them home to test out. Wearing my heels, I go through the motions of my daily life: dishes, brushing my teeth, washing my face, folding clothes, ironing. These are all actually pretty light activities compared to walking around downtown, so if my feet hurt, or feel uncomfortable with these, there's no way I could do any more. The shoes go back to the store.

How many people out there practice with their new purchases?

Local Fare - Galveston, TX

About 3 weeks ago, my sisters, cousins, and I went to the coast.


Galveston coast to be precise. The stamina of my cousins for beach going and boozing is really pretty amazing. Given that drinking hasn't been in my interests as of late, I explored elsewhere: souvenir shops.

I like taking a little something back with me whenever I go somewhere new. It's nice to have a little something with a story behind it...especially if it was something you were looking for or on sale!


I haven't come across soft water pearls anywhere but festival stands and the Fantasy Isle Souvenir shop that was on Poretto Beach. They were having a 3 for $10 sale, which was kind of convenient. Normally soft water pearls would be >$10, but because of the sale...to get the most bang for my buck, I had to buy two other things.



I got a nice coral colored puka shell necklace.


Also, at a loss for my last item, I bought my sister a pair of earrings...and check it out: Lead Free. Personally, I find the stringed detailing pretty cool, but my ears aren't pierced. Gotta remember to give these back to Irene.

Also, among cooler things...

I was talking to my dad in these photos

I got sundresses! Gotta love Wings. Though a chain, it's only in coastal states, with the physical store being presumably along the coast. It's a specialty shop for beach wear. And do you have any idea how hard it is to find a maxi dress when you're 5'2"? Do you? What's even more awesome was how this dress had pockets. @ $20, fine, I'll take it.

I did it my waaayyyyyyy

I've always had this tendency to want to put my own swing on things: style, research papers, lesson plans...you name it! After moving into my current house, it took me a long time to get settled because of the lack of usable space in my closet. (2 hanging rods? Puh-Leaze)

I also needed drawers. Just drawers. I found that the ones that I only sort of wanted were kind of a lot of money...there was a little bit of a conflict of interest there. The story's actually outlined here. My dad thought it would've been easier for me to just get something at IKEA, but is it really wrong for me to want to buy things I want to keep?

I find that motivation is easier to come by when I have a big project that needs to be done...just kind of staring me in the face.

This was staring me in the face.

I'd never sanded before. Never stained wood. It didn't sound too difficult. Time consuming? Probably, but nothing hard.

Ta-da!

And here's what I did! Before I was thinking of doing this cool two tone design, but...then I saw the stain colors that Minwax offered and my eyes stuck on Bayou Green. I was iffy on the two tone design anyway and right now, I'm really happy with how it came out. My logic with the green was that at some point, I'd like to move this dresser out of my closet and have it display elsewhere.

It was a learning experience. Stripping paint is hard. I started off with 120 grain before slowly realizing that to strip off the paint, I had to go down to 60 grain sandpaper. Sheesh.

Anyway, finishing this allowed me to finally get my clothes in order. And after getting my dresser in the closet, I realized that I still didn't have enough closet space to accommodate the mess strewn around my room.

For some extra hanging space, I added IKEA's Portis Hat Rack to accommodate my button downs that still needed to be ironed at the time. The layout of my closet is two hanging rods on opposite sides of a long closet, that middle space wasn't being used and I found it's useless presence rather irritating.

Lots of ironing and folding later... I had a full closet. From left to right:

blazers & skirts on the rod. Sweaters, jeans, cotton trousers, and shorts on the shelf. That yellow bag is my sock bag.

Center: blouses, shirts, the dresser with foldables.

Left: dresses and dress slacks.

Small closets and me just don't get along, There are some things I just won't get rid of. I've adapted to so many closets over the past 6 years, it doesn't rub me the right way to feel I have to get rid of things here and there when I know the most of the places I've been living have always been on some kind of temporary basis.

You know what's the odd thing about closets? Even if you have an avalanche of clothes outside of your closet, having a relatively empty closet can really give you the feeling the something is lacking in your wardrobe...even if you actually have too much.

"not wanting" is the key to success

So, I'm rather irritated right now. I can't find my camera adapter cord and it's hidden somewhere in one of the many cars that happen to reside at my house in San Antonio. It's like an annoying version of the price is right. For now, I'll just make do until I can ask someone for it, after all it is 3:20am and really, I want it just to have it on me.

Anyway...

currently I'm quite content with my clothing situation, save a few side projects I need to finish. After having read Amanda Lee's article on doing more with the clothes you have, I got the final push to finish organizing my closet. I tackled my ironing, any clothes that needed to be folded and laundered. Truthfully, at some point I was afraid that even with all the new alterations (additional hanging rack, newly finished dresser, shelf for my sweaters) to my closet I still wouldn't be able to fit everything in. I seriously have a lot of clothes. After going through that ordeal, I found it kind of ridiculous to want to buy more clothes. Sure, there are a few things I still need (black button-down, black heels, black sweater) and a few things I want (turquoise pencil skirt), I'm just considerably less motivated to actively seek out and spend money on things when I have a full closet.

ch...ch...ch...ch...changes!

Not really.

Although I am happy to say that I feel like this will be the last name change for a good long while. Most of the other names I had before gave me some varying degree of comfort, but for now - I really like this.

For one thing, I like monsters. My closet is a monster to handle. And, among cooler things, the effect of the barbies on the title bar kind of gives me the same feeling that ventriloquist dummies and string puppets do. There's some scary appeal in it.



Going off the tangent of scary appeal. I made this from an art museum brochure that talked about vintage paper dolls. I'm also really fond of menswear.

90s Style

Going off of a tangent of substitution and compensation, I'm going to diverge off into the realm of music for a little...because I feel like it, but also because of its mild relevance in how it influences style. And I happen to be a kid of the 90s. That said...

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, TLC

Bel Biv Devoe, New Kids on the Block

What the heck WAS 90s style? (other than embarrassing) My sister when through a grunge phase. It's rather fun to haunt her with pictures from it. Developing one's style was rather hard in the 90s, what with the various popular music scenes (grunge, hip hop, pop - albeit pop happens to be dictated by the times always) and the very different resulting imagery. Very confusing times for the impressionable young thing I was, it didn't help that I had two elder sisters who were rather critical of the things I wore. On top of that, there were some aspects of 90's style that were so minimalistic that there wasn't much beyond a t-shirt and jeans. That most certainly was the boring aspect of the 90s; however, we did get compensated with some pretty awesome R&B and hip hop, even if the clothes were funny and the dancing was awkward, on the more independent college radio station here in town, they always tend to defer to 90's R&B. I suppose everything has it's time and place.

Substitution & Compensation

After a good number of months spent waiting, I've finally acquired something on my "must have" list:
Oh yes, you know what's coming -


I'm sure it's been mentioned once or twice that I've been eyeing Betsey Johnson's Little Bow Pleat Satchel. At first it was pure lust and impulse, but given that I've still wanted it after 6 months, there had to be more. Many style books seem to try to consolidate the number of purses one needs to have a fairly basic and functional collection. My old roommate use to say that a person only needs a black purse and a brown purse. A number of people suggest the two neutral formula with a couple extra. For the longest time I had bags of every color except black. It's not like I have anything against black, I just tend to be more scrupulous with neutrals and as a result, purses of other colors are easier to pick. As a matter of fact, lots of things are easier to pick than basic neutral pieces not limited to handbags.

Substitution is when you settle for something similar to what you wanted. Given that I couldn't think of anything to substitute for my ideal black bag, this is where the compensation comes in. At the time of the original impulse, I couldn't reason spending $160 on a bag even though it was marked down from $209. I just graduated, I didn't have money or a job, just a lot of credit card bills that resulted from similar impulse spending. I decided to wait it out until there was a better sale on it with the hopes that I would have a job by then.

It goes without saying that it's easier to spend money on things lower in cost than higher in cost without even really having to reason it in your head. I was able to buy things to make up for my wanting my handbag as a form of compensation, but it never really got rid of the "wanting" part. I probably spent much more than $160, probably even more than $209 while waiting for the purse to go down to the $130 that I paid for it (I got a job! Whoo!). After acquiring the purse, I haven't really had much of a desire to buy anything. Sigh. Waiting is the hardest part. In the long run, it would've been better if I just bought the purse earlier, but the best scenario would've been just to remember what I wanted the most.

Oh Barbie!

Barbie, is by far the most far reaching fashion icon in history. While I can't back this up with a thesis on the cultural impact that Barbie has had on American society, I can say from experience that before girls can even coordinate clothes for themselves, they start with a Barbie.
If you think about it, as girls, we can play dress up to some degree, however, that takes a fair amount of money just to see yourself in ill fitting clothes compared to seeing how clothes "should" fit on a Barbie. You see, at a very young age, we were color and fashion scientists. How does this fit? How does this look? A friend of mine says her mom gave her pieces of cloth and she made clothes for her Barbie. One day when I brought Barbies to school for my friend, all of the girls were huddled in a giant group waiting for our turns to dress her. I always got pissed when I lost a shoe.

With a few exceptions of gimmick Barbies, I've really enjoyed how her style has diversified while remaining vibrant, new, risky...overall, a perfect combination of the craziest fashions in a package that makes it work. She out-divas Lady Gaga and Madonna. It also doesn't hurt that, like me, Barbie has large calves.

Observe a more recent conception of Barbie. Sugar by Byron Lars. Who could wear a pagoda style hat that (when placed to scale is probably the size of an umbrella) completely covers a large afro? Barbie. Who could wear a safari style bustier on the outside of her blouse? Barbie. Who could get away with wearing THAT much blue eyeshadow? Barbie. Who could think up an outfit like this? It's like mixing all your watercolors together and actually getting something nice oppose to a giant breen (brownish green) sludge. Of course that would be the amazing Mr. Byron Lars. I'm sure Barbie is the best client to design for. For one thing, she can wear anything. Secondly, I feel that designers chosen to create collections for Barbie are more sought out because of a pure interest in their art oppose to their ability to recreate trends in their vision. It's free range, pretty much complete artistic freedom.

This was mainly inspired by the Barbie Fashion Show over a year ago. Were the designs awesome or what? It would be nice if designers could produce a Barbie line for the general public because seriously

I'd want to get married in this.
I'd want to just go out somewhere in this. Betsey Johnson really got it down!

Another one down!

Anthropologie Button Front, Adjustable Back Moth Sweater
Size L
Comes with an extra button.

I was finally able to list this sweater on eBay after years of not wearing it.

Let me just say that shopping after a break up is only a good idea if you keep the receipts. I'm normally a size XS to S, and somehow I convinced myself that I could make a large work, I'd just have to walk a certain way with a certain posture, but that's asking too much.

Auctions!

Finally. I finally put something up on auction after years of inactivity. And here it is.

What Goes Around Comes Around - Tangerine Dream Shift Dress
Size 0
done for Anthropologie. Comes with sewn on new buttons as well as two of the original buttons (the 3rd one broke)

Just because you're a size zero in college and you make it past your freshman year without gaining 15 pounds doesn't mean you've made it past all the weight obstacles life will offer. What's worse was that I bought this dress when I couldn't even fasten it properly because it was missing a button. It's also not good to have pride in your size...because of how small it is. Seriously, this is probably one of the few instances where it's not good to have confidence in numbers. As such, this dress has never been worn...tried on a few times, but never worn out. I look like a sausage in it. Such a shame...because it's so nice, but for it to fit the way I'd like it to - I'd have to shave my hip bones down, because losing weight alone won't do it

sun punched face

So, my sister got married. That was awesome. The oversize dress I got worked out in the end because I wasn't able to eat that much :( If I was wearing a size smaller, I most certainly would have passed out from all the dancing. That was June 12th. Pictures to come as soon as the photographer sends them. Best lesson learned from the wedding: it might be a good idea to have a back up or reserve DJ in case his ex-girlfriend is at the wedding. It's hard to maintain professionalism after a recent break up. Among other observations, there are actually a lot of good, upbeat, sad-in-theme-but-happy-in-tune songs. Break ups are pretty common music fodder, they may as well make it the best break up song ever. Here's a sample list:

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles - Tears of a Clown
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Beggin' (Pilooski edit)
Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - Let's Hang On
George Michael - Careless Whisper
The Cardigans - Lovefool
When in Rome - The Promise

and the list goes on. My sister and I had good fun putting together a "recently broken up, but still thinking about you" list.


Anywho, I haven't been able to do much lately because I got sunburned---on the face. :(

The sun certainly did more than kiss it. I can't buy make up, or try on clothes without this semi-permanent blush affecting my perception. So, I have to switch back to things that I've known I wanted for a while:

foams heads
a hat rack
the Black Betsey Johnson Little Bow Pleat satchel


yeah baby. yeah

The look of AWESOMENESS

Truly, the one quality that will make anyone look good is knowing that something good is going to happen. :)

I was driving back to Austin from San Antonio, dropped by the Cosmetics Store Outlet - because I had to: it's the best deal when looking for good quality makeup brushes.

I get home and get ready to prep my sample lesson and then I get a call back from the principal of the school that I wanted to work at. And I'm offered a contract!! Score! Who has a job lined up? I have a job lined up. I suppose it's not official until the paperwork is signed, but I don't think anything I can do to my face could make me look better than that.

So, I go back to my room and I'm happy, I have my makeup, and my job. Then I realize that they gave me the wrong color eye shadow (sigh)

eye painting

I haven't abandoned my blog. Just been busy. Personally, I didn't think helping out with SOMEONE ELSE'S wedding would take up as much of my time as it does. I've been traveling between cities a lot and I'm so tired at the end of my day, I can't even finish the last 25 pages of the book I'm reading. Pitiful.

Anyway, I love Sephora. I can spend a good chunk of time there. I also have an acquaintance that works at MAC who always tells us to not shop at Sephora for what come off as fairly biased reasons.

I remember a long time ago (so long I can't find the blog) I blogged over my excitement in procuring the Smashbox Mother Earth Palette that was done exclusively for Sephora. It had 4 pretty awesome shades of eyeshadow and and orangey blush. Made from cornstarch and other natural ingredients, no parabens and all that jazz.

I've been acquiring a lot of eye shadow lately as I have been learning to get more comfortable with going crazy with eye shadow combinations. Most of the colors I acquire happen to be MAC. Recently, I put MAC to the test against the dark brown from my Mother Earth Palette - oh yes, I went to a night club. Using two colors on my lid, by the end of the night, only the MAC color stayed on it's own. I don't know if it has to do with the nature of "all natural" eye shadows, but right now, the Mother Earth Palette is just an eye shadow mixer for me.

Is my pencil skirt too tight?

UPDATE: This topic has been revisited and updated here. Feel free to enjoy this particular posting anyway. - Christine

Seriously, I don't need to ask myself this question. I know my style preferences well enough to feel and know that my pencil skirt is too tight, but for some reason when googling and trying to find pictures, an inappropriately, unintentionally tight pencil skirt is hard to come across. I'm searching for validation. I'm told to do the "sit down" test without any real explanation of what I'm looking for. Luckily for curious people beyond this point I'm about to match a face to the madness that is a tight pencil skirt.

The first part is acceptance. You recognize that, for whatever reason, your pencil skirt just doesn't feel the way it use to. No matter how much you like the pattern, or how much you paid, unless you go to a tailor, there's no making your pencil fit like it use to. Once you get past that, along with any sentiments, you can more easily look at yourself objectively in your skirt and think "only a miracle will make me look good in this skirt." Then, start with the "Sit Down" test.

1.) When you stand up, does your skirt bunch at the hips (or any other place for that matter?)





2.) Do you need to pull your skirt down for it to regain it's shape?




Yes to any one of these means more likely than not, you're skirt is too tight. Constantly having to fix your skirt ruins the sex appeal of wearing a pencil skirt to begin with.
Here are more obvious signs that your pencil skirt it too tight:
When you walk, does your skirt bunch and rise up? This makes it so that you have to fix your skirt virtually all the time.
Does your butt go beyond the give of the skirt to where it distorts the shape? Pencil skirts are not suppose to flare out at the bottom.

Yes. It's too tight. It's times like these that you have to look yourself in the mirror and recognize that the clothes don't make the woman, but it's the woman that makes the clothes. This skirt is of no use to me if it only looks good on the hanger. I did contemplate sleeping in the skirt to see if I'd have any chance at changing the shape, but I think the skirt has enough stretch to make that plan fail miserably.

I bought this skirt over a year ago so returning it was a bit of a pickle. At Anthropologie, it only rings up the dead price (10 cents). There were some complications with the return, and personally, I'd rather keep a skirt that doesn't fit me than get $0.10 for it. Seeing that there is no real point in keeping a skirt that doesn't fit me...

Until I work up the time to get this skirt on eBay, it's on sale for $30. Email me for details.

Yoana Baraschi's Happenstance Skirt
done for Anthropologie
Size 0

the danger of trying things on

...and this is when it all goes to hell

So, a couple weeks ago, I went to Anthropologie to make a return. The return was the main plan, but of course, that wouldn't stop me from looking at the website and thinking about if there was anything that could possibly interest me. I was in the market for a basic black pencil skirt and there happened to be one on sale. This is where my logic fails me. Since I'm all for convenience and efficiency, if I'm going to try on one skirt, why not try on six more?



the expression says which one I got

Who takes a camera into a dressing room? I've found it to be an easier way to review what I've worn without having to go through the trouble of trying on the clothes again. It's a more objective way to review yourself as well as an easier way to compare everything you wear across the board and there's also the bonus of viewing yourself from a different angle. When it came to the pencil skirts, lets just say that lighter colors sometimes let you see things you'd prefer not to. I liked the shape, but not so many of the visible stitch lines; they looked more subtle on the black skirt...and I liked the subtle lines oppose to the more harsh ones on the taupe skirt. I was looking for a black skirt anyway so that made the choice pretty easy.

I can't collect them all, you know

There was also this interesting skirt that looked like it could be good for Fall & Winter...maybe Spring if I get creative, I liked the effect of the ruffle that went down the side. I happened to like all the patterns. Going through the choices in my head was a little harder. I know, the grey one looks the best. What killed me on that one was that I already have a grey, tweed pencil skirt. It was just too similar. With the brown dotted skirt and the navy pinstripe skirt, I had some qualms because I had another pencil skirt that was like a hybrid of the two: a brown pinstriped pencil skirt. True, I could've just put them all back, but I wanted that ruffle! In the end I decided that the navy skirt was the least like any I owned and I went with it. And the picture of me in the grey skirt is just torture >:(



uhh...

Truly, these skirts symbolize that moment of "what the hell :) ! why not?" I saw the purple skirt on the website and decided to check it out. I liked the pattern and the shape, but what's even cooler is how it's cut. There's some subtle gathering that can't be seen that well because of the pattern, just trust me, it makes the shape more awesome. As for the pink ruffles...I liked how it moved...I think this one was the true impulse buy. I just decided to see how it would work with my current wardrobe.

So, this is how one thing leads to another. A return results in a massive buy, I come home with 4 new skirts (I bought the last two.) I'm currently trying to see how well they integrate into my wardrobe (FYI, the purple flowery sequin skirt is officially in my wardrobe, the rest are still pending.) Perhaps there may be some returns in the future...but we know where that may go :/ I don't know if someone can just "try it on." Maybe most people are skeptical, but, for once, clothes fitting and looking good can cause quite the dilemma.

2 pc & a biscuit - 3 lessons

One thing about joblessness is that all the extra time you have goes towards body criticism that you wouldn't have had the time for or would not have even noticed if you had a job. Prior to the start of my job, I was feeling quite chunky. I imagine that my frequent cravings for chicken fried steak didn't help matters.

In my experience, any stressful situation brings some kind of weight loss either through the lack of ability to eat regularly, or something of the like. Also, for some reason, I just get fatter in San Antonio. Anyway...

My sister is getting married! And all of her sister's get to be bridesmaids!


Don't we all look happy? I find that I look rather jobless (chunky), but also, my dress was suppose to look like this:


Let me just say, I think the gathering at the waist was too extreme and added too much puff. All of the extra tulle did not help. Among other things you notice, my sister in the middle seems like a bit of the oddball out.

Lesson #1: To the hospitable bride...

My eldest sister's approach to her wedding was to take everything that irritated her about weddings and not do that. So, in addition to paying for the bridesmaid dresses she also let us pick out the style and only required that the color be the same.

Initially, I picked out a short taffeta dress, Irene picked out the longest chiffon dress and Elie picked out the tea length satin dress. Mine came out longer and more puffy than expected. Elie's dress was actually made of taffeta too and Irene's dress...there is no chiffon with a sheen, at least not with this dress so hers looks different. Hence this is the extreme that results from too much freedom on the bridesmaids side.

Really, if a bride wants to be hospitable, it should be one or the other. Let us pick our dresses and make us pay, or make us wear the same dress and (the bride) pay for it. Also, pick the color AND the material. It'll save a lot of tears later. My elder sister lucked out and got two dresses out of the deal.

Lesson #2: Seriously, take advantage of custom measurements and get seamstress measurements

I told my (bride) sister that and she ended up just taking her own measurements and her dress came out looser than expected. If you're going to go custom with the measurements, have a seamstress do it.

Among other things, take advantage of custom measurements if you can. Not only did my dress come out ridiculously long, it was severely puffy. I put too much trust in the standard sizes. So my dress is in the works, I ripped it up and re-pinned the skirt:

even then, I decided that my dress was still too puffy and I ripped it up more and tore out the tulle:


and now it's pretty much where I want it to be. I still need to sew it, and hand sewing really sucks, but at least everything else is ready. The dress even looks more like the original and the puffy-ness is now more from the gathering at the waist than any of the leftover tulle inside. Man, I look like crap in both of those pictures.

Would there have been a way to get a puffy-ass bubble hem shortened and also the tulle ripped out of the puff for less than $50? Only if grandma were home.

Lesson #3: Be wary of ordering times

The bride to be was rather eager to get these dresses out of the way, so she bought them while I was unemployed and taking out my depression on chicken fried anything. My presumption was that I was going to remain at my current chunk, or at least close to it, so I went one size larger since the smaller size seemed too tight and the larger size seemed like it would fit fine. The tufts of cloth at the sides will tell you otherwise. What was even worse was coming back to Austin, getting a job and losing more chub. Just when I thought I'd actually have to go to the tailors on this one, I found that the easier route to getting the dress to fit: a 2 piece & a biscuit

heck yeah!

$5 for fried chicken is way better than $55 for alterations on a dress I'm not going to wear very often. So that's the plan, before the wedding - a 2pc & a biscuit.

Woo! Flea Markets!

So, like I said, it was SXSW last week. Big music event, Carniville, SWAG, you name it! Oh, and cold weather, that was a bit of a downer.

Anywho, guess what else made an appearance? The American Apparel Flea Market! (For some reason I'm of the impression that this only excites college students.) Apparently, it's a traveling flea market that sets up in a giant tent...it's odd, but what the hey - American Apparel, at a discount, why not? I took the liberty of buying some sweat socks there since my only pair is developing holes. I also got some really cool leg warmers. I found a rather nice track jacket that reminded me of my quest for a red leather/pleather/pvc/vinyl jacket to complete my Michael Jackson "Beat It" look. It was only $15 so I didn't have too much to lose.

Seriously, I feel like a bad mama jama

It's my favorite light jacket now. Sometimes you just never know with these things. It looks awesome when I'm dancing. It has this really cool MJ, Bruce Lee, Kill Bill feel to it.

Fine. Anyone could have seen this coming

So, I changed the name of this blog for the last time (I hope.) I just couldn't take the vagueness of the last name with the coolness of the title pic. Geez. I suppose that I was just eager get a name down. I don't like thinking too much about those things. I've always tried to avoid putting "fashion" in the name. I felt I had to limit what I blogged about for the sake of relevance, but I've found that I usually want to blog about my clothes and clothing issues. So I gave in, somewhat.

See Jane Dress...it kind of sounds like a perverted Tarzan.

slick, smooth, and cool all describe what I wanna be. Those were inspired by all of those jazzy "rebirth" albums. In addition, you need all those qualities to look good dancing.

Did you know that "Jane" is flapper slang for any female? While, admittedly, it would be cooler if my name was Jane too, it works just fine.

Sunrises

I've come to the conclusion that sunrises suck, no matter what. Either you've woken up early (usually against your will) or you've stayed up really really late.

I start work today. This means I'll either be writing less because of a lack of time, or I'll be writing even more because of the need to mentally decompress. Yes. I think that covers about 100% of my options.

More wedding dresses, in the projects

Been busy. It was Spring Break and SXSW this past week. Despite all the fun and lounging, I'm feeling hella tired.

After the "Here comes the Bride" episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, I told my boyfriend that if I ever was in the position to get married - I'd go to a thrift store and buy a wedding dress then just alter it to my liking. Pumpkin thought the idea was cool for it's practicality, I thought it was cool just because I have more power over what my wedding dress would look like. Either way, here are my favorite made-over wedding dresses from that episode.

Tyra Sanchez

Raven

Among other things, I was watching the Media Queens episode from the first season - when Shannel had to lip sync for her life to "The Greatest Love of All" and she kept going despite the little malfunction, the moment brought a tear to my eye. Oooh she worked it out.

Holy Wow Wedding Dresses

Before I get into it, in reference to my last post, I'm kind of reluctant to wear my sun hat.

Anyway, I happen to be a big fan of Ru Paul's Drag Race.

yeah baby!

I've always thought Drag Queens were awesome. I think it's a combo of all the glam and fabulousness that has me addicted to this show. America's Next Top Model, eat your heart out!

This most recent episode, the girls had to dragify their own wedding dresses as well as becomes their own grooms. Maybe it's because I like most of the characters on the show, but really - they're pretty good looking men too. The main thing I want to touch on is their wedding dresses, OH GAWD their wedding dresses. The Queens started off with a rack of wedding dresses they got to pick from, then they had their way with the dresses. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting much because many of the girls don't sew, they hot glue things together. Seriously, some of the dresses that came out made me want to get married, particularly Tyra Sanchez's dress and Raven's dress. Maybe it was the presentation, but damn! Many of the dresses were taken up and made shorter and consequently funkier - in a good way. Very Betsey Johnson-ish. I'm not saying the Betsey Johnson is drag wear as much as it's big, colorful, and fabulous! Truthfully, when it comes to making the dresses shorter - if you're a guy and you can wear as little as possible and still look like a girl, rock it!

On a final note, I thought it was cool how Tyra Sanchez hot glued the lace appliques on her hose. It really looked cool. I may have to try that, but what sucks about it is to get it the way you want, you have to hot glue yourself - and that doesn't sound like fun.

Watch Gay Video & Lesbian Movies

Freaky Fashion

Last night I watched The Stepford Wives (1975).

It's definitely one of those movies that demands a re-watching at least every five years. One way to assess what you've learned in five years is to re-watch a movie so you can see how you view it differently (if at all). Mrs. Doubtfire is a rather dirty movie. When I was a kid, it was just funny. When I first saw The Stepford Wives, it creeped me out. The only reason I was curious about it was because of the 2004 remake that was coming out at the time (the 2004 version turned out to be complete rubbish and it was completely devoid of any message the original had to offer) and following the advice of Jay Sherman, if a movie is a remake of a classic, rent the classic! (sic)

The awesome thing about DVDs, aside from convenience, are the special features. Bryan Forbes was hired as the director and along with him came his wife, Nanette Newman. In the original screenplay by William Goldman, the Stepford Wives were all going to be dressed as Playboy bunnies. Nanette Newman's body type didn't suit the playboy bunny costuming and that instituted a costume change...and this is where it gets freaky.

ha! Really?

While I don't know too many details about the original screenplay, don't you think it would be too big of a giveaway if you moved to a new town and every housewife there was dressed like a playboy bunny? If that was the case I could easily dismiss the movie as some dork's wet dream, but that wasn't the case and the wardrobe change obviously impacted the screenplay.

I am getting the willies just looking at this

One of the things that gives suspense movies their horror factor is any element of realness. You are more likely to see a woman in a long dress and a sun hat walking in the grocery store than a playboy bunny. This was the most notable observation in my 2nd viewing of the movie. I found myself taking a second look at my Pumpkin thinking "could my Pumpkin...be that devious of a Pumpkin?" It's nothing new that there are men out there who only care about a hot body devoid of any substance. What's more scary are those men actually doing something about it. The wardrobe change allowed the director to amp up the creepiness of the movie. Perhaps the underlying message of this blog is "dressing sensibly scares the crap out of me," but really, scary elements don't necessarily require supernatural-looking, hi-tech special effects; they need to elicit that feeling of "this can happen to me."

Mannequin: To Be or Not To Be?

From Merriam Webster

1 : an artist's, tailor's, or dressmaker's lay figure; also : a form representing the human figure used especially for displaying clothes
2 : one employed to model clothing

from left to right: Barbie, Mannequin, Eugenia Mandzhieva

While I don't want to resign myself to the thought that my mind does not have the artistic caliber to interpret fashion and all I can do is think of the social issues, really - as of the moment - it's hard for me to ignore the social issues surrounding fashion.

If you observe the definitions given above, I wonder if designers would prefer the brain functioning of one def along with the living convenience of the other. It's occurred to me that designers could just use mannequins (non-english definition) but, 1.) it takes a lot of time to change the clothes and reposition a mannequin. 2.) As showcased by Old Navy, campaigns attempting to personify mannequins kind of...are not fun.

not fun

At the same time, it would be nice to have a medium that didn't complain about low BMIs and self starvation. Something's gotta give, seriously.

I grew up in a time where if you were a supermodel, you were either featured or mentioned in a music video by either Ru Paul or George Michael. Yes. The awesome glamazon models of the 90s!

I don't know what is was that made those models bigger than their 5' 10" frames, but I feel that the quality of being "untouchable" worked in everyone's favor. I'm thinking that trends were a bigger deal then as well, and skinny was not quite as trendy then as it is today. These days, I think most people have figured out that proportion is the name of the game and if you're not tall, you can always be skinny. And this is where all hell breaks loose.

About a week ago, I was intrigued by a few articles (NY Daily News, New York Times) claiming that Coco Rocha had become a part of fashion's fat camp of models. Though at first incensed (hey, I'm a size 2-4 and about 8 inches short than her), I decided to resort to a more reliable source for the real breakdown: Coco Rocha's blog - O H S O C O C O: My Uncensored Point of View

- aside -
It's times like these that I truly appreciate blogs. Where else could I get an uncensored version of a models opinion other than her blog? On an even more far fetching note - I happen to like a Korean band called SHINee that I wouldn't be able to keep up with if it wasn't for blogs writing about them given that everything else is in Korean - a deep thank you - keep on blogging!
- end -

Needless to say, I much preferred Coco's version to the articles embedded with the elements to make someone angry at the fashion world. I'll admit, it brought me back to 2006 where Italy banned size zero models and Spain required a healthy 18 BMI for their models after the deaths of Ana Carolina Reston and Luisel Ramos. And now the sample size is at zero (0) again. Guilt is never in vogue for that long.

While talking with Pumpkin about it, he commented that he feels some of the things in the fashion world are f***ed up, but that his friend (who was a design major) commented that models may look the way the do so as to not distract from the clothes. Really? Walking hangers essentially. A designer could send down their clothes on hangers and perhaps a conveyor belt of mannequins, it would be cheaper and cost effective, but they don't. The only reason I can think of is that it takes away from the art. I think, in my idealism, I'm trying to get across that there is value in fashion models. That they're not there just to be hangers, but part of the overall artwork. Maybe a model will only be around for one season, but they had a part in completing someone's piece that otherwise would have been substandard. The world already respects the art, but we should also respect the aspects that make it possible.

fashion: the minority opinion

As a precaution to my largely imaginary audience, my teaching nature may diverge into a lot of analogies as well as a few references to history and science. My logical reasoning is also highly mathematical - as reasoning should be.

I've been stumbling across a lot of fashion commentary (via Tavi Gevinson's blog) concerning the opinions of the factions that fashion tends to create. Pro-fashion, anti-fashion, and some mild commentary on things in between, I've found to be interesting in their own ways with distinct messages to offer. There is still one thing that escapes me and it's not due to any unresolved issues within each respective article as much as it is... a more permanent enigma: What is fashion?

It may come off as odd that someone who likes reading fashion blogs and opinions, who has their favorite models and favorite designers, doesn't really have an idea of what fashion is - but seriously, there are times when I have to wonder where a lot of this commentary is being derived from and while they all may have a foundation in fashion, fashion in itself is quicksand.

Fashion, as defined by Webster, is a prevailing style during a particular time. Fashion, being defined by time, essentially makes it a function and with time constantly changing - fashion changes as well. Fashion is a variable in an environment searching for a constant. As a matter of fact, it is quite obvious that fashion trends are predicted through calculus and this manifests itself as:

1997: baggy jeans
2000: boho
2005: metallics
2008: bug sunglasses
2009: big waist defining belts

To add less of a method to the madness is the opinions of designers, who I am quite sure do not come to a hard consensus on the style of the time, also contributing to this unstable, ever changing view of fashion. Thus, fashion is generally an environment where anything goes, but only the best stays. It's the theory of evolution on crack. Hence, the elusiveness of the concept of fashion.

In my own experience, I've never found myself in an environment where I felt the need to alter my style to fit in. I spent the first 9 years of my life in a rather unsexy catholic school girl uniform and that did not change social distinctions at all. I've been regarded as a little off or odd for almost all of my life and since changing a personality is rather hard - especially a personality I like, I embraced this outside perception of me as an opportunity to do whatever I wanted - even wear a stained sweater with ducks on it to picture day. I accepted that, regardless of what I wore, I was always going to be a little odd - because of the way I looked, thought, talked...etc. There was no point in trying to "fit in" with any group and this train of thought was only supported by my having, what one would call, friends. Anyway - this is turning into an aside on my style development, I'll get back to the biz.

I generally go for the nondescript "fashion is a mode for self expression" route. To those who complain about clothes, do you ever look in the mirror naked and find yourself completely content being out of the confines of fashion? Truthfully, I'm quite comfortable either way - though I prefer the clothed route for the sake of being lawful. Laws dictate that we be clothed in most public areas, but that opens some to the larger problems of letting the fashionable general public dress them versus trying to dress themselves. It's a match between the development of personal style versus going with the flow of the fashionable time.

When it comes to fashion, I can't analyze it as concretely as other things. I find it far more abstract - inspiring, interesting, and fun, but nothing that I feel I can supply relevant commentary on. Always adjectives, but never nouns. Maybe social commentary, but fashion commentary? I need words for that.

It wouldn't be out of line to say that I don't really follow fashion, I just like looking at the pictures.

"Do you think that fashion is oppressive to women – and men – or should we celebrate it as a source of fun and self-expression?" (Tanya Gold's Article)

Seriously, it's both.

the name game

I felt that a name change was in order. The last one felt more like a working name (pun), I also realized that no one watches me work as much as they just see the results because that's what gets posted. I got inspired some to make a new image and along with that, I just decided to change the name to something a little more fitting. I think this one will stay for a while longer. The title is a little more typical, but then again, every snowflake is made of water.

culture is an odd thing

Happy Lunar New Year! On the 14th, I (Ox) passed the torch of good luck onto the Tiger. Personally, I would've preferred to muscle a few more days, but what would be the odds of an ox taking out a tiger? Best of luck you bloody 86ers!

A few days ago, I was contemplating my luck for the year. Traditionally, one should not clean on the day of the Lunar New Year or you will be sweeping out your luck for the year. Girls shouldn't wash their hair for the next 3 days or you'll wash out your knowledge. And my all time favorite: parents and elders given their young'uns ang pows - red envelopes with money.

The holiday is wrought with superstition. I find myself a rational person, yet I always have the urge to clean my room and eat long noodles around the Lunar New Year. It's not just superstition, it's my culture. Of course, being one in favor of fusion, this is also the opportunity for more New Years Resolutions.

Just like that cultural based impulse that makes me clean my room around the Lunar New Year, there is also the hard wired impulse that tells me a cheongsam is a wardrobe staple I need.

Perhaps if I wasn't part Chinese, I wouldn't care as much about my need for a cheongsam. Given that I am part Chinese, I can't help but think that the cheongsam not only emphasizes that, but was made to look good on people of the region. To top that off, the thing is so ethnic looking, it can sometimes look like a costume, a wicked costume, but costume no less. There's nothing like owning a piece of clothing and thinking 'damn, this looks really really good on me.' Culture is an odd, but awesome thing. I'd feel so out of place in an Aodai, a Kimono, or Hanbok given my lack of exposure to any of those cultures - those would all be costumes on me, but I feel quite at home rocking a cheongsam.

this is my attempt to do it all

Notice the contrast?


To the left is how I look on occasion. I don't own a pair of black tights, so I just always wear my blue ones, and if you've noticed, I did buy the leopard lace Rodarte dress from Target - yep, it went on sale and sizing up makes a world of difference for getting the thing on.

To the right is how I look 90% of the time. Did I mention that, to some degree, I'm a hip hop dancer? There are my dunks that I've been meaning to post on for some time. That tiger shirt is my favorite, I wear it as often as I can and would probably be in it 90% of the time if I could be.

My boyfriend would much prefer the left and I personally like looking good from time to time, but I don't feel I look bad in my hip hop garb. For a while I was a little conflicted on my need to leave certain "younger" styles of clothing given that I'm 24 and only getting older, but in hip hop, I've found that anything goes, especially if it's colorful. Sometimes dressing on the left conflicts with my wanting to maintain my ability to "break it down" wherever I am. Conveniently, whenever I'm with my boyfriend, I usually don't dance so dressing nice could actually work out.

No need to limit myself when it comes to things that make me happy.

Among other things, my sister is getting married in June and I need to learn to dance in heels without blowing out my knee.