To trench or not to trench

Since my last post was kpop related, here is another tangent to get me back on track. 

This is Tao from EXO-M, a new boy group that made their debut under SM Entertainment. This is his official picture from the jacket of the CD case. You can thank his momma for that face. Aside from being into EXO, one thing that heavily attracted me to this picture in particular in Tao's overcoat. 

I like it very much. It looks medium weight, but like a longer over shirt. I also like the way he's wearing it. Simple t-shirt over a pair of black slacks. This is what I would consider unisex, but it leans more towards the masculine style. This, I like and I would wear the full outfit. This brings my thinking to a whole new level when it comes to trench coats. There's a certain suaveness that comes with a trench that elevates the level of the t-shirt and slacks combo by itself. The trench is more of an accessory than an outerwear piece. My main problem is finding THAT trench. That, and also living in Texas. It's been raining lately though, so I think it's a sign of the times. Where can I find a lightweight trench coat?

Style vs. Fashion...after about 30 minutes of blog research...

First, a personal anecdote:

I've been on a recent shopping spree. It was bound to happen as last year I tore through approximately FOUR pairs of pants. I've gone the skinny and straight route, something I thought I would never do not necessarily out of disliking the style, I just have this pair of monstrous calves that I can be insecure about from time to time.

Fashion crossed my mind when I observed that about 60% of the pants I had procured over the past week were straight leg. I find that straight cut pants are just the skinny equivalent for people with big calves. When I wasn't buying clothes, I could not tell the different between skinny and straight, they all looked the same to me.

After this week, my conclusion:

"Style and fashion only diverge with the passage of a sizable amount of time."
- Christine, on her blog

There were many conclusions that I came across in the many postings about "style vs. fashion," the most popular being about how fashion fades, but style...persists, stays the same, is immortal. Yes, all of that.

The most helpful blog I found in relating my conclusion was the Style v. Fashion page from Samantha C's Style Pick. What I liked was her citation of an article from Psychology Today about how to have style.

My interpretation: "Style is what makes the artist. Fashion provides the tools."

- Christine, on her blog again

Was it a massive change in persona that led the majority of my wearable pants to become considerably skinnier? By some odd means of convergent evolution, my style is now fashionable? In my clothes-less year, in addition to assessing my own wardrobe, I couldn't avoid looking at the ways other people dressed and ask myself "would that look good on me? Would I wear that? Could I wear that?" Even to those who don't follow fashion , it's not hard to find people in a crowd who do. Even more so, since fashion does dictate what is in stores, it was hard to find things similar to what I tore up since a number of years had passed since I acquired those clothes. That, my friends, is divergence. Regardless of style persona, people have to work with the time and with what is available. If we consider "things available at the time" to be clothing sold in stores as a premise based off of three sentences ago, then perhaps style and fashion are closer friends than initially perceived.

By no means am I down playing anyone's style. Nor am I saying that to be stylish you should get with the times. Fashionable? Maybe. Stylish? I've always felt that style flourishes out of limitation whether it be monetary, body type, weather, or time.

To be a great artist, do you need to have every tool possible at your disposal or just the ones the you use the most? Any artist would pick as you also don't need to use every tool to create something amazing. Any tool used would be dictated by what is available at the time and I don't think that's ever stopped anyone from expressing themselves.

hope your holidays were merry, your new year bright...

and 2012 brings everyone a great deal of opportunities.

I am of the opinion that every year is full of opportunities, we just choose to act on some rather than others. We wake up in the mornings immediately with the choice of dreading the day, or making it a good one. Sometimes good days take work and I'm ready to work so that I don't have to rely on luck so much. I'm ready for 2012.

Reflecting on my clothes-less 2011, I can say that there were times I felt I was losing out on not buying certain articles of clothing while they were on sale - I really can't remember any particular articles. After 365 days of going cold turkey and getting reacquainted with my closet, I can say:

- you really only need one or two dresses for every wedding you go to, ever. Just change up the accessories and wear a sweater if it's cold. (Texas perspective is coming out here.) Attention should be on the bride anyway.

- sales are not life and death situations.

- granted that you do not indiscriminately buy clothes, within your own closet you'll notice what you wear more of and why. It's like putting your style preferences under a magnifying glass. You see them a lot better.

- like your style preferences, you'll also see what is less of a preference in your closet. If you're not buying clothes for a year and there are still some things you don't wear, it's time to consider using that closet space for something else.

- on a personal note, I'm short. I'm use to buying clothes and getting them altered but after having good fitting clothes for a year, I find now that I try to get clothes that just fit without alterations or very few. Clothes like that do exist and according to anthropologie, my legs are ankle length...well...if the shoe fits...

I really think everyone should try this once. I also think that you need to endure the full year and not just a number of months.

Merry and bright describe my most recent pants purchases. I will get on that.

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.

Subside

So, the large wave of my obsession with SHINee lasted approximately two days. I still listen to their music, but as I got updated with the band, I've come to the conclusion that their stylist, Korean designer Ha Sang Baek - is on crack (for lack of a better term.)


In addition to the boy's pants getting skinnier (borderline leggings) the boys themselves have been getting skinnier as well - thanks, in part, to the diet imposed on them by their stylist.

What I did get out of the entire ordeal is that: style-wise, I'm happiest wearing anything that I can dance in.

My Latest Obsession

Imagine taking Justin Timberlake and combining him with 112 - the RnB group from the late 90s. Divide that mixture into five Korean boys and add skinny pants with hi top sneakers and you get: SHINee!


Unfortunately, my obsession with them was sprung in an effort to get Michael Jackson off my mind and it turned into a severe distraction from studying for my exam that I had earlier today.

Sure, they were made by a boy band factory, but they struck boy-band research and development gold! What initially got me - was seeing their dancing in a video on youtube. What surprised me about it was the awesomeness of the dancing in skinny pants. I had been toying with the idea of wearing hi top sneakers with skinny pants. While I see a lot of skinny pants on campus, its mostly with sandals or loafers. SHINee just validated my hypothesis that it would work, you could look cool dancing in skinny pants, and skinny jeans are not just a trendy - emo - punk thing.


Apparently, if you can dance like a badass, you get the added privelage of wearing colors that even a rainbow couldn't come up with.

Aside from their style and their dancing, their music is jazzy some - I like how each member weaves their part in and out of each song. True, it's probably already set up for them, but you do need someone who can fill the role. They have some really nice beats that remind me of the "New Jack Swing" styles that I grew up listening to. The youngest one, Tae-Min, has a voice that reminds me of Slim from 112 - that nice light voice you look forward to hearing in a song. They bring me back. :)

Oh, and their song "Replay" is about pursuit of a beautiful older woman. They've made me feel pretty good about being 23. The music is worth checking out, their RnB is...what I think the American music conglomerate is lacking. I've always commented on how the music of the 90s was better. The feel is such a nice throw back and their voices are so nice. It doesn't matter that I don't understand the Korean.

Better late than never

Normally, I'm a mad present wrapper. I believe that presentation is as important as the present itself. That doesn't mean I opt for professional wrapping - in all honesty, I think professional wrapping lacks style; it's more a militaristic regiment of wrapper, bow, tag. I like gift towers connected with ribbon, brown paper packages tied up with string, and newspaper.

While I don't believe in spending too much on wrapping paper, I like being prepared. A lot of good supplies can be acquired at Ikea. Some of the tissue paper is left over from Victoria's Secret and Anthropologie. I save wrapping paper from Christmas and birthdays. I have some nice brown wrapping paper for my brown paper package moments. Generally, since I have a prepped surplus that's replenished from time to time, I never really have to buy much in terms of wrapper. I generally always get colored tissue paper - you never know when you'll need lime green.

I was rather pressed for cash this Christmas. I think the bigger thing on block was my creativity. While checking out with my sister the lady in front of us let us go ahead of her since we only had one item. I observed a bar of soap and questioned her about it since it was cool looking and among other things, she told me that the bar was only $2.50 - I thought that was wicked cool and wanted to make it a soap Christmas. Since I wasn't done with my school projects until late, I didn't have time to dwell on the presents I would give to people and decided to go back to the grocery store (mind you, specialty grocery store) for the soap. The soap is Pre de Provence - Country soap. The thing I found odd was that a packaged gift set of 5 of these soaps were on sale for $18. With each soap at ~$2.50, that $12.50 for the soap and an extra $5.50 for an uninteresting box and a plain green ribbon. To that I said "screw this" and I bought 6 soaps, 3 different kinds, the better smelling of the 5.

Usually at the grocery store, they have narrow brown paper bags for wine; I picked up a couple of these. In the words immortalized by Julie Andrews, "brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things.." oh yeah. Using the paper bags from the grocery stores is a shorter version for the packaging process. Being hardcore with those lyrics, I don't use tape with my brown paper packages; everything is held together by the string and using a brown paper bag makes this considerably easier.
All you have to do is push the soap to the bottom of the bag, maintain the shape, fold over the bag continually and the excess lies flat. You end up with a boxy shape like what is shown in the picture and you hold that shape down with sting tied in a crossover fashion.

If you want the prototypical brown paper package, you just have to switch out the brown paper bag with brown paper. The trickier part with this is tying it. The general approach is to hold all the soaps aligned in the desired shape. Wrap the soaps as you would a boxy present, just don't use any tape. When taking in the extra wrapping paper off the sides, make sure to fold it so that it is more triangular so that it will be easier for the string to hold the package together. It ends up looking like the picture to the left. A bonus with this is that sometimes, the pull of the string opens everything. It has some old fashioned, pre-tape charm to it.

I tend to get creative under time pressure and with low funds. I still think that there should be some cohesiveness to my presents. As a small present for my cousin, I got the following: a book on cocktails with some nice pictures - I've seen it previously selling at Anthropologie for $15.95, but I found it at a book outlet for $3.99 - liquor miniatures that are about 50ml each and also about $3 each - and (individually) the most expensive item, a designer chocolate bar by Voges Haut Chocolate at $7. I think it all works well and is essentially a feel good present. I know I would like this for myself and I recently discovered that sometimes, getting presents for people that you would want yourself has some merit.

It turns out that my older sisters like the things I buy for myself oppose to the things that I think they'll like. My sister says "when you buy me things, think of yourself - of course that results in me buying things for myself which they ask to borrow. I suppose I shouldn't assume that our styles are so different. It might be a reflection on the thought that if I were to get them presents that I'd like, I put as much thought, care, and interest into their presents as I do for myself. Not bad.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Mentor: Lucky Mag

I remember the summer of my junior year of high school. I was going through a mildly awkward phase that every girl goes through at ages 11, 18-ish, and probably 27. Am I dressing too young for my age? I felt that at 17, it was time to start developing my style, but I didn't know where I stood.

Having two elder sisters always led me to ask their advice. Essentially it would be me asking them to dress me, but at the time, 17, I looked at their styles and assessed that, not only did their styles not suit me, I shouldn't be asking them for dressing advice and then criticizing their style - I asked for it.

I still had the issue of not knowing where to go with style. When I would go shopping, I would barely find anything I liked - however, I did on occasion find things that I did like which was something I could bank on. Armed with the knowledge of what I did like and what silhouettes I liked, I ventured on to try to find a way to dig myself out of my jeans and t-shirt existence. At this time, I had already handicapped myself by swearing off of khaki and white for a while since our school uniform required us to wear khaki and white. I felt more tired of the combination instead of wanting to get creative with it.

While slothing one day on the couch (spring 2003), I saw a TV ad for Lucky Magazine. I ended up keeping the number. I asked my mom if I could get it and she said, something to the effect of 'sure it'll teach you how to dress.' I had nothing to lose, the subscription also came with a free bag and I knew I'd be able to relate to the clothes better than in a magazine like...Vogue. Soon enough, I got my first issue, March 2003 - it featured their shoe collection and also a very memorable picture of an organized closet (another blog). Being unemployed and 17 didn't leave much for me in terms of buying the clothes. I was able to better assess what styles I liked and what I didn't like. Throughout most of college, I lived a life with many style visions, but not having any money left me a little limited, so I had to work with what money I had and what workable clothes I had. While I must say, my t-shirt and jeans existence transformed into a t-shirt and trousers existence, the constant influx of Lucky gave me stronger ideas of what I wanted.

I know that magazines like Lucky are meant to showcase the trends of the season, but also, a person can't help what they like. Just recently, I was at my old house looking through 5 year old issues of Lucky - there were articles on Summer suits that were still quite relevant today; Summer suits are generally in paler colors and lighter fabrics like cotton and linen - and also pictures of clothes from back then. I noticed this blouse I would've bought on the spot at $48. I got rather depressed that I have the money now, but didn't then. At least I got an idea. It's better than nothing.

So, my first venture into determining my style was venturing into Lucky Mag. It's a matter of picking and choosing, you just have to see what's out there.