Monday, January 18, 2010

BEAUTY IN STYLE (PART 2)

Hello October! You are my favorite, with your leaves and chilly winds and the best holiday ever, even better than my birthday.


(I don't know where this came from. Someone sent it to me and said, "This is you," and basically, it is. A cat, wearing a scarf, reading something, and drinking tea.)

October:
Knee Socks
Leaves
Cider Donuts
Apple Orchards
Plaid
Halloween
Cold Noses
Hot Chocolate
Scarves
Tweed
Corduroy
Being Creepy



"Oh," cried Marianne, "with what transporting sensations have I formerly seen them fall! How have I delighted as I walked to see them driven in showers about me by the wind! What feelings have they, the season, the air, altogether inspired! Now there is no one to regard them. They are seen only as a nuisance, swept hastily off, and driven as much as possible from the sight."

"It is not everyone," said Elinor, "who has your passion for dead leaves."
-Sense and Sensibility

I think I used this quote last year, but it is so perfect, that I do not care if I am guilty of repetition.


The Sartorialist



I've had this dress for almost a decade. My aunt bought it for me, I think to possible wear to a Freshman semi-formal dance, or maybe for 8th grade graduation. Since I was a skinny twig with all elbows and knees and head, it didn't fit. Finally, in the past few years it has been snug enough to look right--even if I have to admit this is because of snacking on sweets and not form some other magical garment-fitting-into ability. I should have gotten a proper shot of the back, since it's way low and has two bows affixed near the zipper.

It's a huge quandary of a dress. It's so obviously vintage, so obviously of it's time, that I've always had a hard time with it. I hate getting too costumy or too obviously 50s or 60s with it, and yet it doesn't seem like there is much option. No matter what I was never able to get rid of this dress, and tonight I finally wore it out. It's too dressy for most situations, but there was a work occasion to wear it, and so out it came (mostly because the gorgeous satin numero I wanted to wear fit me--ten pounds ago, and I had to adjust accordingly).

I figured I might as well be sort of carelessly literal about it. So poof went the hair, some red lips--which did not last, because of snacking--and my favorite pair of uncomfortable shoes. I'm still not sure about it--it makes me feel so sort of, aware of my body, in a strange way, which I guess is a good thing. I mean, I guess clothes should make one aware of something like their own body, yes? There is a line I think, between being self conscious in a bad way and aware that I think I'm thinking of. Because clearly clothes are no good if they obliterate that sense, and yet if it's too obvious, it's equally miserable.

In any case, velvet dresses are lovely.
 



(In real life I buttoned the cardigan, which looked infinitely better, but I forgot.)

Last weekend, or maybe it was the one before (I lost count) I found myself facing a weekend with no work. With that in mind the boyfriend and I trudged down to NYC, a week earlier than Fashion Week (which I'm not really fashionable or confident enough for anyway--it was nice enough to see the tents up early and sort of ignored) and ran around like mad cats. I escaped with a few things from Anthropologie--this mildly insane bag that I'm not so certain I would have bought if it wasn't 9pm and trying to get back for a train. But it's quite nice, and sort of fall-ish. I also have to admit that I'm quite excited to see how loudly it clashes against my bright winter coats, or even the solid black ones. It's kind of hideous, but I think that is what makes it awesome.

 



The mistake shots are always the ones I end up liking best. I'm attempting some new things clothing wise. A little less prim, a little more slouch. It's the same basic idea--still I want to be cute and ladylike, I want things to have a certain level of prim going on, but suddenly I want something a little less refined, a little more seemingly careless. It's all an illusion anyway, but you know.
 
A Crazed Girl

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

-
William Butler Yeats



 

Despite all those words I spent aching for summer, I think it's here and I'm a little bit hot. It's been really humid for a few days, but beggars can't be choosers, so I'm attempting to make the best of it! Sadly, work and all sorts of other activities like banks and post offices make lounging around the pool a rarity!






I finally altered that second dress, with the help of my mother by sewing some inserts into the sides so I could have some breathing room. This dress has easily become one of my favorites, even though I keep myself from wearing it every day. Long dresses allow a kind of weird freedom that I find is lacking in their mini compatriots. It might just be this one though, that allows for sitting in any position because of it's multitude of fabric in the skirts.

When the girl returned, some hours later, she carried a tray, with a cup of fragrant tea steaming on it; and a plate piled up with very hot buttered toast, cut thick, very brown on both sides, with the butter running through the holes in great golden drops, like honey from the honeycomb. The smell of that buttered toast simply talked to Toad, and with no uncertain voice; talked of warm kitchens, of breakfasts on bright frosty mornings, of cosy parlour firesides on winter evenings, when one's ramble was over and slippered feet were propped on the fender, of the purring of contented cats, and the twitter of sleepy canaries.
-Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows



This is going to have very little to do with clothing--but seeing as we have to eat to live in order to wear clothes, it fits in a very broad and stretchy kind of way.

I love breakfast. More specifically I love second breakfast--Hobbit style--or brunch. I have hard time eating first thing in the morning so I usually have a cup of tea and a piece of candy (oops!) first, then real breakfast an hour or so later.


Rose-bouquet tea, summer fruit tart from work, chocolate disks.


Nutella croissant from work, regular old black tea.


Soft-boiled egg, toast soldiers with butter, rose-bouquet tea (I think, I drink it a lot).


French peasant bread (toasted), orange juice, Mariage Freres 'Eros' tea.


Tea of some kind, corn muffins with butter and raspberry jelly.


Waffles made from scratch, breakfast sausage, grapefruit slices, Summertime Blue tea.

 

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