Of course I got a new hat.

It's practically impossible for me to attend a hat show and not bring home a new hat. I did get to meet Deanna Gibbons, and another wonderful milliner, Jean Hicks.  I had a lovely evening playing with hats and chatting with talented, creative women.  What could be better?

 

I went through a phase a couple years ago when I couldn't get enough of these little uncut corduroy jackets from Anthropologie.  I used to work about a block away from an Anthropologie store and I would haunt the sale section. I had a policy of never paying more than $29.99 for anything. Most of the Anthro jackets I own were purchased in accordance with this policy. This one is one of the few things for which I've ever paid full price. I couldn't resist the little applique birds on the pockets or the cropped puffed sleeves.

I'm hoping that the day will come again when I can button both buttons. I thought it looked okay open so I went ahead and wore it today, and I'm leaving it in the closet as a wearable item even though, technically, I'm stretching this definition a bit. I make the rules, so I can decide when to break 'em.

Leopard zebra peacock?

I'm not sure what animal this print is supposed to represent but I really love this dress. I'm a bit wary of animal prints usually. Please don't send me hate mail, but there can be something tragically woman-of-a-certain-age-trying-desperately-to-look-sexy about these safari print knits. If I hadn't already been enough afraid of hitting this note, I recently attended a fiftieth birthday party where the dance floor was a sea of poorly fitting, cheap looking, and decidedly unflattering leopard.  I'm fearful of looking like an aging, sad cliche. That said, I do think I look great in this dress. I just won't wear it anywhere there is likely to be a troupe of older women also wearing leopard.

I'm wearing this tonight to the Holiday Hat Show at Fino Fino. I'm hoping to meet the milliner, DeAnna Gibbons, who is supposed to be attending this event tonight. I own two of her hats- this little military cap, and my favorite, this feathered beret. Both of these hats are whimsical but still easily wearable, exactly what I'm always hoping for in my clothing. I even love the label DeAnna uses in her hats- its a printed label that looks like it's pinned into the hat. So cute.

After the hat show Chris and I are headed to a Barbara Stanwyck double feature at the Stanford Theater.  I used to work up the street from this amazing movie theater and I would often go see movies by myself after work. At the time I was dating someone whose idea of a great old movie was The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Now I'm married to someone who loves the Stanford Theater as much as I do, and is willing to drive more than a hundred miles to get there. I sure did get lucky!

The coat is a thrift store find. It's black suede with a fur collar. I think it's very fun but the black suede rubs off on your hands if you're not careful (well, actually, even if you are careful) and so at some point in the evening, when you think you are the picture of vintage sophistication, you actually look like a messy child who has been finger painting. I think this problem might go away if I had the coat professionally cleaned. I was waiting to be sure that it was something I would really wear before I put money into cleaning it. This will be it's third outing so I think it's a keeper and deserves to be cared for properly.

Edit (12/06): I just belatedly linked this post to Trending Though The Decades at Silverstyle on the recommendation of a commenter. Great tip. Lots of fun fur.

Chris said the teal gloves "don't make any sense" unless you can see the dress. I don't agree but it's an excuse to post another photo. 

He also said, "A ring on the outside of your gloves? Who does that?"  My answer?  "I do that. That's all you need to know. Who cares who else does it?" He remains unconvinced.

Better than I expected.

I haven't worn this jersey shirt dress since I was a whole lot thinner. I was pleasantly surprised today to find that it still looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.

Still, I'm sure you'd all much rather I compliment myself than mope about complaining about what I don't like, which I have been doing more than I should lately. Sorry.

Getting back on that horse.

I'm tempted to try to excuse my absence from the blog as being the consequence of a hectic holiday but, although the days leading up to Thanksgiving were full, I did not get out of my pajamas, or off the couch, on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. And I loved every minute of it- so I'm not apologizing for that. What I am sorry for is letting a nasty bout of self doubt keep me from posting on Monday and Tuesday. I've been feeling fat, old, frumpy, lumpy, unfashionable, icky, yucky, boring and stupid. It's not much fun. And it makes getting dressed next to impossible. I'm determined to push through this funk. I'm getting back on that horse that threw me and getting back in the race.

I've been looking at my wardrobe with an eye to having an end of year 'progress report' post that sums up how well I've done sticking to my New Year's resolution of getting rid of one thing every day and five things for every new thing. I'm pretty happy with how my edited wardrobe is starting to shape up. While I'm nowhere near achieving my goal of having only exceptional pieces, I can at least say that everything in my closet fits me and I feel good (if not great) wearing what I have hanging in there. This may not sound like a raging success to most people but, when you consider that before I began this editing process, dealing with my wardrobe was like an exercise in self torture, just being able to get dressed in the morning without feeling as if my clothes are mocking me for not being as slim, as young, and as daring as I once was really feels like a major victory to me. It's also the first time ever that I've even come close to keeping a resolution all year.

Truth be told, I am a bit behind in my discarding of items, but I got all the way to November before the process become really difficult. And up until around August it was so effortless that it was a little embarrassing how easy it was to part with the crap I had been holding onto for years without even a second thought. Why had I held onto things that were so obviously crap for so long? Why had I ever even thought I wanted them in the first place?

By the end of the year my goal is to have worn every item from my current wardrobe here on the blog. If I can't make an outfit I'm happy with out of a piece that's hanging in my wardrobe now, then it doesn't need to be there. The jacket I'm wearing today is one of the pieces I don't think I've taken pictures of before.

There's a lot going on with this jacket- polka dots, border print, puffed sleeves, portrait neckline and a bow- therefore I think it would be worn to it's best advantage over a solid black base. I went with grey tights and skirt today because I don't own a straight black skirt. (I know, this seems crazy to me too, but it's true. I'm adding it to my list of things I need.) This jacket is another piece of clothing that I think looks great from the front and only so-so from the side. From the front it seems to flatter my curves and trim my waist, but from the side I appear disturbingly barrel chested and matronly.  I've made it a point to always try to post a side view photo of an outfit, even in cases where doing so has been acutely painful, because I want to get (and give) a fairly honest impression of what I look like in the real, multidimensional, world. I was kind of hoping that the reason I thought I looked terrible from the side was just that I was unused to seeing myself from that angle, and when I became more comfortable with seeing myself this way it wouldn't look as awful to me. No such luck.

I'm not sure what the remedy might be. Better fitting clothes? Better posture? Losing weight? All of the above?  I'm sure none of these improvements would hurt my front view either.

I haven't worn these shoes in a while so I pulled them out today as part of my effort to feature all my current clothes on the blog by the end of the year. Once I started walking around in them I remembered why they had fallen out of my favor in the first place. The sole has become detached from the toe of one of the shoes. Not a lot. Not enough that you notice when you put the shoes on. It's just when you start to walk at a reasonable clip (i.e. when you really need to get somewhere without being impeded by the flapping sole of your shoe) that it becomes noticeable.  They will need to be repaired before going back into the closet.  Which brings me to what is going to be one of my resolutions for next year: I am going to resolve to take care of (at least) one repair, alteration, fix, upgrade, up-cycle, re-style, re-fashion, what have you, every week.  Those pants I've been meaning to hem, that coat that wants the buttons replaced, the shoulder straps I've been wanting to shorten, the skirt that needs to be taken in, the shoes that should be resoled- it's all going to get done, finally. Next year.

Or I might get inspired and start early.

...and you lose some.

I bought this ultra plain black dress on Monday, part of a small shopping spree to bolster my professional wardrobe. It seemed like a smart, practical choice at the time, but today I kind of hate it.

I imagined it being the kind of comfortable, easy to wear basic that could be jazzed up by the judicious use of accessories.  Today I couldn't figure out what I could wear with it to make it look less like a boring black sack on me. I thought this combination of green boots, purple sweater, and brown belt was okay- not stellar, but okay- and then I saw my side view photos!  In every single one the draped cowl neckline juts out like a ridiculous fabric beak above my breasts. I am so irritated I could spit.  Could I not have identified this problem in the fitting room? Would that have been too much to ask?

Add to this situation a bunch of crappy, grainy, low light photos and you can see why I'm going to try and pretend today never happened. We tried taking photos downstairs, hoping there would be more light. There wasn't- and the odd perspective is making me look like an alcoholic giantess dwarfing our bar. I'm just going to put today's outfit behind me and hope for more success (and better light) tomorrow.  I know I'm supposed to be trying to analyze what went wrong and what to do differently in the future, but frankly, I'm too disappointed and too pissed off. And I suspect that the answer may be to just never wear this dress again. Oh well. You win some, you lose some.

Introducing...teeny blue enamel leaf earrings.

This additional *inherited* jewelry post was unexpected. I thought that I had already featured all of the jewelry I could wear without alteration, but while I was organizing the rest of the things I received I found these cuties.  How'd I miss them?  When I picked these up I didn't think I could wear earrings anymore because of the large holes in my ears. But it turns out having big holes in your ears is perfectly adaptive for wearing clip-on earrings. Having no actual ear in the pinchy-est part of the earrings almost completely alleviates their usually migraine inducing tightness. And- bonus- they seem much more secure than I remember them feeling on my unstretched ears. This realization practically has me dancing with joy. Suddenly, I'm dreaming of a world of gorgeous vintage clip-on earrings just waiting to be mine!

The weather has not been cooperative with my outfit photo efforts. These pictures were taken at a reasonable hour in natural light and still they're blurry. At least I don't feel like it's my fault this time.

This I what I wore today to make an epic three store shopping trip to get everything we need for our Thanksgiving feast. I wore pretty much the same outfit last night (different shirt, no hat) to see Bye Bye Birdie at the Davis Musical Theater. Normally I seize any opportunity to dress up for an evening out, even community theater, even though ours is a very casual community. It was raining and cold and I just couldn't work up the enthusiasm for anything fancier than jeans and boots. Turns out this was a good thing- it was so cold in the theater I never took my coat off.

Red, white and blue.

This is what I wore for a tough day online resume submissions. I swear these sites are designed to make an applicant feel so incompetent she's ashamed to have made any claims to computer proficiency on her resume! I spent so long agonizing over the cover letter touting my excellent time management skills that I was timed out of the application process and had to begin again. At which time, this seasoned manager who is able to adapt easily to the changing needs of business, and handle high levels of pressure with decorum and aplomb, began screaming at her husband for not being helpful enough. Luckily, he is not one of my references.

This necklace is reputed to be made of ancient Roman glass. Years ago I worked for The Museum Company and we sold lots of this iridescent glass jewelry. The story goes that the glass was recovered from a cache of discarded glass near the site of a glass factory believed to have been in operation in Israel during the holy roman empire. So, this piece of glass would have been, basically, trash. The substandard glass pieces created at the factory would have been tossed on the refuse pile, buried for centuries, excavated, refashioned into jewelry, and sold at the mall. I have no reason to disbelieve this chain of events; I told this tale to customers myself, hundreds of times. I'm not saying it isn't true, either. I've just become a bit more skeptical of the claims made by retailers than I once was. Whatever the truth is, this is a pretty, glittery, shimmering piece of glass- I don't really care what it is beyond that.

Possibly ancient glass and silver.

The five dollar blue patent flats make their blog debut.