"Life Changing" Products

I wanted to give you a break from skincare products and list some of the best things I've ever spent my money on, in any category. These are things I constantly talk up to everyone and would be the company spokesperson if they wanted to pay me / had any idea I exist.

1. Uniqlo leggings-pants. These are basically jeggings, but they are just thick enough and non-shiny, and they have real back pockets and fake front pockets and fly. In my opinion, they pass as pants. I wear these to work, on vacation, and I have basically forgotten to wear real jeans ever. I got my coworker hooked on them too. They are the ultimate bottom for a long plane ride in the history of travel outfits, ever. I have them in the dark green, shown above, a dark blue, and lavender (I wear these the least, they might have been a mistake but at least I got to try out the colored skinnies trend for cheap?). Next I want them in a dark wine color and my wardrobe will be complete. In the winter, I wear them over fleece leggings, and their tightness balances out big sweaters and coats. They are amazing. Being comfortable is the best.

2. Uniqlo Heattech anything, but particularly long-sleeve scoopneck shirts. I am not exaggerating when I say these are the reason I can still spend winters in Chicago and haven't moved yet. They are very thin and tight and look sexy, but they magically keep you warmer in a way a cotton long-sleeve shirt doesn't even come close. The scoopneck is low enough that your vneck sweaters don't look dorky. Looking dorky in v-neck sweaters was an issue for me pre-Uniqlo. I basically wear one of these every day all winter long. I also have socks and a tank top, and I am always on the lookout for more. They don't feel *warm* like fresh-out-the-dryer clothes, but when those get invented trust me I will be first in line to drop all the $$$. However they wick sweat and keep you insulated.

3. Expensive shoes. This encompasses everything from buying a second pair of waterproof winter boots (similar) when the first ones weren't really cutting it, to fancy Tevas, to Croc flats. Having comfortable, walkable footwear that keeps your feet dry and at an optimal temperature cannot be overhyped. I used to think that Target and Payless shoes would work fine and I suffered through years of unhappy feet. Now I have a job, so never. again.

5. Dear Kates underwear. This is about to get personal about periods, so men, feel free to look away now. I can't remember where I heard about these but I am now practically evangelical about them. They have a really amazing absorbent-yet-dry fabric layer that replaces the need for pantyliners and catches any leaks when you're on your period (or any other time). Never wash your sheets or pants again, especially never in the middle of the night while camping, not that that has happened to me. They are machine washable and do not stain, magically. They are also quite cute, they have lacy and sporty and plain versions. They also have yoga pants which are mostly good just because of the revolutionary fabric (it is revolutionary!), and they have made a new version hopefully working out some of the not-ideal fit issues (too-low rise in back). The company has great customer service. As it's a fairly new product they had some kinks to work out, namely, not the best construction on seams, and when I complained, they sent me another, for free. They did it a second time when I realized I'd ordered the wrong size. They really promote heavily on Instagram and blogs so if you watch out you can almost always get a discount of some kind. I WISH they would pay me to say this, but they aren't. Also, made in USA, company owned and started by a woman chemical engineer, and body-positive advertising and marketing.

EDIT : I had a positive review for the Seven Year Pen, however mine just ran out, easily shy of 5 years in, and after some further research I found out these are just priced-up Swiss promotional pens, like the kind they give out for free with a pharmaceutical drug name on them. They are still pretty nice pens, but no longer worth of the "life changing" title.

Storage for Rainbow Shoes

This is my room! I've been very excited about this shelf I made-- since it got cold and I took my sweaters out from under the bed, I needed to make room for them. The boxes where the sweaters now live was busy holding my shoe collection. So I found some IKEA brackets I'd squirrelled away and my friend got me a board from Home Depot. I figured that it made sense to put it up high so you don't have a moment of "am I gonna hit my head" fear when you walk in the door. It's too bad that short people can't see the rainbow of shoes unless they stand on my bed.

Also pictured: a print I got at Renegade several years ago, candles from Athenian Candle in Greektown (they're made in the back!), birthday cards, an absurd amount of earrings, random crap. Someone told me once "Wes Anderson would have a field day in your room." I'd be a terrible Quaker, I love clutter too much.

Blanket Espadrilles

I apologize for my lack of a better image, I tried to put a few together with paint which is hopelessly frustrating. Will get photoshop one day. Anyway, I started seeing some woven multicolor flats like this and wanted to make you guess: which one is most expensive?

Ok game over. Top left is Rocket Dog, $31.50 here, far right is Rachel Rachel Roy, $59, and the bottom is Missoni, similar ones for $311 here (it comes in other prints or whatever). I dig the Rocket Dog ones but also these by Havaianas in conjunction with Missoni ($130). They also don't seem to have the jute sole that I know from experience gets awful as soon as it gets wet. Cue daydream about Brazil....!

I'm Too Sexy for my ... Job

Mosey suggested heels and form-fitting clothes, and an attempt at wearing make-up, as a way to look more adult and professional at work. I agree, for the most part. But, my work environment has a few strange requirements. I work with people, (not paper or computers) some of whom come from cultures more conservative than mine, so I feel a need to dress with careful modesty. I have actually been hit on by homeless people waiting to get into a clinic in the building, when I've worn more form-fitting clothing, which made me extremely uncomfortable. (This picture is actually a great example of my kind of failure of biz cas clothing-- technically it's a business-like skirt and a button-down, right? but the shirt is too thin and her hair is all "I just got out of bed" and when you're that tall all skirts look short on you, and it just comes off all wrong.)

I also do a lot of walking around including, some days, being outside and on public transit a lot. Often it is impractical for me to, say, wear boots for my commute and then change into heels, as I'll be running outside a couple times a day. So was wearing the life out of my black winter boots, but it came back to haunt me and they got soaked this morning and I was miserable. So I have a pair of flats I leave in my desk drawer that I can wear when I'm in the office.

And to make matters more awesome, the temperature in the building is insane-- one week we brought a thermometer and one office was 90 degrees. We were dying even with the windows open to the winter winds, and we asked for it to get fixed. Now it is chilly inside, sweater-weather chilly.

Soooo, I have found a few biz-cas outfits that really work for me. Corduroy, black, or khaki pants + striped button-down is one of them. Add a cardigan for chill, roll up the sleeves for the sauna rooms, and button up modestly. I dug a knit blazer out of the bottom of a stack of sweaters and it worked really well on Friday, over a nice-ish drapey top I got at Unique.

And sometimes, yeah, I try to wear makeup. But I don't really have that down, as my makeup routine is much more geared towards going out. At night I wear black eyeliner and mascara (I started wearing makeup on a semi-regular basis in Egypt, actually, where super dramatic eyeliner is The Thing), and sometimes some red lipstick to look retro. I own chapstick, a couple eyeshadows (gold and tan), a reddish lipgloss I recently stole from my cousin, and sparkly "golden sand" eyeliner. I also own concealer, which I do use pretty regularly, and bronzer and blush which I inherited from roommates and never never use. None of this seems particularly appropriate. So I've been going to Sephora after work and thinking about what I could buy that would be more versatile.

picture credits: via This is Glamorous, German model Julia Stegner by Tesh via Fashion Gone Rogue.

Rainbow Shoes

So, I arrange my shoes by color. It's true, the secret's out. I've got every color but green, and I have teal sort of to replace it. My collection of high heeled shoes I rarely wear lives on an inverted drawer from a dresser that I found in the alley. I never got around to painting it, but it adds some much-needed storage. Black and brown and everyday shoes are on the bottom, along with some sewing supplies in boxes.

Introduction to Polyvore

I ended up going to a party in the cozy wool sweater & LLBean boots combination I wrote about the other day, and I got really hot and I felt kinda dorky and under-dressed compared to all the hip stylish undergrads at the party. There were a lot of girls in short-ish dresses with black semi-sheer tights and tall leather boots. One girl had a gold panelled dress, one had a huge loose gauzy white blouse with huge poufy curly hair. They were so cute, that I wanted to dress up too. So the next day, I decided that one solution to my struggles with making tights and skirts look alright was to keep them all in the same relative color family. Unless you have the ubiquitous sheer black tights and perfect-fitting boots, I reasoned, best to not try to compete. So I wore a light blue dress over a dark blue slip, with light-blueish-gray lace-patterned tights and the gray ankle boots. The boots didn't make me look too much like Robin Hood when the legs poking out of them weren't radically different-colored. The slip showed too much out the top of the dress's neckline, so I wore a blue floral scarf. It was a lot going on for one outfit, especially considering my simplicity trend as of late, but I think it worked.

I don't currently have a working camera, so I tried to recreate something similar with polyvore. I am about to waste A LOT of time with polyvore, uh oh!

Redmoon and Sartorial Struggles

This morning I woke up feeling unable to get the "Amy's productive day" show on the road. It doesn't help that I was feeling sick again, perhaps from sitting outside in the cold for a few hours last night watching Redmoon's The Astronaut's Birthday. It was a pretty cool show, though I didn't appreciate being packed onto uncomfortable bleachers with irritating children and craning my neck upwards. The show was done entirely with over 4,000 (or something, I forget) hand-drawn, hand-gelled slides and overhead projectors shining from inside the building windows, with occasional people as shadows and puppetry animation. The story was a little "meh" (this review suggests it was too slow-paced, but I also think the overt moral was a strangely uncomfortable one: "don't dream big or shoot for the stars, because love is all that matters.") But I love Redmoon for their commitment to fantastic public art and elaborate low-tech spectacle. And afterwards I got a "blood orange" hot chocolate from a 7-11 and went to a potluck party at a friend's house. I brought a cous-cous salad with grapes, orange pepper, and feta, a combination of two Mark Bittman picnic ideas from the New York Times. Most of them look super good and fast, so I'll be trying them for more than just picnics.

Another thing slowing me down is trying to wear something other than my corduroy pants that I love so much. I think it would be nice to wear skirts and tights, but can never get it to look right or feel comfortable. It's mostly an issue of improper footwear. Somehow, the flats I wore all summer with skirts don't look right as soon as I add tights to my legs, which I can't figure out. And as great as heels look, I just can't bring myself to wear them to walk the 20 minutes to campus, where they will slow me down and make me uncomfortable all day. How do women who wear heels every day do it? I have some ankle boots that I bought last spring and really liked for awhile, but now I feel like they make me look like Robin Hood with my skinny legs poking out of their wide tops. This post from Jane at Ill Seen, Ill Said, inspired me to try to make flats look just as sophisticated, but I can't pull it off. I always love her "Sunday best" imaginary outfit posts, and she's so smart and posts a lot of interesting things about art and books.

Apartment Crisis

We got the keys and checked out the new place, but contrary to everyone's memory, my room does not have a closet. NO CLOSET. Doesn't a closet make a room into a bedroom? (arguably, it's rather a bed, but still). No closet.

I have a lot of clothes.

You can imagine my panic.

There is also very little room for anything but a bed, ruling out ideas like wardrobes and so forth. I'm trying to think of creative solutions: open shelving in the bathroom (which is all mine, at least, and not terribly small), hanging a bar somewhere along the wall? I don't want my clothes all out in the open, cluttering up such a tiny space, but I don't know what else there is to do.

There's also no fan in the bedroom, which we also thought there was. On the positive side, we've got a clothes washer & dryer, and a dishwasher, and for the most part the rest of it is in pretty good, clean shape. Now I'm glad I've got awhile to move, so I can work on storage solutions.

Image from House and Garden/Style Court via This is Glamorous.

Memries...

I was reading on academichic about memento clothes: items that belonged to relatives and/or have special personal significance.

I tend to really hold on to stuff, so I have a lot of these items. The shirt in the picture above gets lots of compliments. My dad bought it for my mom when he was a graduate student back in the mid-80s. I loved my mom's old clothes so much that I was convinced that if I had children, they would like my stuff and so I should hold on to them. To that effect I have been wearing down my favorite cross-country t-shirt since I got in 7th grade. I think my brother has it (along with most of my t-shirts) now. I gave them to him with the express command that he not lose them, and I think for awhile he wore almost exclusively Chapin girls cross-country shirts. Sometimes I feel emotionally attached to things that went on long epic trips with me, or that I've had for a really long time. My mom gave me this shoulder bag in high school, and I carried my school books in it into college. I had to sew it up time and again, but even now, when I carry its ratty goodness around, I feel close to my mom and my high school self: simple, happy, low-maintenance, a bit of a hippie. This is a terrible picture of it, I took it in my room in college when I was playing around with the features on my camera (which is now lost to an encounter with honey inside the very same bag and lots of dust in Wyoming). And, the blanket was my mother's in high school. It's on my couch right now.
This is more playing with my camera settings. I love these orange shoes! They were a 17th birthday present from my mom. I picked them out. They were $20 which seemed like a really big deal to me at the time. I really was a low-maintenance kid! (wow, I don't have half of the stuff I can see in this closet: the "stripper boots," the cleats from frisbee days, the not-waterproof boots, some polyester dresses, ew! and oh look, the sweater I got at Gap in 8th grade and STILL HAVE! I thought I was a big deal for getting something at Gap in season.)

Daily Outfit

Today (actually a couple days ago) I was rather stylish, I thought.
Grey suede scrunched ankle boots I bought at a department store in Pilsen while I was waiting for the bus, after eyeing them in the window all winter. You can't see them too well in this terrible photo that I took, but work with me.
Jeggings-- you can judge me all you want! I got mine at Sears or something after Christmas, and they're practically black. JCrew has jeggings now too so look who jumped on a trendy trend after me?
A long kaftan-like cream tunic from the clothes being thrown out by roommates, probably from her dad. We used it as a Halloween costume for a hippie, and it was so comfortable the day I wore it that I wear it to sleep in and lounge around. The tag is in Hindi or some other script I can't read, and someone wrote CB in pen on the neckline.
A green-and-white knit blazer that I bought the day before at the yard sale/ garden shop/ art space the Op Shop, recently and temporarily re-opened in the old movie rental place on 53rd. I had been looking for a knit blazer since I saw this one in Anthropologie's catalog from December 2007 (!) (I can't believe I'm still carrying it around with me)
And, finally, a crazy beaded necklace similar to those I ogled in Chinatown that my friend brought back from London as a present for letting her crash with us. You can't see in the picture, but it's woven up by the neck and becomes a multi-strand, multi-color swoosh on the chest.

Oh, and that's my room. It's pretty tiny, and you can see the ducts in the ceiling, but I like the warm lavender color, and that it's full of all my stuff-- you can see hanging necklaces, a couple scarves, my comfy bed, a stack of books and a bottle that was fancy German mineral water. Haha, and my space heater, the most important possession for a basement dweller!

Summer! Biking! Pilsen! Rooftops! Elation!

On Thursday I biked to my internship in Pilsen. It was 80* and sunny and on the way back, incredibly windy. I went up the lakeshore path from 47th to 18th, and then got really confused trying to cross over Lakeshore Drive and the Metra tracks. Some nice runner ladies pointed me in the right direction. After you cross the Metra tracks, you're in this surreal place with castles, which turn out to be townhomes and the US Soccer Federation. Then, after some industry and a terrifying bridge made of metal grating, the river glinting below your lurching tires far below, you're in Pilsen. The tamales vendors smile and wave, mothers take their kids to school, stores are opening. By Damen, the street smells like tacos. Later in the day, I went for a walk to the park, bought some pastries at Central Bakery, developed my photos, bought ice cream, ate a salad outside in the sun. In the afternoon, I biked into a strong wind full of dust and blowing trash and "hola, guapa!" to Little Village, where I bought some incredible coconut water with pulp (from Thailand via Mexico) which was summer in a can, along with some chilis and granola, and sat on a front stoop talking and people-watching.

On the way home, I biked down Cermak to Halsted, and then took Halsted south to 31st St, where I passed what I think is the hill from photographer Paul Octavious's daily photo essay (he took a picture of some hill in Chicago every day for a year, photo above, found via Cup of Jo). Then through more blowing grit and a strange conversation at stoplights from a guy on a motorbike (my word for "not as loud as a motorcycle should be but didn't look like a moped") who just seemed to want to share his general elation. I went through Bridgeport and across the Drive onto a grueling ride into the wind down the path, where I got smoked by some guys in matching spandex uniforms and even, hilariously, by the pudgy one who brought up the rear. I blame this on having small tires. Even 53rd street was hopping; what used to be a generic movie rental place and was closed for a long time is now open as a garden shop with a hand-drawn sign. Adorable!

My roommates and I spent the night drinking on the roof, where we stayed for varying portions of the wee am hours. Yesterday afternoon I spent on the roof in the sun with more drinks (gin & tonics, strawberry daiquiris made with fresh strawberries!) and a rotating cast of passer-by friends. The buds on our front yard tree that had been closed shut the night before had little lime green filaments escaping out. We stayed up until sunset, watching the birds reeling out of the west and the streetlights turning everywhere below us a cozy summer orange, the sky turning purple, the clouds dividing the sky. Today it's raining, so it's back to the glowing rectangles and reams of papers for me.


I was reading blogs, specifically Bliss, and came across this cute skirt, which is part of Frei designs, sold super-sustainably in Chicago by designer Annie Novotny at her storefront Workshop, which is on 18th Street and I must have biked right past. This is from the Frei website, can you believe it?:

"Supporting healthy labor practices and environmental sustainability.

Made with carefully-chosen materials:
• 80% organic
• no agrochemicals
• fast-renewing resources
• low-impact or no-impact dying

Sewn in Chicago by workers who receive a fair and living wage.
Shipped using recycled materials"

And to keep it fashion-blog-esque, what I wore:

To work on Thursday, a green-ish gray corduroy knee-length A-line skirt that I made with my grandma probably when I was in early high school and have mended and patched countless times (perhaps the most worn and most versatile thing I own besides jeans), and a blue & yellow striped v-neck t-shirt that my grandma made me recently from a pattern I adapted from a dress (bodice & neckline lowered). I also brought a thin, long, (holey) mauve cardigan I got from Unique not long ago but only had to wear it for half the morning ride.

Thursday night on the roof: the shirt and some tight jeans that I bought at Unique and cut off at the knee, maroon suede bedazzled flats that I found in a free bin in my boyfriend's apartment building.

Friday, before I realized what a perfect day it was outside: jeans & piggly-wiggly tshirt. I have been offered $50 for this t-shirt after a show in Wrigleyville from a guy at a Taco Bell, and regret to this day having not sold it. I could always get another one for $5 at the grocery store back home. The Piggly-Wiggly also featured prominently in the conversation of the Dirty Hippies of Memphis, more information on that later.

Friday, after I realized it was a perfect day to make strawberry daiquiris and lounge on the roof: ragged old hand-me-down Abercrombie shorts, which are perfectly too big and threadbare, and a white eyelet camisole that I got from a roommate who was purging possessions. Blankets: my mom's floral comforter from high school, an unfinished piece of blue & black buffalo plaid wool that I liberated from grandma's fabric stash.

Today in the rain: pink Minnetonka moccasins I got at a thrift store, jeans, lacy pink cami from Unique, boyfriend's old threadbare blue and white striped buttondown.

Oh, and on Tuesday, I went to Village Discount in Pilsen, and got huraches from Brazil (which I'd been wanting since last summer) and are going to take some breaking-in, some Capezio dance shoes (practically new! magically comfortable stay-on-your-foot black heels, my work shoes for all the non-summer and non-snowing days), a textured off-white old Ralph Lauren scoopneck t-shirt, 3 children's books (only one of which I could bring myself to donate to the book drive I bought them for, the others are too gorgeously illustrated and strange to get rid off) and a 2008 planner featuring Japanese woodcut prints that I plan to cut out and use as postcards.

un-glamorous work clothes

Now that I have an internship where I have to look professional, I have discovered that my usual wardrobe of (jeans + LLbean boots + plaid shirts) or (girly dresses + giant earrings) is not really "business casual." Clothes with holes (the alarming majority) are also out. Which is too bad, because I get lots of compliments on my shabby wardrobe. Therefore I am looking for a nice blazer, some kind of business shoes, and a nice leather bag. Let's begin:
from Les Anti-Modernes. I'm not even going to see where she bought it because I am quite sure I cannot buy it. But it is a "boyfriend blazer" which I don't understand. What does this "boyfriend" label mean? On jeans, it seems to mean: straight, kinda baggy, so ok, I understand that, but on a skinny blazer? I guess it just means "cut straight" not "could be your boyfriend's," unless your boyfriend is really skinny and quite stylish.
Another "boyfriend blazer"! This one is from JCrew, who has lots of nice expensive jackets. Unfortunately, that is the only nice thing about JCrew, who has been disappointing me A LOT lately with their stupid ruffles on everything and ridiculous styling. They used to be pretty, classic clothing but I think they have let the Michelle Obama endorsement get to their heads. I am not even anti-ruffle, I am just anti-Jcrew: ridiculous pricing for clothes made in third world countries, the absurd "we hand-sewed on these sequined flowers onto artisanal tweed from the finest mill in Portugal" prose in the catalog, the unattractive too-many-frilly-accessories styling, half-tucked in shirts, neon ankle socks, and so on and on and on. Rant over.
Ok, next I need some shoes. They have to be warm & look classy, preferably kinda retro. These are from etsy & are about $25 and more or less my size but I won't get them, because that is $25 + shipping for shoes I can't try on. Really I want the shoes that belong to my Policy teacher who I love & who is always super stylish & whose hairdo I try to copy when I go to work (only she has dark curly hair which is the opposite of mine) & who I want to be when I grow up. The other young women at the agency I "work" at also have great brogue-like shoes but they are short and so are used to wearing heels more. That's my problem with shoes-- a two inch heel makes me six feet tall.
Ok, losing steam! This is a boring shopping list anyway, but I need a nice leather bag. Zeb went to Unique (our favorite cheapo thrift store) on Monday while I was in class and I told him to find me a nice leather bag but he returned empty-handed. So since that's about all the effort I'm willing to put into shopping for a bag, I'll just post this one from the first blog I referenced, even though I don't really like it, just to give you an idea of what we're talking about here.

Trend Setting

Remember when I was all excited about espadrilles that didn't fit? I was so ahead of the curve! Now Etsy has spotlighted those very blue-and-white striped espadrilles as "this summer's quintessential shoe," and Lucky Magazine has profiled that list of "beach essentials" using the picture I posted earlier. I don't actually like much else in the list, though.

Fortunately, I found even better ones at Boden, as seen above. The heels are a bit too high for me, but they're so cute, and on sale (they're $73, way out of my price range, but still, on sale). I have last year's Boden catalogue in my bathroom for perusing pleasure. Something about the versatile separates and modest cuts strikes me as a little too "old" for me, and yet the bright colors and patterns makes it seem almost too "young" for my mother. But I don't know, maybe Boden can go both ways. They're British. They're kindof like J. Crew used to be before they got so pretentious. And also, they have someone who looks like Kiera Knightley modelling for them.

Summer Shoes

We've had a real Indian Summer in Chicago, but now that it's hot again I want some good sandals again. I started this post at the beginning of summer, but lost steam since I was, you know, wearing boots last night. I actually got the perfect pair of cool, cushy, strappy 70s reddish-leather sandals at Unique awhile ago, but after a week or so of sandal bliss a strap broke. I'll take them to the cobbler, but until then, I'll just be materialistic.

I have way more heels than I will ever wear and a few pairs of flats, but in terms of sandals I have only: some truly ugly turquoise rubber flip-flops with orange print on them, and some too-small red slides that say Hawaii in rainbow print on the white vinyl slide. My great-aunt gave them too me when I was visiting Wisconsin the other weekend and my good sandals broke. I had some worn-out fake suede flip-flops from Walmart that are approximately 1 mm thick on the bottom and wholly inappropriate for walking on concrete, but I lost one of them in the move. Pathetic.

I want:
espedrilles, I guess flat-ish ones, although I so like wedges. Found these on Etsy, although they were too small.
These are also on Etsy, and less cute, but the right size. Do I really need another pair of flats though?
Keds (from their Green collection) or similar simple cotton slip-ons. maybe in eyelet?

Huraches, or other flat sandals with so many straps that they are practically shoes. I found some perfect huraches at Unique but they were way too small. A co-worker has these from Urban Outfitters:and the same store also has these (somewhat boring) huraches, that I would be into if I was into Urban Outfitters. Which I'm not.

I really like flip flops that have a strap in the back. When I was in Egypt I bought some "Jesus sandals" that were great-looking but so flat that they were pretty painful to walk in. The leather soles also made them slippery. These next two are also Urban Outfitters.
Finally, I'd like to retire the plastic flip-flops, and trade them for a comfier, nicer-looking version, maybe Rainbows, that will give my feet some support. Last summer I found some Rainbows at the camp where I was staying with Zeb's family, but I was sure they belonged to someone else so I didn't take them. I found out later that they had been abandoned. Oh well.