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....!

Doppelganger

I got on the Sartorialist! Just kidding, but according to my friend K this girl looks scarily like me. Also, she's searching for chairs in an alley-- could we be more soulmates?

Since dying my hair I've shied away from wearing red but this looks awesome. I think redheads can wear red, it's just a really bold look. Not for the days you want to try to blend in, I guess.

Banners and Pennants

Banners and pendants have been a trendy trend for awhile now on the internets, but they've been looking good around the world for much longer than that.
First image from Cherry Blossom Girl, taken in Yangshuo, China. Now I really want to go there!

This one is cute and simple. From twoandsix, via The Sweetest Occasion, via Oh So Beautiful Paper. Reminds me of a blog post I read a LONG time ago of valentine hearts made by a scientist of old journals and strung around her house. Here they are!
By Heart of Light via East Side Bride (a totally acceptable wedding blog that isn't really a wedding blog really). They're made of her old science journals!
These are from housemartin, via Snippet & Ink (I am over wedding blogs but still find a lot of cute ideas for home and parties).
by Oliver Yaphne, via Minor Details, via Swissmiss. I think we're supposed to be seeing the rug, but all I see are those fantastic pennants along the wall. And the nice big window.

Oh, Hello, friend had the idea to tie together vintage hankerchiefs to make a banner. I have scores of old handkerchiefs, and am so committed to them that today I sewed together a couple that had ripped. On one, the simple flower embroidery was apparently left unfinished-- forced into nose-blowing service by my impatient mother, perhaps?

Garlands are so all over everywhere (Modish, Confetti System, and on and on) that I am getting exhausted posting examples. No one really cares that much about little pieces of paper attached to string, least of all me.

The point is THIS picture:
I took that in Maadi in Cairo in 2007. Those Egyptians really got it right! Their pennants are made of cut-up colorful plastic bags, and they just leave them up in the street all the time. I love how you can see them disappearing around that winding alley corner, and above your head all bleached out by my over-exposed picture. You can deal with my poor photography skills, though, because of my enthusiasm for how cool Egypt is. This was part of the back-roads route that I walked when I went to teach English. You duck into this little labyrinthe after a harrowing walk past a school that just let out a mob of totally insane children, donkeys eating the grass that cushioned the fruit on the cart they pulled all day, a concrete box of a mosque draped in brilliantly-patterned tenting fabric and glowing green for funerals and services. Juice bars, dusty streets, guys selling bad "African" jewelry pinned to faded felt boards, graffiti, Coca-Cola, carrying white boards and chains to keep the chairs from being stolen.

Even more Starry Night!

Whoa! It seems that I've stumbled on a trendy trend with my obsession with galaxy prints! This pretty dope star print shirt is by Mara Hoffman, on stylist Masha Orlov, found on Refinery29. I couldn't find this star print shirt, exactly, on Mara Hoffman's website but BUT there's a bunch of other really cool prints, drapey dresses, very boho. And the intro to her website is a galaxy scene and then an explosion of inspiration pictures which could easily be MY inspiration pictures. Mara Hoffman = my style spirit animal?
Yeah, sexy space swimsuits!

More dope prints. The dirty hippie in me wants these so bad. Especially, um, the space print.

This triangle stuff is cool too, and I like the crazy billowy shape. On Project Runway, all the judges hated on Jay's short dress with the ruffles on the butt because "no woman on earth wants her butt to look bigger." FALSE, Heidi & Michael Kors, FALSE. Plenty of women (and men!) like a big butt, including this Jezebel blogger's mom. You should read that article because it's hilar, and also it lets you see the pictures I'm talking about. It's also totally culturally blind to assume that because skinny white women in 2010 don't like their butts, that no one ever does. Please.

Skeleton back, I dig.

Very cool, looks like nerves or electrical wiring.

Compared to what we've seen so far, this is tame, but I would totally wear it every day. EVERY DAY.

Soooo hippie. So mother earth. LOVE her hair, will recreate.

Almost too hippie, but I love the prints. On Project Runway, they got to design their own fabrics, "something every designer dreams of." But man, did they let that opportunity go to WASTE! Even Emilio's much-lauded graffiti logo print was kinda lame, and they all really disappointed me. If you get to design your own fabric, grow a pair and make a Rorschach ink-blot/neon fractal print, like this!

That's right. Only, isn't it freakishly off-center? I can't look at it for too long, it hurts.

More Space Prints! Great Clothes Online! Great Blog! Tomorrow's Saturday!

I saw this awesome nebula-print tank top on Academichic. It's from All Saints, and they also have a bikini and one-piece swimsuit in the same print. I just looked around that site, which I had never seen before, and holy moley, I want everything there. Studded biker jacket, plaids, draping, crazy cuts, a gold dress, a fireworks print... I just watched like 5 episodes of Project Runway and everything on this site is super creative and interesting. And I was only looking at their "vintage" section-- the new stuff looks good too. Tomorrow I'm going to blow off reading and work on my sewing projects. Got to finish sewing the roses on my blue top that I started way back in December, at the very least, and tackle a pile of mending/alterations: a vintage dress I bought in Mississippi and love, only it's see-through and kinda frumpy on me, a huge men's striped button-down that's totally threadbare with a rip in the elbow, some old jeans that probably should just become cutoffs, polypropelene leggings that I was obsessed with until I melted them on the space heater (noooo!!!!) and now have big plans to cut up in some exciting way, a huge heavy turquoise circle skirt that I made with grandma but then got caught in a bike gear so it's permanently stained and also has some bizarre bleach spots that I'm going to ruche up in some way inspired by this skirt I posted earlier, something out of these too-small nehru collar kaftan-like things that I bought at Unique, and something out of a Japanese-garden watercolor silk shirt that I bought at Unique even though it is huge and ruffly and hideous, just for the fabric. Whew!

I meant for this post actually to be an endorsement of Academichic. It's three women PhD students somewhere in the Midwest, and I really relate to their concerns with looking professional, staying warm, dealing with bizarre temperature changes, and so on. Also, they're quite creative without being hipsters, showing ideas I hadn't thought of like unbuttoning a shirt and wrapping it with a belt and high-waist skirt (also picture above, wearing a cardigan as a wrap, and love that skirt!), wearing full skirts with blazers, and layering with dresses, something I find very difficult to pull off. They're also smart and quite thoughtful, discussing things like the cultural appropriation of Japanese floral motifs by Anthropologie, or how professional women project those two parts of themselves (professionalism and/or femininity) publicly through clothing. And, they can sew! Some altered clothing and some embellishment projects. This is one of the few realistic-fashion blogs that I find continually interesting. 5 stars!

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!

Galaxy Fashion Quest

I really like pictures of space. (I found this sweet blog full of mostly galaxy photos via d.sharp, which is a blog frequently featuring artsy stuff that I enjoy.) My dad was into astronomy, and we did a lot of telescope-squinting, planet-identifying, and constellation-naming. I remember going to some field in a state park one summer night for an astronomy lesson from a park ranger. I don't remember any of the lesson, but I remember the fireflies in the woods on the edges of the field, the tall grass, and the glow-in-the-dark night sky print on the sweatshirt of another little kid. It was like being in a dome of little jumping dots of light.
Maybe that's why I liked this dress from Mociun so much. It's like a grown-up version of the glow-in-the-dark night sky sweatshirt. I found it from Moseyblog. (whew it took me so long to dig up that link! I kept misspelling Mociun.) Vain and Vapid were also all over it last fall or whatever (it's fine, I know I'm behind). Mociun, based in Brooklyn, has got some cool stuff and is sold all over the internets (Beklina, bird, others) but really I only care about that space print. There's still a shirt left in it, but it's size large and $72, so that's a big TM for me (tough mustard).
This photo is from a remarkable 15-year-old photographer on Flickr, Olivia Bee. I don't know what she was doing to make this cool light effect but I love it, and it reminds me of that starry field.
Finally, everything Shabd is similar in the tie-dye galaxy print way. The website is dope and minimalist and features a picture of a galaxy next to each category of clothing, so it's obvious that the inspiration was the awesomeness of galaxies. I have no memory of where I found out about Shabd, lace & tea, which is a favorite blog for gorgeous pictures and fashion, posted about them in April, but I emailed myself the link back in December. Who cares?

Moral of the story? I want tickets to the Hubble 3D Imax movie, where I will completely die of dorky happiness. It's $21 at the Museum of Science and Industry. That is as much as I spent on a tube of lipstick today. Admittedly, it was very high-quality lipstick from Korres at Sephora, my new favorite place-- they let you try everything on! I got it in Red, I can't resist a simple color name, and it has a minimum of evil stuff to ingest. I tried on like six different red lipsticks, and while Clinique had a nice color that didn't make my teeth look yellow, it was full of evil stuff.

Stripes for Spring

Here is my mom circa 1983 wearing an awesome striped dress, holding my baby cousin. Nice hair, mom.

Fact: blog world is obsessed with striped stuff, especially blue & white or gray & white. Good thing my family is way ahead of that curve.

Example: this striped French shirt from etsy seller modaspia, found via Cup of Jo.

Joanna Goddard thinks it's a french thing, and real-life French babe Garance Dore agrees.

This picture caught my eye on Cup of Jo, and it is from the early days (July 2008) of The Selby.

Pic Unrelated

1. My friends from home send me lots of pictures from the internet and youtube videos of dumb stuff, but never cute puppies.
2. Today I made cilantro pesto pasta. Its merits are: uses up cilantro about to go bad in the fridge, some protein, alarming green color, somewhat sinus-clearing, good use for Magic Bullet.
3. I also cleaned my bathroom.
4. I also spent 3 hours in class, 1 hour meeting with a professor, and 3 hours annotating gaze.
5. I only had 2 1/2 hours of sleep last night.
6. I'm tormented by the dim memory of a song I heard last night in the coffee shop and had stuck in my head for hours, and now it is totally gone.

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.

Ahead of the Curve

I totally scooped the New Yorker on the Michael Jackson- Manu Dibango connection, and I'd like to take credit for that.

To further spread my trend-setting taste, watch this video that my friend Genevieve showed me. mmm, summer.