travelin travelin travelin

I'm in Korea for a few hours on my way to China, and thought I'd take this last oportunity to update my blog. This is what I'm wearing for my almost 24 hour journey:

My comfiest outfit without resorting to my personal pet peeve of sweats, flip flops, and t-shirts in public. Ick. 

Batwing blouse and biker shorts from Love Culture

Thrifted nude pumps (btw i heard Project Runway bashed beige heels and they can suck it! I love my beige heels so much, they are coming to China!)

I'll miss you all! Please come visit me over at May Go Wren. Click on the category "zombielace" to filter out all non-fashion related posts.

Things to miss: My life partner, Tate

I am transitioning to my Wordpress blog; in a few days, I will no longer have access to blogger. It's going to be hard going through withdrawal from all my favorite blogger blogs, but I gotta do it! Along with facebook and other google related creature comforts... But please check me out there! May Go Wren: China Blog.  Fashion/vintage/style related entries will be categorized as "Zombie Lace"so click on that if you want to filter out unrelated stuff!

Today's post (since I don't have a lot of time what with packing and preparing etc) is dedicated to my cat whom I am cruelly abandoning while I travel the East. Praying my two friends can take her, but that's not going to be a sure thing til later today so KINDA nervous on that! Made this video to encourage them:

(if that doesn't work, try here for youtube)

And this is what I've been wearing to pack and move and hustle and bustle:









100 % Thrifted (something else I'll miss doing in China!!)

take a romp outside the box

Here's another one of my pieces photographed by Susan Mucino;

The polkadot 80s romper halter.

I got this two summers ago in Austin and I used to wear it CONSTANTLY. Haven't really felt it much this summer at all, though, and really only wore it for these pictures. I'll probably end up selling it in the shop, but with my departure to China only... FIVE DAYS AWAY?!?... it'll have to wait until my return

I feel like this piece brings out my silly side, and just makes me want to hop around and make faces at the camera. Everything about this garment and these pictures reminds me of having no shame in joy and just all around breaking freeeeee!

Meet me by the tracks, love

As my departure date for my year in China approaches, I am forced into the loathsome task of sorting through my (considerable) clothing collection and downsizing. I can't stand it!!! I am something like a clothes hoarder, and the idea of leaving any of my darlings feels like betrayal. Luckily, I had my beautiful talented photographer friend, Susan Mucino, to make the task a little more fun. We got together some of my favorite vintage pieces from my personal collection and had a little photo-shoot. I found it kind of therapeutic to immortalize these pieces in photographic form although I'll have to say goodbye to them for a year. Here is just one of the dresses we shot, and I will be the first to say I am DEFINITELY not a model, but Susan's skill produced some lovely pictures nonetheless.

This series of pictures is kind of whimsically romantic to me; I think it's a shy girl who goes alone by the train tracks every afternoon to read romance novels and dream about her love. She knows he takes the commute on the train behind her, so she wears the red dress, wishing he'd look out the window at just the right moment and see her as a streak of red.

Vintage 80s oversized shirt dress

Flats from Target
Clutch: hand altered from an old one by me!

what's in your notebook?

I want to be a more active blogger, but my lack of camera is a major barrier! So I decided to take advantage of having access to one at work and took some pictures of the contents of my notebook. Now you'll have something (hopefully) interesting to look at though not fashion related.

Do any of you carry a notebook around for ideas and doodles? I never leave home without mine! I have a weird little hobby of writing syllabic poems (mostly haikus and tankas that I put on my tumblr), and I like to jot them down immediately as they come to me. Here you can see a bit of my writing process! Also, you may not know this about me, but I'm a wee bit of a cartoonist... not that I'm ready to be featured at the Louvre or anything, but I do enjoy it if just for my own amusement. So for your entertainment, here is a sneak peak at the contents of my notebook (which disturbingly might reveal the contents of my mind!):

PBR portrait, the drink of champions and the love of my life.

Some strange cowboy cat that came out of my imagination after several of the previous doodle.

Hey, Arnold! Because I can.

A creepy looking portrait of my hand. Ugh, more incentive not to smoke: my skin could really look like this some day!

Quotes I liked from a magazine article.

Poems being born.

I dunno, why the heck not?

Haha, a little doodle I drew to shame my PMSing boo.

Bare with me while I await the arrival of my camera's replacement charger and there shall be pretty clothes galore!

platfornication

Weird title, I know, but I've been lusting so hard over platforms lately I kind of wish I could do them. All night long.

(the Kork Ease platform wedges owned and frequently rocked by Calivintage)

One of the hardest things for me about moving out of the country in a month is trying to keep my clothing collection under control. I feel like I've been purging and purging my wardrobe, yet can't seem to muster up the self control to keep new additions from sneaking in. Some things I justify, by making myself get rid of three items for every one I add, or telling myself how useful all the blouses and blazers I can't resist will be for teacher outfits in China.

But then there's shoes. Oooooh wonderful shoes. I know a lot of girls can relate to the warm fuzzy feeling, the pitter patter of the heart, the cold sweat that erupts at the sight of a beautiful pair of shoes. Platform shoes are one of those highly impractical items to lug halfway across the world, being bulky and heavy by design. And just as the nature of eros in classic greek thought requires the beloved and the lover to never actually unite for "love" to exist, so must I be sundered from the object of my desire thus intensifying these pangs of plat-love.

(Sappho, thinking about the sequined Louboutins she can never afford.)

This feeling has inspired humans to create art about it for thousands of years, like Sappho immortalized in her fragmented versus on eros. I was similarly seized by inspiration when Margaret from the blog Shine by Three wrote up designer Irene Brandt, and I got a load of these incredible platforms:

I don't know why I am so in love. Maybe because they remind me of space-monster boots except super chic in lovely soft gray suede, and that they would make me taaaalllll!

I wrote a haiku about them for my tumblr blog:

You kill me, Irene,
with your fab ankle boots. Note
to Self: MARRY RICH.

Okay, so I'm no Sappho. But I do find it therapeutic to fantasize about all the platforms in the world that I shall someday make mine without actually indulging the urge. I already have more crap than I can bring to China, and must remind myself that China is a glorious mecca for all things trendy and fashionable and inexpensive... I can buy as many platform wedges as it takes to fill the void in my heart once I'm over there. I do have one really awesome pair already that are absolutely coming with me though. They're familiar and comforting (if not terribly comfortABLE). I love them even though they're far from designer. I picked them up for something like $30 in one of the ghetto fabulous boutiques at Underground Atlanta.

H&M blouse

Thrifted hawaiin print skirt

Sam Moon bag

Platforms <3

I don't have a good picture of them by themselves but here they are featured in these outfits. I wore this when my three best friends from childhood and I were on a trip together. As it happens, all three of them are TALL, like, grazing the 6 foot margin. At 5'4 I'd say I'm average, but somehow always feel like a twelve year old when the four of us get together!

(I'm the short one)

One more reason to declare my devotion to the plats: They make me feel like one of the girls instead of a little sister! As long as the rest of them opt for flats, that is...

(sorry for the quality and slight irrelevance of my images, my camera is still out of service so I worked with what I had!)

stars and stripes and outfit evolution (in reverse)

I think I'm going to be one of those embarrassing moms or kindergarten teachers who has a dress and a broach and a pair of earrings for every holiday. I love dressing in theme, and have the most fun ever preparing the right dorky outfit for the right occasion. Naturally today was Fourth of July! My camera is out of commission, but I had some fun with photobooth this gorgeous day of independence. Here's the evolution of my outfit (the top pics are the result I settled on).

I started with last year's Walmart tank, cut up and reshaped, but I didn't feel classy enough with the torn up T and shorts and braids.

I reaaaallly wanted an excuse to wear that amazing jacket I found forever ago at a thrift store.... but Atlanta in July is just not the place to pull that off. Plus I wanted that class-factor like I mentioned.

I got really happy with this old plain blue t-shirt; that with the paisley granny shorts and flats made for a sweet 50s picnic look, I thought. Plus I pinned up the french braids Heidi style. I'm using plain black sewing ribbon for a belt and my necklace is an anchor with an American flag design.

Hope everyone else looked festive and ate plenty of our national foods and mayonnaise and PBR etc.

refuse to be nailed into just one color!

Image from Funky Trend.

One of my favorite ways to funk up a look is to be a bit creative with nail polish. The days of getting to choose only one color to suit your mood are over, and now we see trendtastic ladies donning all kinds of shades and variations on their nails.

I first started doing the accent ring finger last year, having seen it on some of my more fashionable classmates and fellow campus rats, and always considered it a kind of hiphop glam Atlanta thing. (Being from here, I have a soft spot for hiphop culture fashion and like to incorporate it into my looks). My boy and I have a photobooth photo diary thing we like to do, so I happen to have some shots capturing a few of my past nail designs. Blue and orange was just for fun, but mostly I like to do a somber color on the majority of the nails and one bright pop on the ring finger like in the last picture.

Yikes, please ignore the greasy, hungover, rolled-straight-outta-bed faces and focus on the glorious nail polish in the foreground!

When considering the origins of this trend, I think it's inspired in part by wacky nail variations in the 80's, which explains why 80's glam lover and fab nail pioneer, Rihanna, started switching up her colors as early as 2007 (in the picture on the left). Since then, she's taken her nail beds to even more dizzyingly eye-catching heights. Here she is earlier this year with leopard print and stick-on bling. And check out the pure sparkle middle finger accent. Swoon!

Images from All Lacquered Up and glamour.com

With my conception of this trend as a hiphop glam thing with ATL roots, imagine my surprise to stumble across the glorious hands of Molly from Chimerically Yours all the way in Scotland!! I like how she just went with the one fingernail on the left hand. I'm dying to know where she first saw this done or if it came out of her imagination!

The lovely paint job on Molly's hands from her blog, Chimerically Yours.

With a little searching, I also found the amazing nail polish blog, Kawaii Nails by Zahra all the way in Bermuda. Way back in May of '09 she sported the incredible design on the left. More recently, she posted a picture from a Japanese fashion magazine featuring a delightful combo of glue-on bling and accent nails.

Images from Zahra's blog, Kawaii Nails.

Now my theory of this as a hiphop culture, Atlanta based trend is even more questionable. It seems like the crazy accent nails are scratching up notice all over the place! Once again, my faith in the fashion collective unconscious is renewed.

I've also seen accent toes, particularly the big toe (though I don't really like that on my own feet). I am planning to get tiny little rhinestones or pearls to glue to my own big toe for a little sparkle in the summer heat without the added weight of jewelry! Here are my current accent toes, a more subtle hue change to suit my taste.

Do excuse my not so cute feet and not so neat paint job...

Having been inspired by the nail freedom and creativity of others, I decided to dig through my nail polish collection and try a new combo. I had some pastels that remind me of the American Apparel shades going around, and went with a pinkie accent.

Side note: my polish is years, we are talking YEARS (maybe 5?) old and is thus very thick and goopy. I tried adding a bit of nailpolish remover to the bottles and shaking them up, but does anyone else know any remedies for over-the-hill polish?

So, has anyone else seen these nail styles around their city, and if so, where do you think they originate?

Other fun nail sites: Nail Gal, All Lacquered Up.