Indie Famous

When I was a kid I would dress my Barbies up as these girls. Nina Persson, Shirley Manson, Liz Phair, Juliana Hatfield, Angie Hart, and Jill Sobule all hung out together in my world. As the youngest of three girls I was very influenced by the music my sisters listened to and also by my hippie/hipster parents. And somehow I thought I would be talented and indie famous too. I dunno if it was the complete lack of musical talent and ability to sing that kept me from realizing these dreams. I can only dream up my look and costume if I could be like these beautiful and wondrously talented women. I guess the best I can do is throw a little rock and roll into my college kid wardrobe. The Above Nina Persson has been I think one of the biggest influences on my style and the way i view this world. Her look is always simple and glamorous, her accent enchanting, and her voice and words and perfectly beautiful.
Check out her new A Camp video for the song "Love Has Left the Room" great video, amazing outfits and I would love to have that magenta satin robe/ jacket.

Falling

Though the summer barely came, today felt like a beautiful early fall day. You can see how people are ready to give up on summer ever truely coming and ready to embrase the fall on it's way. Everywhere you look women wear tights, great boots, cozy sweaters, and falls signature blazer. The thing is we hardly ever get to embrase the fall in these parts. It goes from 90 degrees to blizzards before one can even notice the change. Today I was happy to put on my black skinny's with a layered but still summery look, throw on a gray hoodie and ride my bike to work, stopping for iced coffee at Dunkin on the way. These Juicy Couture platforms were the basis of my summer wordrobe, as they are comfy enough to stand and walk for eight hours at work. I am just not quite ready to let them go for the nine months of cold ahead. Overall though, I'm psyched as everyone for the beautiful layers, shapes, and colors of my favorite season, the always tragically short fall.

homemade headband, Gap tee, thrifted corset top thing, thrifted belt, Urban Outfitters jeans, Juicy couture wedges, Fuji Allegro bike

NI Feathers

When Forever 21 is too expensive for you, it's a sad life. This dress was at work for forever for about $16. I just couldn't bring myself to swing that. On the sale rounder for $7.99 it joined my wardrobe. Today consisted of sitting and waiting through the bureaucracy that is my school. Then to the NIN concert with the boyfriend and friends from his hometown. Not really my type of music but it was pretty good. Just reliving the time when I was 8 and I went with my mom to see them. Even in the midst of the black and rockenrolly I felt the need of throwing in my favorite color combo of bright orange and lilac from that Luella spring 2009 collection.

I am pretty excited to see whats up with Forever 21's new line "Twist." It sounds like every month or so they will release a new collection based around the theme. The first theme is circus. The clothing looks to be similar in style, fabrication, and target market to the Twelve by Twelve line. The line is full of bold pieces meant to make a statement. Wacky graphic tops, shapely skirts and lots of whimsy. And like the Twelve by Twelve line, I think I will be lusting after many of the pieces from the second I see them in the stock room just out of the boxes.The Twist line will be launching at the Chicago Michigan Ave. location nearing the end of the week.

beachy

First beach day of the "summer". Lamest summer ever. its hardly ever gotten above 80.
Juicy Couture bathing suit and pom-pom headband I made the other night.

The loverly Alice.

Stars, no stripes

Yesterday after work, and after a trip to pick up some yarn for making pom-poms, I stopped by Salvation Army. I wanted to buy a chair but decided against it. I picked up a boring but nicely colored sweater (a light seafoam,) a orange Free People tee shirt, and these Moschino star print jeans. They were a couple sizes too big and not nearly as skinny as I would like them, so I took the waist in and narrowed the legs. This only happened after I attempted a myriad of sewing projects (that all failed). Luckily this worked pretty well.

Fashion Resource Center

Yesterday I visited School of the Art Institute's Fashion Resource Center with some of The Second City Style staff. The Resource Room collects garments donated by designers. The clothing is there for students to touch and study construction. They also have a huge collection of books and magazines including Vogue dating way back. 1940's maybe? Silly me forgot to bring anything to write down just what it was I was seeing. Well I know to some people its no big deal but even just touching these things was amazing to me.

Jean Paul Guiltier corseted dress I thought was just lovely.
Comme des Garcons . This was just beautiful. So detailed. So wonderful. The layers.
Jean Paul Guiltier suit. cool buttons and tassels.
More Comme des Garsons. I 'm a fan of bows, so that bow got me.
...I don't remember but I want it.
Beautiful, But again I don't remember its from 1960 though. Such wonderful detail in the flowers.

Pretty little things from the early 19th century.
HATS! HATS! HATS!
what cool shoes from 1908.

Schools out for the summer. Not forever.

Every time I start to write something distracts me, the window gets closed and I'm gone making me pretty bad at this blog thing. But now am taking a summer off which means three and a half months with no homework, tests, or projects. Its really a number of personal events that touched me in the past year that make me need some time off. I was burnt out and now working right so today it is the start of my summer off, well from school not work.
I thought to get in the swing of things I would share the outfits of my last week at school. You know, I wish we were like the British and called it uni. Not that I even go to a university but still we just call it class.
This is what I wore on Monday to a 10 Am business writing class with the lovely Stefani Bay. Then I would have had intro to college chemistry, which I wouldn't even call intro to 1st grade science, but we finished up finals and projects last week. Next was Retail Buying, and finally Apparel Evaluation. Out of there by 9pm. Observe how tired I look after 11 hours there... (those gloves were not really worn all day.)



This is Yesterday, Wednesday, basically the same thing except more finals. I think I did pretty well! 97% on buyers journal that took up my entire life this quarter.

Tuesday was my birthday. The weekend before that I took my boy to Detroit to meet the family. Celebrated my birthday with my family and had some good times. My parents gave me one of the best presents ever..

Tuesday after a long day at work and a trip to the boy's to pick up all my luggage I cabbed home to find a surprise of my roommate and a few girlfriends who took me out for my first mani pedi and made me fondue and cupcakes.

Wednesday, yesterday, was the first time in a while that I got a chance to enjoy a beautiful Chicago day alone. I dressed myself and headed out on the brown line to the Fransisco stop because last summer when I was biking I found a great park there. I walked around and practiced using my camera.

Also played a bit of dress up. My sister got me this Vera Wang dress found at an estate sale in the burbs. She also got me a Jean Paul Gaultier blazer with these odd cut out armpits.

This really has nothing to do with anything but the fact that I love my Shibuya Mon Amour bunny tanks.

And for my birthday I of course got a soft fuzzy bear hoodie from my dear mother.

So basically the end of my story is I am 20 now.