Bowing Out.

The mistake shots are always the ones I end up liking best. I'm attempting some new things clothing wise. A little less prim, a little more slouch. It's the same basic idea--still I want to be cute and ladylike, I want things to have a certain level of prim going on, but suddenly I want something a little less refined, a little more seemingly careless. It's all an illusion anyway, but you know.

I usually try not to buy things that show up on other blogs too much--I freely admit the desire to do so when you've seen someone else orient an outfit around such a piece--at least just because of that purpose, but I quite love this blouse (and strangely, its seems, noncommittal statements like that one) for its dusty rose color and funny floppy bow. It's just the sort of thing I've been looking for for ages, and since I have spent nary a penny at H&M in months, I figured I would be allowed. I haven't altered it as The Cherry Blossom Girl did, so if you're curious about what it looked like originally, here it is.

I suppose I've ripped off her entire outfit in a way. I plead guilty, although in my defense the pants are new and the roll is how they're styled on the website and in-store.

Rolling and cuffing is a whole new thing to me. I've been familiarly doing it with blouses and cardigans and light jackets, but adding it into the world of pants is a new thing. Blame all the men featured on The Sartorialist or something. It's nice, and it keeps my pants from dragging which I hate, hate, hate, hate. Especially when it rains. Wet pant hems irritate me and almost squick me out.



On an entirely, or slightly, different note, this foray into pants has (chinos are an entirely foreign world to me--I'm looking into jeans alternatives this year. Hmmm) increased my tiny face turning to fall. It's the same as every year, the excitement, but you know it never dwindles. I think I'm mostly excited to wear piles of eyeshadow again. It's not really practical in the summer. It just falls off and pools on lower lids, and at the very least it creases with eyelid sweat (which is really romantic and sultry sounding in short love stories where the girl isn't wearing eyeshadow, but vague eyeliner and some stupid summer dress or slip). I've been segueing into it with MAC's paint pots, the result above. I've wanted something brown and smudgy for a while, and it seems I've finally found it.

I Had a Dream that I Woke up, Remembered.

A Crazed Girl

THAT crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

No matter what disaster occurred
She stood in desperate music wound,
Wound, wound, and she made in her triumph
Where the bales and the baskets lay
No common intelligible sound
But sang, 'O sea-starved, hungry sea.'

-William Butler Yeats

Tote-al-it-tarian.

I am not the kind of girl who is 'into' purses. I can appreciate them, the great ones, especially that are all buttery and leather and lovely, and I recognize the certain whatever-it-is that they can add to an outfit, not to mention their inherent necessity, but I've never been one-with or in-synch with purses. I suppose if everyone can be fit into a neat little box of Shoe Girl or Bag Girl, I am certainly the former.

Because no matter what I always turn back to the tote. The trusty canvas tote, with its dirty handles and the bottom stained from a leaking water bottle. They have no inside pockets, as they are the most basic of bags, and so all those little neat things like lip gloss and ipods and cell phones, bobby pins and all manner of weird little tchothkes that make living frivolously possible trundle around the bottom and inevitably get smashed or worn. It drives me insane but I can't seem to stick to anything else really. I tend to favour the traditional canvas tote-bag, even though it gets really dirty (and I know you can wash it, but it never is quite the same is it? It's like when you wash your stuffed animal and it comes out different and sometimes it's missing and eye). I think it's cool. I mean, almost everyone uses a tote bag. Some are snobbish about it, I'm sure, and would never, but even then I'm sure they do use one now and then to throw an extra pair of shoes (or eight) or snacks for the drive, or piles of books.

They are sturdy things. My favorite one was six dollars from the J. Crew outlet. It is large (and in charge) and has a pig on it., and is made of honest-to-god canvas. It says LA FERME or something, because we think we are francaise, in blue and red. It is glorious now in its degradation. I haven't used it for a week because it got so dirty I started to feel a little strange about it, but I keep looking at it hanging on the doorknob and knowing, in the back of my head and heart, that I'm going to go back to it. Maybe I'll try to wash it.


(When it was new, clean, and fresh)

Ideally, I will be able to find a new tote. The other thing about totes is that they are, theoretically, guilt-free. You toss them around and then get a new one. I am of course, as is the luxury of the spoiled, particular about said totes. The design has to be right, because if it's too twee, it's just that. Avoid the twee-est of the twee. I don't like the ones that have the 'flat bottoms' (in quotations for no reason) because they are hysterical in their call for order, and then they just disappoint you in the end and get all messy anyway. I'm not sure what I mean by that, but you get the idea. The straps then are also important, because they have to be sturdy—otherwise they get all crinkly and useless and hang on your arm like floss and you can't put anything heavy in it anyway if the straps aren't strong enough.

I also feel like the tote goes with everything. I don't really mean that. Almost everything. I wouldn't wear it to a fancy-pants event or anything, but I really like how it demystifies and outfit. I guess a tote sort of anchors it, like black tights, or v-neck t-shirts. I can wear the frilliest outfit and THEN wear a tote, and suddenly it seems balanced. With a t-shirt and jeans and cute flats (something I'm learning to embrace, although dangly earrings help) it's an ernest attempt at effortless dressing. Maybe I'm delusional, but it's how I feel at the moment.

fieldguided has made a few posts and tweets about tote bags, like this one here. I think I'll eventually end up breaking down and snagging an Alphabet Bag for myself, once I commit to a design.