All the Bows.

In addition to lots of stripes, I've also taken to wearing a cloth ribbon in my hair. It's floppy and sort of bedraggled in the most perfect way. I've been snagging lengths of it at work to tie my hair back or up, but I suspect I may have to find a roll of it for myself so I might tie little ribbons all over everything. It adds just the little bit of primness that I need and can't seem to do without.

Secret Spring.

It's been perfection for a week. The only thing missing are the flowers, the leaves, all that lovely greenery. Phosphorescent copses and funny moss on rocks, you know? But we'll get there. I'm crossing all my fingers and toes that this is here to stay. I even did something brazen! I wore nothing on my legs today! Normally I wait to do such a thing until I think spring is official or until it's ridiculous and hot, but this year I'm optimistic early.



I felt exposed without something wrapped around my legs, but it's kind of easy and nice without them. The dress is one I bought half-price on a whim when a vintage store in the mall was moving. It's tight, tight, tight! I can just barely get away with it, although the buttons pull a little bit, so I might have to part with it after one more wear. I think I love it because of the belt (which makes me think of this dress except not as awesome because that blue confection was everything dreamy), and the neckline which is somewhere between a scoop and a crewneck.

I'm also, suddenly, way in love with mustard colors. I really like them with pink especially, so I'm trying to make it happen as often as possible, but mustard is tricky both to eat and to wear. My other favorite vintage pink dress no longer fits (I've gained, oh dear me, two inches in my waist in the past year. Working in a cake shop will catch up with you, or me at least) and so I'm left with just this one.

There is a blouse at an antique store not too far away that has a silk mustard blouse with a bow at the neck that is inexplicably wonderful, but it's also priced a bit high for a blouse. We'll see. If it keeps haunting me by summer's beginning, I may have to throw caution to the wind and whisk it away to my closet.

RagaMuffin etc.

I feel like this is the sort out outfit that make-over shows tout as really unflattering. Kind of weird, somewhat formless pants--cuffed, so that they would theoretically shorten the leg--topped by horizontal stripes and an amorphous jacket with little-to-no shape. I don't particularly care, and I don't happen to think this is terribly unflattering, but it's just interesting I think.



I've taken to snipping ribbons at work and tying them in my hair. It's funny cotton ribbon, which is nice because it doesn't slide out of my ponytail, and sort of un-precious-ifies a hair bow in the first place.

Other outfit notes include: it was a bit too chilly not to wear a proper coat, but I don't care, or socks (especially since I know that March is no promise at all of any kind of weatherly reward). This is also about the 20th striped top I have (I have no idea if that's an exaggeration or an approximation) and it's almost perfect. I also call these my Street Urchin jeans, since they are kind of baggy and have a hole in the knee, and when worn with an equally shapeless coat it feels kind of endearingly ragamuffin. That is the intent anyway.

Scowling at Winter.

I hate to be so typical, but man, I have spring fever quite bad. Lots of us do it seems. We're very short with winter this year, and the internet is no help--it's very hard for me not to throw a fit and be depressed for hours after reading all manner of spectacular blog posts from places where it is warm. Blast winter! I live in a place where it seems like it's winter most of the time, where we all know we're not in the clear until at least April. At the moment I keep turning around and glaring at the window as though if I looked at it hard enough, it would be just kidding.

I've never had the winter blues so bad! Normally I can't wait for summer to end, I dread those hot sticky days, deflating hair and my crispy skin, freckles, the suffocating heat. But of course right now it's all I want, or at least I want mild days where bare arms are acceptable. I've stopped buying winter clothes and have started stockpiling summer dresses like a little clothes-obsessed pack-rat.





For now though, it's all sweaters and tip-toeing around puddles of freezing cold slush.

I'm also back on a vintage kick. I find that I go through cycles with it. I always love it, but sometimes going through etsy or rummaging through a thrift or vintage store is the last thing I can stand to do. Then, a few weeks later, it's all I ever want to do. I love scrounging around and finding old things, wasting away in front of etsy until I think I might have seen every single dress there.



I've been vintage shopping like mad. Lots of summer things, like the most adorable pink dress that does not fit, blouses, dresses, aprons. The blouse above is something I bought at the end of the summer last year and totally forgot about. It's completely divine. I feel like it looks sort of nefarious, like little horns or something. In a drama set in the 50s or 60s at a college, this is the blouse that the catty girl in literature class wears. Or something. I bought it with a 40s crepe dress in pretty sad condition, but the lovely woman selling them let me tote both away happily for $12! I've been trying to salvage the dress, and it's not too bad except I think someone tried to wash it once, because it's really, really, really short. Oh well.

French Haircuts, Circus Girls.

Dear Anthropologie,

Yeah. You win. For a while there it was touch-and-go. I loved you because I always had, despite the fact that so does everyone else, because you had clever things to bait me like green vintage typewriters in your stores and nice packaging and a general sense of whimsy that beckons my silly little heart. But between the last catalog, with the haircut I can never really pull off, and this little bit of circus imagery, you've locked me in.

Wistfully yours,
Kater.

p.s. If you feel so inclined, it would be nice if I could afford your bits and bobs without feeling guilty for handing over my pennies.

You Smell (In a Good Way).

Perfume is a problem. It smells, and a lot of it gives me a headache (ages ago a rather nice sales-woman at a counter somewhere suggested I might have an allergy to 'white amber', whatever that is, and I don't know how true that could be). Despite this, I am fascinated by it. I love hemming and hawing over the little bottles. I'm fascinated by solid perfume, and the more cute, whimsical, or twee and charming the container the more smitten with something I am (although if it doesn't smell good there is no saving a delectable bottle).

I tried Vera Wang's Princess for a while, but I think it's just a tad too sweet for me. My mother wears Chanel No. 22, which is not easy to find (especially since we do not have a Nordstrom here, which I heard carried it) although she has been making do with all kinds of versions of it ordered via ebay. I once had a strange green vial of perfume that was supposed to smell like tea (it did not, but it smelled good anyway) but once it was used up that was it.

These days I'm yet another wear-er of Coco Mademoiselle. I'm not sick of it, it doesn't give me a headache, and sometimes when people smell me I get compliments. It's not too sweet, which I like, and it has the kind of iconic what-have-you lurking behind it that makes me feel like a grown up. Like when you finally figure out what your haircut is (I have yet to do this).

This has become slightly tangential. The point is I have grabbed another perfume that I can't stop loving all day. I picked it up because I liked the product's packaging (I don't care. I do judge books by their cover, I like packaging and prints and lettering and all of that) and the little moisturizers, tiny bottles and pastels. Plus, testers! Testers are really gross because everyone touches them, and I am sure they fomites of the highest degree but I love smelling and smoothing.

I bought the smallest bottle of Lollia's Wish because it had bees on it.



Alright, the bees were not the only reason. I love things in miniature (especially tiny farm animals, but small dice or elephants or impossible small containers are also delightful), and it smelled just divine. Sweet, certainly, but not overly so and sort of spicy. I keep smelling it all day, at random moments on my hand or wrist, or in my hair (on my scarf) and being thrilled by it. I recommend it (I also don't mean for so many of my recent posts to be focusing on products, but you know. Sharing the four-one-one of favorite cosmetic items is nice, and helpful, and I like stuff).

Apparently they are carried at Anthropologie, a store which my humble little city does not have (much to my dismay/disappointment/heartbreak), but they're being carried in a funny little boutique type place in a shopping center in my area. I will eventually have to go back to get the larger size, instead of the miniature one even if the tiny little bottle endears itself to me.

Little Red.

I have very strong feelings about the color red. To be general--I don't like it. I am fond of it in food (strawberries, raspberries, spaghetti sauce, ketchup, candy) and lipstick (occasionally I find it acceptable to add a red accessory, such as a bow or the tiniest of patterns). In general I cannot wear red in large doses, dresses, blouses, etc. I try but it just feels so wrong! Also, I don't mind other things that are red, like couches (if they are velvet), walls, or the covers of books.



This is why it's really kind of funny that I have piles and piles and piles of red lipstick. Especially since I don't wear it all that often--I tend to eat it off my lips--but I can't stop buying it.



I mentioned last week, or whenever that was, that I'm trying to wear red lipstick more often. I am rarely happy with my eye makeup and so have reduced that regime back to concealer, a paint pot, and mascara. A few years ago I bought MAC's Russian Red because I read about it somewhere, and I wore it occasionally when I wanted to make a splash or just felt like it (I really like applying lipstick. Sometimes I put piles of it on at night before I wash my face and walk around looking totally insane in floral PJs and red lipstick).

I really like MAC's matter lipsticks. They stay in place with minimal liner, don't end up smudging to high heaven, have great saturated colors, and don't over-dry my lips. This week I went and snagged myself some Ruby Woo because I wanted to feel really awkward walking up to the slick salesperson and saying the name (or not), and because I'd heard good things about it. I like it. It's like a cartoon red, a scary splash. I have tiny lips so I feel a bit self conscious about it sometimes, like there is too much fleshy face, but I've decided it doesn't matter.

However, I'm relatively low maintenance with makeup. If you can't apply it with your fingers, mascara aside, I could care less. Because of this, I'm a dedicated lover of Stila's convertible color in Poppy--I'm wearing it two posts down in the picture with the mustard sweater--even if it doesn't give the same stark look of a stick. I like it though, it's got that pressed-on, edge-fading look that's kind of romantic and debauched.

I have a tenuous relationship with red. On the one hand, I can't stand it. It needs so much attention. On the other, it's kind of right sometimes. And despite my grumblings towards it, my dastardly glasses are red.

Cinematic Fashion: Part One.

In the list of things that dictate--or at least lead in the general direction--my sense of dress, the literary clearly sits in one of the top spots. To proclaim that movies also influence this is terribly basic--I fear it couldn't be any more obvious, I mean, honestly. Everyone is inspired by movies, and I'm afraid I haven't got anything more useful to toss into the discussion on the matter. It hardly seems worthwhile to note that we're all inflected by it, that Mad Men makes certain kinds of vintage just that much more trendy and all that sort of thing. Because I mean, really, who cares?

That said, I'm still going to post about it. I guess because it's not so much inspiration I'm interested in at the moment as a kind of blatant desire to dress up in a secret costume. You know, the kind if inspiration that reminds one of the childhood and adolescent obsessions--as in, I actually won't wear XY or Z kind of make up because so-and-so in such-and-such doesn't or wouldn't (my goodness, I hate the tone of this post, but one must get back into the swing of things somehow).

Clever Nettle made a post about this back in the day, and I have to admit that from the moment I saw the movie I had many of the same fashionable fixations. First, I think it's safe to say that I'm almost totally obsessed with Inglourious Basterds. I know, lots of people liked this movie, but seriously. I think it's probably one of te best things to happen in a number of years. It made me sad, because I felt upon leaving the theater that I spend an awful lot of time watching movies that are okay, that are clever in one way or another be it a few funny moments or some prettiness that manages to seduce the magpie in me, but very rarely does an exceptionally well written and then, after all of that, well made movie come our way. It has everything, and not in the way that The Princess Bride has everything. It also had the unprecedented advantage of allowing me to be lost in the world of the film while not depressing me upon its end (what I mean here is that some movies, many in fact, make me quite sad because life is not like those movies--Marie Antoinette oddly was one of these, because it made me so sad that my world was not swathed in ridiculous pastel and insane hairdos and all of that. It is not even always so much an effect of story as it is images).

I get away from my point. Despite all the fantastic manifestations of storytelling, a pretentious statement if I ever heard one, I love nothing more than Melanie Laurent's costumes as Shoshanna Dreyfus. Little pleated cropped pants, fitted sweaters with that embroidered blouse, belts, hats, trench coats, red lipstick only sometimes! So terribly functional and feminine. I suppose it might be one of the things that triggered my intense ache for a more tomboy, masculine, bookish and tailored kind of style. I even just love the little way she pins her hair back and up!







I've been trying to keep my eye out for vintage pieces that fit the bill, and thankfully this cropped trouser look is popping up in a few places I also noted a few of these funny over-all type things from some vintage sellers, although they do tend to be pricey. If I ever feel like venturing out into the frozen wilderness that is my neighborhood, I suppose I'll be combing the trouser sections of both the men's and women's sections of local thrift stores.





I suppose the bottom line is that even as a grown-up (shudder), I cannot help but mimic my favorite movies, dress with what I have to best emulate and dress up as my favorite characters even if my own wardrobe items match in no recognizable way. I suppose it's a habit I'll never abandon completely, which is really alright anyway.