Pins and Leaves.

Sweater: J. Crew (current season), Skirt: Thrifted, Shoes: Vintage via allen company on etsy, Bag: J. Crew Summer 2014, Necklace: Camille Carnevale via Fort Orange General Store.

I cut a whole bunch of hair off. It's been in the works for a while, one of the hair-threats made constantly but not often acted on. It's been ages since I've had hair this short, but I was due for a change. I have moments when I realize I've had the same hair since I was 4, and think I need a change. That, and the ends were getting scraggly. My hair has been changing over the last year and a half or so (that's a post for another time) and I just don't have as much of it--so it went.  I mean yeah, Tolkein-style elves don't have short hair but I can't spend my whole life emulating the Eldar. 

My Halloween costume may have contributed to the decision (but not that much).  I'm generally pleased with it, although getting back into the habit of pin-curling is taking a little bit of getting used to. Today is the first day I'm actually pleased with how it came out--although I left the roller pins in that front bit to try and get the waves cooperating. I also kind of liked them. Oddly attracted to or comforted by bobby pins. 

I've also fallen into the part of the season where I wear, almost exclusively, slightly unflattering baggy sweaters. Maybe it's too much Twin Peaks, or an inability to deal with a chilly draft, or the general resurgence of weird lumpy, fuzzy sweaters happening right now in pretty much every store as part of a 90s revival. I'm super okay with this, having spent that decade planted in childhood. I wasn't quite old enough to actually participate in a lot of the trends happening, instead looking up to babysitters embodying everything awesome about that time period. By the time I was watching 9-year-olds it was the early 2000s, and we were all dressing like outer space was gonna happen any minute. 

This fall is living up to sweater weather--holding on till the last minute, my neighborhood is really bringing everything it's got to the leaf show. The last few years have been kind of rainy, with the leaves peaking at different points, and hovering in the distinctly brown range of colors. This time everything is golden. Days, if not sunny, are moody and overcast. I might be stalking the Christmas offerings at Trader Joe's, waiting for my favorite seasonal tea to land, but for now it's pretty exciting to be able to wear impractical shoes in the changing leaves. 

Creepin' it real.

I'm cheating a little bit. Last year I wore the same dress to the same weird little cemetery (is that rude, saying it's weird? It's only that it's clearly not very visited and yet, the grass gets mowed and there are sometimes flowers here and there), but nothing really came out so, I don't know. I had visions of the same dress with a few tweaks, in a different spot, but then ended up having a little hair malfunction and chickened out on going to the big fancy cemetery in the area (there are always people taking walks and things there) and just went back to this one. 

Dress: Laura's Vintage, Tights: Nine West sometime pre-2009, Shoes: J. Crew Outlet holiday 2013, Necklace: Brimfield find gift from Emily.

I'm kind of in shock that we're already at the end of October. I've been celebrating creepiness since the first, compiling a playlist that appealed to a specific brand of creepy that I can't seem to describe but I know what it is on some metaphysical or aesthetic level. That first day of Halloween (I'm totally allowed--Christmas gets months, I'm allowed to stay creepy for 31 days). I've got two costumes planned (still working on those, if I'm honest) for two nights of partying. 

But in the meantime I've started off the week wearing outfits that are borderline costumes, moody and dark and a little bit strange--not entirely what I might wear during the rest of the year, but enjoying the opportunity for some extra inky blacks. 

I also have to admit I maybe scared myself in the cemetery. I know there's nothing to be afraid of but, you know. Despite my love of Halloween I don't watch scary movies. I don't read scary books (I once gave away a book of short stories that gave me the creeps rather than keep it in my house), although I like strange stories about scary things. I just don't like to be outright terrified, or get that thing at 3am when all rational thought has been siphoned out of the mind and I'm convinced some terrifying entity is in my room. As a kid I remember being scared of cemeteries, even driving by I pretty regularly did the whole holding your breath thing (there was one on long island that was next to a stop light and I was sure I was going to pass out every time), and so I suppose there's some residual feeling there.

Also I always worry that I'm somehow being disrespectful, or that I'll get in trouble, and so I ended up being a little jittery and didn't get exactly what I wanted for this post before skittering back to my car and heading home for some editing and leftover pasta. 

So I guess I'm a fake creep. But I like stories about monsters and ghosts, as long as the aren't malicious in nature. I guess that's the difference between scary and creepy at Halloweentime--the little shiver, but not the full-on rattle.

First Falling.

It's fall for real. I've spent more days than not the last few weeks in tights, remembering how much more myself and better I feel in these kinds of clothes. There's an urgency in autumn, like we know the leaves are going to change and there's only a good week or two when everything is really aflame, and already I have the tiniest of knots in my gut that's dreading the long winter. Of course there's nothing to be done about it, and the weather is a boring topic, as though there isn't anything more interesting or original to write or think about, so I might as well slurp up these golden days and enjoy them. 

You know (you don't) I first saw this dress almost exactly a year ago? A little shop in Burlington, VT had it, and even though I had an extra little cushion of spending money burning a hole in my pocket, I left it behind. I even went back at the end of the day to visit it, think about it, and then never did a darned thing about it. It popped up here and there on other blogs and online shops, and I kept thinking about it on at least a monthly basis. Finally, a few weeks ago I thought well, if you're still mulling it over a year later you might as well bite the bullet and go for it. It has planets and stars on it for goodness sake! Why did I wait so long?

Dress: Family Affairs Life on Mars Dress, Tights: look in burgundy, Socks: J. Crew, Boots: Steve Madden Fall 2013, Bag: J. Crew (sold out), Jacket: J. Crew fall 2009

Then of course I had plans. A hat that is a favorite but has never quite gone with anything, a certain bag, hair-do, shoes, hosiery. It all fell through. My hair was flat and un-set from a night staying up too late laughing over dumb tv-shows, there was a promise of a sunny fall afternoon but the shoes were wildly impractical. A pair of tights purchased the previous afternoon (rainy, feeling urge for a new treat, drawn to the color) threw a wrench in the whole thing so that I just went well, throw on the big ugly socks and boots that are falling apart and do that whole honest-outfit blog thing. 

I mean, it's better that way right? I love a good gussied-up bit, with everything matching in that slightly-off just-so kind of way and I do often run around in some pair of slightly impractical footwear for the sake of my own amusement, but I also end up throwing on the boots that are peeling at the sole, or the flats that offer almost no support anymore. Not that either is really better, just, I suppose since the last several posts have been a little fantastical it's nice to switch the gears for something a little bit more indicative of my every day. 

These are also the really choice weeks when outfits are pretty much exactly what I want them to be. in a month or so it'll be cold, and I'll end up in flannel-lined jeans or thick leggings and 3 sweaters, sad that I can't wear dainty little shoes because of the salt and snow. But you know, for now everything is burnished gold and red and it's all walks outside and everything smells like dirt. In a good way. 

Thanks to David for snapping a bunch of these!

Golly Magazine.

If you follow me on other social medias, you've probably seen a few little reposts or retweets and things about this, but here's a proper little blog note to help a bit!

A few of my absolute favorite gals on the planet are making dreams come true with Golly Magazine, and you can totally help fund this pretty fantastic thing on kickstarter! Of course I'm excited because I've had the super-intense luck to hang with these women over the last few years, so I know it's going to be something amazing, but I'm pretty pleased that there seems to be a real movement to fill a void I've lamented in the magazine world, and lo! Along comes Golly to help out!

I finally tossed my little pile of pennies towards this today, my first payday purchase of September! I couldn't be more excited to see what happens with this, because I'm certain we can help get them to issue 2! I really wanted to get my hot little paws on the first issue, but even if you can't swing the 20$ to get that one (along with a few extra treats--it's all detailed on the kickstarter page), any little amount will help. 

Get your Golly and help get to issue 2 here!

The Sparking Dress.

The palette of these pictures is pretty similar to that last batch--milky blues and whites, the overly blown-out light of 3pm late summer afternoons--so I guess that's my vibe lately. It's kind of a dreamy, girly sort of style that I keep settling back into despite wondering if 28 is too old to keep dressing in frilly things, or when I want to be a bit more on the cool girl side of things. 

This is another I've-got-to-photograph-it-before-the-season-leaves dress, although I wonder sometimes if just a dress and a pair of shoes constitutes enough of an outfit to even bother posting about. It's only that I don't tend to wear much in the way of accessories much of the time--a favorite necklace and a rotating cast of teeny-tiny earrings--and in the heat it's really nice to be able to pick a dress, zip it up, and be set to go with minimal fussing. Is a dress by itself an outfit? I don't really care--it's good enough for me. 

Dress:Laura's Vintage, Shoes: Anthropologie circa 2007 (maybe? They're favorites, going to cry an awful lot when they're beyond wear)

I picked up this one at--no surprise here--Laura's early in the spring. It was one of those go in with one dress leave in another kind of deals, and comes from a little group of vintage dresses and skirts that all belonged to the same lady (unsurprisingly, I keep picking up items from her collection while shopping--generations apart we're on some kind of same wavelength), and this is what she called her 'sparking dress', from the early days of courting with her husband. Kind of a vintage lover's dream, getting the story along with the garment!

It's a pretty spectacular day dress, and I've really only worn it twice. It's not particularly delicate, but I'm already afraid of wearing it out. Imaginary numbers hovering over my vintage for the number of wears left in it haunt me. 

I'm kind of enjoying the sort of old-style-blogger shots I've got going on here too, back when I used to scurry around the neighborhood with my tripod trying to find places that didn't look too suburban, giving up, and settling with a plain white fence (inevitable some TV disk on a roof would pop up in the background somewhere). I pass this exploding bloom on walks, and it's just too good not to document!

Meadow-ing.

The summer wind-down is starting, blowing in with the slightest of chills in the breeze, the top of trees starting to color at the tips. In a few weeks they'll be all ablaze and afternoons will be full of apple crunches and boots again. Tights will feel really awesome, noses will get cold and hot beverages will become little beacons of warmth for frozen fingers. 

For now though, the days are still warm and bare arms still fry in the sun. Another dress I've been meaning to have on the blog, first in the beginning of the summer when the earliest bits of greenery were too vibrant fresh on camera, and then later when I had vague but big birthday-outfit plans. The latter fell through in favor of bathing suits on the actual day and piles of camping appropriate clothes the weekend after, but I just somehow was using this dress and the Starlette Crown from Giant Dwarf as a summer book-end. After I took some pictures with them I could cut my hair if I wanted, give up on summer, and fling myself into the coming season if I wanted (not sure on that one now). 

Dress: Vintage from Lawrence, Crown: Giant Dwarf, Necklace (tiny, but it's there!): Camille Carnevale via Fort Orange General Store

I had wanted one of these crowns for ages. I'm not entirely sure what held me back, but when the announcement came that Sue was discontinuing the line and sending it out in a blaze of falling-star glory sale, I pushed my spare pennies into a pile and got one. It's been sitting in it's gorgeous packaging since I got it, tucked away in my lingerie drawer (I don't know, it seemed like the right place somehow) waiting. I'm sure it will look fantastic in the snow, but I don't know. I had visions of meadows and frothy dresses.

They came out fine enough. I'm still borrowing cameras, forgetting the tricks of my self-timer as though I haven't been doing the run back in front of it scramble for years, cursing all the out-of-focus shots that clearly would be the best of the bunch had I taken the extra three seconds to make sure I was focused on anything else besides the tree line. Somehow nothing quite yet lives up to the artistic vision (to borrow a phrase a seven-year-old once used to describe the immense frustration I was feeling when my cohorts in holiday living-room theater performances were not putting in the rehearsal work), but it'll do as evidence of the outfit and setting. 

A big thank you is in order to my friend Janna, who obligingly led me to pretty spots and let me charge my camera battery in her house, narrowly avoiding a poison ivy patch and rewarding ourselves with farmstand corn and plums, and a sushi lunch. 

Drive-in Date.

I love the drive-in. Despite all the things that could go wrong with it (ankle-biting mosquitos, stale oversalted popcorn, sound that may or may come through clear, backaches if you didn't bring enough pillows), it always ends up being that nostalgia-tinted summer-night activity that feels pretty hazy and dreamy while you're still in it. I wouldn't want everything to be picture Kinfolk-perfect (and goodness knows I eat that vibe up like so many seasonal picnic dinners) because the cheesy off-kilter kind of crappy parts are the whole point, aren't they? I'm lucky enough to have three drive-ins in the area (varying distances, of course), but it's one of those things I worry about going away!

Last year we went to the drive-in late, not until late August or September, but did manage to pack in several visits into fall weather (which is kind of ideal in it's own right, when the nights get cool and hardly anyone remembers that the place is even open). This year we started right on time, and if you follow me on instagram you saw some of these snaps a little while ago. 

On me--Dress: Laura's Vintage, Shoes: thrifted. 

On David--Jacket/Jeans: both vintage (thrifted), Sunglasses: Eddie Bauer

We like to dress up for the drive-in. It's kind of a pointless activity because it gets dark, and then you sit in your blanket nest and no one sees you, and I have to say most of the time my outfits of choice aren't super suited to lying around snacking on sour patch kids until I feel sick. But that's part of the whole fun right? And kind of, I mean, the point of this whole blog (that trudges on, a funny little collection of outfits through the years, updates sometimes sporadically and with varying levels of interest). 

I had a totally different outfit planned for this day, but with some time to kill in the area I of course stopped at Laura's Vintage. Glenn's Falls is a halfway point for us, so it's a good spot for dates, and gives me an excuse to hang out trying on dresses for an afternoon if I get out of work early! 

This is the second time I've left the shop in a dress different from what I went in wearing! I thought this was a bathing suit at first---the neckline and ruffle detail somehow gave me that impression--and it looked pretty small but, something told me to try it on anyway (also, Laura was sure it would fit). I zipped it up and knew there was no way it was staying behind, that I couldn't even bear to take it off to leave the store. 

Plus, it was perfect for drive-in night! This added to the fact that David had managed an absolute steal on a vintage deadstock Levi's denim jacket earlier that same day. The vintage stars aligned just in time for two kids who cite The Outsiders as a formative years book/movie to live the dream. 

And we're off to the races, places.

There are a few activities that I really like over-dressing for. I mean, to be honest I like doing it for almost anything, looking for any occasion to pull together an outfit or don a favorite dress is practically a habit at this point, but there are a few things that I really like to specifically wear something a little extra fun for, and it's most likely to happen if it's a classical summer event. 

One of them is visiting the racetrack up in Saratoga. I haven't been terribly often, even though it's not particularly expensive (I guess that part depends on whether or not you wanna bet on horses, or splurge on an inexplicably pricey hot dog) or out of the way but this year and last I was invited to be one of the judges for 'Hat Day', a competition where people get all dressed up with outrageous hats and enter a contest! It's a lot of fun, and of course I use it as an excuse to get a little dressed up. So up I drove, joined by my boyfriend and best friend, for a day at the races! Considering we've spent the better part of two years since Amy moved back to the area listening to Lana del Rey's song of the same occasion, it's baffling that we forgot to put it on in the car. In our defense, it was only a few minutes drive and we know it by heart anyway.

Dress: Dethrose Vintage on Etsy, Shoes: J. Crew Sardinia Wedge Espadrille summer 2012, Bag: Aldo Outlet 2011, Pins: Vintage, Hat: Forever21 years and years ago.

Not that most people do. It's a lot of bringing a blanket and snacks and enjoying the summer weather, but I do like that kind of old-fashioned vision of going to the track that includes a straw hat and something a little bit special, even if casual wear is what most people go with (and honestly, that's okay! It's hot and sweaty and crowded). As usual I just love a good vintage vibe, especially if the activity in question lends itself to such a thing!

My hat isn't anything terribly spectacular--although it is one of my favorites--just enough to keep the sun off my face, vaguely 20s inspired in it's shape, straw with a ribbon. My mom snapped up a few vintage hats at an estate sale earlier this week but of course I ended up in an old standby--I think I've been wearing this one since 2007 or so, one of those mythical forever21 finds that was under 10$ but manages to last longer than anyone ever would have anticipated. 

And of course, a white cotton dress. I managed not to spill anything on this one (a slurp of iced coffee almost made it to the skirt while driving, but landed on my arm instead--sigh of relief), even after eating chicken wings (my face was not as fortunate but that's what napkins are for).

I've started the practice of throwing one extra pin on before I leave the house. The snap-decision forces me to choose without over-thinking it, and I kind of like that it's the opposite of that oft-quoted 'take one thing off before you leave' fashion tall-tale. I've been pretty pleased with the results, a kind of mish-mash of jewels that somehow comes off as less precious because of volume. 

Now that we've gone once, I'm sure we'll make at least one more effort before the season is over, with functional sun hats and shorts, so we can sit on the ground and gorge ourselves on Shake Shack (oh yeah, we've got one here! but it's only at the track during the summer) and round the corner into the deep days of summer.