Pop Culture Clothing

This is a mediocre print, and $54.99 is kind of ridiculous for what looks like an iron-on image on a small mens undershirt. 


Ruche

However...if I am honest, I think I still kinda want it.  Because it's Audrey.  I think something might be wrong with me.  Fortunately, the price is so off-putting and the fit looks so iffy, this one isn't too tough to dissuade myself but...

The root of the problem is also the same reason I am strongly compelled to buy myself the T-shirt version of the Pride and Prejudice book cover even though my awesome in-laws bought me the coveted purple P&P sweatshirt as a gift, which I love and wear almost every weekend.   

OutofPrintClothing

And the 1984 sweatshirt:

OutofPrintClothing

I never got wearing a T-shirt with a band much less a gigantic logo, but book cover T-shirts?  Yes, please!

I feel I genuinely need these book cover clothing articles on some deep level.  Does anyone else find themselves helplessly compulsive about random material items?  Please share, because I'm starting to feel like I have a mental disorder. 

Dolls, Etc.

GiltGroup emails have long been ignored in my gmail inbox.  With tight funds, the last thing I need is more excuses to explain a $100 purchase with, “But look, honey!  It was 70% off!  Think how much we saved!”    

However, when I saw a Madame Alexandre sale in GiltGroup, my usually thrifty brain went:"…they’re so pretty which is unusual since most dolls tend to be creepy...my niece-goddaughter loves dolls…if it’s not a purchase for me it’s like I’m saving even more money…I win!"  

Dorothy and Toto!

I love having nieces and a nephew.  

I knew I was going too far though when I saw a Funny Face doll and almost managed to convince myself that as the fatal combination of my favorite style icon and totally the best fashion movie ever made (that I’ve seen, anyway), I should own this.  Fortunately, I managed to talk myself out of it, perhaps influenced most by the crushing weight of my Very Grown-Up Job in An Office, since in most similar cases, my adulthood actually works out as a justification for a purchase like that: the preservation of my childish whimsy.  Here’s a picture so you understand how compelling the argument was:

Funny Face

Right?!  Audrey is lovely. There are certain movie icons who remain as the Unbeaten Ultimates in American Cinema.  Sofia Loren remains the reigning queen of impossibly voluptuous Roman goddesses in human form (although Sofia Vergara is representing our era pretty well).  Marilyn Monroe is the American girl-next-door, the hardy and sumptuous farm-girl who is knowing in some ways and vulnerably naive in others; though she may have been the beginning of the cliché held by some American men that the more beautiful a girl is, the more mentally unstable she is.  Audrey is, of course, the Hollywood Princess, so convincing not from exceptional acting skill, but because of the success of type-casting.  As the daughter of an actual Dutch baroness and originally a disciplined ballerina struggling to make money after immigrating from impoverished post-WWII Holland, she more stumbled into acting than pursued it, and had all the charm  and sweetness expected from a Cinderella story.    

P.S. I just perused the Madame Alexander website and: a) a lot of their dolls are actually very creepy looking, so hooray me for finding cute ones; b) what is the deal with a doll company that insists that plastic dolls are age 14+?; and c) they have a Henry VIII and Wives collection, supposedly part of their Showtime Collection, but still weird.  Sadly, Anne Boleyn's and Catherine Howard's heads do not pop off.

The French Paradox

Obesity Rates Around the World

#1: The United States at 30.6%,

#2: Mexico, our neighbor to the South at #2: 24.2%,

#3: The United Kingdom, the loins from which our American culture sprang, at 23%. 

#23: France at 9.4%, trailing behind in one battle they can be proud to lose.  Heh, heh...OK, sorry, that was my one obnoxious comment about France for this post.  The point is, the French are significantly less obese, and considerably healthier.  

Funny Face

If you have never heard of the French Paradox, you ought to look it up here.  The French Paradox means that in spite of smoking more, drinking more (wine, anyway), and consuming four times as much butter and lots more saturated fats in general, the French have less coronary heart diesese and frankly enjoy their own daily lives much more than Americans.  This makes that 70 year old Tweedy man sucking on an unfiltered cigarette, swilling scotch while cutting into a rare steak saying, "I say, if this is going to kill me, let it kill me, but I am going to enjoy it while I am alive" seem much less cantakerous and more like the wiseman on the mount, does it not?  There is much to be said for the intuitive health found in doing what you enjoy.     

Sometimes I really wonder what the hell Americans are doing to themselves.  Americans have the most insane habit of forcing themselves to do things they do not enjoy because someone told them it was the most efficient/healthiest/most enlightened.  Please explain to me why anyone would force themselves to aquire a taste for diet drinks, or give up butter for magarine, or start eating tofu, or spend two hours staring at the wall of a gym on a treadmill rather than walking outside, or eat any food that has "fat free" on the label?  Americans turn everything, even things that are meant to be leisure, into work.  It is awful.  We work during vacations, we stuff down food while multi-tasking (responding to emails, reading, watching a show, standing, etc.), and view food more as fuel to continue working.  We are obsessed with gyms, dieting and working out, but we do not even enjoy the means to get there.  All work and no play means a lot of unfulfilled and bored people.  Or Jack Nicholson manically chopping through a door.

The French Paradox involves a mentality of leisure and moderation.  Americans have a bad habit of believing leisure means lazy.  The reality is that often the very things that naturally bring you joy and relaxation are the things that also keep you healthy and happy.  The French culture is about a genuine enjoyment of life.  Taste your food when you eat.  People are far less likely to overeat if they eat slowly, eat a variety of delicous food, and actually take the time to taste it.  Walk because you want to enjoy the activity and scenery, not because you are enviously envisioning Jennifer Aniston legs.  The French smoke because they enjoy the excuse for leisure and conversation it provides.  They drink wine with every meal, taking pride in learning what wine to pair with what entree.  This list just savors of moments of real pleasure in daily routine.  What are you paying attention to?  What is your focus every day?  If it is just to get through the day so you can sleep and start all over again, you might want to reassess lifestyle.  The French lifestyle facilitates what I think is the most valuable part of daily routine, and that is the ability to spend time of genuine enjoyment with people I love.

Wedding Style: Part 1

Sean & Meghan McNally's Wedding

The Shrine Church of St. Stanislaus

Sean and I just celebrated our 6 month wedding anniversary (woot!) and with working on the blog, it made me think of our wedding style.  Weddings are obviously massively important, but our philosophy was, it is essentially a party, so let us avoid getting stuffy about it.  Nonetheless, it is the ultimate party celebrating the rest of your brand new life with all your nearest and dearest so you had better make it an awesome one.  High stakes.  For this post, I will go over the bridal clothes.   

The Dress

Last year, my wedding dress shopping trips and internet research revealed that the national average cost of a wedding dress in 2009 is $1505.  I love beautiful things, and a girl's wedding dress is the single most significant article of clothing, so I was prepared to go a little crazy.  I love so many different dress styles so my one must was silk.  During the agonizingly drawn out shopping trips, I noticed that wedding dresses are just not worth their price tags.  Poorly made, cheap material, badly constructed, and generally just..froofy and boring.  I have enough knowledge of clothing, fabric and construction costs to figure out how much a dress should cost, and trust me: there is a massive mark-up on bridal gowns just because they are bridal, not because they are well made.  (At the average wedding dress shop, you’d think the color white was running out of stock on a global scale.)  So the choice was $1505 for a meh dress or $4000 for a knock-out, designer silk dress.  I was not thrilled at this point, and had developed a deep and burning dislike for wedding dress boutiques, and started seriously considering making my own dress.  Then my sister told me I should check out AriaDress.  Based on vintage designs, they use lovely material with a noticeable devotion to silk that I found very appealing (they offer dresses in 3 different types of silk!  Squee!) and keep the costs down by sticking to simple, classic designs.  If that seems unexciting to you in print, think of the Audrey Hepburn/Givenchy style revolution.  AriaDress also has the refreshingly retro attitude that the point is to make beautiful gowns - that happen to be white and worn for a wedding - and should be priced accordingly. 

The Jacket

The jacket I made myself.  It is made of silk and pont d’sprit, and I believe I spent a total of $25 for the material.  It took me forever to design and sew as working with that type of silk was like trying to nail Jello to the wall, but it was the perfect accent to the gown and was surprisingly warm.  Also, several of my close friends spent hours entertaining me as I finished it in the week before the wedding, (my friend Natalie actually finished sewing on the trim the morning of the wedding) so the jacket absorbed a lot of love during construction.    

Shoes

I bought my shoes on Amazon.  Since age thirteen, I wanted to wear white leather lace-up boots for my wedding.  I found Doc Marten boots on Amazon and blue striped Diesels for the reception.

Photography by Essence of Love Photography
Make-Up by Wendy Fitos

Altered

I bought two dresses recently, and I had to alter them both to fit.  Off-the-rack dresses are easier to make, but they are pretty depressing to shop for.  Designers generally create clothes for one body type, which means for everyone else, the dress is going to look a little funky.

"I've got this figure of mine that looks impossible in off-the-rack clothes.  If the length's right, then the top swims on me.  It's very discouraging to see yourself looking practically malformed.  I loath trying on clothes."  --Audrey Hepburn

 But the thing is, women should stop feeling misshapen every time they try on mass produced dresses.  Unless they are mu-mus, most dresses have to be fitted for the woman in order to look right. 

WikiHow:
http://www.wikihow.com/Take-in-a-Dress-at-the-Waist