On the 2nd Day of Christmas:

I have written a personality quiz for you!  Yes, me, my own self, I tirelessly studied the intricacies of human interaction in order to present you with this quiz about you.  You're welcome.  I actually wrote it as an excuse to make use of an observation I found terribly funny, and I meant to post it directly on the blog, but the site is being terribly wenchy so I have been unable to embed it properly, but here is the link to it in the meantime: 4 Temperaments Quiz.

The 4 Temperaments is very limited, however, and honestly the Myers-Briggs is so much more satisfyingly in depth, so I recommend checking that one out too.          

Anyway, if you do take the test, leave a comment and tell me if it seemed accurate.

Merry Christmas, all!

Anti-dis-in-no-nonsense

The evolution of language is mostly pretty cool.  Also, pretty cool is the English language.  I have a passing acquaintanceship with Italian (minimal), a forced working relationship with Latin (Try as I might, I couldn't get away from Latin.  I attended insane schools that insisted on Great Books curriculum, and Latin was a requirement to get through the core.  My interaction with Latin was like a co-worker you don't like but always get scheduled with and you don't realize you actually have begun to like until they quit the position), and also a wee bit of German (a pathetically wee bit.  I learned how to order food and ask for directions in German and that was it.  I relied very heavily on the panicked, flailing gestures and Deutsch-lish to get by...when my fluent friend was not nearby.)  Anyway, while the romance languages are incredibly musical and pretty, their regularity gets....boring.  English pretty much rocks because more often than not the words actually sound like what they describe, which is ever so much better, for poetry and musical lyrics and just making yourself generally understood.  It is a language of extreme onomatopoeia.  As is German, English's linguistic cousin.  For instance, merde could be anything really, whereas scheiße! most certainly sounds like a frustrated, but mild swear word with scatological roots.

Anyway, why am even talking about this?  I'm not really sure.  I haven't posted in a bit, and I thought I should do something, and I recently experienced a wordsmith revelation.  "Nonsense" is a cute word.  There are things that make sense, and there are things so ridiculous that they are a total absence of sense: nonsense.  What bothers me is the existence of the word no-nonsense.  A double negative that, if anything, obscures the actual meaning of the word and sounds very silly when you think about it.  No-nonsense basically means sensible, but the word is terribly gangly, and sounds made up when you say it 5 times.    

The motivation of this post is obscure even to me.  This weekend has been extremely successful in catching up on sleep and not much besides.  After a couple of beers, pondering in the corporate mire in which I spend my daily hours, this is what I came up with to discuss.  Cheers.                      

Blog of the Day!

I would like to have some kind of organized theme for this blog because my mind adores categories.  Something like favorite styles on Mondays, featured products with photographs on Tuesdays, featured artists/designers on Wednesdays, nothing particular for Thursdays because Thursday doesn't count as a day, and movie recommendations on Fridays.  Unfortunately, while my analytic mind adores categories and likes to imagine sleek organization, I am easily distracted and my ambition holds no follow-through so it's more like transporting water in a sieve.  If you could read the blog in my head, you would be amazed I tell you.  


That was an attempt at explaining the slightly illogical post title.  I can't really have a blog of the day if I've never featured another blog before.  It's more like blog of the blog.  The gist is my dear friend Monica sent me a blog post and I have been reading the blog, Hyperbole and a Half almost ever since.  This blogger is hilarious, and reminds me of the startling witty, over-the-top and somehow still amusingly understated humor of my friend Mel and the manic intensity of my friend Elizabeth.  And she illustrates her posts which is darling.  I recommend you check her out.


Thursday out.        

Featured Designer: Carri Perani of Iridescence Jewelry

I have been so excited to share this with you guys for ages.  OK, intro: my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Randy stalk garage sales, vintage stores, and estate sales for random treasures, and the stuff that they manage to pick up is kind of amazing.  I really need to make a weekend visit just to join them on scavenger hunts, and they will be the masters and I shall be the pupil.  Which reminds of that time when I was like 6 and was dead-set on ditching my family and just living with Kathy and Randy, even though Uncle Randy tickled me so much I think I stopped breathing long enough to do brain damage, and Aunt Kathy was kind of sarcastic, but I could totally tell she was cool with me and that made me feel very urbane.  Anyways, during a scavenging adventure, they found a jeweler that Aunt Kathy told me about, and I want to share with you.  


Carri Perani began Iridescence Jewelry in West Virginia at the end of 2007, making the transition from a job in a corporate office.  Though she has not had any formal art training in jewelry design, she learns techniques from local goldsmith, Gene Conley of Touchstone Designs, in something akin to an apprenticeship.  Carri tells me that she is currently studying silversmithing with Gene.  (And I just need to break off for a moment to say that it makes me really happy to know that there are still apprenticeships.  Apprenticing needs to come back in a big way.)    


She generally works with sterling and 14k gold, but she also has a line of jewelry called the Rabbit Hole Collection which is what got me so fanatical about her jewelry that I bought two pieces right away.  Carri said, "The Rabbit Hole Collection is about recycling/repurposing & using what's already available. I've traveled all over the continental US, to Hawaii, New Zealand, and to several islands in the Caribbean.  Traveling is so inspiring to me because it makes me realize just how much beauty there is in the world."  She actually named her jewelry line during a walk on the beach in St. Augustine, Florida, inspired by the beauty of thin iridescent shells.  She collaborates with close friend, Cara, who started a buy, sell, trade clothing company called Journe Wear in Steubenville, Ohio.  Together they shop thrift stores, flea markets, garage sales & buy odds and ends from people like Aunt Kathy & Uncle Randy.  


The Rabbit Hole Collection

Gold Scalloped Earrings

"I think the beauty of these pieces is that it is open to interpretation, you can write & rewrite their story because every piece has it's own long lost history. You look at a piece and wonder, who did this belong to? where has this been? It all has so much character & mystery attached to it. That's what I think really draws people to it. I also think people find the rabbit hole collection intriguing because we are using found objects in very creative, unthought of ways," Carri says.

Soaring Swallow

Vintage Teapot Necklace

The Steam Punk Collection

"Steampunk places great importance on the value of beauty that reflects unusual or antiquated ideals. The steampunk culture takes its cues from the Victorian era, and speculates on how our world would be different if steam power had become the driving force behind our culture."

Nerdly Couture

Hello lambs!  It's been a long sabbatical, mostly because this clinging, lung-bruising sickness is stalking me like a gollum, but I have too many things to share to wait any more.


First, one of my friends (the friend I need to live nearby again eventually because, among many, many other reasons, I miss borrowing her clothes like I did when we lived together while we rambled on and on about film and art and love, and whatever else happened to catch our education-expanded minds.  Sigh, college: where you meet people to love for their wonderful minds and better fashion sense) sent me an email alerting me about these clutches by French designer Olympia Le-Tan.

  Natalie Portman had one during a Black Swan (wanna see it) junket:

It's a shame she looks so hungry and cranky.

I think I love these, but I also think I'd be a little irked when I absentmindedly opened the clutch during a lull to read a few pages of Nineteen Eighty-Four and just found my keys and lip gloss.  And, yes, I bring books with me almost everywhere, so I could totally see myself doing that.  I squeezed my gigantic copy of The Brothers Karamazov into the precious little space I had in my book bag for my trip to Berlin.  I read like 150 pages of that sucker on the train, and I would have been really bummed out if my copy had morphed into a clutch halfway through.  But still!  Books!  Books as fashion accessories!  I just don't know.  What are your thoughts?     

                           

The Faces of Autumn

The blog title doesn't make much sense, but I'm still groggy from the creeping death so I'm not going to be too hard on myself.  We explored the gorgeous campus of SMU during our glorious Thanksgiving weekend to more fully enjoy the autumnimity.

The photo above makes me laugh.  I was just talking with a friend of mine about the awkwardness of posing for pictures because generally you forget what to do with your face.  She still looks pretty in her pictures, if wearing maybe an expression slightly different from her usual one.  I somehow end up with cartoonish expressions of exaggerated emotion.  The one above is "actor in an 80s television drama portraying a spy playing it cool".  Anyway, it was a gorgeous day.

Sweater: Gap

Scarf: Mossimo

Necklace: Thursday Island

Pants: Gap

Shoes: Converse

Jacket: Priorities

Being

I am currently ill with a something or other and my mind is about as sharp and focused as an undercooked pancake, so I won't inflict the results of my addled brain-matter on you too much.  (I assume most people are like me and are mentally flat-lining/easily distracted whilst sick, on top of being irrationally cranky.  I have been trying to motivate myself to make chicken soup out of our Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner and just realized that instead I have spent almost the past six hours lumbering through the internet.  I need to make tea and go to bed with a Wodehouse novel before I implode with frustrated intentions.)  (Omg, I just realized my apartment complex shut off the water, because I needed something else to make me feel gross and deprived.)  (This can make me a better person.  Calmete.)  

Regardless of my current health conditions, I wanted to share some lovely things with you on this final day of November.  When I met my friend Maggie, one of the first things I noticed looking around her dorm room was that she has killer taste, sort of an effortless barometer for chic while mixing it up with modern and otherwise.  She also had the coolest vintage Guinness ad I have seen to this date, apropos of nothing.  Anyway, this preface is to explain why it is that I keep filching from neat things she sends me.  Observe: Wrist Worms, also featured on Sacramento Street weird name, cool product.  Hand-crocheted by Sandra Juto in Sweden of 100% wool, and her website is full of lovely photography!

Wrist Worms by Sandra Juto

Thanks! #2: Literature Nerds Designing Clothes

I <3 Out of Print Clothing, for real.  Guess what I spotted on their site today:

Out of Print Clothing.

This sweatshirt makes me what to jump up and down and whine "but I want it".  Seriously, I want this, like a lot.  It is awesome on at least three different levels.  Actually, for every shirt bought at Out of Print, a book is donated to people who need it, so make that four levels.

Thanks! #1: Tweed Rides

The First Tweed Run, 2009

My lovely friend Maggie sent me a link to ReadysetDC's post on D.C.'s 2010 Tweed Ride (fair warning, there are some inexplicable near-nudey pictures towards the end, so nsfw, and shield the children's eyes).  I had first heard of a Tweed Ride on RidingPretty's blog during the Essence of Autumn contest, and, you all know I love my tweed so I looked into this Tweed Ride thing.  The very first Tweed Run was held in London in 2009, an organized group bike ride through the city with participants dressed in tweedy cycling attire, specifically from 1920s England.  Since then, Tweed Rides have become something of a minor global explosion with Tweed Rides popping up in cities like Sacramento, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, D.C., Boston, Chicago, Portland, as well as Toronto, Sydney, New York, and Tokyo to name a few (here is another of Riding Pretty's posts of various Tweed Ride posters).  A few of these rides also overlap with a some pretty sweet Cycling Fashion Shows.

image via dustinj, sfwiggle.com, SF Tweed Ride

image via sftweed.com

Jeans Shopping Angst Makes Me Philosophical

No matter how much women may differ in terms of belief structure, background, etc., the one thing that I think almost everyone of us can agree on is we all hating shopping for jeans. Yes, I am bridging the gap of prejudice using a shared hatred of jeans shopping. It works. Anyway, I realized that I have not had a good, flattering pair of jeans since I lived with a roommate my size and height who has better shopping instincts than me. My Achilles heel with jeans and boots is that, slender and willowy though I be, I am thick of limb. Like, seriously stocky. I wish I was my height with long, slender gams, because I'd be stalking around in dresses and skirts that are as they say "fierce", but no, I have the sturdy, muscular stems of peasant stock. If I lived in a 19th century novel, some handsome, pretentious baron would make a sneering comment about me being built for hard labor, and then after several months of acquaintanceship my saucy wit and mildly Bohemian Pre-Raphaelite beauty would bewitch him into falling hopelessly in love with me. Then it would go in one of two ways depending on the type of novel: if written by say, Thomas Hardy, then the baron’s love grows too late, and only narrowly misses the opportunity to marry me and live happier lives than anyone in existence. As it stands, he missed his chance by mere days because of his character flaw of pride, because life sucks, and due to some cataclysmic combination of tragedies, I have been reduced to a wretched life of prostitution, forever barred from a decent life in the rigid societal confines of Victorian England, and I don’t know, something about murder or whatever. If it be written by Jane Austen, then a few hijinks and misunderstandings would ensue before the baron and I finally settled into a marriage of mutual respect and passion, after I showed him the importance of valuing people for their own worth. Basically, no one should ever be stuck in a Hardy novel. Jane Austen is way more fun. That’s what British Victorianism does to you.

What was I even talking about? Jeans! Yes, so it’s tough for me to find jeans that I like, because my limbs are just too damn muscular (yeah, we'll say "muscular"...I'm lying shamelessly, btw). But then I start to ponder this: American women have this pathologically stupid idea that if you do not fit into off-the-rack clothes, that means that you fall short of the correct womanly shape. (I limit myself to my own culture since I’m not really equipped to talk about any others, but when I lived in Europe six years ago, most of the women definitely had a better grip on playing up their natural beauty rather than chasing fads. Input on other country stereotypes welcome.) I have had so many of these conversations with girlfriends and if you sit back and listen we sound completely neurotic and/or insane: “you see, my femurs are disproportionately longer than the rest of me”, “my arms are too skinny”, “my fingernails are so unattractive” etc., ad nauseum, and I have an unusually good looking bunch of friends. A few of my friends are genuine stunners, and even these girls have their own litany, “my shoulders are rounded”, “I have no curves”, “my nose is too big” and they are objectively gorgeous. It is amazing to me that American women have no idea how to appreciate feminine beauty and instead make themselves miserable over a vague ideal they couldn't even really define. Sure, there does exist a tiny percentage of goddess-like women, like Heidi Klum, and it's nice that she became a model so we can all look at her, but why should women fall into the insanity of thinking they should possessed the beauty of Helen of Troy or they are an epic fail? Why do we do that? I’m really asking; I don’t have an adequate answer. In the blog Single Dad Laughing, Dan writes in “Worthless Women and the Men Who Make Them” about the responsibility men have which I agree is a significant factor, but I don’t think that’s everything. The source is not Hollywood, it’s not the runway, it’s not misogyny, it’s not peer pressure. All those things may play a small part but they are more symptomatic rather than causal.

There is a supposed “movement” to curvy, but the people in this curvy movement sometimes end up shrilly berating the thin body type as ugly/anorexic or criticizing a heavier model if she loses weight (one example is covered nicely by Kristy in "Crystal Renn Admits to Losing Weight, World Forgets to Mind Its Own Business", so they end up being part of the disease themselves, topped off with an obnoxious amount of self-righteousness.  They are doing the same thing by still insisting on only one shape being attractive, to hell with everyone else.  Excuse me, but wtf? Why the rigidity? Feminine beauty is amazingly diverse. The unfortunate thing is, you often have beautiful girls looking significantly less lovely because they keep trying to conform to a type that is simply not their own, which only creates awkwardness stylistically. A lot of girls outright spoil their looks by tanning themselves into oblivion, doing horrible things to their hair, and plastering on pounds of makeup, not to mention wearing ridiculous trends that work against their body type. People look so much more lovely when they accentuate their natural looks. And everyone looks better when they stop harping on about the imagined imperfections of themselves or others.

2nd Letter to Piperlime: The Black Heel

Dear Piperlime,

Now I don't want to bite the hand that gives me gift cards, but I am trying to heal our relationship and I hear that communication is key.  I see you going down a dark path, and I want to help out before it's too late.   

Here's the deal: I want to get a more professional wardrobe but one that actually looks like me and not like I'm an extra in Working Girl, and step number one is heels.  I am very flexible with colors and patterns even, since I like shoes that pop.  I have only three caveats for heels:

1. Heel height.  I am already 5'9 so high heels are not my friend: they throw me off balance like a drunk stilt-walker and I have no particular desire to be 6'1, thank you. 
2. Chunky heels or platforms also are an absolute no; the whole point of heels is to look delicate and to push out the right curves in the right direction, so clomping around on hoofs would defeat the whole purpose and sacrifice of making myself even more Amazonian. 
3. ...1/2, leather and good quality.  I want my feet to have sensation left in them at the end of the day, and I wear shoes for years if I like them. 

Piperlime, that's not asking too much, right?  I'm a pretty easy customer, aren't I?  Why, then, in your selection of 78 low to mid heels, almost all of them are bland neutrals?  I see you are in denial, you can't believe you could have allowed that to happen to your product selection.  Allow me to present my case: out of that 78, only 9 are something other than neutral colors.  And do you need me to tell you what those 9 shoes are like?  Stop being childish, I don't like this any more than you do, so you can quit rolling your eyes.  You need to face the truth if this is going to change.  2 shoes are very underwhelming heels of actual color (red and yellow if you are curious), 5 are animal print (yes, I know, animal print heels are adorable, but I cannot wear animal print anything without looking like I'm dressing up as a hooker for Halloween.  How about some variety?), and 2 look like what you would see when you close your eyes after spinning around way too fast in a room with blue 80s era floral print wallpaper.

Bandolino Berry...Wallpaper

You see the problem, right?  These are boring, like furniture in a nursing home boring, and most of them are dated and not in a cute Madmen kind of way.  Do you have any concept of how delighted I would be at a vintage inspired, low-heel pump like any of these? 

ModCloth: Seychelles "Watching the Clock" 

How delighted, you ask? - picture a rusty Autumn evening, the first evening of a long holiday weekend off, in which I mildly indulge in pyrotechnics by enjoying a bonfire with hot toddies, heavy on the whiskey: in a word, euphoric.  Well, even shoes like the ones above would not accomplish this level of euphoria.  But your low-heeled pumps inspire something more like this: after planning a holiday for two weeks I get a creeping death sickness the very evening before my scheduled time off, my husband is stranded away from home due to weather conditions, and an over-sharing neighbor who will not take a hint invites themselves in to "help take care of" me, i.e. I am utterly annoyed by your selection and want to be left alone.

So, in the effort to salvage our relationship even after such a blow to my basic footwear needs, I turned to the most basic of the basic: black heels.  Amoung 31 pairs of low-heeled black pumps only one peked my interest even a little bit:

Salina

These got one mediocre review, but I want to check out the Pour la Victoire brand, (it's a Brazilian company inspired by French couture, so that sounds wild) so I am going to go ahead and give these a shot, Piperlime.  And while I am waiting to get these in the mail, and appreciate your awesome free shipping, which promises to be even faster than before, I really want you to think about the direction you are currently going: do you want to keep the current Piperlime woman you are appealing to, or do you want me...and every last one of my friends, as customers (if I guess their aesthetic correctly).

Love,

Meghan

Piperlime: Style?

Dear Piperlime,

I like you a lot.  Your free shipping, your customer service, the fact that you carry brands like Frye, Hunter, Clarks, Diesel, Sperrys, Pink Studio, Puma, and that you gave a $500 gift card as a contest prize.  You have a good heart, you do.  Also, ever since I began watching Project Runway, I have my own Tim Gunn in my head who says, "Use your wall of Piperlime accessories, people," whenever I shop on your site, which is fun.  But...listen,...now that I have my own Project  Runway budget, I've taken a step back from the trees to take a look at the forest, and I am having second thoughts about our relationship.  Like, what is your style aesthetic, exactly?  I spent ages shopping around Piperlime and, I don't mean to harsh the buzz on our blooming relationship, but most of your products are, well, haphazard.  Did you ever notice that you have, like, 17 very slightly different versions of the same item?  Now, don't look at this as a heartless criticism.  Look at this as me trying to make this relationship work, and since I was not accepted for the hour long Dallas "chat" about how to make Piperlime better, this is the only way.

Essentially, to get to the root of the problem, I've been trying to figure out who the Piperlime Woman is because if that woman is not me, we can call this is a mutual break-up.  I know what the J.Crew woman is, the Anthropologie woman, the Gap and Banana Republic women, the Abercombie and Fitch (and I'll stop here before I start to pretend I have any familiarity with high end designers), but tell me, who is the Piperlime Woman?  I mean, it's almost all bland neutrals, droopy shapes, and seems to have the style sensibility of a woman in dire need of some sleep and maybe a gin and tonic who nonetheless has a lots of money she wants to spend on looking schlumpy.  Actually, at the moment, Piperlime seems to be in the style version of the Bog of Discouragement and ran out of Prozac several weeks back.  I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it: it looks like your only directed demographic is...Season 8 Project Runway winner, Gretchen.  And look I don't mean to mindlessly join the rabid dog pile of Gretchen critics since she's beat my favorite, Mondo.  Her style does have some value, and she's a good designer, sure but her look is mostly avoidant of shape, allergic to color, and sort of, well, frowny face-ish and Piperlime's current selection is likewise.  The aesthetic just befuddles me.  Unrelated words and phrases just jostle each other to attempt a full, coherent sentence, and all that's happened so far is: Camo-Drab, Pretentiously Inaccurate Attempt at "Granola", here comes Current Global Economy Chic: Depressed!, But Still Mystifyingly Expensive.  Example:



This is ugly and synthetic. Why does this cost $132?

This says: "I'm trying to save money, so I dug up my old toddler clothes to see what would work and look how great this still is on me!  Would you guess I haven't worn this since Kindergarten?"  Even for a busty girl, this is flattening and it has a little dust ruffle for your hips because everyone wants to add another ten pounds there.  Plus, there are tons more clothes like this.  The Liberty Bell shape has never been widely desired in Fashion for a reason.  Just because our economy sucks, and our country is growing more antagonistically polarized by the day doesn't mean we should wear nothing but sackcloth to reflect our sombre mood...unless you're doing an Old Testament inspired sacrifice for the sake of our country and the world, in which case, OK, but you shouldn't spend $400 for your sackcloth outfit as that sort of defeats the purpose. 

I am firmly of the mind that when you buy something, buy nice somethings or nothing at all, and when I can find really good quality somethings for a bit cheaper, I'm in retail nirvana.  You are so close to this, Piperlime!  I bought Frye sandals for like $45 + a rewards card which I will wear for the next decade or until they fall apart, but lately you have had pricey items made of synthetics and just :-(.  I know how we can solve this: I will let you hire me as an assistant buyer to help you out, because I care.  Until then (or until I spend my gift card) I will continue doing this, but with more illustrations and possibly charts, because this is fun. 

Love,
Meghan