Emily Says: That Is Not A Dress

Sweater: Hey Girl by Bonnie Marie Burns; wollmeise dk in fruhling; my notes and modifications on Atlantic Pacific
Dress: The Reformation (similar dress from current collection); similar styles from Loft, T by Alexander Wang, and bcbg
Shoes: Manolo Blahnik (similar shoe from current collection); other nude mary janes from SJP, Miu Miu, and Rupert Sanderson
Lips: Dolce and Gabbana passion duo gloss fusion lipstick in Sensual and Bobbi Brown high shimmer lip gloss in Hot

Wait! Don't click any of those links! I need to plug Fashionism. I met this guy at my maid of honor's birthday a couple years ago and he was talking about a website idea he was on the point of launching. It's the simplest of affiliate payback sites, only its focus is fashion, specifically, highish fashion. You know the drill, start your shopping through the Fashionism site and get a small percentage of your purchase price back. I pestered him to be a beta user and have gotten to know him fairly well over that time (and found more than my fair share of broken links, I'll have you know), I've also amassed over $100 in my "cash back" account. Is that a tremendous amount of money? Nope. Is it the kind of money I would buy things I didn't need to acquire? Nope. Is it totally acceptable as a fun bonus for crap I was already buying? Yup. I mean Sephora is an affiliate, and I buy tons of crap at Sephora already. Getting 5% of the stuff I purchase back? Sounds good to me. So this isn't a get rich quick scheme, it's a "hey would you like a couple bucks back on that thing you were already buying? great, click this link." In the 2 years I've used it, I have not been "accidentally on purpose" subscribed to anyone's mailing list or experienced anything else unexpected or untoward. So there's my pitch. I'll probably make it again because it is a service I actually use.

Back to Emily's pearl clutching. I may have a bit of a The Reformation addiction. I love the style, I love the concept, I love everything about it save the fact that the vast majority of the clothing is designed to be worn without a bra and I need to wear a bra. They have a twice annual sale, which is where I got this dress ("dress"), but I have also been availing myself of their full-priced merchandise with somewhat alarming regularity because it is just that awesome (I have repeatedly begged the Fashionism guy to get them as an affiliate). Also the one thing I bought that had major problems? Return, full refund, no questions asked. I love them. But, there mini dresses are definitely mini. Over the protestations/eye rolling of both Emily and my husband, I will kick a super short skirt from time to time, but with a modest upper. So long sleeved, buttoned shirtdress with casual cardigan up top and Tina Turner on the bottom kinda works for me.

Still in love with this sweater, still wondering why my second is still a WIP, still hate the buttons. Notice a pattern? I sometimes feel my lazy is actually a special power.

Take Your Breton To Work Day

Sweater: Better Breton by me; wollmeise dk in natur and admiral
Skirt: J. Crew; similar styles at ASOSs, H&M, and bcbg
Shoes: Tabitha Simmons Lou leather pumps and there are a couple sizes left in this amazing sale; similar styles by Kate Spade and Sam Edelman
Lips: Marc Jacobs Lovemarc Lip Gel in Showstopper

In light of my full-on sadface vis a vis the Grandpa Cardigan, I wanted to use a counter example to show why my sweaters need to perform double duty. Monday through Firday I work in an office. It's not overly formal, in fact I think I am dressed far more formally than many of my coworkers, but chalk it up to a conservative upbringing when it comes to comportment (on all other things, I am pretty sure my upbringing was pretty standard commie, pinko, UES, ACLU, NYT, ADL); Saturday and Sunday I am either not leaving my house except for groceries, or out seeing friends, maybe going out to dinner. And if I'm sitting in my house with no one but my husband to see me, I don't really need a wardrobe for that. Which is why my wardrobe is predominantly business casual. I have recently been adding to my jeans collection (thank you, sales), but when I think about knitting a sweater, I always think about how it will look at work and on line at the Whole Foods - because I am very vain and need to make sure the other insufferable yuppies aren't judging me on my clothing choices while I judge them on their carts full of frozen organic meals.

But where does a Breton-style sweater fit into that? It is a decidedly casual piece and is evocative of people not at work: people at cafes in France on vacation, drinking strong coffee and smoking strong cigarettes, and definitely unconcerned with formal dress. Yet it's also a navy and white sweater and navy and white are perfectly lovely, boring work colors. Ask me how I know.

I originally paired the sweater with a highly patriotic red skirt and while I wasn't turned off by the Happy 4th of July-ness of it all, the skirt is too big by a fair bit and looks sloppy when it hangs on my hips instead of on my waist, and it also made it a bit too long on my legs. So out comes the old faithful J Crew chartreuse mini, the navy tights, and the brand spanking new navy pumps. This last choice was probably a poor one as the amount of salt dumped in my office parking lot is dangerous to all but the most LL Bean-ish of footwear. I almost went with a navy blazer as well, but I thought that might be a) overkill and b) ill-fitting - this sweater is a bit too ease-y to happily live beneath a tailored blazer.

Red lips were an easy choice.

Hair Emergency

Sweater: Cora by Andrea Black; wollmeise dk in Vamp; my notes and modifications (very few) on Jessica Rabbit
Skirt: Hilfiger suede skirt; similar styles by Ralph Lauren and (totally worth a visit to the store at this price) H&M
Shoes: Manolo Blahnik camel pumps; similar styles in suede by Gucci, in leather by Kate Spade, and in d'Orsay by Marciano
Lips: Dolce and Gabbana passion duo gloss fusion lipstick in Sensual

I no longer work in Manhattan. My hairdresser is a) in Manhattan and b) an Orthodox Jew who doesn't work on Saturdays. While both my office and my home are accessible by commuter train, it's not the same commuter train. To stop boring you as quickly as possible, what this means is that I can't get my haircut on a weekday without taking at least a half day off of work. As a result, this is what my hair looks like (coincidentally, as I was looking at my project page, I had similar hair problems then and also solved them with a flat iron). I promise I am really going to try to see him this Sunday even though I feel really strange about asking my hairdresser to work on a day he ordinarily doesn't work. Perhaps paying in cash will assuage all my guilt feelings. Now I know that many of you are looking at me like this is yet another high maintenance thing because it's not as though there's only one hairdresser in the history of the world, and you are just a tiny bit correct. But only a tiny bit. Laurent has cut my hair since my first haircut. In the intervening years, only one person other than Laurent has cut my hair. It was freshman year of high school and I went to Dramatics and I never went again. Laurent is kind of like family. In that he is like family and has shared in our triumphs and tragedies since my father first started seeing him in 1974. Oh, sorry, Laurent cuts the rest of my family's hair as well. So while I know how dreadful and severe my hair looks right now, flat ironing it today means I can forget about styling it for the rest of the week (those at-home keratin-esque treatments actually work quite well) while I find a way to ask a favor of a friend. Knowing my luck there's either a) some obscure Jewish holiday on Sunday that not even my comprehensive upbringing included, or b) he has a hot date on Sunday.

I go back and forth on this sweater. In the pro column is the amazing color. Also in the pro column is the beautiful cable design. In the con column are the raglan sleeves and slightly high, flat neck. The more I look at myself in raglan sweaters, the less I like them. I already have a formidable shoulder profile and I find raglans accentuate that. Not in a dear-god-madam-what-are-you-wearing way, but in a way that reminds me how much better I think I look in set-in sleeves. Since I'm coming off a week of not feeling well which, for me, goes hand in hand with a bizarre combination of self- pities and flagellations, I would like to also mention that my front green area looks homeless, the hair on the top of my head looks especially thin and balding, my nails aren't painted, this photograph is terribly dark, and dear god my yardish area looks homeless. What kind of person doesn't clean up her tomato stakes FROM SUMMER 2013?!? On the plus side, I can guarantee that those stockings are clean as I finally (again, I am kind of a colossal failure at being an adult) got the magicians at Amazon to bring me lingerie bags so I could launder all my hosiery in the handwash cycle of my washing machine.

Reading over this, it's possible I have a case of the Mondays.

You Keep Saying You Got Something For Me

Sweater: Taqrian by Thayer Preece Parker; wollmeise dk in sternschnuppe; my notes and modifications on Happy
Skirt: J. Crew; similar color (and an incredibly amazing style) by Marni, really cute style at Kate Spade Saturday, and in my new favorite fabric neoprene at Piperlime
Boots: Manolo Blahnik, winter '00-01; this year's far less streamlined version, and the one I would buy were I in the market is from Christian Louboutin, but to be perfectly honest, I would probably wait and see what comes next - I prefer my existing boots (which still have many more years in them) to anything currently on sale
Jacket: Reiss midnight leather moto jacket; similar styles by Veda and on sale Marc New York
Lips: Dolce and Gabbana passion duo gloss fusion lipstick in Sensual
Nails: OPI for Sephora in Break A Legwarmer

I have decided that my eccentric fashion thing, that thing I'm known for (ok, maybe the second thing I'm known for since I think I might already be known for shoes, but that doesn't seem like a "thing" - lots of women like shoes, frankly it's a hahafunny thing that pisses me off, "oh you ladies, always out shoe shopping...") is going to be leather jackets. I'm going to try to score one on sale every year and have a collection of them because I really, really like them (provided I do not pay a lot of money for them). I never owned a real leather jacket until 2012 (I had a two terribly hideous thrift store finds in my HS/College years that were terrifying - and they were 1970s men's jackets because I was too fat for ladies' vintage). I honestly didn't want to buy something of value for a body I didn't value. It's why, by the way, I own all those shoes. When I was unhappy with my shape, I didn't want to spend money to dress it. My feet, on the other hand, weren't going to fluctuate with my weight, so they could have beautiful things. I used to swan about pretty much every day in $20 dollar clothing and $500 shoes. So I bought my first leather jacket from a Canadian company, Danier, which I can highly recommend for great bargains and great quality. I started with a center zip, fitted, burgundy jacket. AND LOVED IT! Oh my, it just makes a girl look so cool to toss on a leather jacket. So this past winter, I started looking at other styles, and I fixated on the classic moto. All the cool celebrities have one (I think Balenciaga and Yves Saint Laurent are the faves), and it makes a good girl appear tough. Soon the hunt I went. I knew what I wanted: the good old fashioned classic black moto with the chrome features. I wanted these things right until the moment I tried this one on at Bloomingdale's while I was shopping for something entirely different. It fit really well. And more than that, the style fit me really well. I'm not butch, no matter how much I might think I can play at it. My tough is a different kind of tough - I'd dare to call it steely, but it's definitely not an out there, let's take this outside, kind of tough. I kept thinking of Katie Segal in Sons of anarchy and how frickin' awesome she is and how I simply do not have that same look. The midnight blue, flat matte detailed, motorcycle jacket was just...me. The non-showy kind of tough. It went on sale, I hit buy, the rest is beautiful history. I love this jacket and I love it more than I would have loved its traditional cousin. It goes great with a dress and with jeans and is trying just hard enough without trying too hard. We're a good fit.

This sweater, on the other hand, is begging for you to pay attention to it. The color is amazing. I called the project Happy because knitting this sweater with this color yarn made me happy - and I knit it at a time when I was anything but happy. This was therapy knitting and it worked wonders. I really did derive some happy from sitting down to knit this. When I originally saw the pattern, I felt certain I would make it in a neutral, but then I discovered this color, which is a pretty perfect yellow and has a bonus, slightly difficult-to-pronounce German name, and realized that I could make the sweater in a decidedly non-neutral. Before I started knitting, I would never have considered wearing yellow; now I have a surprising number of yellow sweaters and an even more surprising number of yellow yarns yet to be bought. And I'm discovering that yellow is more neutral than I thought. There are few colors that won't go with yellow, and most of them (I'm looking at you, pink) aren't colors I would own a lot of bottoms in any way. I also thought it looked pretty good under my midnight moto, which is why they went together this morning.

A note on my hair: it needs to be cut. A lot. It's kind of a disaster. However, I discovered that my slightly Mod look benefited from the old "no these bangs aren't too long, I intentionally bobby pinned them back like this because STYLE" hairdo.

Verdant

Sweater: Hey Girl cardigan by Bonnie Marie Burns; Wollmeise Merino DK in Fruhling, my notes and modifications for "Atlantic Pacific"
Top: Elie Tahari silk shell, similar styles by Reiss and Kate Spade
Skirt: Brooks Brothers wool skirt, similar style at Loft
Shoes: Manolo Blahnik, similar color, same style in black, for people who think I spend too much on shoes
Lipstick: Makeup Forever Rouge Artist Natural in N31 Soft Fushia (sic)

Story: I got these shoes on ebay 10 or so years ago because I couldn't resist the idea of chartreuse, patent leather, mary janes. Also, they were likely 1/5 retail. Since the idea of chartreuse, patent leather mary janes is so patently ridiculous, I try to wear them a lot. They add a lot of fun to the simplest outfit and are surprisingly versatile (though not with brown). They also make other people happy because they're acceptably outrageous.

I would never have made myself a chartreuse cardigan, however, until I saw this post by Blair Eadie last year at which point I couldn't not make myself a chartreuse cardigan. I did not make the cardigan to match the shoes. In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've worn them together. I still hate the buttons on this cardigan because they aren't the right color. They are the second set of buttons this cardigan has had, and the third set might never go on the cardigan because they're not quite right either. I hate selecting buttons for cardigans while, simultaneously being adamant that for my style, the buttons need to blend, not stand out.

The top is a bit of a departure for me. I don't tend to wear a-line tops because I like highlighting my waist. Similarly, I don't own many Nehru-style collars because they tend not to flatter the busty. I'll admit that this top is a hand-me-down and I wear it and a similar navy one in an attempt to broaden my horizons. I don't know if I would buy this style myself, but as a something different in the closet that I didn't have to buy, it can stay in the rotation.