hampden

the area directly surrounding the hopkins homewood campus has been dubiously remastered by wise business owners to play host to moderately-priced eateries, coffee-serving establishments, & carry-all convenience stores. however, baltimore is confusingly conglomerative. there are no boroughs, but there are identifiable neighborhoods/areas. hampden is one of these small regions identified by name. hampden is unlike fells or the inner harbor in that its regionality is defined by the type of and tangible presence of a certain culture, whereas areas like fells are characterized almost entirely by the audience to whom the businesses & restaurants cater, & the area's physical appearance, & not an interwoven culture.
in laments terms, hampden is the williamsburg of baltimore, plus babies, minus frequent scoffing. (the babies are probably a product of the youth that characterizes the population.) however, unlike the poisoned world of mainstream thrifting in new york, the vintage in hampden is astonishingly affordable. the store most on par with the quality and affordability of hampden vintage at home is the thrift store hidden beneath an all-purpose town-owned building. aside from boutiques exclusively devoted to vintage clothing & vintage/re-purposed accessories, hampden is comprised of several blocks of unique, independent, non-chain stores & restaurants. the storefronts juxtapose specialty boutiques & everything-under-the-sun second-hand stores. particularly all-encompassing is a store that spans two floors of two, attached buildings, one of which identifies itself with the words "books & maps," ambiguous albeit accurately describing a collection of books & maps. (pictured: a gorgeous, 100-year-old copy of oscar wilde's plays.) some are beautiful, antique, & collectible, while others were published recently & are sold randomly second-hand. there are also several crystal bowls of free gelatin treats scattered throughout the room, which is room one of five that make up the entire establishment. the storefront is misleading - vintage furniture, furnishings, collectibles, & clothing can be found throughout the store/house. one interesting but apparently widely understood characteristic of the stores in hampden is the use of spaces that could feasibly double as rooms of someone's house, e.g. small, cramped basements. i imagine many shop owners live above their stores.
the culture is most prominent among the restaurant waiters. while patrons come from all over baltimore, there is definitely an image associated with the waiters in restaurants like the golden west. there is no negative connotation - the golden west, for instance, employs a staff of flannel-wearing, facial-hair-growing men that seem like they would love to sit back & discuss the vast assortment of artwork/decoration that almost haphazardly adorns the walls. the restaurants also help give rise to the emerging music scene in baltimore by hosting local bands &, on some occasions, local DJs.
my most recent visits to hampden have been exclusively shopping excursions. on the first, i bought a knee-length white leather skirt that has the letters "USA" printed in read all over for a whopping $10. on the second, i bought two dresses, each $30: an irresistibly sparkley betsey johnson dress that looked like it may have, or at least ought to have, belonged to an award-winning ice skater at some time in its former life, (pictured above), & a pink-purple puff-sleeved 50's style yves saint laurent dress (right). i picked the dresses out before i had read either of their tags, but the combination of their condition, authenticity & price made it impossible to leave them on the hangers.
so, in conclusion, hampden = old records, strange antiques, random home accessories, cheap vintage, delicious food, & an outspoken, interesting collection of people. thank god.

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*disclaimer - i wrote the first paragraph of this post approximately four days after halloween. it is now almost christmas, but i am not going to waste halloween picsz!

baltimore is an old city. there are historic neighborhoods that go unappreciated, historic neighborhoods that are comprised of beautiful, expensive brick homes accessible only to those who live in them, & some historic neighborhoods that have been actively preserved for the public to enjoy. fells falls into the latter category. fells point, which dates back to 1763, when it was founded by an english shipbuilder. currently acting as a manifestation of baltimore's historic value and its residents' attention to that history, & serving as a site for complacent entertainment removed from the rest of the city's urbanity, particularly for tourists, fells is a cutesy world of cobblestone roads & shoulder-to-shoulder pubs. why am i writing what sounds like a description for a baltimore travel guide? did i forget to mention i'm majoring in travel agent proficiency? no, it's because i spent night three of three celebrating halloween at fells point, where the cutseyness was transformed into vile, mesmerizing belligerency & chaos thanks to the presence of hundreds of scantily-clad women & creepily-but-thankfully sufficiently-clad men.
enough of this weird marketing syntax. my halloween costumes this year included a princess ballerina, a mechanic, & finally, lady gaga. tR!Ck 0r tR34t h0ll4~~*!


1) ballerina
i chose to be, gathered the materials to be, & got dressed up as a ballerina within 20 minutes, tops. it just so happens that i decided a leotard & tutu were necessities i could not leave behind when i packed for college. the costume was comprised of my black leotard (a la single ladies), white tutu, black striped tights, little pale pink pumps (see goodwill post to come), & a barbie crown. i wore an obscene amount of glitter & sequins & stick-on gemstones around my eyes. the ensemble fell somewhere between weirdly childish & awkwardly slutty, due in large part to the fact my tutu is the same tutu i wore as a child, and is thus a sad excuse for an article of clothing on my 18-year-old body. this outfit is survived by one lonely picture, courtesy mah gurl laura.


2) mechanic
there are two reasons why i decided to wear my ambiguous blue jumpsuit on the saturday of halloween weekend. firstly, because i own it. secondly, because it was both warm & revealing. this is an incredibly hard combination to come by. bearing an "hello my name is miss fix it" nametag & my reliable tools - a hammer that becomes several screwdrivers in a stacking doll fashion & duct tape - i went as a mechanic. this was mostly hilarious because of the size of my hammer, & because i expected my costume to be obvious to any onlooker.
*update* scanning asos for my christmas wishlist, i happened upon this pantsuit. oh, so my $20 probably-previously-owned-by-a-mechanic-or-a-doctor jumpsuit is trendy now?

3) lady gaga
the only costume that really mattered, though, was the one i saved for the fell's point celebration. what i find most noteworthy is that even this costume was comprised entirely of items i already owned. what made lady gaga challenging was the hair-do. i committed myself to the hair bow seen in the "poker face" video (2:44), which was easier to execute than i had anticipated, but time consuming. the other problem i faced was wearing nothing more than a leotard in 40-degree weather. so, i piled on three pairs of sheer tights, the infamous long-sleeved leotard, a tank top, & my strong-shouldered long-sleeved t-shirt, the latter complete with two pairs of unattached shoulder-pads - go big or go home - to best brace myself for the frigidity. consistent with the themes of the outfits in "poker face," i wore my mirrored belt & heavy metal bracelets, & ditched the signature lightning bolt makeup. i wore my black foot-binding booties, the closest thing to mcqueen's armadillo shoes in my wardrobe. sure, there were probably a dozen other gagas roaming fell's that night, but i felt i truly did her justice through non-commercial commitment & creativity. luv u gurl!*~~xo0

still alive!

alert: this is an awkwardly & uncharacteristically serious post.
I. the reincarnation
according to my blog, i prepared for college but never actually got to it. there are several reasons for my unprecedented two-month-long blog vacation.
1) moving in to & adjusting to is a far greater transition than one might expect
2) it is a lot harder to stay connected with the world whilst growing into one's college identity when you don't have a computer. (to make a long, dramatic story short, my laptop's screen cracked seven weeks ago, & HP completely neglected the issue due to laziness & lack of LCD screen parts until a week ago when they replaced my computer with an envy14.)
3) furthermore, it is inherently difficult to blog without a computer. lawlz t3Chn0LoGii3*~
4) johns hopkins doesn't believe in any activity other than reading & writing all the time. oh & medicine & everything related to science ever.

II. the brief rant
i could consider the latter fact in numerous contexts. there is not necessarily a standard of appearance here at hopkins, but i would venture to say there is a lack thereof; clothing is not a priority on a top-15 college campus. out-of-the-box fashion choices are such a rarity here that i can't go anywhere without receiving at least a couple judgmental once-overs. some people even go so far as to privately but deliberately loudly voice their opinions on how i dress. sorry that i prefer high heels to ugg boots! lawlz jjhs
these are some unfairly harsh remarks, though. i should not scapegoat the entire student body for the behavior of a few petty girls. but, on that note, how different is hopkins' physical culture from john jay, really? not very. the bookstore just started selling so-low products with bluejays branded on them.

III. the conclusion, from which i will move forward after this post for good
it has been interesting to embrace a new culture of peers even on the most superficial level. i could probably remark on & attempt to analyze the functionality that defines the wardrobes of hopkins students forever. i will bluntly, concisely state that functionality is the definitive, characteristic quality: comfort on the weekdays, put together on the weekends, willing-to-ruin on weekend nights.
is this because hopkins attracts &, furthermore, accepts very few individuals who care about fashion? or is it because the average hopkins student's personality is so academically driven that there is no room to think twice about clothing? the answer probably lies somewhere in between the two. get at me, MICA?

before i close this post, i should mention that there is a number (albeit small) of well-dressed & trendy people here i've met or seen in passing. interestingly, it feels like there are more well-dressed men on campus than girls. perhaps this will permit my blog to take a path down which i had not previously tread - that is, menswear. for now, my plan is to discuss dressing for the cold & the baltimore hipster (despite my impoverished exposure to such subculture). i apologize for how somber & serious this reflection was. had to be done. oh, & i won't fall off the face of the earth for another two months! heh
see yuh (i swear, rly)

holy grails

even though i would love to go out & drop hundreds on fancy new clothes - & by go out i mean spend a couple hours placing orders for things on my amazon wishlist & on gilt - before going off to school, necessity has taken precedence. not that the word necessity doesn't point to the absurd ideal of necessity that exists here in westchester, but there you have it. i've purchased little white socks, black tights, black shorts, leggings, & new underwear. i have all of the things i really "need" in order to go off to school. but sometimes even the plainest of necessities are impossible for me to find. i end up obsessed with the searches, keeping very particular styles in mind, & they become endless quests, i the archetypal medieval heroine searching for the holy grail.
why discuss this now? today i finally found replacement shoes for my favourite flats. clearly this was imperative as i need shoes that are not heeled to wear around campus. the shoes i need of replacement: black patent-leather peep-toe 1/2" heeled flats with little bows by steve madden purchased for probably $60 in 2007 or 2008. despite the peep-toe, i wear them year-round & the plastic on the heels began peeling off in ugly chunks last year. they do everything a shoe should do: fit snugly, have padded - not flat - soles, make noise when i step, elevate me slightly, have fabric detailing sans metal or colour, & are shiny. so, short of re-purchasing them off e-bay (which was a viable, although expensive, option a week ago), i performed extremely delicate searches on websites like zappos, shoes.com, & department stores' websites... to no avail! finally, on a whim, i google searched "black patent flat" & the google shopping tab took me to newport news, a clothing website that caters to 30-something women & is very economically reasonable. (i have a pair of lace-up "granny booties" from newport news i bought three years ago for $35 that are still in excellent shape.) there they were! the perfect replacement. & for $19! you want it, you got it. the shoes arrived in the mail today & fit perfectly. after four months, grail found.
but there is another simple, black item that is haunting me. i am in dire need - dire. really. - of a short, drop-waist black shift with sleeves. not long sleeves, but short or 3/4-length sleeves. not of a heavy material - i'm envisioning silk - & sans detailing of any kind. i want it to sit on my shoulders like a smock, accentuating nothing. this is hard to find for a multitude of reasons:
1) i found exactly what i wanted in june, but urban outfitters, without my knowledge, cancelled the order due to a random price change. by the time i had learned this, recovered from my resentment, & decided to re-order it, it was sold out. having an ideal image in mind that was at some point palpable is almost worse.
2) i don't want to spend a lot. this, for obvious reasons, hurts the hunt.
3) it is really hard to find "little black dresses" that aren't form-fitting to a degree. people are usually looking for that feature in their little black dresses.
4) i rarely find dresses that, even when designed to fall loosely, do not accentuate any part of my body. this may sound like something for which i should be thankful & about which i should stop complaining, but in this case, i'm complaining.
moral: be less obsessive & more open. but if you happen upon a dress that meets this description, please let me know. i'll probably be searching for a long time because i can't just give up now.

the e.s.m.

there are many things literally clothing-related haunting the depths of my brain as august 24th & my entire future loom. but in an effort to post consistently over the next few days, i will preface packing up all of my belongings with an age-old expression that has become an imperative tool in the pre-college shopping extravaganza this summer has been.
first, for some history: it is well known that when my family visit our relatives out west we frequent the extremely large malls & outlets that surround their small, suburban, western towns. there is a wealth of gigantic, clean, air-conditioned buildings in nevada & colorado. twenty-first century consumerism has incentivized their construction alongside the necessity of enticement: where all da humans @ in tha desert? i don't know if these stand-alone structures - literally, not even under the cover of foliage - have succeeded in enticing, but they are usually built next to sites of new condominium/housing developments, which over time will surely produce a population of cheap-home-seeking consumers. the current/long-time residents are the one reeping the benefits, however. such is the case with my maternal extended family. my father's siblings living in new jersey may have the meadowlands complex (more like spacestation), but they don't have the outlet malls.
so, why is this relevant? well, the expression to which i am referring is the e.s.m., or exciting shopping moment. it was invented by my mother, my cousin anna & me after a trip to dsw, the large shoe warehouse that did not arrive on the east coast for some time after its placement in colorado. the term is applicable to all purchases made on items extremely reduced, items that, thanks to coupons & giftcards, are significantly reduced at the register, &, most excitingly, items that are surprisingly cheaper than expected when scanned. how does this relate to college shopping? well, being frugal is a key component of dorm furnishment, and that frugality necessarily dips into overall money-spending of any kind.
my most recent e.s.m.s were a fitted, strong-shouldered black blazer marked down from $70 to $24, rung up for $19, at lord & taylor, two gigantic silver baubles & purchased at macy's, both of which started at $24 & were marked down to $12.00, further reduced at the register to $5.70 a piece.

the fact that the bracelets were purchased at macy's points to another e.s.m. factor. e.s.m.s are frequently found at the most uncommon of places, uncommon here meaning stores in which one rarely purchases anything. hence the application of the term at things like sidewalk sales. the unexpected element contributes to the "exciting" part of the "moment" in question.
herein ends an insight into both my family of girly, bargain-loving shoppers & my lack of interest in anything marked up to full-price.
one last note: the image in which i am sporting a leotard above is a shot of my performance of the single ladies dance at camp a week ago. youtube link to follow.

staff

i have thirteen or so camp t-shirts - navy, gray, & the rare white (left) - only three of which bear the bold letters on the back that symbolize maturity & indicate personal economic situation: STAFF. i was overwhelmingly pleased to finally own a staff shirt when i got my first one five years ago. even after i owned one, i coveted staff shirts. four of us stole & shared a yellow staff shirt several years ago with no motive other than wearing a shirt that read "staff" during the dance show. i reserve my camp t-shirts for sleeping, but i reliably choose my staff shirts over my plain camp shirts. & now i am getting what i asked for: those bold, white letters on my back every single day for the next four & a half weeks.
i assume everyone understands why i hate this new uniform. fundamentally yes, i like dressing like a girl. & yes, i understand the concept - campers need to be able to identify their adult, supervising counterparts with ease. but no one has ever mistaken me for a four-year-old or a four-year-old for a counselor. furthermore, getting dressed isn't entirely about looking pretty, making a statement, or mimicking my favourite glamorous historical figures. what i wear dictates my mood, & this t-shirt spoils whatever cheery mood the BBC world news puts me in before i get dressed every day.
so. now that i've adequately ranted, i'll return to the surface-level problems with this navy blue t-shirt, emblazoned with silkscreen on the left breast & this iconic - now insulting - word on the back. i was told i wasn't allowed to alter the shirt. as plain & one-size-fits-all as the t-shirt shape is, the box it creates on one's body cannot be paired with just any other article of clothing. this would be less of an issue if it were not july, because sweaters are burdensome accessories for camp. (save for in the main room where the air conditioning is below freezing & has been since i was nine years old.)
i would like to be able to look at this t-shirt as a challenge, a test of my ability to style & accessorize, but there are only so many ways to wear a t-shirt in july AND dress appropriately to play with babies all day. not to mention the shirt has red on it, which rules out one pair of red shorts & two red skirts i own right off the bat. a week & a half in & i have worn high-waisted shorts, long skirts, short hip-hugging & waist-cinching skirts (as seen above), necklaces, earrings, round-toed flats, pointy-toed flats, sandals, & i even broke out tights with a pair of plain shorts today, taking advantage of the less-than-sweltering temperature outside. i am not going to give up just yet. this is war, staff shirt. here come the lace vest i wore to winter ball in the ninth grade, my tiny top hat, my floral pants from the tenth grade, my hair plumes, & perhaps one of those soda-can-straw-hats with starbucks cups inside, seeing as i've officially become a two-cups-per-morning person. (i will be dead by age 35. plz let me know on what possessions of mine you are keen.)

WHAT a hiatus!

how do you compensate for over a month of inactivity? first of all, this is the third or fourth blog post that begins with something about procrastination/lack of updates. clearly i have to spend the summer diligently writing if i have any hope of maintaining whatever status i may or may not have as a blogger. english major 2010
prior to this absurd hiatus i had been keeping a list of blog subjects to come, which has since then been lost in the abyss that is the ever-present pile of papers on/under my desk. if i were a 29-year-old journalist/novel-writer, this would be acceptable. but i'm not, so it's not. seeing as fairly major - major here synonymous with circumstantial but not necessarily pivotal - events have come to pass in the last few weeks, it only makes sense to discuss them. the end of senior year brought many treats - a brief appearance in a slideshow of pictures of girls in lines, a history channel schedule, a sharpie to take to the woodwork in h-building, prom, and graduation. while i would love to dedicate this entire post to ap euro (especially seeing as i do not yet have my score on the exam), i would probably start to cry if i wrote about it. so, on a lighter and, i guess, more relevant note, i'll discuss prom.

prom is strange. even though "pomp & circumstance" characterizes graduation, it should probably play at all pre-prom affairs first. this isn't about to become a "ten things i hate about you" angsty teen reprise, though. i love any excuse to dress up AND any excuse to dance to britney spears, so i'm not sure why anyone wouldn't like the idea of a fancy party like prom. however, i really dislike the corsage-boutonniere tradition. my ensemble was carefully - albeit quickly - assembled, as was every girl's. however, i don't know a single girl who, in her mind, reserved a space on her wrist for a corsage. it's not part of the equation frequently enough - or ever - for a girl to consider it when making choices about accessories. i'm also unaware of any other time or place a corsage is appropriate. boutonnieres are less irregular. and cuter. i think we should do away with this tradition. lying at the foundation of the corsage/boutonniere tradition is the victorian custom of carrying "nosegays," which are small bunches of flowers. even earlier, ladies wore small bouquets in their hair to keep from smelling foul because they bathed so irregularly. in the 1800s, nosegays - synonymous with the victorian term "tussie-mussie" - became popular fashion accessories & were frequently given as gifts, the flowers of which they were comprised indicative of the giver's feelings towards the receiver. seeing as the corsage has been pummeled into american culture & the flowers used no longer represent love, as they are purchased based on colour, we ought to accept its retirement. we have perfume & costume jewelry to enhance our attractiveness & encourage fanciness. i would prefer a prom nosegay. they'd stay alive longer! men used to wear boutonnieres almost daily just to indicate their wealth & respectable stature, which is why i don't think boutonnieres deserve expulsion just yet. perhaps we need more boutonnieres in the world now.
so anyway.
i wore antique beaded lace. my friends & i had many a debate about long vs. short prom dresses months prior to shopping this year. i understand my mother's argument that there are very few times a girl can wear a floor-length gown. i just don't think an organized dance party at the end of june is the right time to seize the moment. i was pleased to be in a short dress, although i can't say i saved myself any sweating because i wore a long-sleeved jacket. i empathized with all of the tux'ed boys even though i had no pants to worry about. (do i ever?) a word of advice, though- the sweating at preprom was worth the warmth in the cool evening air/on the air conditioned bus. i carried a pink bag to match my pink glitter shoes - elle woods meets dorothy, if you will. last year i wore cinderella shoes to junior prom, so it was only appropriate to break out another costume-like accessory this year. the bag came from my mother's friend, & i had to carry it because of its miraculously well-matched shade of pink. fated. in retrospect, i wish i had worn my hair in the 90s gwen stefani/"not myself tonight" christina aguilera ponytail (at 1:27) i had been considering, but it didn't look awful down. while i'm discussing myself, i might as well mention my date. troy wore seude nikes, which were notably classy enough for prom, & a really bright tiger tie. perhaps if i had had the time to pick out a boutonniere (yes, we're back to this subject) it would have been less dramatic & pink than the one my mother picked, but like i said, i would have preferred flowerlessness anyway. we voted ourselves best dressed dates of the evening & consequently we won best dressed dates of the evening. good for us! i will here remark that troy was a fun & highly chivalrous date, & i'm very glad he became the four to our (rei, joh, em) three (2:23). after all, he is probably the only person who could have successfully made us the most matching foursome ever, as we were all wearing the same things. twin dates.
if i discussed all of my beautiful lady friends' ensembles, this post would grow to be longer than that alice post from a few months ago. in lieu of that, i have posted some lovely pictures for your admiring pleasure.




note: kieran's excellently coordinated pocket square

aaaaaand this officially marks the end of high-school-related blog posts. i was considering discussing graduation, but because i am so through with john jay, i am declaring culmination. SEE YUH

thx, carothers, for clothing me every single day

according to ABC news, yesterday marked the anniversary of the invention of nylon. nylon marked a huge milestone on the path of the creation of synthetic materials that were efficient & cheap.
i decided to read a brief biography of the creator in his honour because he literally invented the one article of clothing that i arguably wear every single day. in a sense, i owe my entire girly fa$hun world to him. if stockings were still made of silk, they'd be a) extremely fragile, b) weirdly slippery, & c) far more expensive. i would not be able to indulge in tights every day - hello, levi strauss. actually, i felt ignorant when i was surprised to learn that tights were made of silk in the first place. the history of the invention of nylon makes absolutely perfect sense. wallace hume carothers, (what a name, huh?), a man educated in iowa & illinois who became a professor & researcher @ harvard, had been "experimenting with chemical structures of polymers with high molecular weight". in 1928 e.i. dupont de nemours & company brought him to work on articifial polymers, where he "investigated the structure of substances of high molecular weight and their formation by polymerization". @ this time, because of world war II, america's relationship with japan was not stable enough to sustain the regular, affordable silk demanded in the united states. the promising material carothers & his team invented was first marketed as an alternative form of toothbrush bristle. (alternative to animal hair. what?..........uh, anyway.....) DuPont's announcement of nylon's invention in 1938 explained that nylon was, quote: "the first man-made organic textile fabric prepared entirely from new materials from the mineral kingdom." a year later, nylon stockings were worn by women @ the world's fair, & in 1940 they were put on the market. they were extraordinarily successful. so here i am, wearin' tights!

nylon stockings is not an unwavering market product - women are far less inclined to wear dresses & skirts frequently nowadays because of the advent of contemporary gender roles & the obsession with comfort & casuality to which denim caters. however, nylon stockings will always be a valuable product, because of the product's simplicity, effective cost, possible variations, & its ability to meet very basic but worldwide needs, be it for costuming or for dressing(-up).
all in all, i commemorate carothers & his team of researchers for their creation. i owe them my entire closet.
carothers is also celebrated for his knowledge of the formation of natural polymers & his work that led to the creation of synthetic rubber. his work launched scientists in america into research of synthetic materials which has given us most of the things we touch & own today.
photo 1: 1940
photo 2: 1971
i went looking for a 1969 ad for leggs tights & found..................... this.

artsiest award

i have been writing "blog" on my daily to-do lists for two weeks now. how did that much time pass!? well, i have several subjects to touch upon over the next few days. in honour of the official culmination of my advanced placement class career as it ended on friday afternoon with european history (how fitting), i thought i'd first post about being sickeningly artsy. i mean, not that i am. but i have a couple photos that constitute such a description & are almost ironically so. i mean, i took the ap art "exam" friday morning ALONE. (which was awkward, because proctors have to read aloud exam instructions, but it was just me & i am literate.)
aside from posting a stupidly artsy "about me" survey on the "get to know your classmates" discussion board of the hopkins enrolled students facebook group, what i mean by sickeningly artsy is:

1) this is the jean button-down that i gleaned from my mother's collection of clothes she wore @ one time in her life but has since retired to a large box in the attic. she tried to convince me i ought to wear her pair of abnormally oversized overalls to school. i declined the generous offer......... anyway, this shirt - circa 1991 - makes me feel like a 90's mother who is ready to pull her hair up with a scrunchie, run to the gym, stop @ the grocery store, & then paint a room of the house. so it is only appropriate that i wear it when i slave away over art homework. fyi, tj maxx sells shirts very similar. (you know who you are) i'd also like to take the time right now to point out my queens & kings of england chart hanging on my bedroom door, visible here next to the beanie baby cat that acted as crookshanks three years ago when i dressed as hermione for the borders midnight harry potter 7 release party.


2) when i went to visit hopkins for an accepted students open house, i brought an overnight bag, a purse, & my art board. this is beyond absurd. the absurdity ripened when i didn't get any work on the drawing done while we were there. i had brought pencils & tracing paper & my sharpener & everything! TOO ARTSY. the end.



oh! one more thing. because i had to digitize my entire portfolio of artwork in order to submit it to the college board, i decided to make a carbonmade. so if you're interested, i am posting the link here & in my personal information!
http://catluvandprosper.carbonmade.com/

you're welcome, preppy turtle

perhaps it is because i am forward-thinking & college-bound, but when my family performed the weekend-long task of "switching over our closets" from winter to spring, i willingly parted ways with articles i have not worn in years but have been hoarding out of guilt.

i have long been waiting to go through & rid myself of quite a few t-shirts i no longer wear, but i wound up being far more destructive to my collection of sweatpants that have been permanently residing in the attic. i easily purged my closet of over one hundred items, as miraculous as that may sound. four gigantic shopping bags (& one garbage bag) carried clothes out of my room this year. long-sleeved abercrombie tees, plain tanktops with built-in bras, bat mitzvah sweatshirts, & dusty pairs of ill-fitting jeans have all been given chances for rebirth in the form of donation to my neighbors' daughters &/or consignment shops nearby. perhaps a few pairs of shoes will make their way onto ebay because they were rarely worn. i had more difficulty parting with shoes than clothing because it meant that my grand total of 70-some-odd shoes was decreasing. (i don't know what number i stand at currently.)


i do have an overarching point here. i have been holding on to a pink wool juicy couture skirt, seven ralph lauren polo shirts, a floral button-down guess top, & a pair of gold dress shoes that a shop owner gave me because he liked my style all for one reason: i felt bad getting rid of them. these are expensive items that were worn maybe three times each, at most. but my inability to part with material possessions has always restrained me from saying goodbye. i have now accepted, though, that as i am moving on to college where my life is essentially beginning again, i should give these mindt condition clothes a chance to be appreciated. as anna wintour of vogue says in the september issue, "fashion is never about looking back. it's always about looking forward." of course i did keep some things purely for the sake of nostalgia - a pirates of the caribbean tee from hot topic circa my band shirt phase, for instance - but i embraced maturity in saying goodbye to others. (lolz so serious -n- heartfelt)

of course, i had also had to keep the pink t-shirt that reads "pretty in pink, wicked in uniform" across a lacrosse stick head because i am going to johns hopkins where lax rulez. how is it that i managed to pick a school where the one sport i ever played reigns king? how did that happen? (if you're wondering when & why i played lacrosse, i have only one answer: seventh grade.) hopkins, you're the right place for me.

easter resurgence

i know that easter was long, long ago, but as i said in my previous post, london & college clogged up my schedule this month. so this is going to be a short post about easter traditions.


ultimate alice in wonderland shot courtesy mah fathur

easter is a holiday almost as repetitious as christmas in its traditions at my house. the order in which we carry out each tradition changes slightly each year, but not significantly. we go to the 11:00 church service & we hunt for eggs. we count the eggs, we eat their treeeeeeeeats. this year, my brother & i also taught sunday school @ church. alongside fourteen second & third graders, i looked about five in my easter ensemble.


(photo: me winning the award for dumbest pose ever) i had gotten out several obnoxiously floral/springy dresses to consider that morning, but wound up wearing my junior prom dress. i often overdress because i feel that to own nice, fancy things & never wear them is a waste. i do stow away my nicest dresses, as everyday life is undeserving of their glamor. my prom dress, however, was only $16 on ebay + shipping. i hadn't worn the dress since prom, so i decided to pair it with my prom shoes, too. go big or go home, right?

anyway, my point is not that i looked SUP3R CUT3 on easter. what amazed me was that i looked so childish because so many little girls were clad in fancy, circle-skirted easter dresses. my mother had always purchased easter dresses & shoes for me when i was little, but it was always an alien concept to me, even when i was benefitting from it. apparently the tradition is absolutely alive & well. even the easter bonnet was well represented by the population of young girls at my church.

my best explanatory hypothesis was that the easter parades - a tradition almost as old as easter itself - in europe, particularly during the middle ages, included special costumes/outfits, & the annual creation or purchase of new threads for easter parades evolved into the easter dress. with some research i learned that this is directly tied to the tradition of making or buying new white clothes for "white week" when "newly baptized Christian[s] wore white linen robes for a whole week to symbolize their rebirth and new life". several internet sources attribute the easter dress fad to the annual new york city easter parade because the parade "was a combination of religious services and haute couture in the days before TV", but i think that gives new york city far too much credit. the new york easter parade is what has kept the tradition alive, as it "doesn't have any floats or marching bands but it is a spectacle nonetheless ....[and] outfits range from elegant to outrageous", but is not the site of origin.

new york easter parade 1900

in my easter fa$$$$hion research i also discovered that nordic easter traditions (used to) include children dressing up as witches & going door to door to collect candies in exchange for decorated pussy willows, & that birch tree branches were used on good friday to remind children & servants of christ's suffering through beatings.

last london post, i swear

a list of things about which to blog has been accumulating over the last two weeks, but i have not yet written my final post about london, so i can't attack it yet. in an effort to culminate the london blogging & begin discussing other things, this is a brief look at the stark differences between a two staples of london shopping that are without american equal.

1) topshop
according to wikipedia, topshop's oxford street store is the largest fashion retail store in the world. i may be reading the wiki wrong, but i certainly don't find it hard to believe. i imagine the only competitors are places like harrods, bloomingdales, & saks, but perhaps these don't qualify as "fashion stores" because they sell such a wide variety of consumer goods & market themselves as purveyors of everything, not just high-end fashion. even if topshop on oxford street isn't the largest fashion store in the world, it is certainly singular in its gargantuan frenzy-generating stock of desirable, fair-priced clothing for both men & women. it isn't a self-sustained business - topshop is a member of Arcadia Group Limited along with other london high street clothing stores - but it is definitely a giant walking among mortals. what strikes me as odd is that there is no store comparable to topshop anywhere in the U.S. & arguably, by that token, in the world. granted its popularity has only peaked in the last 15 years, no one store operates as a fashion retailer & markets to an impossibly huge audience of female (& male) shoppers, from the extremely trendy to very reserved & literally everyone in between. why no store here can accomplish such a thing is beyond me - the model certainly presents itself as successful, seeing as topshop at oxford circus is immeasurably busy at any given time. stores here have yet to match the one-stop-shopping that topshop (especially topshop on oxford street) has created, & as always american stores struggle to balance the inexpensive with the reasonably priced, something that topshop has down to a science as they supply "boutique" and vintage-inspired brands with steeper tags alongside the affordable. topshop has made its way to america but the new york flagship store is almost incomparable - because of its distance from london & its american coinage, the store is both expensive & less well stocked than that of oxford street. in conclusion: take a hint, american retailers!


2) department store food halls
defined by class & rectangular departmentalized rooms with low ceilings, the pillars of department store shopping that stand in london - namely harrods, selfridges, harvey nichols, john lewis, house of fraser, & debenhams - are historic & iconic, but someone must have left a few pages of the "how to create a successful department store" behind when they came to the U.S. one unique & completely luxurious element of the london department store is the food hall, brimming with stands of packaged & prepared foods of various ethnic origins &, naturally, layers of chocolates & pastries. why do the new york department store staples lack these gorgeous arrays of food? perhaps it is because by the early 1900s, when departments stores has truly taken off in both countries, the concept of the department store was the inspiration, & not a precise model, thus departmentalizations became unique in each country. what is interesting is that target & walmart are technically (discount) departments stores & they do have departments in which they sell food, even prepared foods in some cases. also noteworthy: technically marks & spencer isn't a department store because not every department has its own register & it therefore does not fit the british definition of "department store"; there are several at the front of the store @ which you can purchase any department's goods.

bricklane

in the midst of my research prior to our trip on timeout london i discovered a list of london's best markets & was struck to find that the one marketplace i had never heard of was the number one place for vintage, evidenced by the comments on the article. i was not aware that among dozens of vintage vendors @ bricklane we would also find every single hip, trendy, artsy youth (18-32 years) in london.


photo note: snapped by kelsey, outside of the baker street tube stop, this is the only photo we have from our bricklane day: french hat + latte + oyster card = too much european

it was strange to walk down streets that looked more like they belonged in new york than london - sort of sketchy & definitely not charming - & rather intimidating to look like lost tourists in an area clearly unbeknownst to & off limits to tourism. it was more than obvious that we were in the right place once we stumbled into a central area of shops & pubs, though. hundreds of scene & hip looking people. any one of them could have walked up to me & told me he or she was a starving artist, an undiscovered guitarist, &/or a drug-addicted college student studying philosophy & letting life lead them & i would have believed him or her. in retrospect, it should not have been surprising. the bricklane area identifies itself as "extremely popular with London’s edgy and artistic crowd, featuring galleries, restaurants, markets and festivals throughout the year".
it also should have been significantly less surprising to step onto a self-sufficient planet, its orbit powered by everyone culturally-aware & everything cultural, seeing as we visited bricklane on a sunday for the sunday up market. apparently we are inherently in touch with this hip scene ("the best day to visit Brick Lane market is on Sundays").
aside from feeling like i had just entered the 2010 version of the punk-infused london of 1977, i also felt really welcome (& cool) @ bricklane. everyone is "into" one another there. even though the marketplace's population is most synonymous with the artsy new yorkers i spend more time making fun of than complimenting, there was something far more friendly & far less standoffish about the bricklane inhabitants than the new yorkers that go to comparable flea markets. i suppose this means one thing: even the edgiest londoners are more amicable than the trendy new yorkers that are might even be an object of admiration in the eyes of many of these friendly london lipstick-stained, grunge-wearing, doc marten-loving, mohawk-styling hipsters. this is a sad commentary on new york, but i am probably biased. of course, i also have no real authority on this matter (as any hip new yorker would point out). i guess it's a question of feeling welcome by the people who are supposedly the most liberal, most intellectual, & most interesting, be it in either of these great cities.

endnote: can't say a lot of these things any better myself

how i blew my money$$

money to blow? not really. but i blew some anyway. (allison reference... check!)
so before i tackle analyzing social scenes & looking @ london fashion & culture through the lense of an adolescent american who likes clothes, i must do some listing. in keeping with my post-shopping tradition of showing with enthusiasm all of the day's purchases to my father (who is always BEYOND EXCITED!!!!!!! to see them),
here's what i bought:
> a tight white dress with gigantic black-trimmed sleeves, reminiscent of madonna circa 1985 or lady gaga circa any day. similar but different is this dress
> blue harem shorts ("hareem" in england) with double-breasted sailor buttons (below)
> tan strapless tulip dress with a bold aboriginal/native american-esque blue design down the middle (below). this bullet is a prime example of my inability to describe clothing. see *** below
> denim blue shorts with white polka-dots ruffled around the waist (below)
> blue tee, the back of which is made up of four vintage satin bows
> navy jumpsuit (FULL jumpsuit) with white drawstring waist, the sleeves of which make it strongly resemble a one-piece scrub for a hospital worker. for 15 pounds at bricklane i can roll the pants & cut the sleeves.
> flat-topped straw hat with black bow similar to this or this (below)
> tiny black hat.. it was on sale because it was broken, but i wanted it headband-less anyway!
> waist-length necklace with black bow bearing an image of the globe that elizabeth i holds in many portraits
> pinwheel shaped oragami-esque gold ring.. pointy & dangerous
> plexiglass earrings with blue string detailing
> vintage yellow & black striped pumps (h0lla @ me bumble beesz(below))

check it! green grass on tha ground!

things i wanted but didn't buy for whatever reason:
> lime green playsuit (my butt was too big, especially because playsuit doesn't mean shorts, it means inside there is a bikini attached inside to separate yah legs!) 
> tight floral dress (15 inches worth of metal clasps down the back to get this on... not worth it)
> a white statement blazer with a black african pattern (165 pounds = outta mah league)

***i probably should've prefaced this post by saying: i'm notoriously bad @ describing clothing.

summary post: london

having just returned from london not three days ago - missing you, steph! - it is high time that i reconvene frequent blogging. one extraordinarily long blog post per month is entirely inappropriate! now that i am home & have heard from all but one college - i'm waiting for you to get home tonight, loff - i can say with confidence that i will stop slacking off. catluvandprosper in da h0use(?).
since this blog is supposed to be about fa$hun, i am writing this post as a preface. i have many fashion-related topics to discuss after having visited the original, palpably vibrant fashion & culture hub that is & always has been london. as one can imagine, i shed hundreds of pounds that were weighing down my wallet to purchase shorts, dresses, hats, & jewels. what else was i to do with all that cash? of course, some of my trip money was used to purchase gifts for my family & mAh B0iiz as well as a few completely necessary nerd indulgences (a chart detailing the kings & queens of england, a mock-up of henry viii's coronation ring). all in all - save for the 35 or so pounds i spent on fruity cocktails.. oopsies! - i don't regret the dolla dolla billsz i spent acr0ss tha p0nd.
to come: a review of my purchases, an analysis of topshop, a description of bricklane, a note on kensington palace, & a miscellaneous discussion of food halls & cds

see yuh!

a long blog vacation = a long blog post

catluvandprosper has been suffering from blog post deprivation as of late. i am ashamed of how long it has taken me to post. as usual, i must mention allison's evening reminder that my three blog readers wanted an update & so here it is, an update.
i have accumulated numerous topics to discuss, but i will begin with the most obvious & absolutely most important: alice.

i was convinced from the moment the production was announced that the film was made for me: my favourite director, my favourite actors (johnny & helena), my favourite story - one of the five or so books i've ever read. i scoffed at other peoples' excitement because i was naturally more genuinely excited & alice-educated than anyone else anticipating the film's release. (I AM DEVOTED.) so when march fifth came around - even though the original release date was march 10th - i dragged my midnight-premiere-virgin friend kelsey with me to see it. never have i had more thoughts run through my brain throughout the course of a movie. i was loving the costume & scenery artistry, hating the hatter's scottish brogue, & wondering why the movie was called "alice in wonderland" when the plotline was bandersnatched right from "through the looking glass & what alice found there". i tried to watch it as if i was lewis carroll (or, as refer to him because i am an elitist, charles dodgson) & couldn't decide if he would have liked it.
overall, my review is this - as a film, it was absolutely excellent. as an alice guru, it was alright. the movie was poorly titled - disney should've purchased the rights to the title "alice" from the scifi network, because that would've been far more appropriate - and failed to give dodgson credit for his creations like the jabberwocky, the white queen, and the chess board. of course, in my opinion, the white queen may as well have been omitted from the film.
on that note, certainly there were little things that bothered me - young alice's terrible wig, the decision to set the story in underland from "looking glass" but not explain the name, the "wizard of oz" ending, the rabbit's loyalty to the white queen instead of the red, the size of the red queen's head when it is the duchess, not the queen, that is bulbous, & the inexplicable shift from black to red that spane's eyepatch made. but if i could/had to alter the movie, i wouldn't even bother correcting the minor problems. i would take but two actions.
1) i would exile anne hathaway so as to insure that she could never come anywhere NEAR the production therein ruining it with her inability to portray the white queen - something i had anticipated from the moment i learned she had been cast - as well as her ability to annoy me to death. not only was the decision to cast her a poor one, but her character was written completely wrong. there are no cauldron-like concoctions in underland (or wonderland, for that matter).
2) i would require & make certain that the flutterwacken bore absolutely no resemblence to hiphop, not to mention animated, contortionist breakdancing. with one, swift, completely idiotic move, someone - i will not name burton because i choose the route of ignorance in saying that he could not have been responsible for the atrocity that was this dance - managed to downgrade the gravity & maturity that this story of "older alice" sought to convey, not to mention completely destroy the victorian english mannerisms & setting that had accurately & properly dictated much of the film & the characters. when i saw the film for a second and third time, i could not help but cringe & let out a gasp of gut-wrenching anticipation when the music started up. & as if that wasn't enough, they forced alice to bring it back in the alice of oz ending when she returned to the real world. WHY!!!!!!!!!!!?
it may seem like i have more negative things to say than positive about alice. this is wrong. i am strongly opposed to the comments made by most people that it doesn't live up to the "tim burton standard". i'm sorry that you think morbidity & eerieness cannot come in any form but dark & ghoulish. the leering satire in this film carried from dodgson's writings is just as disturbing & chilly as a dead bride or a cannibalist restaurant if you look at it from the right perspective. burton's ability to portray society's problems uniquely is what makes him a great director. with alice, he has proven that he can show victorian england as a gory, man-eat-man world of unsympathetic chaos AND as a world trapped in routine, nonsensical conformity, & almost futile social & political cycles. how many directors could do such a thing & still capture an audience because of the unique approach & production design? very few. i am appalled to hear anyone critisize this film for being "un-burton."
i'd also like to take note of the soundtrack. danny elfman's unparalleled fantasy soundtrack abilities paired with a beautiful (albeit completely digital) world did dodgson justice. no music has ever roused in me more excitement & anxious anticipation than the masterful track "proposal/down the hole". even the third time i saw the movie, that piece of music as it follows alice on a brief chase scene made me feel truly as if i was going to implode with unimaginable excitement.
overall, i congratulate the production on its success - after all, it grossed $116.3million in its opening weekend, blowing "avatar" out of the water, & has remained on top. (thx disney 3D lolz!) even after three weeks it is still on top, grossing $265.8m thus far. according to box office analyst paul dergarabedian, this is particularly unusual for this time of year. of course, there is still debate going on about when the movie will be released on dvd - a controversy that almost caused british theatres to boycott the projection of the film when it was released - but it should be resolved soon. hopefully for the best.
oh, did i mention that mia wasikowska scalped me & used my hair for the movie? because she did.

in order to make this post relevant: i have been dressing with my big black bow in alice costumes for years - including halloween & random school days. i have a few other pictures to add, including the miniature dress i wore when i was alice as a child, a costume that my mother made for me.

lolita

over the weekend i discovered & proceeded to research a world of fashion unbeknownst to me until some (i'll be frank) random facebook stalking provoked my curiosity. intrigued by the weird combination of victorian & childish costumes prevalent in these pictures, i went to google &, using clues from the captions, discovered lolita, a fashion subculture that originated in japan in the 80's. @ first i was under the impression that it had developed as a materialized form of fan-fiction for a manga character. i appear to have been wrong. while many a manga does depict japanese super-girls in the lolita image, the fashion culture is more than fan-fiction. the style has become its own movement & has managed to permeate the western hemisphere, almost detached from manga.
even though the most common definition of the word "lolita" is a seductive adolescent girl (think reverse pedophilia), the fashion movement is almost entirely antonymous. from what i have gathered, lolita is most simply described as a fashion subculture influenced by the victorian/edwardian & french rococo movements of art/clothing in history. part of the harajuku social scene in the 1980's, lolita has developed a vast following for teenage girls & women in their early twenties. lolita has recognizable sub-genres, the most popular of which include gothic, sweet, classic, & punk, not to mention more specific styles like waloli (incorporating japanese traditional styles), oji (boystyle & more gender-neutral), & guro lolita (incorporating fake blood/injuries).
sweet:
followers & analysts explain that lolitas dress like aristocratic children from the early 1800's to rebel against the modern societal tenet that women's clothing should be sexy & flatter/reveal the body to make the woman more attractive. regardless of the sub-genre, a typical lolita outfit from top to bottom consists of a large bow or headpiece, a ruffley blouse worn under a jumper-type dress or with a full skirt, an apron, bloomers or a petticoat, knee-high socks, & platform mary-jane shoes.

needless to say, the ensemble is 100% chaste, save for the skirt/dress, which rarely falls below the knee. many a pervy mind might think this is supposed to appeal to pervy middle-aged men who love little girls. lolitas' reply: WRONG WRONG WRONG. refusing to conform to the societal norm that is revealing clothing & escaping to a "fantasy world" where things like princesses, garden tea parties, & parasols are staples, not tomfoolery, are two major principles that characterize the lolita culture.
supposedly it also makes a statement against the gender roles prescribed by japanese culture, but i think that might not apply to every frill-loving lolita out there. there are some lolitas that completely immerse themselves in the movement, but others that just use the movement - which consists of the clothing (never referred to as costume) and social gatherings (usually tea parties) - as an escape from their daily lives. this is where the appeal to the western world lies.
part of me loves the idea of entire stores devoted to the re-creation and marketing of victorian clothing, because i am a history nerd. but part of me really can't quite decide what to make of the whole thing. i checked out the website for baby, the stars shine bright, a lolita pillar from the 80's that has recently adapted its website into english & opened stores in america & paris. the clothing is weird & adorable, but extraordinarily pricey. the life of a lolita is one of extreme expense. because every element must be historically accurate & match perfectly - coordination is inextricably bound to lolita fashion - outfits cannot mix & match. a cheap lolita ensemble might go for $300.
in conclusion, i may secretly want to order myself a few blouses & bows from places like angelic pretty or innocent world, but for now i think i'll continue to keep my historical dressing frequent but subdued. except on days i must present something in euro. then this is totally appropriate.