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!