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.