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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.