I Had a Hunch

 24th street, SF / east oakland - 2012

Summer, Maybe

skirt, shoes, cardigan - vintage // bag - thrifted // shades - buffalo exchange

Pika Me This

I finally got to have the ultimate Pika Pika experience a few weeks ago with the ultimate veteran cute-pie (last time we scheduled a pika date they were closed). It's amazingly fun, and luckily Ashley is a pro at navigating the machines - she says she doesn't speak Japanese, but you wouldn't know it judging by the way she poked at the foreign keyboards with mellifluous aplomb. And our cardigans perfectly complemented one another.

The semester is almost over - I just have two large projects to complete over the next two weeks and then I shall officially welcome summer with a big picnic by the lake.

*update: Ashley sent me some more properly-scanned photos, including some new ones I didn't have! Peace!

It's a Wash

Downtown Oakland / Encore Karaoke Lounge - 2012

Hangover Cures

shirt, docs, denim jacket - thrifted // skirt - vintage, Pretty Penny // socks - SF Sock Market // shades - buffalo exchange

Pardon the lack of posts lately. I'm in the final two weeks of the semester, as well as coming up on the print-deadline for the next Blood is the New Black Magazine, and I made the mistake of ordering a double whiskey and coke while at a concert on Tuesday night. The cocktail waitress said "It's double the price but triple the pour!" Right now it's all I can do to put on clean underwear every day.

Rachel took these during a healing lunch date of Vietnamese food and iced coffee yesterday. While walking to meet her, I was accosted by dude in purple pants on a skateboard whizzing toward me with an open tackle-box in his hands. "I know you wanna buy some earrings...!" he yelled, and he was right. I did want to buy some earrings; I was pleasantly surprised at how creepy they were. Garrett, I learned, was on his way to the Oakland Museum of California for a class assignment ("but I make these and try to tell them wherever I go, because I'm an art student and I'm broke"). I chose ones that look like a baby emerging from my lobes.

Who knows? If Garrett keeps doing his homework, these could be worth dozens of dollars someday.

Wanderlust

Will Brown Gallery SF / Lake Merritt, Oakland - 2012

Puzzle Pieces

suede skirt, blouse, jacket - thifted // hat, bag - vintage // heels - TopShop

Most of these photos didn't come out, so I had to give some of them the Jak&Jil treatment, i.e. framing the torso to better emphasize the armload of bracelets clutching an iPad covered in a leather slipcase bearing the latest it-print (Ikat, leopard, digitized floral, etc). Sadly, none of those elements are present here, but it's still a nice excuse to get nutty with the crop tool.

This is what I wore to meet Rachel, Jen, and Annalise for a screening of Barbarella as part of the SF Fashion Film Festival last week. It was totally worth $15 witness, on the big screen, such heights of sci-fi inanity and cheeseball sexual innuendo coupled with Jane Fonda's amazing costumes. I definitely see why it's considered a fashion film... but it makes Logan's Run look like Schindler's List.

Do you see the kilt-pin in the second photo? I took it off of a skirt one day to use as a quick-fix for closing a blazer that was missing a button. I kind of like the way it looks hanging off of a buttonhole, so I now I slip it onto any jacket that has one, missing buttons or no. Call it an archaic punk flourish; lord knows it's the only kind I got.

Witch Hunt

vintage everything

 Oakland, 2012

Lakeshore Ave.

suede skirt, blouse - thrifted / jacket, brooch - vintage / shoes - Madison Hardig / bag - AdeleShop

That's not an attempt at babeface in the last photo. I'm whistling. As you can see, it was very beautiful out, and it behooves one to whistle while conducting a sunset promenade in such conditions. I had a great day catching up with a new friend and experiencing one of those brief, magical thrifting episodes where you spontaneously pop in and walk out 10 minutes later with two sweaters and the perfect blackwatch plaid skirt. This little jacket is a newish eBay score. I'm trying to build up my outerwear wardrobe in response to this NorCal weather (coats and sweaters were never of much concern in LA) and tapestry is all I want. Coats, bags, skirts, shoes... I'd tapestry my face if it were socially acceptable / medically possible.

I'm working on some strange inspiration posts that will hopefully go up over the next few weeks, also thinking of having a giveaway. I know you're out there, readers (I got Google Analytics y'all) and it seems like giveaways are the only sure way of luring hibernating commenters out of the woodwork. Seeing as I don't have sponsors (I do have that ad over there on the right, which yields about $0.27 a month), I'll have to rifle through the kitchen drawers to come up with a prize. But it will be neat. Promise.

Polka Snake

skirt and blouse - h&m / snakeskin heels - thrifted

We've Reached a Plateau

dress - vintage / coat - vintage / bag - thrifted / shoes - FP

If the platform-shoe trend has reached critical mass, this isn't the first time. In an ode to her 20-year-old Lagerfeld platform, Cathy Horyn recently talked shit on the state of said shoes today, saying rather poetically that they've become "absurdly big — like a giant Idaho potato wedged under the ball of your foot". This is all true, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I was standing in line at Walgreens the other day, perusing a magazine and shaking my head at one of those ubiquitous dress-for-your-body-type spreads that tend to reduce women to fruit and office supplies. But I did learn that apparently I have an apple shaped body, and apparently large, chunky shoes complement my skinny legs more than delicate ones do. I'm an equal-opportunity when it comes to footwear, but I have to admit that there's a nice sense of self-possession that comes from wearing a giant, solid-ass shoe.  Rachel was nice enough to take these photos on our way to a preview party for the The Hunt SF, and for one glorious evening, we were actually the same height...