Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Birthday

All I wanted was some black and white striped pants. I can't say why I wanted them, but I'd been on the hunt for some for months. My requirements were very strict. All the stripes had to be the same width—none of that pinstripe nonsense for me—and I strongly preferred a dramatic, wide leg cut. 

I finally found what I was looking for on ThredUP, an online thrift store that I don't frequent often because their prices are rather steep (but if you want to give them a whirl, here's a referral code for 10 dollars off: https://www.thredup.com/r/Y4HCK2). However, desperation calls for desperate measures. I spent 15 dollars on these pants! They didn't even fit! 

I had to take two inches off the waistline before I could wear these trousers, but that was all for the better, because when you size down a pair of pants, the leg openings are proportionally wider. And that means an even more dramatic effect!

I figured I'd be saving these pants for a crisp fall day, but as luck would have it, the weather turned a little cool on the day of my (joint with a friend's!) birthday party, so the tropical getup I'd had planned for the occasion was going to have to wait.

I paired the eyecatching pants with a purple crop top and black platform sandals, and my party ensemble was made! A connection was made, too: apparently thought of Beetlejuice when they saw these pants. I guess I'd prefer if my lovely outfit did not remind people of a half-rotted corpse, but pop culture references always garner more views, so I'm gonna run with it!

Oh, and I'm also gonna drop a dog photo in here, and my shameless attempt at boosting my online popularity will be complete!

I went to a concert!

Finally, finally, the moment arrived when I could cast off my COVID caution, put on my colorful clothes, and go out dancing with few hundred of my closest friends!

I was going to see Vini Vici, and I thought the colorful embroidery on the pants was a good choice to evoke the kind of music they often play. Everything else was just black, so as not to clash! Easy peasy! And that's good, because I barely had time to snap a picture in my huge rush out the door. I didn't plan for bits of my hair to be standing out like that—really.

The outfit isn't really one of my best, if you ask me, but the point is, I got to dress myself up for a show for the first time in 2 years!

I also promptly caught a cold, but it was worth it.

I got dressed up!

A momentous occasion occurred this weekend: I wore a dress for a public occasion for the first time since before COVID! It's not like I never wore a dress during the pandemic—I occasionally put one on just to work from home or for special occasions with my boyfriend, but this was the first time that I got all gussied up and stepped out beyond my front door! And so, I went for the cutesiest, most festive dress I could find!

The occasion was a friend's birthday party, so a party dress, complete with tulle petticoat, was in order! But because I was in the mood for something truly one-of-a-kind and avant-garde, if you will, I decided against the traditional and safe sandals, and went with calf-high white boots!

On top, some dogwood flower earrings in a matching aqua hue finished off the look. I was pretty pleased with this one. The party host told me I looked beautiful, and I even matched the balloons!

Pearls before Wine

 

A lot has happened since I made my last Unfashion post: In March, I had an upsetting breakup which triggered insomnia which just never resolved, so I haven't had much energy for blogging. Other things that happened, though, were that most COVID closings and restrictions started getting rolled back, and I began dating again, which means I've had lots of opportunities to go out and get dressed up. So it's not for lack of outfits that my blog has been a desolate wasteland—just lack of motivation!

I have been taking a lot of outfit photos and then feeling too tired to share them. I probably wouldn't have posted this one either, but for one reason that I'm going to withhold for a few more paragraphs.

The focal point of this outfit is the shirt, a pearl-studded affair with a choker-like strip across the neckline. Pearl-studded everything, along with this style of shirt, both had their heyday around 2017, so it's appropriate that the ever-late Unfashonista finally got to try both of them four years past their prime. I was almost too embarrassed to wear such an obvious throwback, but I needed some fresh new tops for all the dates I've been going on, and I figured most men aren't aware enough of fashion to notice.

I ended up not wearing the shirt for a date at all, but for a winery visit with some friends—and the sole reason for this choice was so I could use the phrase "Pearls before Wine" as a title on a blog post. The shirt is even wine-colored, so it works on many levels!

Phew! I'm glad I achieved that goal and somehow managed to hammer out this narrative! Now back to my regularly scheduled sleep-deprived daze!

Naturally I had to wear pearl earrings!

"The R3fashion"

From a useless pair of leggings to a scarf, some boot toppers, and a headband, this 3-way refashion was a great way to get into the DIY groove after a long absence!

The feedstock was a pair of metallic printed leggings that I got from Swap.com.

Even though they were nonreturnable, and even though they cost $3.20 (more than I normally pay for a nonreturnable item), I took a chance on them because I figured leggings are stretchy, so they'd almost certainly fit! I was wrong. These leggings were so tight, I knew I'd never be able to sit comfortably in them.

As with most of my failed purchases, I chucked these into a donation box...and couldn't stop thinking about them! Such shimmer! What a pattern! I couldn't just let them disappear from my life like that!

These days, when faced with a fabric item that looks gorgeous but isn't quite usable as-is, my first thought is, "Can I turn it into a face mask?" In the case of these leggings, while there was more than enough material for several masks, the non-printed parts were too sheer to provide adequate filtration, and the printed areas weren't breathable at all!

Another option was just to use it as a loose-fitting mask cover, purely for decoration. I've been experimenting with scarf-style masks, and I thought the long legs of the leggings would serve that purpose admirably!

So into the fitting room (that's also my office, closet, and crafting room,) I went! The goal was to find a shape that would hang off my nose without immediately falling down from the weight of so much fabric.

I folded the leggings in half and marked a spot on the front seam, then stitched a line.  

It took three tries to find the right fit, but once I did, I could fold them in half the other way, and have a nice face cover with a center seam! Is it weird that I'm using the crotch of a pair of pants to cover my face? Maybe, but they'd never been worn, and no one else needs to know, right?

From there, I cut off the excess from the top part of the leggings, reversed the nose seam so that the stitches were all on the inside, and turned the pair of pants into one long tube with the ankle holes at either end. 

I swear I took more pictures of this process, but they don't seem to be anywhere in my camera. I think either the camera or the XD card is beginning to die, because this isn't the first time I've lost photos in a mysterious way.

In any case, once I had created a scarf-like object, I attached some ear loops to it so it would stay on my face. 

For the finishing touch, I hand-stitched over the nose seam, to hold the two layers of fabric together.

A shiny scarf mask sounds fun, but when I tried it on with clothes, I realized I wanted a little something more to make it outfit-worthy. So, with the remains of the top portion of the leggings, I set out to make some accessories: boot toppers and headband.

I was able to use two strips of the original waistband on my legs, held in place by the original elastic. They look pretty silly as I'm modeling them here, but I think they tied the outfit together nicely when I tucked them into my boots.

With the remaining strip of fabric, I made a headband. I remembered my lesson from the first headband I ever sewed from scraps, and gave it tapered ends with elastic at the bottom. The number of times I had to turn this tiny tube inside out and back again while trying to construct it, I'd rather not remember, but it was worth the effort.

It's a perfect fit! 

I wore the scarf mask and boot toppers this weekend on a date with my boyfriend (who said I looked like I was trying to be a ninja, and not in a good way. Sigh—we can't please everyone!). We were planning to go ice skating, but my best-laid plans, like my photos, went all asunder! I think the boot toppers would have looked adorable with ice skates, but I guess we'll never know!

10 years going on 11

 

I started this blog in 2010, which means I've been an Unfashion blogger for over 10 years (and a few months)!

I wish I'd noticed that auspicious anniversary before it passed, but let's face it: I've basically been living in my own little world since COVID, and my blog's birthday wasn't at the top of my mind. But eleven is my favorite number, so why not make a big deal out of that, and treat my eleventh year with as much pomp as is usually devoted to Year 10?

Since I haven't had, don't have, and probably won't have for a while, many blogworthy outfits to post, this seems like a great year to get all retrospective and talk about those sappy things people like to bring up when marking significant moments in the passage of time.

Things like, what's changed? How have I grown? What lessons have I learned? What funny embarrassments have I racked up along the way?

Well, I certainly haven't grown my blog from a rinky-dink affair on a free website to a media juggernaut with millions in yearly revenue, and I still can count my followers on one hand with a couple missing fingers, so in that sense, I haven't changed at all.

I did grow my salary some, and with it, my clothes-storage capability. I now have a house with 2 rooms to call my own, and I keep garments in 4 closets instead of just 2...so that has been a boon for my blog, I'm sure.

If I've learned any lessons, well, it's that people don't come to a fashion blog to read my purple prose; they do it for the pictures! But nevertheless, I persist. In fact, I persist so hard, I'm going to turn this sentimental anniversary article into a the kind of literary juggernaut I only wish my blogging career could be—post upon wordy post, chock full of musings, anecdotes, navel-gazing, and maybe even a token attempt or two at putting in some pictures!

One of my goals for this anniversary celebration is to take a closer look at how things have evolved over the past decade+, so I'm going way deep into the archives! That's where I need your help—that's right, you! For this segment (which I'm tentatively calling "Would I Wear It?"), I need my dearest readers (if I still have any) to help me choose a few past outfits to critique and cringe at.

So if you want to play, just peruse my previous posts (here's a neat way to view just the main pictures) and comment here with the link to any outfit that you'd like me to revisit. Since oldies are goodies, we're going to focus on the first 5 years of this blog. That would be 2010 to 2014, but since 2010 was pretty sparse and we seem to be doing a baker's-dozen kind of thing with numbers in this story, I'll throw in 2015 as well! The object is to observe how my personal style has changed along with the world I live in, but the bonus is that I'm sure there will be plenty of answers to the final sappy question above. Funny embarrassments, here we come!

Telework trifecta

Working from home has enabled me to experiment with fashion in a way that I never would either at the office or in a more social setting.

When I know no one's around to judge me, I feel free to push the limits, whether they're about weird silhouettes, color/pattern pairings, or level of formality. Or preferably all three, as in yesterday's outfit!

I started with this pair of floral printed leggings, which I had very nearly given up as a lost cause. I got them from Swap.com for $1.80, extra-cheap because they were non-returnable, and oh, how I wished I could return them! I suspect they might have been kids' leggings miscategorized in the adults section, but they had no tags, so I have no way of knowing. The length hovers awkwardly somewhere in between a capri and above-the-ankle—a strange cut that works nowhere, and certainly not in the middle of January. Cropped pants – even oddly cropped ones – can be cute in warm weather, but these ones are lined with terrycloth, which makes them too warm for warm weather! I was ready to just send them straight to the thrift store, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I've been so desperate for printed pants, there had to be a way to make them work!

As you can see, the way I made them work was to put knee-high socks underneath. Thus, my legs are completely protected from the cold, even though the effect is a little unconventional—weird silhouettes, here I come!

Next decision was what to wear on top. My first choice was a modest brown tunic, but that violated the cardinal rule of never cutting yourself in half by wearing long tops with short bottoms. Instead of breaking that rule, I broke another—the now-more-broken-than-kept rule of no leggings as pants!

Away with the dowdy tunic, and in its place, a beige long-sleeve tee! Leggings and T-shirt together would be too informal at the office (though I would wear each separately), so this work-from-home look takes full advantage of my lack of a dress code.

However, since I was still on the clock, I did decide to notch up the formality by adding something I rarely bother with when lounging at home: an accessory! The T-shirt by itself is quite plain and thin, so I decided to draw attention elsewhere with a strategically positioned scarf.

Or, to be more accurate, napkin. Yes, the thing around my neck is technically a napkin that I got for Christmas in a lunchbox set, but I figured it would get much more use if I kept it with my clothing, and I was correct. It jumped out at me when I was searching for a coordinating scarf for today's outfit. The colors and the print were different from those on the pants, but in an adjacent sort of way. 

 

 

I felt the combination. almost matching but not quite, was perfect for work from home, because I might never be brave enough to try it in the real world!

In total, today's outfit may have been too skimpy, too mismatched, and too experimental for the office, but I thoroughly enjoyed wearing it for a cozy day of teleworking!

2020 Hindsight

At the beginning of every year, I reflect back on the previous one and the sartorial styling that gave it flavor. Last year gave me more time than ever for reflection, but fewer actual resultant observations.

During the Great Quarantine of 2020, while the wheels of fashion still kept turning (as evidenced by the continued existence of fashion publications and the #OOTD hashtag), I hopped off the ride. I paid only passing attention to the articles telling me what to stock up on for next season; I certainly didn't get to observe any other fashionistas in real life!

So the pickings are slim, but I'll do what I can to report on a trend or two before returning to my cozy and carefree existence where leggings really are pants.

Sweatpants

Speaking of pants, let's start this post off with something you all knew was coming—sweatpants! The darling of athleisure that translated all too easily into stay-at-home everything, sweatpants were the topic of every Zoom joke that wasn't about putting wine in your coffee mug. For me (and presumably for many others), these cozy pants were not just a trend but a necessity, as a COVID winter loomed. I went all-in on sweatpants in the fall, buying as many bargain pairs as I could get my thrifty hands on (it ended up being 3), and even making a token effort at staying relevant by converting a straight-leg pair into the slouchy cuffed type.

Ultra-cropped tops

The other trend I noted in my sweatpants post was this specific type of very short, very baggy shirt. It seems impractical to me in a thermoregulatory sense, but it seemed almost mandatory to pair little cropped sweatshirts with your big baggy sweatpants, as long as you were young and/or in possession of abs of steel. I am neither (and rather committed to keeping my midriff warm!) so I am happily letting this trend pass me by.

Cardigans

I suppose in a year where everyone seeks out the comfy and cozy, a topper that reminds you of your grandmother makes perfect sense! To be honest, though, the short, large-button cardigan is the first trend I noticed this year, way before coronavirus was even a gleam in the CDC's eye. It has popped up pretty consistently in my halfhearted fashion scrolling, and cardigans are one of the specific items that my local consignment shop was requesting this winter. If I were ever to seek a sign to let me know what's trendy, it would be whatever the professional buyers are trying to obtain. Cardigans it is!

Boots with lug soles (and knee high shafts)

I always put a shoe trend on my list, but to be honest, I've hardly paid attention to shoes at all this year, since the only ones I can wear are soft flat ones for walking quietly on my hardwood floors and biking to the grocery store. I've totally let practicality supersede trendiness in my recent shoe shopping. But there's one thing I couldn't help but notice every time I read a missive from my Internet fashion advisors. It's the lug-sole boot. Although my sample pictures are exclusively of the above-the-ankle variety, I've been told that knee-high boots are coming back. After years of learning to loathe thigh-high boots (they always slide down!) and reluctant adoption of ankle boots, I'm excited for the return of knee-highs—my first boot love. Of course, time will tell if it really becomes a trend, but here's hoping anyway!

 

Predictions

Speaking of hoping, it's time to talk predictions. My forecasting game was way off last year – I haven't seen even a hint of lace gloves! Seeing as I was such a poor guesser for 2020, I hesitate to imagine what 2021 will bring, but yes, I'm going to make the attempt anyway.

Assuming we beat the coronavirus and can start strutting our stuff before the year's too far gone, I'm banking on a flood of maximalism. After a year of being confined to our homes, choosing comfort over fashion, and few opportunities for dressing to impress even if we were so inclined, I think we're all going to want to cut loose! Bring on the sequins! The sparkle! Every impractical but oh-so-interesting statement garment we've stuffed into the backs of our closets and are now going to wear all at once! If this vision comes true, I can't wait to see what it looks like!

Ultimate Gray and Illuminating

Since I started my tradition of wearing the Pantone Color of the Year on New Year's Day (or the day after!), this will be the first year that there have been two colors for the price of one! Every once in a while, Pantone chooses a two-tone combination to be its "color" of the year. Is it cheating? Perhaps, but it's not my place to critique their color selections—it's my place to wear them.

I was initially unenthused by this year's choice of "Ultimate Gray and Illuminating"—after all, I unwittingly wore Ultimate Gray for my Pantone outfit in 2018, and would never find it an interesting color even if it hadn't been done before. The other half – "Illuminating" – variously described as a "bright," "vibrant," "cheerful," "warming" yellow, sounded a lot more fun, except for the fact that I don't really have anything yellow in my wardrobe.

Well, anything, really, except that one sweater I've been wearing and rewearing since at least 2016. The thought of my best option being a tired-out old shirt with a boring pair of gray slacks sent me into a funk...until I realized this was the perfect excuse to shop for something new! I am forever trying to get more warm colors into my collection. Though lately my sights have been set on goldenrod, 2021 seemed as good a time as any to shift to an even more sunshiney shade!

As soon as I saw this yellow zippered hoodie on Swap.com, instantly my spirits soared and my imagination went into overdrive, calculating all the fashiony fun that could be had with such a lively layering piece (you know I'm in a good mood when I start piling on the alliteration and inventing new words!).

Most importantly, it was a velour hoodie! I missed the velour tracksuit trend the first time around. Though I had a coworker at the grocery store who wore her Juicy Couture almost every day (and was, although she never knew it, the one who gave me the courage to trade in my jeans for yoga pants and start donning knitwear for work), I myself never got to  jump on the tracksuit bandwagon.

But better late than never, as the Unfashionista always says (since last month!), and I've been hearing from reliable sources that velour is cool again! So yes, I had to buy the hoodie. At 9 dollars, it was more than I pay for a shirt, but within my price range for a jacket (maximum 10), so I felt I'd be excused for overspending, especially for such a worthy occasion.

I paired the hoodie with a grey camisole and some Ultimate Gray workout leggings that I recently retired from actually working out. Poorly designed for athletics, they are neither very flexible nor very breathable. About the only thing they're good for is anchoring an athleisure outfit while just happening to be the Pantone Color of the Year.

The icing on the bottom was a brand new pair of light grey sneakers with metallic racing stripes, which were neither Ultimate Gray nor Illuminating, but complemented the colors in a way that I liked.

In this very loungey ensemble, I am at perhaps my finest representation of Quarantine Chic. Now that I've hit the pinnacle, there's nowhere to go but down. You hear that, COVID? Time to get lost. 2021 (and its promise of real pants) awaits!