Split front pants

After almost 39 years of wearing pants that fully cover my shins, I was ready for a change. How convenient that split-front trousers began appearing sometime early last spring, just in time to lift me out of the rut that I didn't even know I was in! I was instantly drawn to the style, but it took me until just now to actually try it out for myself.

I was on the verge of donating the pants that I had used so many years ago to try out the "stepped hem" look, when it occurred to me that they might as well be put to good use as another experiment in alternative hem styles!

I re-sewed the side seams, bravely cut a slit right up the center, about 1/3 the way up to my knee, and finished the edges so they wouldn't fray.

Inside view

This was a super-simple project, but one that gave me great joy! One of my coworkers even noticed them!

And that nearly upended my neat little world. Since the past year or so, I've pretty much given up on "doing fashion" at work. My long stretch of working from home made me realize how little I actually interact with people at the office, how little need there is to dress to impress, and how little value there is in spending all my time planning, executing, photographing, and commentating outfits. Which explains why I've gone from writing two to ten blog posts a month, to, uh, so far, closer to two a year.

But, this was a creative crafty project that attracted comment! So, for old times' sake, I decided to share it. Is this the beginning of my triumphant return to prolific blogging? Stay tuned til September to find out!

 

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!

Black / Hearts

Over the years, my Valentine's Day outfits have been evolving from simplistic single pieces in the holiday's signature colors to entire heart-themed getups.

The other thing they've been doing is getting more subdued in color. Last year, it was navy blue (and a super-subtle pink); this year at work, it was moody dark red almost entirely subsumed by black. But for Valentine's Date Night this year (which occurred 2 days after Valentine's Day, but still counts!), I took it to a new extreme by not wearing a single piece in red or pink!

That's right; for the first time ever, my Valentine's outfit consisted almost entirely of neutral colors!

The centerpiece of the look was this black skirt with white hearts, which I ordered on Swap.com for a cool $2.50 the last week of January, and which arrived with only a week to plan an outfit around. While I could have added a lot more color if I were so inclined, I was really digging the stark contrasts in all the black and white pieces I tried on (and I tried on a lot!). In the end, I went with black stockings, my newish white layered boots, and a white long-sleeve crop top.

I did manage to work in a tiny flash of color: blue heart earrings, which have actually been sitting around unworn since I wore their pink twins last year! It's about time they got some love!

My Fuzzy Valentine

I started planning this year's Valentine's Day outfits back in September, but when the Big Day went from "some far-off occasion" to "this upcoming Friday," I suddenly felt like I hadn't done any preparation at all! I spent most of the past week trying and re-trying different outfit combinations every evening, and was still waffling around last night.

Part of the reason for my indecision was the very recent addition of these shoes into the pool of contenders. They are yet another shoe refresh project that I've been dragging out for months and only finished reupholstering on Sunday (I'll give you the full DIY in a few days). It wasn't until Tuesday that I noticed that their reddish-purple color made them a potential option for Valentine's Day, but once I realized that if I wore them, I could title the resultant blog post, "My Fuzzy Valentine," their fate was sealed (can't help it; I'm addicted to cutesy headlines!).

On Wednesday, I came up with a couple of outfits that used the shoes (mostly involving matching red leggings), but as I lay in bed that night, sleepless with excitement about my upcoming activities and their corresponding getups, I was also ruing the fact that the boots didn't really stand out next to the same-color leggings. It would be better if I could wear them with black pants...but then what to wear on top? I remembered that the fabric I'd used on the boots originally came from a shirt, and the inner layer might still be around and wearable. The next morning, I concluded that the original shirt, while verifiably still around, was definitely not wearable. Fortunately, I had a camisole that was, and was almost the same color!

So all day at work on Thursday, my brain was churning out ideas for different ensembles that could utilize the burgundy camisole. I came up with two, both involving blazers (I've barely touched any of my blazers in over a year, but there's just something about Valentine's Day that inspires me to wear a blazer!). When I got home that evening, I decided on the very businessy black look (as opposed to the jeans-based grey look), and finally had an outfit planned for my suddenly not-so-casual Friday!

Except for one thing. The burgundy booties and camisole weren't really red or pink enough to truly channel the holiday spirit. A few more romantic touches were required, and I knew just the trick!

I made a pair of bows in a matching color, and fixed them to the shoes with tiny strips of Velcro.
Make your embellishments temporary by attaching them with something removable, like Velcro! Then, as an afterthought, with just two hours to go til bedtime, I sewed on some silver heart charms so that they dangled from the bows. Now the shoes were real fuzzy Valentines! 

Lest anyone miss the subtle detailing on my boots, I added a few more hearts to my look in the form of a necklace and some stud earrings. I also re-dyed my hair red and curled it for the occasion. As they say, love is in the hair!

The ex-X top

So I had this striped top. I've owned it for a few years now (It came to me as a companion to the black skirt-pants I first wore in 2017), and in all those years, all I wanted to do was sell it.

It was so cool in theory—form fitting, with black and white stripes, and a totally unique design with bands of the same fabric layered across the front in an X shape! 

I loved it; however, on me, it just fit too tight (Indonesian sizing strikes again!), and the X's tended to bunch up around my neck and over my chest in a most unflattering manner!

New with tags, I thought it would sell for a decent price, but I had it listed on eBay for quite a while without any signs of interest from the masses. Eventually I de-listed it and decided to have one more shot at making it work for me.

My first step was to remove the sleeves. As always, my extra-wide shoulders stretched them awkwardly, an effect which was only exaggerated by the horizontal stripes.

It looked much better as a sleeveless top, but the problem of the crisscrossing straps remained. I really wanted them to work...but they didn't! Eventually I accepted the inevitable and cut the front X off at each side of the waist, leaving it attached at the top.

Wow! Magically, it now had a cute little pussy-bow neckline, which was just what this ordinary striped top needed to give it some flair!

I had to sew the panels down at the shoulders to keep them in the right position, and that was the only stitchery this project required!

Now that the shirt has gone from having an X in the front to not, I can call it my ex-X top (interestingly enough, it was given to me by the mother of my former boyfriend, so there are all sorts of exes in this story!)

It has a sort of cutesy old-fashioned look that calls to my mind the late 50's, when pedal pushers were an integral part of every teen's uniform (I'm thinking "Bye Bye Birdie" cast photos). So I wore it with my cropped lavender pants! Lavender accessories and shoes rounded out the look.

The shirt still has crisscrossed panels in the back, which I do like...but which I might choose to remove later, as they tend to pull the top of the arm openings in towards my neck, meaning constant adjustment is necessary. If I cut them off, I'll have some extra black-and-white striped fabric that would make an adorable matching headband, completing my "Bye Bye Birdie" look!

Friday Fun?Day

I think the only time I can get away with wearing graphic printed leggings at work is on Friday Funday. So I did it!

The printed graphic leggings in question are the last of the many pairs that my boyfriend bought me, cheery enough in a kind of wintry way, with their white snowflakes and cute little trees.

But that's where the fun ends. The rest of the look takes on a decidedly gothic tone, with nothing but shades of shadow and blood.The leggings are otherwise black. The dress is black. The scarf I draped over my shoulders like a shroud is deep dark red, as are my boots. The earrings are positively vampirish in their antique splendor and crimson hue.

Undereye circles worthy of the undead!

So what is this outfit? Is it fun or is it depressing? Can it be both at once? Does it matter? Does anything really matter?

Just kidding! Lighten up, you downer! Just look at how I tied my scarf to my waist with the dress' built-in sash! With styling techniques like that to cheer us up, how could things be anything but fun!?

How to wear neon yellow hair

Let's just jump right in and answer that burning question that I'm sure you were all wondering about: what do you wear with neon yellow hair?

The answer is simple—a neon yellow sweater!

The question of why I have neon yellow hair and a neon yellow sweater is a little more complicated to answer. If you don't already know, I'm not a big fan of fluorescent colors, so to be featuring them in both my hair and my clothing is more than a little out of character for me. But it can all be explained—I promise.

In November, I made a Swap.com order that included what I thought was a green sweater. In the photo, it looked to be a muted poison green—rather along the lines of my long-retired witchy skirt, or a slightly darker hue than my springtimey polo shirt. I was wrong. It was a saturated, eye-popping, neon chartreuse, almost more yellow than green. My first instinct was to return it, but everything else about the sweater was perfect, and sometimes I just don't want to abuse the return policy lest they take it away from me. So I kept the sweater and vowed to get at least a few uses from it before listing it on eBay.

Now to explain the hair. While my hair has been cycling between blonde and pastel shades of purple and pink for over a year now, I have been steering clear of intense color since I dyed it dark green in 2016. At this point in my life, subtlety (or at least, subtlety by Unfashionista standards!) seems like the right approach. After several months rocking the pale coral color, the next phase in the evolution of my coiffure was to be a light orange-yellow gradient. I usually buy cheap-beauty-supply-shop hair color, but because I had a very specific yellow tone in mind, I splurged on a jar of Manic Panic. I diluted it 1:1 with white conditioner, then added in some water to help the mixture go farther. I washed it off just a few minutes after I was done putting it on, thinking that so short a dye time, combined with all the dilution, would reduce the color's intensity to equal the faded orange hue left at my hair's tips. Again, I was wrong. After rinsing, my hair came out just as described on the bottle: electric banana.

Well, this was not what I intended! But after years of cutting and dyeing my own hair, I'm used to disappointing myself. What I get is very rarely what I planned...but what I've noticed is that no matter how much I hate what I've done to my hair, someone else is guaranteed to love it! So I run with it. I re-dyed the bottom half a darker orange so that the yellow wouldn't be totally overpowering, and strutted my stuff. Sure enough, I got a compliment on the new color within a day.

The thing with neon is, it is made to be noticed. To do your neon hair justice, you really have to coordinate it to your outfit much more intentionally than you can get away with when your hair color is pastel. One way to accomplish this is to wear it with all black, all white, or both, so that the hair is clearly the focal point of the outfit. That's what I did on my first day with neon hair. But by the second day, my need for colored clothes was clawing to get out! The only remaining solution was...more neon!

Fortunately, the aforementioned overly bright sweater was almost the exact same color as my hair. Problem solved, with surprisingly little effort!

Saturated colors go best with other saturated colors or "pure" neutrals – white or black. So I turned to black for my pants and shoes.

The shoes are another thing that's out of character for me. I prefer a more refined look on my feet even when the rest of my outfit is casual, so I rarely wear athletic shoes outside the gym, and almost never at work. But everyone needs a pair of basic black sneakers (for airport shoes, if nothing else!), so I got these Reeboks on Black Friday. Of course, I couldn't settle for truly basic black (I'm not an animal!), so these have a shiny finish and faceted texture just to keep things interesting.

They were interesting enough that I thought them worth pushing the boundaries of my personal dress code for. Why not play around with sporty shoes and out-there hair? There's never been a better day for it than Friday Funday!

Sock boots and backup stash

I set a little Fashion Challenge last week, to wear something new or refashioned every day for work. It was a four-day week, so it couldn't be so hard, right?

Tuesday it was my Ultra Violet shirt, Wednesday the green blazer, Thursday the navy sweater, and so all was well, right up until Friday. Friday, I had big plans to wear a cute casual outfit featuring my new burgundy velvet sock boots.

If you have been keeping up with my long-winded years-in-review, you know that both sock boots and velvet boots have been ruling the footwear roost for a while now. I craved a pair of velvet sock boots over a year ago, yet by early this fall, the closest I had come was a suede sock boot (still never worn). Getting desperate, I searched Google Shopping for the term, and finally found a slick burgundy pair just under my maximum price at Forever 21.

 

I was fairly surprised when the entire month of December afforded me zero opportunities to wear this classically Christmas-colored shoe, so for the new year, I resolved to get it out of its box and onto my foot as soon as possible.

Cut to Friday, the day I'd selected to finally wear these boots! I won't bore you with the details of what I originally chose to wear with them, because I didn't wear it. When I got to the office, I realized my wardrobe was malfunctioning in a major way!* Although it wasn't the too-revealing type of wardrobe malfunction, I looked unkempt and completely below my standards. I was annoyed with myself and sad, for a minute, until I realized that this misfortune was the perfect opportunity for me to showcase my Backup Stash.

Backup Stash? You ask. What's that? Well, let me tell you!

Years ago, I started keeping extra clothes at the office in a side drawer of my desk. At first, it was basically just workout clothes, back when I used to sometimes visit the gym after work. Over time, I realized it might be helpful to keep an extra pair of socks and underwear. Maybe a sweater, in case I get cold. A blazer, in case I have an unexpected meeting. Flat shoes, for unplanned across-campus walks. Etc. Etc. Over the years, I have completely filled that drawer with clothes and shoes that might come in handy in an emergency situation. They are usually things that I have retired from everyday wear, so they tend to fit poorly or be out of style, but better that than walking around all day with a huge stain on your pants, right?

The backup stash saved the day for my Fall Florals post a year ago, but I've never before worn garments from the stash so prominently as I did on Friday. What a momentous day!

I was already wearing leggings, so it made sense to wear a dress—I keep a black-and-white sheath dress in the stash. The dress has no sleeves, so I topped it off with the blazer from the stash.  A little too large, a little wrinkly, but still better than my original outfit!

I deliberately limit my stash to mostly black items so they'll look OK with almost anything else I might be wearing, and it paid off for this outfit. My burgundy velvet sock boots didn't look out of place at all, in spite of being worn with clothes that were completely unplanned! Fashion Challenge, complete!

*I told you I wouldn't bore you with this, but if your curiosity is too much for you (as it was for me when I read this post through the eyes of someone else), here's what happened: I wore a black dress that I'd cut up and trimmed with lace on the bottom. The cheap lace edge was clinging to my leggings and causing the whole dress to bunch up around my thighs. The previous night, I'd attached weights to the hem to keep it down, and while this helped, I only tested it out over my pajama pants, which were apparently a much less snaggy texture than the leggings. When I got to work, I found that not only was the dress still bunching up, but you could see the weights very clearly through the lace.

Masquerade

New Year, 2014, when I donned my first
(self-decorated, naturally!) masquerade mask.

The Unfashionista loves a good masquerade ball. 

I've only been to one, but liked the idea so much that I started accumulating a collection of masks, "just in case."

The opportunity to bring one into the spotlight finally occurred last weekend, at a friend's recreation of Truman Capote's (I would say "famous," but I'd never heard of it until I got my invitation) Black and White Ball. We were required to wear black and white, and encouraged to bring a mask if the spirit moved us. Of course, I needed no further encouragement, so I set about decorating the fanciest of my masquerade masks, which conveniently at this point was nothing more than a white base.

I had an ostrich feather I'd been hoarding (incidentally, I'm pretty sure I acquired it at the same New Year's party as in the picture), so I hot-glued it to the mask, also wrapping it with fishing line for good measure. The mask had ties to attach it to one's head, but I didn't like what that did to my hairstyle, so I removed those and replaced them with a stick, which is a much more classy way to wear a masquerade mask anyway.

When all was said and done, my mask was one of only two at the party, and no one was actually wearing the other one, so mine stayed in my purse for the duration of the fête. But here's a picture of me peacocking around in it at home after the event was over.

Alas, my handiwork doomed ever to languish in the darkest reaches of the internet, known only to the elite readers of fashion's best-kept secret—my blog!

Unlike my very secret mask, the outfit I wore got a lot more positive attention. At least 3 people commented that they loved my dress, and at least one of them took enough interest to learn that it wasn't actually a dress, but an amalgamation of three different garments: my FabKids tutu, an old camisole that I cropped and hemmed specifically for this occasion, and a new sheer top with stars that I recently acquired from China/eBay.

Weird neckline, cool design.

Getting the top was quite an ordeal—I ordered one last year, but it got turned back at customs, and the seller declined to send me a replacement (they refunded me). Later on, I decided I wasn't ready to roll over and quit just yet, so I ordered another one in August. This time it arrived, and I have to say it wasn't a bad deal for $1.99. The original neckline was hideous, but I was able to fix that with a few snips of my scissors.

Since it was a black-and-white party, and so far I was wearing only black, I simply had to don my white knee-high boots. Had I been wearing the mask, I would have had a nice sandwich of black and white color (like an inverted Oreo), but I had to settle for some much less noticeable white dangle earrings.

Black Olive

Here's a color combination I don't think I've ever tried before: olive green and black.

I'm glad I was able to inject some novelty into my outfit somehow, because overall, today was a sad day for an Unfashionista—drab, grey, rainy, and ... not even 70 degrees! In August! What is this world coming to? These last few days of August have all been unseasonably cool, and today's weather just takes the cake.

But I digress. Novelty. I was talking about novelty.

The olive sweater is by no means novel; I think I've had it for around a year or maybe even two, but I hardly ever wear it, because it's so boxy and baggy; it generally has the effect of making me look like a huge hulking blob. I kept it out this summer when I put most of my cool-weather clothes away, because I thought I might like it better paired with shorts. I never got around to wearing it that way, but when I looked at today's bleak forecast, I realized it was time. Since I don't wear shorts at work (except that one time), I decided I'd wear it with a short skirt instead, which amounts to basically the same thing, but is for some reason more office-appropriate.

It was just my luck that I had recently purchased a new pair of olive green shoes that would coordinate perfectly with my olive drab cardigan. What's the difference between olive green and olive drab? Well, as with most color words, it is frequently up to the person who uses them, but in my book, olive drab is just a desaturated (i.e. grayish) version of olive green. The shoes just barely squeak by as "green" instead of "drab."

Once I had decided on what to wear, the next step was to make it all actually wearable! As is common in my fashion life, what started out as simply assembling an ensemble morphed into a sewing extravaganza. First I decided I could fix the boxy-and-baggy problem of the sweater by giving it a more tailored shape. So under my sewing machine it went. I freehanded a couple of generous curves into the side seams, and ended up with a slightly more fitted version of the original. I took before and after pictures, but the difference is so subtle even I can't see it. Oh well, at least I feel better about wearing this sweater!

Second, the black-and-beige lace top needed some refinement. It was originally a too-short dress, which I wore once as a dress and regretted all evening, then started wearing with the bottom folded under as a top. Finally I decided to make the change permanent and cut it to shirt length sometime over last winter. It has a slippery beige liner and a tight lace outer layer, and I found after a couple of wears that the liner would always start peeking out the bottom as the outer layer rode up. So my final alteration to this top, made last night, was to tack the two layers together at the side seams, to hopefully prevent any further wardrobe malfunctions.

My final additions to the ensemble were a pair of earrings—a brighter green than olive, I'm counting on them to add sparkle and lightness to the somewhat dreary look—and a headband.

 
In case you didn't notice in my last post, I changed up my haircut again—to my shortest bob yet!—and that means it's time for me to start experimenting with new ways to decorate my hair. I found that with my last hairstyle, which I started blunt-cutting myself around March of last year, the most flattering look was to just leave it alone (though occasionally I had some luck with spiral curls, that never happened unless I had an event to attend and a lot of time on my hands in the preceding hours). But now that it's shorter, rounder, and just plain different, it may lend itself better to ornamentation...and dare I say... a new dye job?

A happy goth

These days when I'm going out, I usually gravitate towards pants (or shorts, in the summer) and a shirt, because it's a versatile combination that can take you almost anywhere...but yesterday, I felt like wearing a dress (perhaps because the day before, I had spent the evening in shorts and a satin halter top – as seen at right – and wanted to change it up)! 

 

I immediately went for my black-and-white striped dress, because I'd just recently downgraded (or upgraded, depending on your perspective) it from a "dress I wear to work" to a "dress I will only wear outside of work" (because I decided it was just too short for the office...unless I wear it with tights, like I did the first time I wore it...but I haven't been much into tights this year...are you catching my indecisive vibe?) and I wanted to try it out in its new role.

A black and white dress lends itself perfectly to colorful shoes, and I really wanted to wear one of my new pairs of flamboyant high heels. But alas, when I tried them on, I realized to my dismay that my recently sprained ankle still wasn't up to the challenge. I was practically devastated.

But I consoled myself with the knowledge that if I couldn't have a party on my feet, I could at least have a party on my ears, so I dug around in my Unworn Jewelry Basket for some suitably new and exciting earrings.

Once again, I struck out, since I didn't have any new earrings worth wearing. But I did have a black lace choker and matching bracelet, which just felt right, even if they were somewhat lacking in the color department. I guess you could say that having such depressing shoe options had put me in a black mood.

Well, I reached into my bag of optimism and consoled myself again: if I wasn't wearing colorful shoes, and I wasn't wearing colorful jewelry, I could at least wear a colorful face!

I made up my eyes with some dramatic winged liner, a hint of purple shadow, purple mascara, and even purple "lash sprinkles" (glitter mascara). The purple mascara was a new thing for me (I've done lots of blue mascara, but never purple!), so I was pretty excited to finally try it. You know what else I was excited to try? Purple lips! A few months ago, I found this tube of liquid lip color on the sidewalk near where I work, and being a shameless scrounge, I decided I had to take it. Yes, it was opened, yes, it was potentially contaminated, but I'd been wanting some purplish lipstick for a long time, and here it had just showed up in my path! I felt like it was destiny. So I took it home and did my best to sterilize it by thoroughly cleaning the applicator wand first, then letting it sit for a couple of weeks, then freezing it for a couple of days, then microwaving it for a couple of seconds (I had to stop when the metallic ink on the tube started sparking!). I gave it a trial run at home and didn't suffer any adverse effects, so I decided it was probably safe!

And finally, I got to wear it for real. Between my black jewelry, black-dominant attire, and weirdly purple lips, I had a little bit of a goth thing going, which was totally at odds with my now-positively-spritely mood. I was so pleased at how my makeup had turned out! Psshh, who needs high heels when they can have purple lips?

Working it at work

I don't much care for dressing professionally, and my definition of "business casual" skews heavily to the casual, but this outfit is one I feel would have met the dress code at most offices. 

Maybe the person whose mission in life lately is "pushing our casual dress code to the limits," is not the best person to trust when it comes to choosing your office attire, but this is the kind of stuff I would try to wear every day if I weren't permitted the regular indulgence of jeans at work. 

First off, though it is anchored by a pair of modest (some might say slightly too big) black trousers, the top is bright red satin to satisfy my love for color.

Though the shoes are flat and modest, they are decorated with huge embroidered flowers to satisfy my need for imagery.

While I am wearing a button-up blouse (my very definition of office dress), it doesn't have any sleeves! (I did that, of course—it was one of the many puff-sleeve blouses that I've put under the knife). I always feel a little better, a little more free, when nothing is covering my arms.

So am I casual or professional? Conservative or artsy? Well, the blazer settles it!

What blazer? Well, during the day, during a freezing meeting, I covered up with a grey checked blazer, which I forgot to take a picture of, of course, but just look at this old blog post of it and imagine it on top of what I'm wearing now. It definitely could not get more businesslike than that. 

Which brings me to my philosophy of professional dressing in a nutshell! When in doubt, throw on a blazer!

T is for Tutu

This tutu has a backstory. Not a very interesting one, but I'm going to tell it anyway, because how else would I fill my whole post up with unnecessary narrative?

There's this website I shop from called JustFab. When I joined them (they operate on a membership system, albeit one that you don't have to pay for as long as you remember to "skip" every month), they only sold shoes, but they keep expanding their operations. A few years ago, they suckered me into joining their newish (then) "Fabletics" site for workout clothes with an offer of 5$ leggings (their regular prices are definitely too expensive for a monthly membership, but the leggings are the best pair of athletic pants I've ever owned). More recently, they started their "Fab Kids" line, which as you might be able to guess, is for children's clothing. With no kids in my life and no intention to change that, I had zero interest in buying from Fab Kids, but they kept emailing me special offers, until finally they made me an offer I couldn't refuse: my first outfit free! I'd only have to pay 4.95$ shipping. 

Well, I've worn clothes from the kids' department before (one of my favorite coats ever was a girls' XL), so I checked to see whether their size range could accommodate my adult frame, and it turned out that it could! So I joined Fab Kids. I figured, at 4.95$ for 2 garments, even if the endeavor was a complete failure, I'd have a nice new outfit to donate to a clothing drive at hardly any expense.

Fab Kids allows you to save a profile for the kid you are shopping for, so I invented myself a "daughter." Her name is Fern, she is 16, wears a size XXL, and is now the proud owner of a Fab Kids skirt and T-shirt.

Today, I'm wearing the skirt. The website referred to it as a "tutu." I usually reserve that word for a skirt with a little more volume, but it was made of tulle, so it fits the T-theme regardless of what you call it.

I paired the tutu with my glittery purple shirt, purple earrings, and purple shoes. The look is a little overly festive for a typical Monday (shall I say it's "too too?"), but it's the holiday season, so I can just say I'm wearing it to yet another workplace party.

EDITOR'S NOTE: All links to shopping websites in this post contain my personal referral link! If you do decide to shop from any of these websites, we both share great benefits if you join from my personal link.

S is for Stars & Stripes

Fashion Dog never misses an opportunity to be seen in pictures.

S-Day came just in time for me to finish a small alteration on the new black-and-white striped tunic I picked up at a rummage sale over the summer. So S-Day had to be stripes day!

Unlike argyle or lightning, stripes are common enough that I'd feel a little pitiful only wearing one item to represent them, but oddly, I didn't have anything else in my wardrobe stripey enough (Well, I did have these knee socks, but they were just a bit too crazy for an everyday non-quirky outfit)!

To make up for the weak presentation of stripes, I picked another S-word to round out the day, and, logically, since I have a lot of stars in my clothes, (not to mention "stars & stripes" are a pretty common pairing thanks to the American flag), that pick was stars. 

So it was no struggle to find a pair of star earrings (pictured in selfie below) and a pair of star boots.

If you haven't figured it out by now, my photographer is,
frequently, the same friend who's obsessed with the Miami Dolphins,
and today he quite coincidentally wore a striped shirt
to match both his his team's colors and my theme!

You can't see them in the complete outfit, but when I first got dressed, expecting a relaxing day at home (but turning out to be a crazy day of brunching and drinking and excessive photographing), I wore a pair of Christmas socks, expecting them to be my sole (get it?) footwear option of the day. They are, in fact, the crowning glory of this outfit, featuring both stars and stripes at once!

O is for Over-the-knee

Today's outfit is all about the boots. Big, tall, in-your-face, over-the-knee boots. I've had a thing for over-the-knee socks and boots for a couple years now. But this year, I decided to make a concerted effort to acquire a solid collection.

There are the black ones that I've had for so many years, they've developed holes in the toes (I've worn them slouched for my blog before, but never in all their thigh-high glory); the brown ones I sang the praises of last fall; another brown pair given to me by a friend (tricky to wear, because you can't bend your legs in them, but I vow you'll see them some day!); the black fur-lined ones (which really aren't thigh-high, though sometimes I unfold the top and try to pretend they are); and now, finally, these beauties.

 

 

There's so much to love about these boots. The metal studs remind me of my "rockstar boots," which I loved but which wore out a few years ago. The price was only $6.99 at the thrift store, minus at least a 25% discount, making them an unbelievable bargain.

And finally, they are the tallest boots I've ever had! I was planning to wear over-the-knee socks under my boots, so O-day would not be a one-garment wonder, but the boots were so tall, they completely disguised my socks.

O is for "Oh, well."

I paired the boots with dark clothing and simple pewter earrings so that nothing would overshadow the shoes. After reviewing a few of my photos, I realized the "zipper baby" was none too flattering, so I unzipped the extra-long cardigan for a few more shots. Which way do you think it looked better?

 

Unvestment

Another day, another play on the word "vest." The first time I wore this garment (I had received it as a dress that looked like it had formerly been a vest, and I remade it into a vest), it met with a lot of disapproval, and I wasn't really crazy about it myself. I played around with squaring off the bottom hem, but it never really worked...and besides, I already have several black vests in a variety of lengths, and didn't see that this one with green trim would really get much use. So I remade it again, in a process so simple, I can describe it in one sentence!

I took the open-front vest and closed the front again, took in the sides, and shortened it to make it a shirt! From vest to dress to vest to shirt...round and round it goes! I wonder if i will open up the front again somewhere down the line!

As it turns out, a black shirt with green trim doesn't really go with very much in my wardrobe, but I paired it with capri pants in a slightly different shade of green, for my signature monochrome (plus black!) look.

Original

 As a vest

As a shirt