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!

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!

Week 8: A Farewell to Arm Coverage

I haven't been posting my work-from-home outfits as the novelty factor wore off and they basically became variations on a tired theme, but this week I'm back! There are exciting developments afoot! This week, as the weather finally, hesitantly, approached something resembling warm, I got to wear short sleeves!

On Wednesday, it was a pink and red floral number, topped off with my still-new-and-exciting dusty pink duster! The color coordination came as a pleasant surprise even to me, the person who put it together!

On Thursday, my gold cardigan made its second appearance, over an off-white T-shirt and my still-new-and-exciting refashioned gold pants for another day of monochromatic dressing.

Both those days, the afternoon got warm enough that I was able to discard the cardigans for a few hours and enjoy freely flailing my limbs! But Friday was truly special. The forecast predicted 86 degrees, and I marked the occasion with my first dress since the first week of April! I didn't even need a cardigan in the morning!

Usually, by this time of year, I've already had my spring wardrobe out for several weeks and sometimes (as in 2018) even already begun wearing my summer clothes.

This year has been the cold and miserable exception. My usual cutoff for the Spring Switch, seven consecutive days of high temps above 59, has still not actually occurred—meaning that if I were following the rules, I'd still be decked out in my winter wardrobe of cable knits and furs.

But I haven't been following the rules. I went ahead and unpacked my spring clothes sometime in mid-April, as we'd had enough days in the high 60's and low 70's that I'd started re-wearing T-shirts. I'd also run out of interesting outfits for any weather condition, since wearing nothing but house clothes has effectively reduced my wardrobe to less than a third its usual size. So out came the transitional clothing, even though plenty of chilly days awaited!

There's no reason I shouldn't be able to fashionably enjoy whatever warm weather we have, whenever we have it! Following a set of arbitrary rules is needlessly restrictive and prevents me from living my life to the fullest! Rules are for the repressed! Plus, it's pretty clear that climate change is the new normal and I can no longer count on consistent weather patterns to guide me in my clothing selections.

So I think I've given up on the rules entirely. I revise them and make exceptions so often; I may as well just abolish them. From now on, I'll use my own good judgment as to when it's appropriate to rotate my collection. Rules? They're more like guidelines.

A mustard manifesto

I can't say that I truly have a favorite color. In fact, I'm so uncertain of my favorite color, I've actually written a whole blog post about the subject!

Although my color tastes wax and wane, they almost always skew to cooler, more pastel shades, so another thing I can say is that I never would have expected mustard yellow to appear in my short list of preferred hues. But guess what happened.

Over the past 2 years, I've noticed myself being drawn more and more often to darker yellow and golden garments. My mustard cropped cardigan is a "darling of my wardrobe." I'm always trying to find excuses to wear my mustard long-sleeved tee, and I'm beefing up my collection of the color all the time.

My birthday shoes this year, which I lamented were not as shiny and gold as I'd been expecting, could quite accurately be described as mustard. An early summer order from Thredup contained my first-ever pair of mustard pants (really my first-ever pair of pants in any shade of orange or yellow). But when they arrived, I saw that the color, which had seemed so warm online, was almost greenish in real life. I wasn't sure if I was a fan, but I kept the pants and decided to see what happened.

This outfit happened. I had trouble coordinating the oddly colored pants with anything, hence the preponderance of black and white...but the slightly greenish yellow pants did happen to go quite well with my yellowish green shoes.

The 'fit is nothing to get excited over, but the existence of the pants themselves got me to thinking about color—specifically, how we define a particular color and the attributes a shade must have in order to meet the definition. I've had this internal debate about salmon and coral, and now, it seems, it's time to have it about mustard.

Those pants were not the sunny, orange-adjacent hue that I'd hitherto characterized as mustard, but with their slightly green tint, they were actually closer to real-life mustard than any other thing I'd ever bestowed with that descriptor. Real mustard – the kind that comes out of a squeeze jar – isn't golden and warm. It's straight-up yellow with an often sickly (or herbaceous, if you want a more pleasant term) greenish hue.

The color I'd previously been cavalierly referring to as "mustard" for so many years is really, I now have come to believe, more accurately described as "goldenrod," or "marigold," or really any number of other terms with the word "gold" in them. And that's the color I've actually been falling in love with. Not mustard, which runs dangerously close to the same shade as snot and bile.

Much appropriately, the first and only compliment I received when I finally wore my mustard pants was in the bathroom. The giver of said compliment specifically mentioned how much she liked the pants' color...so even if I'm not certain it will ever quite meet my approval, at least it meets someone else's!

Trends of the teens

Since I started insisting that all the trends in my year-in-review fashion post had to have been actually witnessed by me somewhere other than someone else's trend report, the list has grown a lot shorter...which is fine, because that means I have more space to dig way back into previous years! I'm pretty excited, since, as long as I've been doing my annual trend reports, this is the first one that will mark the turn of not only the year, but a decade!

But let's start simple, with some of the stuff I've seen in 2019!

Square toes 

My favorite trend of the year has to be square-toed shoes. I rhapsodized about my excitement for the style all the way back in May, and I'm thrilled to announce that the boxy toe has stayed strong right into boot season! I suppose I (and the rest of the world) will get tired of it just like the last time it was in fashion, but I hope that takes a good long while!

Chunky acrylic jewelry

Here's one trend I had plenty of opportunities to shop in 2019—fat geometric acrylic hoops seemed to dominate the earring selection this year. In a similar vein, huge barrettes also cropped up everywhere—frequently covered in pearls. While usually bigger is better, somehow I just can't get on board with the strange merging of hard shapes with soft edges, and natural colors in unnatural plastic, and just, so much bigness! It's like ... a baby's toy, but fashion!

Totally tubular shoulders

I've been cringing and hoping it wasn't true, but there is no longer any denying it: 80's shoulders are back and as big as ever! These aren't the cute little puffed sleeves of circa 2005—no, these are monstrous legs-of-mutton and shoulder pads that need their own area code. I personally haven't seen anyone rocking the voluminous styles, but I chalk that up to never getting invited to holiday parties. It seemed that there were plenty of them available to buy, and formalwear was where the trend really blew up (like a balloon!).

Questionable Mentionables

That's only three trends this year, but honestly, I think that's it. I saw "shield" sunglasses everywhere during Paris Fashion Week, but I never see them in stores, so it must have been an insiders-only thing. Something in September prompted me to say that "eclipse" motifs were big, but I haven't seen a single such image since then, so I think it was my imagination. The style publications tell me that heeled flip flops are having a moment, and much as I want that to be true – after all, I called it – I haven't seen any evidence of it IRL. Huge puffy headbands à la the Renaissance are all over fashion and shopping websites but don't seem to be on anyone's actual head. Clearly this has been a slow year for actual developments in fashion.

The Decade in Review

So let's move on back into the past, when things were a lot more interesting, and talk about what made the 2010's the 2010's. For starters, definitely skinny jeans. And leggings. 10 years from now, all the kids attending "10's parties" will be giggling uncontrollably at their sausage-casing calves, but for now, it is still totally normal, and has been that way for so long I almost forget that everyone used to wear nothing but flares. While sticking your Spandex-clad legs into knee-high boots seems to have become passé by now, it was ubiquitous for enough of the decade that I think it qualifies as iconic. As far as shirts go... You know how in the 90's we had tiny spaghetti strap camisoles, and then in the 2000's, it was all about the wife beaters? Well, in the 2010's, the top pick for tops was the loose, flowy tank—bonus points if you wore it in a half-tuck. Lastly, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the advancements in technology that allowed pretty much anything to be digitally printed on pretty much anything. While everyone is by no means walking around in custom graphics 24-7, I think we will look back on the past decade as the dawn of a new era in printed apparel.

Do I have predictions for the decade ahead? Well, though I was wrong about tall socks taking over in 2019 (not saying they didn't; just saying I didn't notice if they did!), I'm still going to take a stab at the forecasting game...and this year, I'm looking at my hands—specifically, hands that I hope will soon be rocking totally non-functional lace gloves. If 80's shoulders have returned, surely their counterparts the mesh gloves can do it too!

Lastly, I'm thinking that it's been a long time since fitted shirts were truly trendy. Sure, we've got some really skimpy clubbing outfits that cling like a second skin, but in general, the last decade has been far too focused on boxy, top-heavy, figure-hiding tops. They're great for shoulder mobility, but not at all flattering on me. After 10 years, it's probably about time for the pendulum of fashion to swing back towards the slim-fitting end of things. My hope and wish for the 2020's is that I'm right!

Suits and Sneakers and Sparkles

 

My employers probably haven't realized it yet, but I am a champion of dress-code reform! Every time I do something bold and daring like anchor my work outfit with shorts, I am breaking down boundaries. Maybe they're just self-imposed boundaries, but they still count! I feel powerful when I juxtapose the business-casual with the totally casual.

While I once used to challenge myself to see just how formal I could dress at the office, I'm definitely enjoying taking it in the opposite direction these days.

Or am I? 

 

 

When your ultra-casual shoes are ornamented with ultra-dressy embellishments, does that make them more casual or more formal? Could it possibly, magically, unite the two extremes into the perfect paradigm of professional attire?

I'd like to think so, because that's what I wore to the office today.

I was going to go all out with a complete set of dress and matching jacket, but I can no longer pretend that I don't feel overdressed showing up to work in a full suit—even when I decorate it with a squirrel and leg warmers. So I took the ultimate middle path and paired my fancy-not-fancy sneakers with a (fancy) suit dress and a (not-fancy) cardigan. I've worn this combo before, but I have to say, the rhinestones bring it to the next level!

A flat worse than death

In 2017, I claimed I "would rather die than wear sneakers when I could wear heels."

Cut to 2 years later, and I've downsized pretty much all my heels (I just counted, and slightly over half of the shoes on my shoe rack now have a rise of 2 inches or less) and am now making sneakers the focus of my OOTD. 

I suppose it was inevitable, with my office wardrobe getting more casual by the month, that sneakers for work would be a logical step in the progression. Would I still rather die than wear sneakers? Heck no! Especially not if they're (a) velvet, (b) bedazzled, (c) platform, or (d) metallic.

You're probably guessing what comes next: over the past year, I purchased sneakers in all of the aforementioned styles! I guess I accepted my fate as a wearer of athleisure footwear.

I have to say, for something that I formerly ranked below death in order of preference, sneakers have made me pretty happy.

These new blue ones in particular are quite comfy (my new gold standard for a great shoe!), flattering (I think it's the thick sole and fabric that help balance my foot proportions), and made of velvet! What's an Unfashionista not to love!?

I decided to wear my new cozy kicks on the first chilly day since spring (Forecast: 72°). Cold weather is always more tolerable when you've got new exciting clothes to keep you warm! The cropped pants paired excellently with the shoes, and the top, while nothing to write home about, rounds out the look with a variety of colors.

For the love of used clothes

I'm a huge advocate for secondhand fashion. The last time I checked, 70% of my clothing collection was acquired used, and since I discovered online thrift stores (Swap.com and, just recently, ThredUP – links are referral links!), it's gone up to 78!

Today's outfit is a celebration of all things pre-loved, and what better way to represent that than with a dress covered in hearts? I got the dress at Swap.com, and found that not only was it pre-loved; it was also pre-refashioned! It apparently used to have sleeves, and I can tell that they were removed by the fraying fabric around the armholes. I'll have to do something about that, but at least I know there's one DIYer out there who's just as lazy as I am!

While the used dress and used sweater (hand-me-down from a friend) are a pretty good celebration in themselves, the real party in this outfit is the shoes.

Let's take a stroll down memory lane in them!

When I was in high school, shoes like this were at the height of fashion. I can still see me now, attending a function in our gym/auditorium with all the other girls in my class, rocking a long floral straight skirt and a cardigan-cami set (other iconic styles of the late 90's) and a pair of sandals much like these—skinny, asymmetrical straps, square toe, and, well, mine definitely had a much more aesthetically pleasing block heel, but I guess this flared look was fashionable too!

For a long time after the 90's ended, I was forced to eschew square toes because they were very clearly outdated. But what goes around comes around, and the square-toe shoe is back! After having had about 20 years to get over them, I am fully on board with their return and have gone all-in on finding vintage  sandals from the 90's to round out my collection. I've gotten three so far (and I should probably stop now!), but these off-white ones are probably my best find at only $3.49. So yeah, you can pay a couple hundred dollars for a cool, up-to-the-minute pair of vintage-looking sandals from your designer of choice, or you can head to your local thrift store right now and probably snag something decent for a couple bucks!

If that's not a reason to buy used clothes, I don't know what is!

ThredUP gave me this nifty "used" pin when I made my first order,
so naturally I had to take a photo with it for this ode to secondhand goods!

(Ti)red and (Bo)red

The only reason I'm posting today's outfit is because it showcases a moderately interesting tailoring technique I'd like to share (oh, and also those new granny shoes I'm so inexplicably proud of).

The tailoring technique can be covered in a brief paragraph.

See, when I got the dress, it was too loose, and the saggy detailing around the waistband made it look extra-frumpy. If I wanted to actually resize that waistband to fit, I would have had to unstitch a lot of layers and recreate a lot of complicated twists and gathers, and I just didn't feel up to it. Instead, I took the lazy way out, making it tighter in the back, out of sight. I stretched a piece of elastic across the seam in the back, sewed it down, and voila! I had a fitted waist!

Now let's stop talking about this boring outfit. It is so deadly dull. I am so done with red!

Ever since the influx of red hit my wardrobe back in fall of 2016, I haven't really been able to shake it.

I rarely blog outfits featuring the color (maybe because I find it so boring), but lately it seems like a disproportionately large number of my clothes contain it.

I somehow have become the owner of four pairs of red tall boots, two pairs of red ankle boots, two pairs of red flats, and one pair of red pumps. I have three pairs of red pants and two red cardigans. Surprisingly, I've got only one red pullover, but four of my winter dresses are either red or red-accented, and three of my skirts. Enough al"red"y! I don't even like red that much!

I can't figure out why I have so much red stuff when I'm not really drawn to it, but I guess it's just a matter of availability. When you do all your shopping secondhand, and you find a garment you like, you don't get to choose what color it is. It comes in the color it comes in, and that's that. So when I needed some new long-sleeved dresses this fall, somehow the only ones that suited my requirements for length and features were all predominantly red. When I wanted some colorful pants to add variety to my collection, somehow the only options were red. Even when buying new, as I often do for shoes, I have found that the most plentiful non-neutral color out there is almost always red (for example, on ShoeDazzle, I found 54 styles of red boots, but only 5 each of green and purple).

Two days ago, when I was planning my outfit and realized that literally every single unworn thing I could choose from was red, all of a sudden, I couldn't take it any more (that was the moment I mentioned I "finally snapped.") I was sick to death of red. Once, in the past, I had to make a conscious effort to stop buying everything in green. Now I think I'm going to have to declare a moratorium on red.

Red, you're dead!

So much to say

I have so many talking points on my outfit today! Are you ready for an epic read? Here we go!

1. Skirts in winter

In yet another sign of my gradual succumbing-to-wimpiness as I get older (the first was my admission that I now prefer low heels to high ones), I have almost completely given up on wearing skirts in the winter. When I first started my job, 10 out of my 18 outfits in the month of January featured a dress or skirt. This January, all of my work outfits that I can remember have included pants (and if I did wear a dress, it was with comfy leggings underneath!). Almost every time I reached into a closet and pulled out a dress or skirt (from my much smaller selection than last year), I put it back again with a cringe, thinking how complicated it is to wear a skirt in cold weather.

You basically have 4 choices:

1. Wear the skirt with nothing on your legs and freeze.
2. Wear the skirt with tall boots and freeze less—a challenge lately since the winds of fashion have been blowing towards low boots
3. Wear the skirt with leggings and deal with loads of static cling
4. Wear the skirt with tights or pantyhose, and deal with marginally less static cling, but instead have to deal with pantyhose!

None of these choices are very great, so usually I just pick Option 5: Wear pants.

But I'm back to doing One New Thing a Day with my winter clothes, and One of my remaining New Things was this lavender midi skirt.

2. This skirt

I purchased this skirt on September 9th, and it is no reflection of my lack of love for it that I haven't yet worn it. In fact, I'm not sure why I haven't worn it, other than the fact that it's winter! But this skirt is a fine specimen of skirt. Although the tags look like it was made in the 80's at the latest, it is still in great condition. Although the sizing is petite, meaning it runs the risk of being too short, its hem actually hits my legs at that most flattering point where my calves narrow below the knee. And while I initially worried it was too tight around the waist, it still buttons (thank goodness for the elasticized waistband!), and the rest of it skims my body like it was made just for me!

I have to alter at least half of my new clothes just to make them look decent, so it is a rare treat to get something new that looks perfect with absolutely no tailoring! And it's a good thing it didn't need tailoring, because that half-pleated trumpet silhouette would have been ghastly to work around! But since it is a perfect fit, it's the perfect skirt! It reminds me of something Kate Middleton would wear. The question now is, can I style it to be worthy of its royal connotations?

3. This outfit

Upon examination of my closet, I realized there were plenty of tops I could wear with this skirt, but they were all more or less the same, in that they were all a single solid color. I'm not much into wearing solid colors when I can wear graphics instead, so maybe that's another reason I haven't been wearing this skirt. However, given the lack of other options, I eventually settled on a plain cream sweater.

Although I would have liked to keep my legs warm in a pair of boots, one of my least favorite outfit formulas is solid-color top + different-solid-color bottom + different-solid-color boots. All those colors stacked on top of each other make you look like a striped flag! I had to settle for a neutral pair of pumps. Hello, frozen legs! I brought a pair of sheer ivory hose to work with me, but when I got to the office, I just couldn't stomach the idea of wearing nylons all day. I went with bare legs and a space heater! To further mitigate the striped-flag look, I decided to use a scarf to transcend the borders between strips of color.

4. This scarf

By far the most well-used scarf in my sizable collection, this butterfly scarf has been an essential part of my personal style since 2013. I wear it as a belt, as a head wrap, as a shawl in the summer, and, today, as a regular scarf in the winter. And this in spite of its very seasonally inappropriate motif! Or perhaps because of it—wearing spring themes in winter is a favorite subversive pleasure of mine.

Today I'm practicing a new way of tying the scarf at the neck—the figure 8. I made sure it had uneven tails so that the asymmetry would make it appear more jaunty, and so that one of them would dangle far enough to overlap my skirt. When wearing two different-color items on top and on bottom, literally connect the two with a vertical line—such as a scarf or vest. The physical link will help them seem more related. Striped-flag look? Not today!

Down! Heel!

I only noticed that one of the boots had lost its heel tip after I took this photo. It's off to the cobbler for me!

Some people refer to their feet (rather tongue-in-cheek, I hope!) as their "dogs," so it's quite appropriate that I've decided to apply some commonly used dog commands to my shoes.

Steady... Steady...

"Heel! Down!"

I am, rather tongue-in-cheek, of course, telling my heels to get down, because I've had it up to here with the ridiculous levels of elevation.

I have not always been such a disciplinarian with my shoes. Quite the opposite, in fact! Since high school (hehe), I've associated height with style, so whenever I could get away with it, I was wearing the tallest platforms I could find. My first fashion post ever featured a chunky mary jane with what had to have been a 5-inch heel. I wore those shoes to work. At a grocery store. Where I was standing and walking around all day. How I ever survived such an ordeal, I don't recall, but my unwillingness to do so nowadays is the reason for this post.

For many years, I felt like heels were literally and figuratively the height of fashion, and higher equaled better. I invested in them heavily, even casting aside my preference for chunky heels and experimenting with stilettos. By 2015, I would say that 90 percent of my shoe collection had heels over four inches.

And then something changed. I began to realize that woman can't live on heels alone, and that if I wanted my feet to survive into old age, I would have to give them a break once in a while. Well, I gave them a break, all right—I fell out of bed that December, fracturing a toe, and inspiring the purchase of a flotilla of flats.

By the middle of 2016, I had implemented my shoe-height rules, which state that at least 2 days out of every work week, I have to wear low-heeled or flat shoes. I originally defined low-heels as 2 inches or less, but those are actually quite hard to find, so I relaxed the rule to allow for up to 3 inches.

By the end of 2016, I had noticed that low block heels were a legitimately fashionable footwear option, which really ramped up my desire to wear them more and painful stilettos less!

I can't say for sure that it's just the increased availability of low heels, or my own aesthetic preferences changing, or my internalized desire to inflict less damage on my feet, but over the past two years, I have found that I not only require myself to wear low-heeled shoes, but I actually prefer to wear them. I've come to realize that they're not any less cute than high-heeled shoes—in fact, they're cuter than high-heeled shoes! When I wore my towering stilettos, one of my coworkers always used to stare at them and yell, "Sexy shoes!" which was never really my goal. I want to look pretty, but sexy is taking it a little too far, especially for the office. I find that low-heeled shoes fit better with my image of myself. And they're also so much more comfortable!

So I've been, over the past year, replacing many of my insanely high shoes with more sensible ones. Remember the red pumps that I wore on the Thursday of my week of pants last spring? I think that's the first and last time I wore them. I always felt they were better suited for a Halloween costume than everyday use, so in December I replaced them with some cute comfort pumps with a 2-inch heel.


Remember the blue boots that I wore with everything since I resized them in 2013? I also replaced them in December, with some slightly darker boots made out of real suede, with a 3-inch wedge. So comfy to walk in, and much higher quality!

Once upon a time, I categorically shunned all kinds of flat boots (by which I mean boots with no heel, or with a tiny wafer heel) as I associated them with Uggs and found them too hideous for words. But over the past year, I've acquired 3 pairs, flat as pancakes all, that I actually adore (pictured at top of the post)! One of those pairs is replacing a pair of 4-inch heeled boots that I retired this year.

I probably will never completely purge my closet of skyscraper heels, but I'm slowly but surely reducing my shoe collection's average height by almost 3 inches, and I'm actually pretty pumped about it (pun totally intended)!

In Living Coral

The only color I ever saw fit to write a whole blog post about was salmon—the pastel hue that lies somewhere in the no-man's (but not, apparently, no-fish's!) land between pink and orange. In that post, I also mentioned that its darker, more intense sister is commonly known as coral. I complained, in fact, that my personal idea of what the color coral should look like seemed to differ greatly from the more popular usage, which reserved coral mostly for deep, orange-tinged reds. Well, the debate is finally over, because in 2019, Pantone's color of the year is "Living Coral."

Pantone describes this color as a "coral hue with a golden undertone," which is a not-so-helpful circular definition. But if we go beyond words to analyze the color swatch and the background hues on Pantone's color page, I can say pretty confidently that coral – at least this shade of it – is a slightly reddish orange that leans ever so slightly toward the pastel end of the tonal range. Eat that, all you product peddlers who've been using the term without my approval to describe a deep vermilion!

As in 2018, this year I wanted my very first outfit to feature Pantone's Color of the Year; and, as in 2018, I waited until the second day of the year to actually do it. The only really coral thing in my closet – a pair of crisply creased crêpe slacks (tongue twister not intended!) – was much better suited to the office than a New Year's Day breakfast.

Whatever could not be coral in today's look had to be neutral, so I donned a flesh-toned sweater and matching nude shoes. For jewelry, I chose the only other truly coral item in my collection: my 3-D filigree necklace. I like to think the swirling, branching design somewhat resembles the structure of a live coral colony.

The sweater is slightly see-through, and I'm glad it is, because it forced me to add a camisole underneath. That opened an opportunity to diversify my color choices! Since the pants and necklace were more on the pink side of things, the soft orange hue of the cami helped realign my color palette closer to its Living Coral theme. And of course, a touch of sequin is never unwelcome!

Once again, my hair quite coincidentally participated in the theme—while yesterday I claimed that it had faded to pink, in full-spectrum lighting, it clearly still sports an orange tint. All this time I've been calling my hair "orangey-pink," and I could have just called it "coral!"

I was about to finish off the look with some unobtrusive gold stud earrings when I noticed these goldfish on the rack nearby. My mental gears started clanking: my color scheme was orange; so were these fish. Fish live in the ocean; so does coral! I had unwittingly stumbled on the cleverest accessory to complete my ensemble, representing the theme not only in color but also motif! What luck!

I said it yesterday, and I'll say it again—2019 is going to be a great year!

No Repeats

One of the principles that guide  my fashion life is that of consistent inconsistency. I won't wear the same main color two days in a row, I won't wear the same main garment type two days in a row, I won't wear the same shoes two days in a row. Anything that is more noticeable than a basic staple has to have a rest period (varying from a week to a couple months, depending on just how noticeable it is) before I wear it again. If I can remember ever wearing a certain combination of clothes, I really, strongly hesitate to wear them together again. Ever.

Fortunately, I don't have great recall (Usually I struggle to remember what I wore one day prior), so I can happily re-wear a lot of outfits since I forget them in the meantime...but once I blog one of my outfits, it's game over. The photographic evidence is out in public, proving that it's been done before. Which makes me even less likely to forget other non-blogged outfits, featuring the same primary items. Even this usually isn't a problem, because I tend to retire most of my clothes after 2-3 years, so then I don't need to worry about re-wearing them any more. But there are some garments that I am loath to part with.

One example is this blue and white caftan top. It's a funny thing for me to want to keep, as it's not really terribly flattering on my body (tending to accentuate my broad shoulders and make me appear top-heavy), but I just can't resist its inherent versatility! It's got the perfect sleeve style for a transitional-weather-day like today, where it's too cool for summer clothes, but anything too wintry would make me feel stifled. It's loose and breathable, but provides ample coverage against a chill in the still air. And also, I really just like the pattern!

The problem is that since I've had it for 3 summers and some change, I've basically run out of new ways to style it. I've worn it with black leggings; I've worn it with white pants; I've worn it with navy blue pants; I've worn it outside my color comfort zone and paired it with yellow shoes. Since I'm incurably matchy-matchy in my personal style, you know that once I start adding bold accent colors, I'm running out of ideas.

But today I wanted to wear it again. And I needed a novel color pairing for it.

To choose this color, I used a technique that I might as well give a name—we'll call it Stare & Pair.

Stare & Pair—the catchy name for a technique that probably doesn't need one!

Simply take the piece that you want to find a mate for (in this case, it was my blue & white sweater), and set it down as close as possible to the collection of candidates for pairing with it (in this example, my stack of colored skinny jeans). Then allow yourself to take in the whole picture, all the colors and possibilities, and just gaze unfocusedly. At some point, your eyes should be drawn to one candidate in particular. In this example, it was my purple jeans. There's really no difference between this technique and just trying on tons of outfits in sequence, except it takes a lot less time!

So I'd selected a new and untried color of pants to wear with the sweater. Great!

The next step was finding the third piece—the accessory or shoe or jewelry to finish everything off. I used the Stare & Pair method to narrow my options down to a couple pieces of lavender jewelry. That was a rather exciting development, because it introduced a new layer of complexity into my color palette! If I were to wear lavender jewelry, that meant I could also wear lavender shoes, which would be much more interesting than the white or blue I almost always combine with this shirt.

By the time the outfit was completely assembled, I was pretty delighted. Usually my first wear of an article of clothing is also the most inspired, and all my subsequent outfits go downhill from there. But in all the years I've been wearing this caftan top, this new combination of clothing is probably my favorite! Sometimes, refusing to allow yourself an outfit repeat can really have unexpected benefits!

Infinite shoes

This is how you fit 69 pairs of shoes
onto a 36-pair rack!

If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd be a woman with almost 100 pairs of shoes in her room and half again that many hiding away in storage, I would have been appalled. I would have probably also made a conscious effort to avoid going shoe-crazy, just to prove you wrong. Alas, you didn't tell me, so somehow I morphed into that woman.

I read once that the reason some people have so many shoes is the simple human desire to collect things. Even if you never wear them, having a variety of shoes is a pleasure in itself. Or so they say. For my part, the size of my shoe collection is an uncomfortable burden (it literally causes parts of my shoe rack to collapse on about a monthly basis!), and I actually feel a sense of relief whenever I realize I'm ready to retire a pair. Unlike the shoe collectors that other people love to look down on, I actually do wear all of my shoes (sometimes only once a year, but it still counts!). The reason that I have so many of them, I think, is my compulsion to color-coordinate everything.

In my mind, an outfit is a failure if the color of my shoes is not reflected somewhere in my clothing. Consequently, I need shoes to match at least one color in every garment I own. Even though my shoe collection is so large it makes me nervous, I find myself constantly trying to acquire just one more overly specific color of shoe to accessorize a specific outfit—"berry purple sandals" topping my list right now, for example. Wouldn't it be great if I could just have one shoe to match all my color needs?

Well, now I do!

 

 

I ran across these shoes on eBay, and it was commitment-phobic love at first sight! On the one foot (yes, I'm twisting this saying for my own cheesy purposes), they were utterly versatile. With silver heels and clear uppers, they have no real color of their own, enabling you to tie any piece of ribbon through the top and make them whatever color (or pattern!) your heart desires! But on the other foot, they have no ankle straps, meaning they'd flop off with every step, plus they have stubby little kitten heels, which I'm just not into, no matter how many times I get told they're becoming a trend. I left them in my watch list until the listing expired, then when they were re-listed, I finally decided they were too versatile to pass up. After some negotiation, I bought them (and their 9 pairs of included ribbons) for 9 dollars. Not a bad price, considering they could technically replace almost every pair of sandals I own.

The question is, will they? I've already used them as a reason to knock "black sandals, not too high, not flat, more elegant than the Swedish ones" off my shopping list (it would be a long story to explain why I think of one pair of my sandals as "the Swedish ones," but beyond that, you can see why excessive specificity is a real problem for me)! Maybe my next move will be to stop seeking "berry purple sandals" and start shopping for "berry purple ribbon" instead.

Time will tell whether my new pair of all-purpose sandals will help me curtail my shoe shopping, or whether they will just become an excuse to find more shoes like them (next up on my shopping list: "Clear-topped sandals with a higher heel and ankle strap?"). Until then, the only thing that's certain is that my shoe collection has just expanded by one!

P.S. Here's the first outfit I wore them with.

 

I was originally planning a much more boring use of my Summer 2018 uniform, but I just couldn't allow the second-to-last hot day of the year (according to the forecast anyway), to pass without trying something exciting. Fortunately, my multicolored bird dress lent itself well to the wearing of red-ribboned sandals! This outfit actually deserves much more narrative, because I had to get really creative to make it look fitted (add the waist belt) and work-appropriate (cover the shoulders with a vest), but I guess this tiny paragraph will have to suffice!

Have you heard of Hypebae?

I'm about to disappear on a vacation for a week. That means that even if I wear any blog-worthy outfits (unlikely while traveling!), I probably won't have the time and resources to post them. So here's a little something to keep you busy: a fun game that sometimes ends up fashion-related! The one rule: Whenever you hear a new term for the first time, don't immediately look it up or ask what it means. Instead, listen, observe, and see if you can figure it out for yourself. Sometimes this process happens over several months. When you're satisfied with your own mental definition, then consult your reference material, and see how close you came! 

I played this game with the newest word in my fashion vocabulary: hypebae. The first time I heard it mentioned, it was in some firsthand narrative in which the author was wistfully admiring this particular style of dress without actually committing to it herself. Like any good guessing-gamer, I of course didn't do any research at that time, and quickly lost track of the article. But now that I've heard the word hypebae a couple of times, sometimes in conjunction with pictures, I'm going to take a stab at what it means.

Hypebae (adj.) *[Note: Since there isn't a lot out there describing this supposed trend, I worry that people who search for the word might come across this post. If that is you, don't take the following definition as gospel! It's a guess based on limited information! For a more informed definition, scroll down to the bottom.] Describing a style of dress in which the wearer (usually female) incorporates a number of characteristic components: a strong profusion of athletic elements such as leggings, cropped tanks or T-shirts, and sneakers. Prominent logos of athletic brands are common. Accessories often include angular sunglasses and belt bags worn as crossbodies. The hypebae style is frequently aggressive and masculine, and based in the strong neutral colors of white and black.

Now let's see how I did!

Urban dictionary defines hypebae as "A girl who is dating a hypebeast and wears his clothing." Well, this doesn't tell me too much except that I was wrong about the part of speech that hypebae occupies—it's a noun, not an adjective. But nouns are frequently used to stand in for adjectives, so I'm not going to judge myself too harshly. The part about wearing his clothing gives credence to my theory that the style involves a strong element of the masculine...but to really understand this definition, I guess we'll have to go see what a hypebeast is.

"A Hype Beast is a kid that collect clothing, shoes, and accessories for the sole purpose of impressing others." Well, according to this Urban Dictionary definition, my ideas are much further off base than I thought. Although I picked up on the notion of brand obsession when I mentioned prominent logos, I got the whole focal point wrong. According to Urban Dictionary, hypebeasts are not necessarily all about athletic clothing (although they are "very much into sneakers"), but rather any brand or item that is considered prestigious or hard to acquire.

What is most confusing is that, while a few Urban Dictionary entries strongly emphasize that "hypebeast" is a derogatory term for someone without much actual style, my impression of "hypebae" was that it was an intentional label that women wear with pride.

The existence of a whole website dedicated to hypebae would certainly support that notion, but unfortunately, hypebae.com seems like it has really just co-opted the word to present yet another generic lifestyle site about "today’s female leaders within fashion and culture." Let's take a step back from editorial websites trying to capitalize on a word, to spaces where people are actually talking about "Hypebae style" as a specific phenomenon.

There wasn't much out there. Lookbook had only 9 hypebae looks; Instagram had 903,111 pictures (many seeming to come from the same corporate juggernaut behind hypebae.com) but not much explanation.

I found only two sources that seemed to make an effort at classifying hypebae fashion. One article basically distills hypebae down into 9 essential characteristics, (which is pretty helpful, but it's still written by someone who seems to be an outsider.

There was also a video, which splits the aesthetic into three different distinct types: Heatbae (characterized by branding and logomania) Techbae (characterized by techwear, which as far as I can understand it is high-tech utility clothing meant for extreme weather and sports), and Sportybae (characterized by a casual look, a lot of athletic apparel, and a smattering of visible brand names - basically what I thought hypebae meant). But here's the catch: the person presenting the video is an Instagrammer who never (as far as I could see) even mentions hypebae in her posts.

So is hypebae fashion a real thing? Or is it all a conspiracy between expensive clothing brands and a well placed social media entity?

We may never know, but that won't stop me from sharing my revised definition.

Hypebae (n.) A girl or woman whose personal style leans heavily towards exclusive brands and limited production items, particularly those of an athletic nature or a typically masculine aesthetic. Common elements in a hypebae's wardrobe include sneakers, prominent logos, technical outerwear, and belt bags worn as crossbody bags.

I have to add that one word that kept popping up in my search was "streetwear." I always thought streetwear was supposed to mean "clothing you wear on the street," i.e. everyday clothing, as opposed to formalwear or loungewear. Isn't that what streetwear means? Apparently not. Rather than wait another few months to puzzle out the word's hidden meaning, I looked it up right away. Wikipedia was helpful, but not very: "Streetwear is a style of street fashion rooted in Californian surf and skate culture. It has grown to encompass elements of hip hop fashion, Japanese street fashion, and modern haute couture fashion." So basically streetwear is whatever you want it to be, and hypebaes wear a lot of it.

When was it made?

 

As an avid thrift store shopper, I am no stranger to old clothing. One of my favorite activities is trying to guess exactly when any secondhand garment of mine was made. Now, I'm not a fashion archivist by any means, so my guesses at the vintage of a garment are usually based on my vague memories, other people's online throwback posts, and comparison to stills from period movies. I've learned some techniques for dating old clothing using other clues as well. Today, I thought I'd do something a little different, and share some of the attributes I use to help me guess at a garment's age.

As an example, I'll use this vest that I purchased from Swap.com about a month ago.

I've seen more than my share of 90's vests at the thrift store — they are ubiquitous, usually made of thick tapestry or heavy knit, in hideous patterns, color combos, and bulky shapes that I would never wear today — but this vest fits in quite well with my modern aesthetic. In fact, when I first got it, I didn't even really pay attention to its dated appearance, but focused mainly on the pretty blue-green color and how much I liked the flowers. After I'd owned it for a while, I began to pay more attention to the signs of its age.

Here they are—signs that you can use to help you determine the age of any fashion item!

1. The pattern - Different eras produce different trendy patterns (think the psychedelic designs of the 60's or the earth-toned rainbows of 70's). On this vest, the profusion of wavy-edged straight lines and imperfect zigzags is something I'd swear was everywhere in the early 90's, but I'm having trouble coming up with photographic evidence. In any case, it's clearly an evolution from the scribble-heavy designs that are definitive marks of the 80's. Meanwhile, the flowers hint at the sunflower obsession that defined the 90's.
   
2. The fabric - As textile technologies grow and change, different kinds of fabric rise to ascendancy. This vest is made of rayon. Although rayon-like materials have been around since the 19th century, the rubbery, faux-silk feel of rayon is, to me, firmly entrenched in the 90's. This is definitely a more "vague memory"  than anything empirically backed, but I seem to recall encountering this type of fabric a lot when shopping during my youth.
   
3. The embellishments - Much as trends in patterns rise and fall over time, so do those in the little add-ons and visible fastenings.
   
   Take a look at those buttons. The "knot" style of plastic or metal button is one I often see on vintage clothing and never on clothing of the present day. Although this does nothing to help me narrow down a specific year, I can say with a degree of confidence that these buttons wouldn't have been used past the mid-1990's.
   
4. The fastening style - In very old vintage clothing, I've heard you can use the placement of the zipper (or whether there's a zipper at all) as a reliable indicator of the approximate era of construction. With modern clothes, this doesn't often apply, but there is one style of fastening that really had a heyday in the 90's, and that's the side- or back- cinch tie.
   
   Shirts and dresses that tie in the back to adjust the fit (like this one) were common in the 90's, but seemed to have lost their appeal by the turn of the millennium. I still see them in one-size-fits-all hippie clothes, but popular opinion labels them tacky.
   
5. The cut - Obviously different silhouettes can provide a strong clue as to the age of garments--like when you see huge puffed sleeves, you can know without almost any doubt that they came from the 80's. I wasn't really aware that this top had an iconic cut, but then I googled "90's vest." Apparently it wasn't just tapestry/sweater vests that were popular in the 90's—this particular cut (with the longer length, deep V-neck, and pointed bottom hem) was popular in the era as well. Most of the pictures I found of the style were actually modern bloggers trying to do their own take on 90's trends, but I did find one 1992 sewing pattern that confirmed it.
   
6. The size - Because of size inflation, clothes manufactured today fit larger than equivalent sizes from past eras. Now, I have to make some assumptions here, because some brands use very unusual sizing, but I'm going to assume this shirt was manufactured using a common size scale. My size in contemporary juniors' clothing (the odd-numbered sizes) is usually a 3 or 5, so the fact that I fit pretty well in this size 9 is a strong indicator that it's a couple decades old.
   
7. The label - The materials and method used to make the label are often good ways of telling how old an item is as well. For example, clothing made in the 2010's often has a translucent plastic label, or the label printed right on the inside of the fabric.
   
   This heavy woven polyester label with the stiff scratchy care tag is definitely an older breed. The logo, surrounded by textural dots, also has that late-80's/early-90's feel.

It's not often that you find clothing a couple decades old with the original tags still attached, but this one was just that. Apparently it went through a battery of markdowns before someone bought it out of pity, and never wore it. Since the style number is printed on the tag, I could probably pinpoint the exact age of this vest by contacting the Joni Blair company (if it still exists), but that would be a little too much work for this armchair fashion detective! I'll settle my investigation here by concluding this vest was made around 1992.

So now we come to a question: with so many features clearly branding this top as out of date, am I still brave enough to wear it?

Thinking, thinking...

Of course! I'm the Unfashionista!

Instead of wearing my retro vest in a retro style, I wore it as a shirt without anything under it. I paired it with a pair of black capri pants (the cut of these also being almost 20 years out of fashion!) and some coordinating robin's egg blue pumps (fortunately, this conservative style of shoe will probably never look too passé!).

The most modern element of my outfit is the jewelry. I made the earrings myself out of a pair of studs that I ordered online recently. The style turned out to look silly on me, so I took them apart and impaled them on some kidney-shaped wire hooks that I cut the fastener end off of.

Now they're a never-before-seen threader-dangle-hybrid style! 1990's vest, welcome to the future!