Fashion for Writers

As much as I love vintage frocks, one thing that I can’t turn down is a good white tee-shirt. I’ve run the gamut from Hanes’s Men’s ComfortSoft to Kova & T to the standard American Apparel, and I have to say that my obsession with a perfect plain white tee continues to this day. It’s about a certain amount of sheerness, combined with a great cut and a floaty softness that caresses the skin. Though I’m still on the hunt for the tee of my dreams, I love to wear the ones I have with puffy skirts; I love to wear them with slim-fit black trousers; something high-waisted and fancy goes great with the classic simplicity of something slouchy and soft. And the slightly see-through nature of such a tee gives the perfect amount of sexy when choosing undergarments.

Designer web-store Chickdowntown and FFW have teamed up to give one lucky reader an Elizabeth and James deconstructed white tee (retail: $90). (Other designers Chickdowntown carries include Loeffler Randall and McQ Alexander McQueen.)

Make sure to check out:

http://twitter.com/chickdowntown http://www.facebook.com/pages/chickdowntowncom/

RULES: 

1. Comment on this post with a brief description of your favorite tee-shirt. Things you might mention include where you found or bought it and what makes it great. Make sure to include some sort of name and email with the post so that I can hunt down the winner.
2. Due to the nature of the prize, this giveaway is restricted to those living in the U.S. ONLY.
3. The giveaway will run from July 3-July 18, 2008. (12 PM PST.) 
4. One entry per person, please.
5. I will put the entries in a hat (probably a real hat) and draw the winner after the giveaway is over. 

Good luck!

Chris got some new glasses recently (pictured). Prescription glasses — as any of you other four-eyes know — are ridiculously expensive. Guess how much these were, with frames plus lenses? $25. That’s right. Brand new frames, brand new prescription lenses. 

It was our Bostonian friends who introduced us to a site called Zenni Optical. Their website design leaves something to be desired, but they get the job done quite nicely; all you need is to send them your prescription (which can be acquired by calling your optometrist) and a few pupil-related measurements, and they’ll get you a fine pair of spectacles as a very low cost. 

After browsing their site for a bit, I’ve come across these dandies:

A kaleidoscopic effect. For seeing through walls.

Like my half-rims, only upside-down. I have never seen glasses like this before.

It is the year 2098. I am wearing these while riding in my hover-car.

Perhaps you, too, would like a series of glasses in a fine design. Imagine changing your frames to match your ensemble! Fancy that; fancy that! 

P.S. Be on the lookout for FFW’s very first giveaway. I’d received emails about other advertising opportunities, but this is the first one I’ve been genuinely excited about. I’d keep the prize for myself if it weren’t so unethical…

When Chris and I returned home after a long morning of wedding walk-throughs and picking up our marriage license, I found a pink slip from the U.S. Postal Service claiming that an Express package was waiting for him at the post office. Sender: “England.” O boy! It could only be one thing: Chris’s custom-made, tweed, tailored suit from Bookster of the UK. 

The suit is ever-so-dashing in person, but alas, I won’t be sharing any pictures of it until the wedding’s over; this little taste is all you can see for now, in which you can be privy to the bold, golden lining and the sewn-in label.

And as much as I love costume jewelry and rhinestones, I won’t be weighed down in baubles on the “big day” — I will be wearing this delicate silver bracelet designed by Saundra Messinger, which I recently received from Chris as a pre-wedding present. I love how obviously hand-crafted it is and the tiny lines carved into the surface. It’s like a twig wrapped around my wrist. 

Very recently I discovered that I’d been overmedicated for a medical condition, adjusted some things (with the OK from my doctor, of course), and have found myself with much less fatigue than I’d been experiencing previously, which leaves me with all kinds of energy to do things like the following: a chapter a day of Latin lessons with Chris, who gives me daily homework; working on my novel; wedding planning; cooking; reading back issues of Elle UK; jogging in the sun and dancing to Nirvana in the living room; plotting my future; brainstorming for photography projects; etc. It’s summer! I’m in my mid-to-late 20s! I’m a very lucky girl!

Chris and I went to Illinois for the wedding of our good friends Emily B. and Don T. I wore sleeveless dresses the entire time — Bloomington-Normal was muggy and hot — and for the ceremony and reception I got to wear my new Cacharel dress, which is sea foam green and trimmed in little sequins, plus one of those shimmery, vintage metal bandana-necklaces that seem to be all the rage these days. We practiced our dance moves and invented a groove to “Karma Chameleon” that involved a lot of flailing around and arm-waggling. A preview to our own wedding, which is creeping ever-so-close. (See our website at http://www.chrisandmeggy.com/).

My reception dinner dress is, for the moment, a $1 steal. Ah, the glories of ultra-sales.

dress from streetside store in Taiwan, my favorite necklace from a vintage store in Oakland, heels from SOGO (famous department store in Taiwan)

I decided to go mostly simple for my 26th birthday ensemble — this particular dress recalls a much louder, 70s vintage dress that I bought from a consignment shop where I used to live, with the same flared, fun sleeves and shift torso. I’ve been wearing miniskirts and dresses a lot lately because I somehow just discovered that I think I like my legs, and I won’t be able to wear miniskirts and dresses for much longer, professionally speaking; so these heels, which are plain and black and have absolutely nothing exciting about them, are a new staple to my wardrobe.

Yesterday I spent most of the day alone, because I’m a paid graduate student on holiday and my family and fiance are working stiffs. I went for brunch; browsed the only decent clothing store in my hometown, where everything is astronomically priced because it’s all stuff like Preen and Rick Owens and gorgeous investment pieces; chatted with the charming salesgirl and spoke abstractly of future coffee plans; wrote and drank tea and coffee at a cafe; walked forty-five minutes to get home in pleasant weather. Later in the evening Chris’s co-workers treated us to a wedding dinner, which was aborted because of a fire alarm (free wine!), and I ended up eating chili cheese fries at an upscale burger joint for my birthday dinner.

One of my favorite people in the whole world, Max Doty, wrote a novel a few years ago. He turned it into a screenplay, and now the trailer is one of 10 semi-finalists in Netflix’s Find Your Voice competition. I’m here to nudge you in the direction of the Find Your Voice website, where you don’t have to register or anything to vote; Max’s movie is Touchback, but feel free to watch all of them — just make sure to rate the trailer!

Nowhere have I felt the pressure of “thin is in” so palpably as I have here, in Taiwan; I arrived here after a winter of gaining weight from hibernating in the frigid Midwest and my mother, upon my exit from Immigration/Customs (which was a nightmare in itself) saw my [  ]-lb. self, and immediately put me on a diet. I recall a particular cabbage-and-tomato soup, and plenty of diet seaweed-jello drinks. Recall that I’d just decided that I wanted to stop dieting, as it had led to nothing but weight fluctuations over the last eight years and an obsessiveness over calorie-counting, scale-hopping, and profound self-loathing, not to mention events such as sitting on my love-seat, bingeing on sliced salami. (A book called Overcoming Overeating is to thank for my newfound outlook on food.) 

I didn’t want to be on a diet, but circumstances dictated that I was, in essence, on one. We ate as though we were restricting — and the longer I stayed in Taiwan, the more I realized that this country simply does not tolerate the non-petite. On the second or third day my mom took me to her favorite clothing store, and when a dress I tried on turned out to be abominably small, the saleslady informed me that all of the clothes were in one size only.  

I go back to the States tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to eating some chili cheese fries. Mindfully — and I won’t finish the whole batch. But I’ll eat them without berating myself, and I know that I’ll really enjoy them.

I am really attached to having short, curly hair. I don’t know where this comes from, but anyway, after having one of those I’m-feeling-emotional-and-am-going-to-cut-my-hair-really-short-attacks, I couldn’t perm my hair for a while. One woman I went to haughtily told me that I’d have to wait five months to get a perm. But then I went to Above Ground (where I’d done the fashion show a few months back), and Cookie told me that if I just waited till right before I left Ann Arbor, I’d be able to have a perm, albeit a short one — which was fine by me. So now I have curly hair again.

I’m flying out to Taiwan at 1:40 AM tonight. It’s a 13-hour flight, and I haven’t been to Taiwan in years, but I’ll be doing considerable blogging from there, I imagine. The shopping there is incredible in terms of price and scope, plus I’m going to be heading out into some rural areas with my mother with my camera and notebook, taking notes for future stories.

Goals for the summer include:

• Start learning basic Latin. Chris started teaching me this morning, and I’ll really dig into it as soon as I get back from Taiwan. We’re very excited about this venture. He wants to get a whiteboard.
• Write at least 100 pages of my novel that are presentable enough to show my thesis reader in September. 
• Get married in July without having a nervous breakdown.
• Fix my super unhealthy eating habits and eating-related psychology. (I weigh considerably more now than the last time I went to Taiwan, and the last time I went, a saleslady said that I was obviously so fat because I was pregnant. But this has less to do with my decision to fix my unhealthy eating habits, and more to do with the fact that I’ve spent way too much energy in the last ten years thinking about my negative body image.)

& Happy Mother’s Day!

Formaggio Kitchen, Cambridge, MA. I just got back from a brief trip to Boston and it was chockablock with friends, good eats (is there such a thing as too many good eats?) and lots of walking (to mitigate the good eats). Many thanks to my friend Aaron for hosting me, Emily and Don for good times, and Formaggio Kitchen for allowing me to take pictures of their fine wares. (244 Huron Ave., Cambridge)

20s vintage necklace, laura ashley little girls’ cardigan (thrifted), mcq dress, loafers (etsy)

We’re having the end-of-the-term picnic today and this is what I’m wearing to it — I invested in this McQ dress as my go-to summer piece. It has no sleeves and is jersey and can curl up into a little ball for easy travel; I’ll be running around a lot this summer and I’d like to keep my luggage to one small carry-on, regardless of where I go. 

The weather, by the way, was beautiful this morning. Hanna and I even napped in the shade. An hour later, a thunderstorm hit and we were sprinting to the car as fast as our gym-rat (ha) legs could carry us.