the stars are out tonight, only they can hear you breathing

I got new glasses! They're as big as a planet! And I'm very excited about them. For those of us that are cursedblessed with poor vision, getting a new pair of eyeglasses is almost equivalent to getting a new car. They may not come with New Car Smell, but they come with Oh, I Finally Updated My Prescription And Can See Properly Again!

I knew that I wanted another pair of blue glasses, and this cornflower blue delighted me almost immediately. It strangely works with my warm skin tone which is kind of antithetical, but I think that's just the product of excellent design. The brand of these specs are RVSbyV.

MAC matte lipstick in So Chaud. Orange lipstick and blue glasses are hardly a more perfect pair. I'm generally not one to participate in trends, but orange lipstick is one I can get behind.

When choosing a pair of glasses, I pay close attention to the way it looks from a profile. Clean lines and minimal convex curvature is a must. Jamie sent me a few of these barrettes which looks really solid with my rose-print AA blouse. I'd first seen this print on the other Meagan and had mini-seizures over the not-so-vague Jil Sander spring '11-inspired print. I prefer this print, actually, because the roses are pastel and magical and they feel like a Cocteau Twins song. Like if these flowers were real, they'd be covered in pearly dewdrops' drops and love's easy tears.

(Stepping away from wearing black a little. It's a work in progress, but I don't like to pigeonhole myself into just one style.)

Rosy collar action in 2011.

Jamie also included her zine with the barrettes. It's full of beautiful things that as women, we unfortunately don't tell each other and ourselves enough.

it's always christmas on my head

Amy was nice enough to take this photo of me, and equally nice enough to write nice things about me, so I though that sharing this photo with you all would be, well,...nice. Ahem. Thanks Amy!

This outfit has lately been a kind of uniform of sorts - just "edgy" enough that passerby wouldn't mistake me for a trixie, yet warm enough to get through Chicago's annual Sort-Of Spring. By Sort-Of Spring, I mean that it's 35 degrees and rainy until well into the middle of May. Uniqlo coat via ebay, thrifted Karl Lagerfeld x H&M jacket, American Apparel blue blouse, thrifted black blouse, thrifted leggings, Comme des Garcons shoes also from ebay, thrifted bag, Zana Bayne harness, MAC lipstick in Cyber. This lipstick, being called Cyber and all, makes me think of AOL and how the internet was this new cool exciting thing back in, uh, 1998. Suddenly, people didn't have to have long-distance sex over the phone, because a 56K modem meant that for the first time, you could see boobs in *real time*...nevermind the fact that in 1998, *real time* meant that your photo still took 30 minutes to load. But, uh, how would I know such things?! In 1998, I was using AOL just to chat with my cool older friend in middle school who was seductively Wiccan and had a pentacle as her IM avatar (rebelling against my Catholic upbringing, let me tell you.) By the time I was old enough to send boob photos over the internet (OH SHUT UP, LIKE YOU'VE NEVER DONE IT. TO THE LEFT!), broadband was already commonplace and AOL was more like LOL and only old people still thought that you needed AOL to access the magicalunicorninternetland.

Also, for those of you that know anything about hair, SOS PLEASE SEND HELP. My naturally thin hair has gotten so long that it literally has the consistency of Christmas tinsel on my head. It. Does. Nothing. At this point I'm tempted to chop it all off again but I know that the minute I see those hard-earned locks hit the ground, I'll turn into Angelina Jolie from The Changeling. "MY BAAAABBBYYYYY!!!"

"real" is simply electric signals interpreted by your brain

I bought the new issue of POP Magazine specifically because while flipping through it at Quimby's, I noticed this hauntingly beautiful spread (and not just because my friend is in it, haha). Jacquelyn Jablonski is in tough, tailored pieces in a black and blue palette while seemingly stranded in a post-apocalyptic desert. Obviously all of these things are highly appealing to me. The styling itself is a little dystopian with its found-in-a-bomb-shelter modesty and unfinished hems that suggest that perhaps the garments and world have seen better days. The setting reminds me a lot of the scene in The Matrix where Morpheus explains to Neo how the surface exists in its current state - a devastated world devoid of color and beauty with a desperately scorched sky.

I'm especially intrigued by the styling in the second-right image; the sheer turtleneck with the bra over it. This feels so painfully obvious to me now, as I look at it, and I wonder why I haven't thought to do something like this before. Fashion editorials are at their best when they can inspire the viewer to capture the pictured beauty with their own wardrobe.

five ten fifty folds

 

Five things I've been obsessed with lately.

1. Wearing my hair in braids. I need to get my split ends trimmed.

2. MAC lipstick in Cyber...I have NO idea why I didn't buy this sooner.

3. Jil Sander silk blouse, about $3 from a thrift store. The blouse features superbly-designed hidden buttons, and after wearing it for weeks on end, buttons just feel so...excessive nowadays.

4. Clearer skin. I've suffered from acne for well over 10 years now and my new dermatologist knows what he's doing.

5. Zana Bayne Alter harness. I got this harness specifically because I wear collared shirts fairly often, and I loved the way this particular harness resembles a necktie.