Today has been hard. We have winter storms on the way, and the falling air pressure and rapidly-dropping temps have my arthritis in overdrive. Combine that with stress about deadlines at work and I slept VERY badly and woke up too early. The day continued with more thwarted deadlines and wrecked plans and an inexplicable internet outage, and it all piled up to induce a quiet sobbing meltdown. I came very close to not doing today’s outfit at all. But sometimes I feel better after I get the whole thing together, and it’s at least one thing I can complete right now.

Purple cotton sweater: Value Village (label is Blue Sky)
Black & white stripe ponte skater skirt: Torrid
Leggings: Carousel Ink
Purple nubuck boots: Hotter Shoes Belle
Black fleece arm warmers: Talismana Designs via Sock Dreams
Silver & black star diopside “Orbits” neckace: Angelwear Creations
Black onyx & silver wire cabochon earrings: Angelwear Creations
Makeup—Aromaleigh unless otherwise noted
Foundation, concealer, undereye: standard
Contour: Medusa Menagerie Amphisbaena
Eye shadow: front of lid, Pure Eyes Frost Hyacinth (discontinued); rest of lid, Crystal Fretting (LE); browbone, Spring Solstice Larkspur (discontinued); crease & corner, Medusa Menagerie Sthenno
Liner: Holly-Days Midnight Mess (LE)
Mascara: standard
Rouge: Goddess of the Month Iris
Highlighter: Galactic Gravitational Lensing
Powder: Ultra Resolution English Rose
Lips: NYX Cosmetics Matte Lipstick Up the Bass

Today’s outfit is basically a color variation on the one from last week: long sweater, short skirt, leggings, boots. As I said then, some days I just need to be able to be comfy and quick when I get dressed. I decided to go with the B&W skirt to break up the palette a bit; I would have done B&W jewelry as well, but I wore it all when I did this last August and I’m trying not to repeat clothes or accessories.

The arm warmers are for my arthritis. I have it bad in my hands, and the pain refers up into my forearms. Nice cozy arm warmers like these help mitigate that, and provide a little stylishness too. I have them in a few colors, because, as noted several times during this project, when I find something that works for me, I get multiples. They’re out of stock at Sock Dreams, which is where I bought them; a few other colors are available from the Talismana Designs Etsy shop, linked above, and there are some other styles as well.

And yes, the hair is the same as yesterday. You’ll probably see this more times before the project is over. As with most things in my outfits, there’s a reason.

There was a meme on Twitter a couple of weeks ago that asked what your two accessories would be if you were an action figure. Mine were a mug of tea, and an octopus clip. I have a lot of hair, very dense and heavy, as well as prone to Medusa-esque qualities, and when it gets more than a couple of inches past my shoulders, it becomes hard to wear loose and down. Thus, when my hair is as long as it is currently, it needs to be corralled.

I am capable of doing a lot of cool things with my hair; I can do numerous kinds of updos, braids, and twists. However, a lot of those cool things require a lot of pins and clips to manage, and there are days when having to stick all that stuff in my hair becomes a source of discomfort. And on days when my arthritis is active, forget it, there’s no way I’m managing the effort of twisting and wrapping and folding and holding to do something cool. Also, a lot of those cool things take time, and some days I don’t have or don’t want to spare the time required.

Doing a basic ponytail with an elastic or large barrette is an option, but my hair is so heavy that it’ll pull these fasteners down unless I can fasten them very tightly, which goes back to the “source of discomfort” issue. And a low ponytail is prone to the Medusa problem, with my hair wrapping into and around neck, collars, and jewelry.

The one tool that address all of this is an octopus clip. The design and the way it holds my hair doesn’t give me quite as many issues with pulling or discomfort as other hair accessories, and it gets my hair up and away from my neck well enough that my hair is less likely to wrap around other things. And on top of everything, it’s quick: gather the hair up, twist a big elastic around it a couple of times, flip it up and clip it. So it’s the best option for days when I hurt too much or my hands won’t cooperate or I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it (or all three). Therefore, an octopus clip is one of my action accessories.

Today was my second (and last) day this month to be onsite at work. We’re also entering a cold snap. So today was very much about easy and cozy.

Black cotton corset-waist sweater dress: Torrid
Bright violet leggings: Woman Within
Knee-high silver hardware boots: Miz Mooz
Violet mixed-stitch scarf: New Zealand, gift from MIL
Mixed crystal necklace and earrings: Fred Meyer
Makeup—Aromaleigh unless otherwise stated
Foundation, concealer, undereye: standard
Contour: Medusa Menagerie Amphisbaena
Eye shadows: Les Papillons Butterfly Kisses and Victoria’s Revenge Mourning’s Whimsy (both discontinued)
Liner: Victoria’s Revenge Poison Utopia (discontinued)
Mascara: standard
Rouge: Brilliant Deductions Purple Shirt of Sex (discontinued)
Highlighter: Anne Boleyn Marquess
Finishing powder: Fatalis Convallaria majalis
Lips: Revlon Colorburst Matte Balm Shameless (discontinued)

This dress is another example of a thing I buy multiple times; I have it in three other colors and I’m trying to find the remaining one on eBay. Sweater dresses are pretty much the best thing in the world this time of year.

I mentioned a few entries back that I own A LOT of cotton leggings. I don’t have any particular preference on those; I like a variety of colors and patterns, and I like them even better for a low cost. So I tend to buy a lot of them from the discount plus-size catalogs. That’s the case here. That said, Roamans (which isn’t really discount these days) has the softest cotton leggings I’ve tried, while Torrid has by far the best fit and quality.

Here is my confession about makeup: On days I have to be onsite, I don’t do a full face in the morning. These days it doesn’t make sense to; masks make lipstick, rouge, highlighter irrelevant, and I’m usually there by myself so the only person who might see me is the mail carrier. But even in the Before Times, when I had to be onsite five days a week, I didn’t do the level of makeup I describe in these posts. The need to get up early along with my general lack of Morning Person inclination meant the last thing I wanted to do was add extra time to my routine. Back then the usual routine was foundation, concealer, two eye shadows, liner & mascara, and something on my lips (that more often than not I would fail to reapply after having breakfast). I had the routine down to 10 minutes at one point, because cutting out extraneous steps meant sleeping a little bit longer.

For onsite days, I still have to get up an hour earlier than is normal for pandemic life. So today, I followed the old routine, minus even the lip color, but I’m out of practice at it and can’t get it done quite as fast anymore, which is an additional reason to not do the full complement. The face you see in these photos was done after I got home this afternoon. Maybe it’s cheating. (Though I probably can’t really cheat at something I made up the rules for and that I’m the only participant in.)

Here’s another confession: On days I’m at home, I don’t usually do the makeup until I’m done with work around 3 p.m. (That’s why these posts happen in the evening.) It’s for the same reason: Doing a full face in the morning means getting up earlier, and I value sleep more than having my makeup done early in the day. I envy morning people—I genuinely do. It must be great to be able to get up with plenty of time before you need to be ready to work and have the capacity to be productive for that part of the day. But I am never going to be a person who can do that.

(Reminder that the parameter for this project is outfits guaranteed on weekdays only.)

I knew that I wanted to get some color into this week’s outfits, since the first week was all shades of gray and black. And I remembered that I hadn’t worn this dress in a while. So it’s dark cool purples for this outing. FWIW, I would (and have) worn this outfit to my workplace; this is a nice example of the spectrum of how I define corpgoth.

Rayon/spandex knit dress: Disney via Torrid
Cotton knit cami: Newport News Clothing (out of business)
Boots: Fluevog Enneagram Optimist
Jewelry: Treasured Finds Silver Jewelry (out of business)
Makeup:
Foundation, concealer, undereye: standard
Contour: Aromaleigh Orpheus & Eurydice Deathly Pallor
Eye Shadow: Aromaleigh Valentine Digital Romance (LE) and MEOW Winter Coat (LE)
Liner: Aromaleigh Moulin Rouge Garter (LE)
Mascara: standard
Rouge: Aromaleigh Get Cheeky! Smolder (discontinued)
Highlighter: Aromaleigh Goddess of the Month Nyx
Lips: Butter London Plush Rush Gloss Ultra Violet (LE)

Yes, I am matchy-matchy in this. I own it. I don’t tend to do a lot of color mixing and I like doing a coordinated color palette with a range of shades in the same base tone. I tend to do this most often in purple since I am one of Those People about my favorite color and because of my hair, but my idea of purple can range from basically mauve to blueberry to almost burgundy. And sometimes I’ll do it with red or pink, and even with very dramatic lipstick shades like gray or green.

The dress is licensed Disney and if you look closely at the hem you’ll spot some low-key Villains symbols. I am not a Disney Person as such, though I do have affinity for Maleficent since she was my very first goth influence when I was a whole four years old. (My feelings about art that matters to me being in the iron control of ginormous, IP-hoarding corporations are something I wrestle with regularly, and it’s rough, but in-depth discussion on that is better suited to its own blog post.) The main reason I like this dress is the design of branching brambles, which is among my personal motifs; the goblincore in me finds something deeply compelling about images or silhouettes of bare branches and brambles. And the indigo color is a nice bonus.

Remember back at the beginning of the project when I mentioned that I keep stuff for a long time if it fits? Yeah. I don’t remember exactly when I bought this cami, but I’m confident it’s been a couple of decades. And, in a callback to my gripes about the inconsistency of sizing, it’s tagged M. But it still fits.

The necklace and earrings are iolite in sterling. The vendor for these has been gone for quite awhile as well; I believe I bought these pieces in the early Aughts. I fell in love with iolite as a kid, when my mother inherited some gorgeous floral-motif custom pieces that had belonged to my grandmother. I love pear and marquise cuts, and the settings and links on the necklace give it the feel of stones in chainmail, which appeals to my weird aesthetic sense of jumbled influences.

Yes, the boots are only laced partway. This is because Fluevog, despite my love for them, continues to think that people with powerful calves don’t buy their boots. Every time I wear these I tell myself I need to get longer laces. And then I forget. But partially-laced boots are their own kind of statement.

My hair is out of control. I really need a haircut but I’m not willing to go into a salon yet. None of the options for putting it up felt quite right for this outfit, and/or put too much strain on my head and neck for me to tolerate when my pain is being insistent. (Tangent: When I was considering this I started thinking about how the hairstyles for female Disney villains tend to fall into two motifs: Tightly controlled/covered [Maleficent, Evil Queen] or utterly wild [Ursula, Cruella de Ville]. Feels like there’s some subtext to unpack there.) So today I just let it be wild, kind of like the brambles on my dress.

I’ve had an outfit planned for today all week. (In fact, it was originally going to happen earlier in the week.) And then I put it on and I disliked it. I disliked it so much that I considered scrapping today. I took some deep breaths and figured out another outfit. That one went so badly that I was briefly in tears and really considered scrapping today. But I gave myself a little time to calm down and looked around my dressing room and decided screw it, it’s Friday, and casualness (if not whimsy) are encouraged. So we end up with an improvised casual-Friday goth outfit instead.

Gray fleece jacket: Soft Surroundings
Black T-shirt: Woodland Park Zoo ZooStore
Black and gray check pants: Torrid
Boots: Fluevog Earl of Warwick Lancaster
Makeup—Aromaleigh unless otherwise stated
Foundation, concealer, undereye: standard
Contour: Insectarium Alucita
Eye shadows: Moth (gray with pink/green interference) and Risque (cool gray satin) (discontinued), MEOW Cosmetics Winter Spirits Sparkling (LE)
Liner: Drama Queen Silver (discontinued)
Mascara: standard
Rouge: Vernal Roses (LE, but Amalasuntha is a re-creation of it)
Highlighter: Luminary (discontinued)
Finishing powder: Orpheus and Eurydice Beloved
Lips: NYX Matte Lipstick Ultra Dare (may be discontinued, but the line still exists) topped with Shimmer Down Lip Veil Goth Love (discontinued)
Earrings: Fred Meyer
Necklace: purchased a few years ago from a vendor at the Mourning Market artisan fair in Seattle
(You also get freshly-washed, still-damp hair that is fairly uncontrollable; I haven’t had a haircut in more than a year and a half.)

How much do I love fleece jackets from Soft Surroundings? So much that I have four (different colors) in this specific style, and two others in different styles, and I’m continually trawling eBay for others. Remember what I said yesterday about the joint need for comfortable and office appropriate? These hit that intersection perfectly.

I’m not normally given to buying T-shirts from attractions, but this one is special. First, it’s absurdly goth, and that alone might have been enough. Second, Woodland Park Zoo is very special to me. I originally became a volunteer there in 2010 (which is when I bought this shirt), and spent a year serving as a keeper’s aide, where I got to make food for red pandas and tiny deer, help weigh swans and southern screamers, and assist in hand-raising of a flamingo chick. It was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life and ultimately led to me changing professional paths into the nonprofit world, as well as other volunteer work with organizations focused on environmental and wildlife conservation. I returned to WPZ as a volunteer in 2015 and am currently a docent with focus in snow leopard conservation, bats, Komodo dragons, and African Savannah and Pacific Northwest ecosystems. Of course, I haven’t actually volunteered in nearly a year; it’s not yet safe to have volunteer educators on grounds. But I will go back eventually, and in the meantime my absurdly goth shirt helps me remember this place I love.

The pants are notable because for a really long time—somewhere in the realm of 15 years—I did not wear pants at all. I had a really hard time finding pants that fit (see my diatribe about fit on day 2 of the project) and I didn’t like how I looked. When I did start wearing them again it was mostly for my volunteer work. But over the last year or so, I’ve stopped feeling quite as negative about I how I look in them. Since last August I’ve bought five pairs, all skinny. Most are from Torrid, which has a lot to do with it—I can be confident that pants from them will fit in the challenging places. They’re still mostly too long, but that’s easier to deal with than the rest of it.

Technically, by the (self-imposed) rules of the project, I’m done for the week; weekends aren’t required. But since I make the rules, something else might happen. If not, though, I’ll be back for the second week of this on Monday 2/8.

Today ended up being a day for comfort. I’ve had really wretched sleep for a couple of weeks now, we had storms move in (after a break yesterday) which ramped up some chronic pain issues, and the cold is really getting to me. But I figured comfort could also accommodate a little bit of postpunk.

Cotton cowlneck sweater: Value Village (don’t remember the brand)
Plaid skater skirt: Torrid
Leggings: Carousel Ink (transitioned to Fox Savant but they no longer offer these cotton leggings, alas)
Boots: Fluevog Hopeful Serene
Makeup is Aromaleigh unless otherwise stated
Foundation, concealer, undereye: standard
Countour: Medusa Menagerie Amphisbaena
Eyes: Shadows and liner all discontinued; mascara is standard CoverGirl
Rouge: Goddess of the Month Psyche
Highlighter: Catherine of Aragon Humble & Loyal
Finishing powder: Fatalis Convallaria majalis
Lips: NYX Macaron Chambord (discontinued) over Slim Lip Pencil Black Berry
Heart earrings: A vendor at Norwescon a few years ago, unfortunately can’t recall the name
Necklace: Fred Meyer

This sweater is one of my favorite pieces because it’s soft, not too heavy but still warm, and I really like how it fits, so it’s one of my first choices when I have days where warmth and comfort are primary factors. Leggings are a no-brainer on these days, and I have a variety of knee-length skirts I can wear over leggings. (I’m old school and believe that Leggings Are Not Pants, and I like doing this kind of layering.) I hadn’t consciously intended to go with the plaids & checks theme this week when I started, but when I realized I was doing it I figured I’d carry it through, and picked this cozy sweater-knit plaid.

It’s not the most exciting outfit, so I figured I could spice it up with some callbacks to my postpunk youth, which was supported by the plaid skirt: sparkly contrast-y eyes and black lips, as well as the kinda stompy boots (which are also comfortable–my need for comfort doesn’t stop at shoes). I didn’t feel like going fully matchy with jewelry colors like yesterday, so instead I picked these pieces in silvertone and clear, which are fun and easy to wear.

Truth is, a lot of my wardrobe over the past several years has prioritized comfort. I have several health conditions that can mean chronic pain or weather-related achiness, and when that happens I really want the option for soft, non-restrictive clothing. But I also needed to achieve a degree of appropriate corpgoth for my job back in the days when being in the office every day was a requirement, and I needed to be able to get dressed quickly and easily at crackofdawn o’clock. (I have learned to function early in the morning for a variety of reasons, but I am absolutely not a Morning Person, which also contributes to my chronic pain issues.)

The solution to both of these challenges ended up being a lot of knits: sweaters, jersey dresses and tops, knit skirts with soft waistbands, and leggings. (I own SO MANY pairs of cotton leggings. SO MANY.) So I have a lot of pieces that would give me the option of being stylishly appropriate for the office without sacrificing my need for comfort. And that ends up being a lot of what I wear day to day, even when I’m working from home.

I do have wardrobe pieces that are more obviously or dramatically gothy, and some of them will likely turn up during the course of this project. Today, though, comfort had to take priority. One of the things you get good at when you’re an Eldergoth is figuring out how to reconcile the goth and the elder in a stylish way.

Today I felt like some contrast: Black and white, Victorian lines with strong patterns.

Dress: eShakti
Leggings: Torrid
Boots: Chelsea Crew
Jewelry: April Cornell
Makeup: Face and eyes mostly Aromaleigh
Foundation, concealer, undereye, mascara–all standard
Contour–Insectarium Alucita
Eye shadows all discontinued–Aromaleigh Fume (metallic silver) and Moonlight (pale gray frost), Hard Candy Trash (dark gray)
Finishing powder—Glamoured Avena
Rouge discontinued—Brilliant Deductions Purple Shirt of Sex
Highlighter—Insectarium Diaphora
Lips discontinued–J.Cat Beauty Flash Metal Matte Metallic Sonic Boom

You might have noticed a couple of themes so far. Yes, I do like checks, plaids, and patterns traditionally considered “menswear,” and I like combining those with more traditionally femme influences like Victorianesque silhouettes, lace, and ruffles. While my own style overall is decidedly femme, I’ve always enjoyed playing around with contrasts like this and incorporating harder or more masculine elements. And I enjoy the strong contrast of black and white together, especially when there’s a pattern that’s really bold like in the leggings and the boots. Finally, I wanted to add some additional contrast with the metallic silver eye shadow and the metallic plum lip, contrasted with more subtle tones and finishes.

I also really like cameos. There’s something about the pattern in relief that appeals to my tactile side and my appreciation for both 18th and 19th century fashion. I particularly like the cameos in these pieces since they’re matte and single color. The matte aspect appeals to my tactile side again, while the single color is a contrast to a contrast—they’re going against the contrast in the boots and leggings. Plus it’s another iteration of the softer, more feminine jewelry with the menswear influences.

I don’t typically analyze the foundations of why I choose particular ensembles. I have a mental shorthand that says “I like this and this and this and this all together.” Spending many years collecting the types of pieces I like helps with that, as does a lot of time spent studying the fashion of various historical eras and a tendency to want to break things across strict period lines. I can look at one or two items and readily envision what else I have that would help achieve what I have in mind. It’s a weird skill set and not all that applicable to anything else. But I appreciate my weird skills.

Today was one of my days this month to be onsite at work, which meant getting up an hour earlier than usual, and thus required an outfit that I could put on fairly quickly with minimal effort. I really like the swooshiness and lines of this dress, and with knits underneath it’s a really comfortable and easy outfit.

Silk/cotton turtleneck: Chadwicks
Cotton poplin dress: eShakti (pockets!)
Leggings: Roamans (not really visible but they’re there)
Boots: Miz Mooz
Necklace and earrings: Fred Meyer
Most makeup: Aromaleigh
Foundation Dewdrop 2N (standard)
Concealer Pashmina 1C (standard)
Undereye Illuminata Eye Perfecting Powder
Contour Fatalis Heloderma suspectum
Inner half of eye area Proserpina Windflowers
Outer half of lid and brow bothdiscontinued
Liner Feast of Lupercal Trivia (LE)
Rouge discontinued
Highlight Goddess of the Month Cerridwen
Finishing powder Orpheus and Eurydice Beloved
Mascara: CoverGirl LashBlast Waterproof black (standard)
Lipstick: NYX Cosmetics Diamonds & Ice, Please Icon Living (LE)

A note on makeup: I didn’t detail or link anything for the makeup in yesterday’s outfit because most of what I was wearing is no longer available. Today a lot of what I’m wearing is still available so I’m including details and links where possible. Going forward I’ll do that for items that can still be purchased, but after today I won’t list standards like my foundation and mascara unless I do something different.

There was some interesting synchronicity in today’s outfit when I riffed on a Twitter thread about the impossibility of RTW women’s clothing sizing. (Note: at the time I write this the original user’s account is locked, which it was not earlier today, but she was talking about how she has five different T-shirts ranging from L to 2XL that all fit her but are all cut slightly differently.) First I agreed with the originator about how clothing sizes and fit vary so much: In this outfit, the top is an XL in misses’ sizing, the leggings are L in plus sizing, and the dress is a 20 in eShakti’s standard sizing, which doesn’t differentiate and simply goes by a range of consistent measurements for each size. (eShakti fans, hold on, I’ll address that.) It’s simply absurd to have all these different standards and size markers with no consistency of fit.

I do appreciate the malleability of knit fabrics and I wear a lot of them because of that—I have knits I bought three sizes ago that still fit comfortably. And I certainly know what my usual size is from brands I shop frequently. At the same time, though, it’s frustrating to have to know that for so many different manufacturers, and to have to play roulette when I want to try a new brand. And if a brand changes their fit model and sizing scales, all bets are off. Back in the Aughts, items from J. Peterman fit me pretty much perfectly even across sizes, because their fit model worked with my build and their sizing was always consistent; even now, when I’m a larger size than I was then, I can buy certain items used a size or two down and know they’ll still fit. Last decade, though, they changed everything: the fit model is different, the sizing varies among items, and now I can’t ever tell with any certainty if an item that is listed as my current size will indeed fit me.

After the grousing about variability of size markers came the griping about cut. (This is where we get to the eShakti stuff.) One of the reasons I like eShakti is that their standard sizing is reliable. I know that a 20 from them will fit the way I expect…depending on the cut. One of the things eShakti does a lot of is dresses with seamed waists that are set at a specific length. As it happens, I’m long-waisted. And the waist seams on eShakti dresses never fall at my actual waist—they’re always high. I bought a lot of seamed-waist dresses from them before I figured this out. I got this dress second-hand (I don’t remember if it was eBay or thrift store), which I could do because I knew it was the right size, but it was before I figured out the waist seam thing. I think this dress was designed with a high seam based how the shoulders and neckline are designed, and it works okay because of that, but most seamed eShakti dresses put the waist seam squarely in the middle of my rib cage. That’s not a good silhouette, and it’s not comfortable.

“But,” you say, “eShakti offers custom sizing! You can have the waist cut where you want it!” That is true. It also requires getting properly measured in the first place, hoping the measurements don’t change, keeping the measurements handy and entering them when ordering, and being willing to pay the customizing fee every time. And honestly, that’s a lot of work for what is essentially RTW that you can make small changes to.

One of the reasons I like eShakti is that even without choosing the customizing option I can rely on their sizing, and they offer enough non-seamed-waist styles that I can find things that work for me much more often than I can with other manufacturers. And I still wear some of my dresses with seamed waists and just live with the waists riding high, because somebody decided that’s how dresses for fat girls should be cut. (Torrid, I’m looking at you.) I know it’s not realistic to expect a huge variety of cuts from manufacturers living on razor-thin margins and seasonal style changes. I know where not to shop and what styles don’t work on me. But sometimes it’s so frustrating to have to do that, and today’s combo of outfit choice and Twitter conversation gave me opportunity to gripe. So there.

Being stuck in a rut right now is hardly surprising, considering that we’re coming up on a year of pandemic isolation. And January made it worse; as someone with seasonal affective disorder, I find January in Seattle, with short days compounded by long stretches of gray rainy weather, to be a major challenge to my capacity to be more than basically functional. I’ve spent a lot more of the past month in pajamas than I care to confess. But I decided at the end of January that I needed to try and kickstart myself into something more than that. Wardrobe stuff is an easy starting point for that. Hence, the start of the Get Out of a Rut project for the month of February.

The basic concept is that I promise to put together a full outfit–including shoes, jewelry, and makeup–each weekday of the month (weekends optional) and post photos to social media. The intent is to keep me accountable for doing it and inspire me to not spend every day in my pajamas. The skills needed to plan and assemble outfits help get my executive function operating steadily, and putting it all together helps my sense of creativity and aesthetic pleasure.

I did this in August last year, when I was hitting six-month fatigue from isolation, and it helped. I didn’t do it consistently in the intervening months because I got busier with work than intended, and the advent of winter and SAD sent my function into a nosedive. But the days are getting longer, there’s some glimmers of hope for mitigating the disaster in the U.S., and I simply got tired of my own schlumpiness. The previous version was done just on Twitter; I decided to do blog posts to go with it this time so I can talk about the details and maybe get in the habit of posting regularly (another thing that has vanished in the nightmare of the past year).

A note about my wardrobe philosophies: I keep things for a long time. Yes, I do buy fast fashion–and then I take good care of it and hold on to it. If I like something and it still fits, I’ll keep it until it starts to fall apart. I also buy a lot of stuff second-hand, through thrift stores and eBay, partly because it can be difficult to find styles I like in my size in retail stores, and partly because I’m cheap and I love the thrill of the hunt. I also buy a fair amount of vintage, limited edition, and indie designers, especially in jewelry. Thus, it’s not all that likely you’ll see things in my outfits that are currently available. But you can see where I shop and get an idea of what inspires me in assembling an outfit. I will link to some of the indie businesses in the text details.

All that tiresome expository introduction over with, here is the outfit for day 1.

Lace mockneck top: Metrostyle
Glen plaid waistcoat: Torrid
Bias seamed wool skirt: J. Peterman
Lace textured socks: Sock Dreams
Shoes: Fluevog Mini Momo
Necklace: BellaLili
Earrings: Art of Adornment
Makeup: all Aromaleigh except lips, which are Wet ‘n’ Wild
Hair (because I know someone will ask): one pack of Splat Lusty Lavender, one pack of Splat Purple Desire, 1/3 bottle of Arctic Fox Purple Rain

I got the inspiration for this outfit years ago, amusingly enough from BelaLili’s old website. She used to photograph her necklaces on a dress form dressed in a frilly high-necked blouse and a glen plaid waistcoat, and I found it to be a charming look. But it took me literally a decade to find a suitable waistcoat; I got this one on eBay a couple of months ago. So when I decided to do this project again, I decided this would be the first outfit.

To be honest, this outfit didn’t work entirely the way I intended. The waistcoat is both shorter and cut lower than I realized, and the first two tops I tried weren’t right with the cut of the waistcoat. BUT I put it all together and I took photos and I’m posting them despite my personal nitpicks, which right now is a success. I’ll go with it.