I Caved In And Bought Miu Mius And They Came In The Mail: A Tale in Three Parts

PART I
I said, "Oh." TO BE CONTINUED.

PART II
I said, "My." TO BE CONTINUED.

PART III
I said, "GOD!!!!!!"

~The End~
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I caved. After four (five?) dreams about them, a persuasive essay for my parents to justify my spending, and lots of arm-flailing in stress over whether or not they were sold out, they are mine. The good thing about being this obsessed with clothes is that I feel pretty certain that I will love mine all my life. I'll need a million storage units, but that's okay.
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Hand-me-down shirt and bag, dress sent to me by Fred Flare (thanks Jen!), Miu Miu collar from the boutique and shoes from Bergdorf Goodman (ugh, I'm going to reread my persuasive essay to make sure I'm not crazy for being so obsessed with that collection.)

They are my middle school graduation present to myself, which is pretty pathetic considering the non-milestone middle school graduation is. You go and listen to a bunch of speeches throwing around words like Excellence and Community and Opportunity and Effort, all capitalized, and then you get your diploma and refrain from throwing your stupid cardboard hat in the air ("eye injuries," they say,) and then you leave. Or you leave and then buy yourself Miu Miu clogs and decide they'll be your special Now We Are In High School shoes, probably much to the disgust of your peers, but you try to justify negative feedback with misanthropy, well aware that this will probably result in incurable bitterness that will last you your whole life, but not caring. Um, it'll help me get through high school?

Perhaps you are wondering, WHAT'S SO SPECIAL ABOUT SHOES? Let me tell you: this is what's so special, perhaps! Tomorrow is my last day of Jezebel posting, but I can't say that'll make for more going on here. Summer means I have more time to blog but I also feel less like doing it, because I have entire days, every day of the week, to spend entirely at the library, or making things, or whatever. Until school starts, posts here will be less frequent, but the content will be more inspired. It's not fun to write when you don't feel like it, and reading posts that are obviously forced and uninspired and bored isn't fun, either. Like, during the school year, blogging is the most convenient way to be creative, but I have all this time now to really delve into it. Hope all your summers are going swimmingly! Get it? Swimmingly? Cuz it's summer? I need to go to bed.

toe-ronto. GET IT? TOE? (i don't know either. it's late, okay?)

IdeaCity, which I attended last week, was really ridiculously inspiring. I dunno when the talks will all be up but maybe then I'll post a few favorites and my own. Because it was REALLY RIDICULOUSLY INSPIRING.

My regret with my talk was that it was so off the cuff -- I wish I'd spent more time figuring out what I wanted to say, because some people said it seemed like I wanted to take over Sassy or take it away from its creators (what? Aiiieee!) and I'm not sure if everything I said about feminism threaded together the way it did in my head. (Um, this is probably all lost on anyone who wasn't there, but oh well.) The thing with feminism is that it's important to me, and I really want to write about it and be a part of the discussion and learn things, but I don't have a set of principles I'm sure of, and sometimes find myself being contradictory, and it's confusing. So, you know, working that out.

Anyway, one major highlight of the trip was hanging out at the Worn (which I previously wrote about here, as one of my favorite magazines) offices and then doing some walking around with Anna and Isabel. Hard at work with the Wornettes:


Fancy button-making! Know who gets those buttons? OH, SORRY, NOT YOU. Unless you subscribe to Worn, that is! And so, SUBSCRIBE. BECAUSE IT'S AWESOME. MORE AWESOME THAN YOU. (I know it's hard to say no to such charm and charisma. This is why I should never go into advertising.) (Oh, did I mention I reviewed a book for Issue 10? Well, I did. So, yeah.)

There were these really disturbing singing bear things and they harmonize together and are cute and creepy, simultaneously.

Then Anna, Isabel and I went to Kensington Market. I think this place was called Exile? We didn't spend too much time there, though Anna was taking a good long, serious think about this dress thingy:

And now, outfit time:
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Anna is very Annie Hall.
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Isabel is very Desperately Seeking Susan on top and then Doc Martens on bottom.
Also, what the hell? I can never find jeans as good as these two's!
For a while I've been meaning to make a post about my favorite bloggers, which will take a long time, so I'll do these now. Anna is hilarious and witty and responsible for introducing me to wonderful things and is also a highjacker of my thoughts because I'll be thinking about something and then go to her blog and she will have articulated everything so PERFECTLY. Isabel is really good at executing teen angst into outfits which have so much CHARACTER and I know I can always go to her blog when I feel uninspired and lazy and she has, like Anna, turned me on to the greatest movies and music and whatnot through her blog. Yay, the internet, etc.
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Hand-me-down top, skirt by Risto Bimbiloski (same guy responsible for those nebula shorts!!)
, Hayden-Harnett bag, Happy Socks from tobi.com, American Apparel shoes. (FTC disclosure: the skirt, bag, and shoes were sent to me by the companies.)

We walked the streets of Toronto a bit more and the next day I hung out with Anna at the conference and then we went back to the hotel my parents and I stayed with and ordered pizza and watched Daria. One of these days I'll move to Toronto so we can do this all the time.

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Are you guys dying or what? My god, Meisel! Christy and Karen and Natalia are GLOWING. The colors and the composition and ahhh. It's so beautiful and classic and will be iconic and plastered on my walls.

(Okay, so not the most insightful or critical commentary, but I have been writing at Jezebel all day and I am tired, dammit. At the end of the day all I want to do is gaze at Karen Elson's mesmerizing hair, okay? But speaking of Jezebel, I am guest-blogging there, starting yesterday and going until Wednesday, so you should visit us! Okay, back to hair staring.)

wooden striped braided nebulae

So much to write about Toronto! So much tiredness to fix! But until then, an outfit from the trip:
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comme des garcons top, risto bimbiloski shorts, happy socks from tobi.com, pierre hardy for gap shoes. /ignore hair wtfery.

Basically just doing the old different prints/same colors thing here, but HOLY HELL DO NEBULA CLOTHES MAKE MY DAY. They are by/were sent to me by Risto Bimbiloski, aka, Evil Mastermind Who Will One Day Rule Us All With His Magical Shorts. I didn't even wear these to the astronomy session of the IdeaCity conference on purpose. But then Edna DeVore started talking about the insanity of hubble telescopes and how freaky the universe is and I stared at my shorts and got all scared.
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And I normally can't stand wearing shorts or pants but these are surprisingly comfy and the shape is beautiful (one of these days I'll get a profile view.)
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I started to write something about how nice summer is but deleted it because it's a million degrees and I have a million mosquito bites and summer is so easy to romanticize when you have homework to do but then it comes and you don't do all that creative stuff you anticipated and you're kind of like OH WAIT, ALL I'VE BEEN DOING IS SITTING ON THE COUCH AND FALLING ASLEEP, AND NOW IT IS FALL; SHIT. And then you miss your mosquito bites! And wish you were sweating buckets in your living room as opposed to gym class! And you realize that watching people be annoying on Two And a Half Men is better than having to witness that kind of annoyingness in real life! And then you remember that you have those awesome nebula shorts, and you don't care about the other stuff because I HAVE NEBULA SHORTS MUAHAHA.

~Fin~

yes, we are still talking about resort (part four)

color
Burst
The colors the colors the colors.

Bottega Veneta (1, 6.) GAH. See what I meant about the brilliant color sense when I talked about this collection in part one? These two looks in particular remind me of Scooby Doo, but don't ask me to explain that.

Thakoon (2.) Relaxed art teacher vibes. The cool kind of art teacher! Not the Ghost World kind. Also the colored hair is obviously A+.

Celine (3, 5.) Phoebe Philo does bright colors incredibly well, too. Part one for more.

Givenchy (4.) Part three, but sweet lord do I want to wear an all-red suit with brooches that look like they were acquired randomly in random places over a long period of time.

resort favorites part three

These favorite looks of mine didn't fit into my other collages, so here we are (the other collection would be Chloe Sevigny for Opening Ceremony, which I wrote about here):
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Givenchy The whole collection was sort of the Alejandro video/Frida Kahlo (cited by Riccardo Tisci as an inspiration) and I want everything. I would love to see detail shots for this one. Everyone knows "resort" is a sucky name but if the girl that owned this whole collection* and went on vacation to an island she would live in a hut and paint and read and mix potions and burn incense and call in to work sick every day for the rest of her life.

*and anyone who owned this whole collection would wear nothing else, because they'd have no reason to not be satisfied with all this loveliness, and because owning these clothes would make them the kind of person with a niche. Like how a cartoon character always wears the same thing, or like Margot Tenenbaum.

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Stella McCartney STELLAAAAA! STELLLLLAAAAA! Okay, now that I have the obligatory over, HOLY HELL. Seriously, STELLLAAAA. I'll stop. But, um, marry me? The lace is perfectly balanced between being detailed and simple. The flowers are the greatest kind of florals because they look like intense paintings as opposed to that playful repeating print. And the colors. The whole thing sounds like a dreamy sigh, smells like spring rain, and feels like the luxurious, non-sick kind of bed-in day.

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Lanvin This looks like the kind of collection you'd have to see in real life, but hey, looks awesome enough. This picture is the greatest thing ever:

I want Alber Elbaz to photobomb my school picture next year.

resort favorites part two

liquid
Liquid
Cool colors, electrifying warm ones, beiges, and flowing liquidy shapes.

Alexander Wang (1.) (Written about in part one.)

Calvin Klein (2, 5, 12.) (Also written about in part one. And that limey yellow is like the day time version of this look from Marc Jacobs Fall 2010. They have both made their way into my dreams.)

Balenciaga (3, 10.) The colors and prints in this collection are all too much. In the good way, of course. I know that when I talked about Bottega Veneta in my last post I was all "it's great because they cut the crap and get to the main details!" This collection isn't necessarily the anti-thesis of that, and the details aren't crap, but they're special in a different way. I need detail shots, though.

Bottega Veneta (4, 7.) HOLY HELL, see what I mean about the sense of color? The series of looks in the style of photo 4 made my jaw drop when I looked at the slideshow. Anyway, expanded upon in part one.

Celine (6, 9, 11.) Part one, again, but 1) THAT BAG! and 2) the side detail in photo 6 is so clever and cool and the kind of thing that would elicit a wink from another Celine fanatic, in a way more wonderful than someone complimenting an obnoxious monogram bag.

Zero + Maria Cornejo (8.) I can't get over the way the side sort of falls out of the arm. The whole collection is so perfectly earthy and Cornejo-y.

resort favorites part one

I don't know if I think Resort collections are relevant, but they are fun to review. Their sole purpose of commercial success means there isn't really a message to decipher or a concept to pick apart, and it's mostly based just on how visually appealing the clothes are. As Alber Elbaz told style.com, "Pre-collection isn't about an image or a direction. It's about a woman, a desire, a need. What do women want?" Isn't that fun? I don't have to wonder what Rei Kawakubo's two-word explanation of cotton tumors means, and can instead just sit at my computer and stare while saying either "OOOH, PRETTY COLORS" or "ME NO LIKE." Keepin' it classy, as usual.

Though I feel ridiculous spending so much time on Resort while having done very few with Fall shows, I have a bunch of scheduled Resort posts to go up this week while I am at IdeaCity in Canada Land. But for now, one mood I especially liked:
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Simplicity (Not necessarily minimalism, but that is all for another time.)

Bottega Veneta (ph. 1, 6, and 9.) For lack of better word, wowowow. I never find myself unable to attach the word "fresh," annoying and abused as it is, to a Bottega collection. Tomas Maier has the greatest sense of color (better displayed in the resort posts I have to come) and every look is always just cut to the chase with the most important details there -- stated, simple, not touched or bothered by any other guilty pleasure add-ons. The flats here are too perfect. And this is like, a SPRING collection. Seriously, that first dress is resort!? Jesus! I often wonder whether or not, if I was the kind of grown-up person who thoughtfully spent lots of money on clothes, I would spend it on resort. In many cases it's the label's team and not the actual designer that does most of the designing, and it's much harder to emotionally connect with a resort collection than a Spring or Fall one. But this collection in particular is just so so next level.

Alexander Wang (2, 8, 11.) Though I am normally a socks and sandal person -- almost ALWAYS a socks and sandal person, because feet are ugly -- something felt overly stuffy about the sock usage here. Something was stuffy about the collection overall, but most of it I dug, especially the transparent dresses over sporty underthings. Something is so right!

Calvin Klein (3.) This is another one where I would've guessed it was a Spring collection if I didn't know it was resort. So serene. So serene that I feel too calm and serene and stuff to think of a better description. PS, why does the blogosphere not freak out about Francisco Costa more often? The man creates wonders!

Celine (4, 5, 7, 10, 12.) Phoebe Philo does no wrong. She just doesn't. It is simply not how she rolls. As a consequence of this, I want to become a bank robber. ANGUISH. (Also, I am not a bag person, but the Celine bag is SO GOOD and for Resort they made it this electric liquidy lime color. It totally makes me want to cry.)

throw her away

Meh, I lied, still into summer hippie swamp fairy witch vibes. Pacing, pacing. (photos vice, hole, stevie dance's candles by tommy ton, vintage juergen, don't really know what this is, brion nuda rusch.)

already thinking about fall

Already I am feeling sweaters and denim and being bored at school and Sassy and maybe dying my hair again. Then when it comes time for all of this, I'll be watching The Virgin Suicides and wanting to go prance around in a field on a hot summer day. In a long white dress. Catching lightning bugs. Dammit, Daria!
(photos 1, 2, 3, 4.)

meh, some pun involving the word "zine," i'm too lazy right now/summer means not thinking

Time to combine two DIY mediums as I show some love for a few of my favorite zines on this here blog! Whoa! Can the internet handle it? Will it implode?
I don't have too many photos of the insides of these because I think zines are kinda special and something feels wrong about sharing that. And some of these are my recommendations, and some are just really awesome and I'm excited about them.
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Belle made this one, this might be my favorite spread visually. I dunno if she's selling it but look at how pretty it is! It's like a sandwich/sundae of all her best outfits. In collage form.

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I love fashion illustration, especially when you can color it in, so obviously I'm obsessed with Laia's Holy Child. You can see all of it here, but this is my favorite part:
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Tim Blanks for president! I don't care that he's British!

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Pamflet was sent to me by its creators, but I swear I actually like it! Like, a lot. They're funny and honest and write about fashion with feminism so I'm obviously all over it. And this part struck me especially, and I started making my own zine again: (to read, click on the photo and then "all sizes" on the Flickr page.)
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And then these are a couple other things where I'm like "HELL YEAH!!" (from issue X only, you'll have to be surprised by the others!)
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You know what else? How talk show hosts are always like, SO TELL ME FEMALE ACTRESS, HOW DO YOU JUGGLE BEING A MOM WITH A CAREER?!?!?! but men are never asked about their parenting. So much sexism! For both sides! Blahhh.
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I don't think Anna is selling it (sorry kids!) but she was kind enough to send me a copy. My favorite part is the comparison between Rodarte Spring 2010 and Sonic Youth's self-titled album (she compared the Fall 2010 collection with Daydream Nation, too. I emailed it to Kate and Laura of Rodarte and they freaked out. Go email Anna and bug her to do more because they're great.)
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Lastly, First Kiss, which is done most justice when alongside the goodies that zine co-creator Marisa (who wrote Girl Power and co-wrote the Sassy book) and I bonded over when she visited my hotel room last time I was in NY.
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I mean...Daria! 1993 Details with Nirvana on the cover! Floral clogs! All photographed beautifully against an ugly hotel room duvet designed to cleverly disguise stains.

So the zine -- a bunch of their friends and readers of Elizabeth's blog sent in stories of their first kisses and the whole thing is so angsty and beautiful.
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Not to mention that some awesome people contributed:
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Yes, that is my name. No, I will not tell you anything. Unless you buy the zine.

And now, make your own zine! Make a blog! Make babies! Reproduce! No, don't reproduce! Stoned Nirvana interviews!