Spree vs Steal: Baby Edition

One of the websites I've been compusively surfing, alongside BabyCenter.com and BabyCentre.co.uk (and yes, there is just enough difference to justify bookmarking both), is online boutique Smallable which features almost unutterably beautiful thing. It arouses the same sort of feelings I get about Graham & Green catalogues, i.e., that I'd like to live in that world. Sadly, the Smallable universe is apparently only for small, French-speaking people, but oh, the outfits. So tiny, so lovely. Please see below:

And so, so expensive. Like, the above outfit (not counting the shoes) costs £124. 27. So I concocted this alternative version:

It isn't exactly the same. My blouse has little flutter sleeves rather than long sleeves like the original and obviously the trousers are different (though I do have a cute pair of grey trousers, in case we decide to go that way). The "inspiration" cardigan seems to be sweatshirt material, while mine is soft cotton knit. Mine was also originally white, but I spent most of an evening dyeing it grey and am very happy with the results. I'm actually really happy with the entire outfit.

Of course, I feel particularly smug about the cost: blouse and trouser set, £5; cardigan, £4; dye, £3.75. That totals £12.75, or roughly 1/10th of the original outfit. Oh, yes, I am very clever.

Work is a Four-Letter Word...

...but it turns out that "payday" is like sweet, sweet music. I've been back at work for a month now. There have been ups and downs - there has been a change of landlords, half our staff has relocated to a different floor and, most disruptive to me personally, my friend and co-worker Amy is going back to South Africa to continue her architecture studies. I'm moving to a new role starting next Wednesday, so there will be two new people to train from Monday. It's been challenging, to say the least, but it's not too bad. And I got paid on Tuesday. I was used to being paid weekly, so a month's pay in one check made me feel like I was suddenly very rich. I celebrated by ordering this dress.

I've had my eye on it for a while, but as soon as I placed the order, I started to lose interest. I might send it back, or it might be my new favorite thing...

Is This How Everyone Dresses in Helsinki?

I look at several street fashion blogs semi-regularly, but I sometimes find them frustrating. A lot of them seem to be shot guerilla-style – very little posing and bad lighting so that you can’t even really see what the person is wearing, much less be impressed by it – and with little if no commentary. And I know that many, many people love the Sartorialist, but I am not all that interested in what he thinks about the people he photographs. Also, his taste is sooo conservative and he only seems interested in thin, good-looking people who are wearing, you know, designer clothes. That’s why I like Hel-Looks so much. It has pictures of interestingly dressed Finnish people (mostly young but sometimes older people and children) and, believe me, they are never conservative or boring. Each photo is accompanied by a paragraph of the subject talking about the outfit and his or her philosophy of dressing. Some of them are pretty much what you’d expect – the clothes came from such-and-such shop and my style inspiration is a famous person with “good style” – but sometimes they are wonderfully off the wall. Lots of people wear second hand or homemade clothes, often as a response to obsessive consumerism. Lots of items are borrowed or handed down from parents or grandparents. One guy says he only wears denim. People seem to have strong views on colour and use it to respond to seasonal changes. Some of my favourite “inspirations”:

Swedish Elle and the city of Vaasa inspire me.

I want to make people smile with my style. Ten year old skate boys and fake tattoos from chewing gum packages inspire me.

Gipsy men have a great style. Personality is always stylish, too.

I adore my parents' style at the time when I was born. I wear their clothes from that time. (This person is 25.)

My moustache is my favorite accessory as it gives a certain je ne sais quoi to my outfit, regardless of what I'm wearing. I admire people with humour and something thorny in their style.

Wikipedia inspires me.

My obsession of the summer has been Ultra Sonar Bat Calls bat detector. Actually bats have inspired my style for years.

My inspiration & my style: quiet resistance.

Naturality, randomness and sky inspire me.

This jacket was so shockingly ugly that I just had to buy it. (Who hasn’t been in that position? What, just me?)

Semiotics, Finnish folklore, Beverly Hills and crazy thrifted things inspire me.

Ugliness inspires me. I get more self-respect when I dare to wear ugly clothes. Like these tights.

Michelle Williams

As part of my ongoing campaign of sassiness, I am trying to inject a bit more "oomph" in my appearance. Overall, this isn't that hard. Although I've never worn much makeup or had very elaborate hairstyles, I've always had strong ideas about my hair and clothes, to the point of often having stated theories and philosophies about them. I like to think about clothes in terms of "outfits", which you would wear out to school/work/dinner/the grocery store, as opposed to "just clothes" that you'd wear around the house - though I see no reason why those shouldn't be cute and colour-coordinated, too.

However, for the last year or so, I've been working in architecture practices, and it may be a cliche and by no means universal, but architects do generally wear a lot of black and have very serious black-framed glasses. I wear black-framed glasses but they aren't heavy enough to be very serious. Anyway, being around architects has meant that I've somehow ended up with a very dark wardrobe. I say somehow; last autumn I went out shopping with a list that read: trousers, blouses, jumpers - black, navy, grey only. I think that had something to do with it.

So I'm currently re-injecting colour into my routine. The first big success has been red. Boy, do I like red. In fact, last week I had to acknowledge that it is my official favourite colour, edging out pink/green, a combo that has been number one for probably 8 years now. This acknowledgement came after we'd gone out for our friend Sean's birthday and I wore a red skirt, a red t-shirt and a red flower in my hair. It was kind of hard to miss - like a red flag, if you will.

So that's the wardrobe component sorted. I've not made any real changes to my make-up routine, since I don't like to wear too much, though I am now wearing mascara every day. Well, on days when I leave the house. But today, I'm focusing on getting a new haircut. This is such a fraught subject. In March, I went to a very fancy salon and got what turned out to be the most expensive haircut of my life. The cut itself was pretty pricey, but it was the colour (which I didn't love) and tipping the stylist, the colourist, the guy who washed my hair and the girl who gave me the aromatherapy mini-massage that put the expense over the top. But I loved my hair! It was sort of messy on purpose, so it never looked like it was messed up. Does that make sense? Matthew said he thought it was the best haircut I've ever had (though he might have been trying to help me feel better about spending £187 at the salon). And, yes, it really did cost that much. Check the exchange rate - are you choking on whatever you were eating/drinking? After a while, I went back, but the second time around, it just wasn't as good. It was a good haircut, but not magical and maybe not worth £85 (no colour that time). Since then, I've had a trim at a cheapy little place in Covent Garden, but it's getting to the point where I have to do something. I don't want a drab, yucky haircut. I want something cute. Something sassy. Something a little bit like Michelle Williams is sporting these days.

I consulted Matthew for his thoughts, but he had never heard of Michelle Williams, so I had to give him the following primer:

Michelle Williams is the tragic ex of Heath Ledger and tragic mother of his tragic little girl Matilda. (Does that seem like a funny name for a half-Austrialian child to anyone else? Isn't it like Matthew and me naming our kid Britannia or Yankee Doodle Dandy?) They met when she played his tragic wife in the tragic Broke Back Mountain. She has recently been spotted having dinner with Spike Jonze - I don't know if it was tragic or not. I also read that she is rumoured to keep a diary. Undoubtedly contains lots of tragedy. Oh, and she used to be on Dawson's Creek. Is that tragic? Her ex-boyfriend died, Katie Holmes became a zombie (or not - not looking for a lawsuit here!) and James van der Beek and Joshua Jackson turned out to be much less attractive as grown men than as teenage boys. Could the show be cursed?!? More evidence: the WB network no longer exists and Paula Cole's career hasn't exactly been red-hot lately. Ooh - spooky!

But curses aside, Michelle's hair is pretty cute. I'm going print out the picture, draw on a side part because I can't wear a fringe/bangs, and see if I can get a stylist to make something pretty happen. Exciting, huh? And once he'd seen her picture, Matthew did say that it looked like a haircut that might well suit me, so that's a ringing endorsement from him.

On the subject of eyewear, I feel like if I'm going to wear glasses, I don't want to try to hide the fact by wearing invisible wire framed ones. I'm not ashamed! Just very near-sighted. My friend Krystal and I had a conversation in Scotland that illustrates my feelings on the subject:

Drunk man (thinking he's flirting): Can I see you without your glasses?

Us: Er, whatever. (raising glasses but not actually taking them off)
Drunk man: Wow, you're really pretty. Why do you wear glasses?
Us: So we can see better.
Drunk man: Yeah, but why don't you wear contacts?
Us: To prevent us being attractive to people like you.

This happened some years ago and I can't remember which of us he was trying to flirt with, as we are both really pretty, with or without glasses. But the same thing happened again, almost verbatim, in Austin once when I was out '80s-retro-dancing with my friend Julie. But, for all my fist-in-air, "we're near-sighted, we're here, get used to it!" rhetoric, I am starting to entertain the idea of getting my eyes lasered. I've always been against it, out of a combination of fear of new medical procedures, squeamishness at the thought of someone messing with my eyes, and glasses-wearing pride. But I would really like to be able to wear non-prescription sunglasses.

Goody Two (New) Shoes

Yesterday I got a new pair of Bass Weejuns sent all the way from Connecticut, courtesy of my grandma and mom. Now I'm all set for school to start. Just seven weeks to go. I'll probably buy some books and a notebook or something, too, but this was the most important element of my school supply shopping.

More Style Views

I have now had extensive conversations with Matthew re Tilda Swinton, whom we have decided we like very much. She's so willowy. Also, as Matthew points out, she sort of looks like David Bowie (a can't-miss move in his book). We give her weird Oscars dress two thumbs up!

(These images are from the BBC's article on Oscar dresses. Nice overview, but I wish people would stop trying to make me look at Cameron Diaz. Enough already!)

My New Style Crush

I didn't see the Oscars. For some reason, we have stayed up to watch the Super Bowl the past two years, but neither of us even considered staying up for the Oscars. However, thanks to the wonder of the internet, I know who won what and, more importantly, have seen lots of pretty dresses (and some not so pretty ones).

I am totally entranced by Diablo Cody's dress! For one thing, the press here hasn't had very large pictures of her, so I had to do some actual research to see the whole thing and even then, I haven't quite got my head around it. I found lots of other pictures of her throughout the award season and, I gotta say, I love this woman's wardrobe! It seems to consist of black, cardigans, funky jewelry, touches of red and leopard print and, almost exclusively, flats! She wore flats to the Oscars! I can so get behind that! I am not completely sold on the tattoo, but I like that she shows it off. Maybe everyone in the States is in love with her and she's been named the official new Style Icon of the nation and is getting her own TV show, but in the UK press all I've read is how she's very clever and talented. Which is good, but these clothes demand some attention too.

I've read that she has lots more films in development, so with any luck, we'll all have many opportunities to enjoy her red carpet style. In future, when people complain about the entertainment industry, I will point to this...