DSW, OOTD, Target. Jason Wu for Target, thrift

Orange-cha glad

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Top: Thrifted  Skirt: Jason Wu for Target  Shoes: DSW
      I wore this outfit to go to a belated Mothers’ Day celebration with my mom and grandparents. I like the simplicity of the outfit but I think it would look good with a few accessories too. In the Spring/Summer I have a harder time punching up outfits since layering is not really practical. So I’m gonna try and add more with accessories this season.
       Anyway although I have a few Target/Designer collaborations most are pieces I found while thrifting. I’m not really one to wake up early to get to the collaborations. All the crowds and frenzy just aren’t very appealing to me. But this year when the Jason Wu collection came out I decided to give it a try since I had an old Target gift card from my birthday burning a hole in my pocket. I went in the afternoon the day the collection launched and there wasn’t one piece of the collection left in stores. I suppose I should have gone earlier but I’m not a morning person and designer collections just aren’t enough to get me up in the morning. So I gave up and figured I might be able to find some in a thrift store some time. Cut to a few weeks later when I had a fiery urge to shop and decided to go to Target, since I still had my gift card. To my surprise the Jason Wu collection had been re-stocked and there were still quite a few pieces available. I checked out a few and decided on this skirt. I really like the skirt it has a cute floral pattern and goes well with a variety of shirts. I’ll definitely be remixing this skirt a lot this summer.

DSW, khols, OOTD

Rediscovered

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Dress:Khols Shoes: DSW  
I wore this dress last week to pick my car up from it’s oil change, go to a mid century-tastic estate sale and a few not so great yard sale’s near my house. I kind of forgot about this dress for a while until I was looking for an easy outfit to wear to the car repair place. While browsing my closet I remembered this dress and fell back in love with it. This dress was one of my first dress purchases a couple years ago when I decided to add skirts and dresses into my wardrobe. Before 2010 the last time I had worn a dress was prom. I got this at Khols on sale and liked it’s shape and it’s kind of cool dot rose pattern. It also has kind of a 40’s detail that I like. It’s a cute and easy dress to wear, you just put it on and go. The only problem with this outfit is the shoes. I got them years ago and the plastic heel has always been slippery, they’re very cute but I can’t wear them when going to certain places. Unfortunately I haven’t worn them in a while, forgot about the shitty heel, and ended up awkwardly slipping on my way down a driveway to a garage sale. So now I’m on the lookout for better pointed toe flats.

DSW, Enid, forever 21, Ghost World, Icon, Inspiration, OOTD, skirt a day challenge, thrift, vintage

Day 10: Copy Cat

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Bowling Shirt: Vintage  Skirt: love 21(forever 21)  Shoes: DSW  Bag: market in Ecuador Earrings: thrift

             And so we meet the last day of the skirt challenge. I’m excited. I have to say I’m glad I took the challenge, it made me really think about the skirts in my wardrobe and how to style them, but I’m also glad it’s over. Now I can post pants and dresses!! Get ready. Anyway I had a hard time thinking of an icon/designer look I wanted to copy. But this morning when I woke up, at a ridiculously early hour, I suddenly had it, Enid from Ghost World! I’ve loved the movie Ghost World since I first watched it in middle school and have even read one of the comic the story is based on. While watching it I totally fell in love with Enid. Not only is she a busty four-eyes but she’s funny, sarcastic and had a great sense of style. I was totally in love with everything Enid especially her clothes and room decor. When it comes to style icons most of mine have pretty edgy/funky style. I’d say my style is classic with a little bit of funk, so I always look to celebrities and other style icons with funky/edgier taste to get ideas on how to incorporate their look into mine. I think Enid’s look has three basic qualities: Vintage, color and pattern. Her style is an eclectic mix of 70’s punk and 60’s mod that I’m just in love with and is reasonably on trend. Peter pan collars, plaid, leather jackets, skinny jeans, funky t-shirts, docs and mod inspired clothing are all things you can pick up in almost any retail or thrift store right now.

Enid’s different looks from the movie

             So when I decided to choose Enid as my style icon I googled her to check out some of the outfits from the movie. I found the pictures I was looking for but I also found out that British designer Luella did a spring/summer 2008 collection of Enid inspired clothes. I checked out the runway show online and was even more inspired! I definitely have at least 3 Enid inspired looks besides this one that I’ll be posting soon. I think one of the great things about Enid’s style is the incorporation of t-shirts. As my style has evolved I’ve found it harder to incorporate crew neck t-shirts into my wardrobe stylishly. As someone whose pretty busty and has a rather short neck I tend to veer away from them, but I have a ton of cool crew neck t-shirts that I’ve gotten from school etc. that I’d love to incorporate into my wardrobe. Luckily Enid is an avid fan of the crew neck t-shirt and gives totally amazing inspiration on how to rock a crew neck.

Some of my favorite looks from Luella’s SS 2008 Enid inspired collection.

          On to the outfit! Enid wears a lot of cool graphic skirts, like the green one on the movie poster, but I don’t really have any that compare. Instead of copying Enid’s style I went with an outfit inspired by it. To me a main component of Enid style is vintage. A year or so ago I found this vintage bowling shirt in a pile of my mom’s vintage clothes. I knew it was cool but I didn’t really know how to style it. Then today I knew Enid’s style would work effortlessly with this top. In my dream world I would have paired it with a more graphic printed skirt, maybe something in a plaid, but I don’t have any plaid skirts so I opted for this magenta skirt that appeals to Enid’s use of bright colors.  If I went 100% Enid on this outfit I would have added my leather Jacked and Docs but it’s was an unseasonably hot day, 70 degrees, and I haven’t broken my Docs in yet. The last time I wore them it took them less than 10 minutes to tear apart my heels. Anyway when the weather cools off I’ll definitely do more Enid inspired looks and post them here. In the mean time I’ll be looking for more cool t-shirts, patterned skirts, big nerdy glasses, mod inspired clothes and more vintage, to really amp up the Enid-spiration. Lastly here’s a video of the opening to Ghost World, I can’t get this song or there urge to dance around to it out of my mind!

DSW, OOTD, skirt a day challenge, target

Day 9: To the beach

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Dress, leggings and Belt: Target   Shoes:DSW  Cardigan: Vintage

      OK so I have to admit i’ve been stalling on this one for awhile. Partly because I don’t go the beach much and partly because it’s Fall and dressing like i’m going to the beach sounds cold. So this outfit is more what i’d wear to the beach today, October 1, 2011. I’m also cheating a little since technically this is a dress and not a skirt. But, it’s dress that’s made to look like a skirt, I have a belt and cardigan on so it looks more like seperates and finally if I was going to the beach i’d probably wear a dress anyway so I would only have to deal with one item.
         I wore this dress to go check out an antique/vintage sale in north Minneapolis. The sale was cool, there were some pretty cool items and good prices but nothing, that I could afford, really grabbed me. There were these cool mid century 60’s lamps that I really liked but they were $145.00 and though worth it a little too expensive for me. I took these pictures in my backyard in an attempt at getting better quality photos and better light. For some reason all the ones I liked are a little silly and all are at various locations in an attempt to find the best place with the best sun. I’ll probably try and take more photos outside, weather permitting, since you can’t beat that natural light.
           Anyway I got this dress two years ago at target after deciding I needed more dresses in my life. I’m pretty on the fence about the dress that looks like a skirt and top thing though. I like this dress but I think a lot of this style of dresses can look kind of cheap. I don’t like the look of the elastic band so I always try to dress it up with a more interesting belt and generally when I look at these dresses I like the bottom more than the top and would rather they had just made the skirt. I suppose I could cut off the top but it just seems like such a waste. I do though like both the top and bottom to this dress. The top is a nice coral color and the fabric of the skirt reminds me of a dress I had in the 90’s. The cropped camel cardigan is 100% cashmere and vintage. I’m totally in love with this cardigan. Not only is it extremely warm it’s neutral so I can, and do , wear it with everything. Prepare to see this piece a lot because I like to add it to a lot of outfits in the Fall/winter months.
          So I still don’t know what I’m gonna do for the last part of the skirt challenge but I’m gonna do some googling and hopefully have the final skirt challenge outfit for you tomorrow.

cats, DSW, OOTD, skirt a day challenge, thrift

DAY 8: Casual

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gratuitous cute cat picture
detail of the skirt pattern
Top and Skirt: Thrift  Belt: Target  Shoes: DSW 
             This is probably one of my favorite outfits of the whole skirt challenge. I’ve worn this outfit, as is and in a variety of different incarnations, way more than I should have since getting the skirt. I got this skirt two weeks ago in Eau Claire, WI when my mom and I randomly took a mini road trip to the Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls, WI. Despite it being early September, all the Halloween stuff was out and of course that means the vintage rack, that usually is pretty lack luster in the Savers I usually frequent, was stuffed. I found this skirt there, it’s navy blue with little yellow stars on it. Surprisingly it’s super on trend, it’s not only a midi skirt it also has one of the trendy prints of the season, stars. At first I was going to pair it with the bright yellow shirt I wore for the color block challenge but I just wasn’t feeling being that bright. So I paired it with this lovely grey t-shirt that I paid a little too much for at Unique Thrift Store, but loved too much to not get it. I like the color and the fact that it has some interesting texture/pattern to it, something that makes it a little more interesting than your regular grey t-shirt.
             I wore this outfit to go to an Estate Sale in Austin, MN. I had seen a sale online and it looked like it had pretty good stuff  and my mom and I are always up for a mini road trips, as long as the weathers nice, so we got up early and went. It took about two or so hours to get to Austin and well we probably won’t be going back. We went to the Estate sale and everything was ridiculously overpriced. We came on the last day of the Sale so everything was 50% off but there was still a lot of stuff despite the fact that it was the third day of the sale. I found some clothes I was interested including a black 80’s dress with a sequin embellished neckline. But, when we went to check out the lady told me, very rudely, that instead of being $2.50 the dress would be $20.00 because it was embellished. Turns out the rack where I had gotten the dress had other 80’s embellished sequin tops and that dress and instead of originally being $5.00 like the rest of the stuff on the rack they were $40.00 or so because of the embellishment. The problem? they’re ugly 80’s sequin shirts! They’re not in style and only some people are really interested in wearing them in a sort of ironic-y fashion. I have a similar old lady 80’s sequin cardigan that I bought at the Salvation Army for like $3.00.  Needless to say the prices were ridiculous and I wouldn’t be surprised if they still had a bunch of stuff left over after the sale ended. Anyway after that we explored Austin a bit, which kinda smells like Ham/Spam due to the Hormel plant near by. The town was ok and we ended up stopping for lunch at a Mexican Restaurant that was nice. But after that we decided to split. The lovely interactions we had with the ladies at the sale left a bad taste in our mouths so we left and went back home. When we got back we went to another Estate sale in a town closer to home and found some really cool stuff which we ended up paying a total of $40.00 for on the last day of the sale, way less then we would have spent at the sale in Austina and for way better stuff. Guess we won’ be going to anymore Estate sales in Austin.

cats, DSW, old navy, OOTD, skirt a day challenge, Tang, target, thrift

Day 6: Make it Classy add a blazer

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Tang and my shoes

       Blazer & Belt: Target  Shirt: Old Navy Skirt: Thrift  Shoes: DSW
              Sorry for this slightly delayed post, I wore this and couple other outfits the last few weeks and took pictures this weekend but we changed internet providers and had a mini lapse in internet for few days. Anyway we’re back up and running and I have a bunch of skirt challenge outfits to post and will hopefully be wrapping up this challenge soon. 
             On to the clothes! I wore this outfit to get up really early on a Saturday and try and get some amazing things at the final day of an estate sale. I totally lucked out and got all the pieces I wanted, about eight things for $40 bucks, all of which I’ll show you in an up coming A Sale-ing We Shall Go. Most of this outfit I’ve had for a really long time. The blazer I think I’ve had for roughly five years and never really worn. I’ve never really been much of a blazer person, I think they look amazing on a lot of people and can really pull an outfit together but I’ve just never really gravitated towards them. I bought this one because I’m an avid What Not to Wear fan and Stacy and Clinton always praise a good blazer. Anyway I think I may be a convert now, I really like how the blazer pulled together the outfit and I think i’ll have to start giving them more of a chance. The skirt was originally an 80’s dress I got at Savers a couple years ago in a very last minute decision. I liked the color and pattern so I just decided to get it. When I got home I tried to twerk it and make it work as a dress but it just wasn’t cutting it, so a year or so ago I cut my losses and made it into a skirt. I think I made the right decision. It’s a lot more versitle as a skirt and I really like it. The only slight downfall is it’s kinda sheer. It could probably use a slip but the only one I have is really long so I just wore it as is, I figure I don’t really care if in the right sunlight you can kinda see the outline of my hips. 
      Anyway  you may have noticed a little furry friend at the bottom of a few of the pictures, that’s one of the two cats behind Black Cat Lies, my fur baby Tang. Usually when i’m taking pictures she wonders what the hell i’m doing and comes over to meow at me and rub against my legs. As you can see she’s not a black cat but she’s adorable so you can’t really complain too much. The other cat behind BCL is Diamond who isn’t really a black cat, she’s a torise shell, but she’s mostly black so just go with it. You’ll probably see more Tang pictures in the future since I can’t resist a gratuitous cute cat picture and she always seems to be following me around when I take outfit pictures You probably wont see as much of Diamond, she’s not as much of a ham but i’ll try and post pictures of her too.