blue berry style

gothic lolita bo peep.

o m g!

this inspiration began with the shoes [jeffrey campbell lydia platforms: $135, nasty gal]. one of the things that i was most excited about prior to moving to japan five years ago was the mythical lolita style that was supposedly prevalent throughout harajuku and beyond. sure enough, on my first weekend venture into harajuku, lolitas lined the sidewalks in clusters. but unfortunately, i wound up perusing a few boutiques catering to this style where i discovered that the outfits were quite pre-packaged.

still, i liked the idea behind the fashion - victorian-inspired outfits of petticoats and full skirts, stockings and bows. i felt as if lolita fashion represented a disregard for the increasing utilitarianism of modern fashion and a love for layers, frills and old-fashioned elegance, which were made contemporary with additions such as platform shoes, cutesy or gothic motifs, lots of black lace and exaggerated accessories, all in celebration of how much reality you can evade through clothing.

for a while, i've felt the desire to incorporate lolita fashion into my own outfits, but this can be difficult as it's quite costume-ish, and the goal is not to don a pre-packaged costume. however, wearing a lace hairbow is probably as far as i've gone thus far...

so, back to the shoes: when i came across those shoes, i immediately thought "lolita". except that they're not totally outrageous, and actually quite on-trend [i see a bit of a miu miu silhouette in those platforms]. and if you think about it, a lot of lolita touches are also totally on-trend right now - bows, lace, petticoats and stockings included. so maybe there is no better time than now to mimic lolita stylings.

i'd wear the shoes with what i imagine as a mixture of "classic" lolita met with "gothic" lolita - feminine blouses in delicate fabrics and soft colors paired with edgy, bold skirts with full cuts and frilly embellishments.

lolita bo peep.

pushbutton oversized white caped shirt: $160, asos; pink ruffle silk shirt: $183, pixie market; cooperative peter pan blouse: $54, urban outfitters; aristocracy top: $38, modcloth.

kera chiffon pants: $95, opening ceremony; tulle academy skirt: $45, nasty gal; tsumori chisato moon dot skirt: $274, la garconne; vintage red chiffon and black lace petticoat skirt: $60, shrinkle on etsy; see by chloe bow flared skirt: $295, net-a-porter; sretsis gold/black skirt: $138, farfetch.

me time.

these days, i have an excessive amount of what i'm going to call "me" time. i used to consider myself one of those people who absolutely values their alone time...the kind of person who would need a break after being around other people for extensive periods of time. however, in a turn of events, i wound up living with my boyfriend for nearly three years. and our home life did not involve staying out of each others' ways - we slept in together, ate meals together, watched movies together and surfed the internet side-by-side. and to my surprise, our "us" time fulfilled my need for "me" time.

but now i find myself 800 miles away from him, and i'm slowly re-orienting myself with what it means to have "me" time with just me. i'd be lying if i said i didn't feel completely lost at times (no one to eat with? no one to talk to at night?). but, for the most part, new york city is kind to those who have an abundance of alone time.

today, i spent the day browsing the many teeny record stores in downtown manhattan. and there was a great feeling of accomplishment when i uncovered my finds all on my own.

i found velocity girl's "copacetic" album! as you may know, i am a big fan of black tambourine, so it's only fitting for me to like velocity girl as well. it's a natural progression from black tambourine, a lot smoother and poppier and definitely the type of music i always end up listening to on repeat in the summer. since i've been listening to velocity girl so much lately, i felt like it was a stroke of luck to come across their first album on colored vinyl. sidenote: also nabbed their second album on cassette....yes, i'm developing an unstoppable fiendness for analog audio...

...because i also couldn't resist this 7", circa 1996, from versus. i just recently got their album "the stars are insane" and loved it instantly....so this was a no-hesitation buy.

and yes, i have plans to make little mixtapes with all this analog audio and "me" time!

are you familiar with veniero's? it seems like a destination spot for tourists...but man. it's actually quite worth your while. it's great for those who are both indecisive AND gluttonous, because their desserts come in miniature sizes, so you can fill up a small box for around $5-7.

...and then you can proceed to eat it ALL in one sitting, which is exactly what i did (washed down with a few scoops of ben and jerry's!). the chocolate cannoli is quite possibly the best i've ever had. not pictured: cream puff, because i had devoured it before i thought to snap a picture...

so there you have it. "me" time = indie pop and sweets.

too typical?

self-made inspirations, part 1.

when strapped for a career direction, it's sometimes useful to reflect back on how you might have viewed things when you had a more opportunity-filled and idyllic view of the reality that is navigating the career world. before i knew the anxiety-inducing obstacle it is to define and achieve the perfect career path, i simply wanted to be an entrepreneur.

although...i'd prefer not to use the word "entrepreneur", because it conjures up images of wearing a suit and stiffly articulating obsequious business proposals to venture capitalists. no, no, the kind of entrepreneurial spirit that i'm thinking of is nothing like that. it's totally within reach and knows no compromises - you just have to have a vision and a desire to do your own thing. this is a new aspect to my blog that i'd like to undertake in the coming months, where i want to recognize the self-made people who have inspired me. i'll start here with one new and one old.

gary pepper vintage

when i first noticed nicole warne on weardrobe, i was immediately drawn to her well-styled and early 90's-inspired outfits of cropped tops, blazers, lace, minidresses and a feminine color palette. imagine how pleased i was to discover that the blog linked to her weardrobe account was much more than a personal style blog, but a showcase for her vintage store, through which her personal brand is strongly projected - nicole buys, styles, models, photographs and lists everything herself.

gary pepper vintage is less than a year old, but nicole has already worked on a collaboration with solestruck, hosted a bunch of generous giveaways, put some of her own designs into production and is now listing new items by the hundreds. the gary pepper vintage brand is a lifestyle - one that stemmed from a girl who simply stayed true to her own creative vision and let her business grow from there - "the gary pepper girl is a japanese popstar. famous in her own right, admired by all."

pick*y cosmetics

thinking about pick*y cosmetics is like recalling a first. first time driving car, first time cooking a meal, first time feeling completely intrigued by a self-made inspiration. i discovered pick*y cosmetics through an online forum that i used to peruse when i was 14 or 15 (this was 2000/2001. pre-facebook, pre-myspace, even pre-friendster). the online forum was full of progressive-minded girls and actually paved the way for a lot of my own self-development, but i digress. pick*y was the name of the all-natural, homemade cosmetics company run by one of the forum members - i think her name was tasha. tasha formulated, produced, designed and packaged everything herself, in her own home, using few all-natural ingredients.

tasha was an active poster on the forum, so it didn't take long before her products spread virally across the community (an earlier form of social media marketing? maybe.)...and i started obsessively scouring her web site everyday and enviously reading the rave reviews of her products by other forum members. i watched as her business grew, as she re-designed and re-packaged and introduced new products. i remember admiring tasha's alternative, raver-ish style and her bright eye makeup, and then watching as she unleashed a line of brightly-hued eye colors.

i didn't have a credit card or checking account back then, so it took a bit of time and polite begging before my mom (also quite skeptical of online ordering at the time) finally allowed me to make a purchase. i greedily got one of each kind of product on pick*y - two solid perfumes, a shimmery lip gloss, a pot of lip balm, a lotion on a stick, and eye dust...and waited so eagerly for them to arrive. and they were very much worth it - i remember heavenly smells of strawberry, cucumber and grass, all carefully packaged together with a personal touch. i was so proud of my pick*y products - no one else had them. im sad to say, however, that one day, without warning, pick*y was gone. while i considered it a very successful business, we were all much younger back then, and perhaps tasha wanted to move onto other things. there's hardly a trace of pick*y cosmetics on the internet anymore, but i'll always remember how inspired i felt at the thought of how far one person could really carry out an idea.

Ana Hickmann

Ana Lucia Hickmann known us Ana Hickmann, she is beautiful of Brazillian model. Ana was born March 1, 1981 in Santa Cruz do Sul, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. 

tapes and tapes.

back in chicago, i used to listen to records all day. it was fun listening to analog audio, where the medium doesn't allow for shuffling songs or skipping tracks with the touch of a button. i want to get back to the point where i think of music in cohesively produced albums, rather than a slew of random tracks.

unfortunately, i don't have space for a record player in my tiny bedroom...so i've changed my analog preference to cassette. i now have a space-saving portable cassette player (with fm tuner), a simple device which you can still purchase at electronic stores for $8-10. i got mine at the kmart in astor place and painted it over with coats of glitter and modge podge.

shopping for cassettes is fun, like treasure-hunting. in record stores, it seems like cassettes are almost always thrown into unorganized piles underneath alphabetized records and cd's, forcing you to dig and poke around to find the good stuff. a few tips: rainbow music on 8th and 1st has mountains and mountains of rare cassettes that you could probably browse for hours. ear wax records in williamsburg has a few boxes of cassettes as well as some rare ones locked away in a display case. and academy annex has some limited release small label cassettes. and plustapes, a chicago-based record label and distro which i recently discovered at pitchfork festival, deals solely with cassette tapes.

here is the small collection that i have built up over the past few days:

roxy music - avalon (1982)

serge gainsbourg - love on the beat (1984)

cocteau twins - heaven or las vegas (1990)

morrissey - bona drag (1990)

rem - out of time (1991/german takt music release)

the afghan whigs - gentlemen (1993)

kate bush - the red shoes (1993)

week in chicago.

i got back around midnight last night from nearly a week-long visit to chicago, and what a relaxing trip it was! although i lived in chicago for nearly three years, returning there for a visit offered a new experience - one where i felt a nostalgic appreciation for all the things that differentiate chicago from manhattan. so here is my list of things that captured my fondness this week in the midwest.

1. in chicago, even if you are a not-yet-established twentysomething, you can live in a castle with a frontyard and a backyard in a trendy area occupied mostly by the hip and young-spirited.

this is the street that my boyfriend lives on! of course, those are not real castles [although i read somewhere that immigrants to chicago did mimic the architecture of eastern european castles], but multi-unit buildings with beautifully rehabbed apartments that have all the desirable modern amenities as well as preserved vintage fixtures - vinny's apartment has pillars!

2. in chicago, you can also lounge around sipping on beers in your spacious backyard, watching the sun set and wasting time just as you please. and you can fire up the grill if you get hungry. thus leading to a most delicious dinner of savory grilled tofu accompanied by roasted corn, greens and a cold beer.

3. in chicago, you can hear and watch nightlife go by from the platform of the elevated rail system. below, my old 'hood, as seen from the damen blue line platform. amazing for people-watching. if you happen to be there past 1 or 2 am on a weekend, my guess is that the odds of catching someone ralfing it up on the sidewalk are quite high...

see the upper lefthand corner? i lived just around the corner from there, a surprisingly quieter safe haven from the perpetual madness that is the six corners (or 'crotch') of wicker park.

4. in chicago, you can attend large, multi-stage, three-day outdoor music festivals without having to travel to a different state or even outside city limits. such as pitchfork music festival. this was my third and possibly best year!

just as i suspected...yoni wolf from WHY? was greeeeeeat!

and here's my sad little picture of wolf parade. notice a poorly-captured spencer krug on the left side. my hasty point-and-shoot skills do not do their pitchfork set justice!

5. in chicago, i can also wear flip flops without feeling too uncouth or grody. i cannot bring myself to wear flip flops through the grimy, sticky streets of manhattan. in the wide, grass-lined sidewalks of chicago, however, it seems fine! while i don't particularly care for the look of flip flops, i do ultimately enjoy the comfort and freedom they can provide in hot, hot weather...and boy was it hot all week...

here's the pair i sported throughout the weekend - some threadless x havainas flip flops that vinny won from the threadless prize wheel at pitchfork. cute, eh?

6. in chicago, you can get dinner and drunk for $7.50....

on the menu at the boiler room in logan square. oh, alright, maybe this one is a wash because there are many ways to cheaply drink and eat in nyc as well...

7. so, last but not least, in chicago, i get to enjoy brunches with my boyfriend!!!

at cozy corner restaurant and pancake house in logan square.

now it's back to nyc and back to the grind of getting my life together. starting with announcing the winner of the csn stores giveaway: the winner is hannah from heart city vintage! yay! we'll be contacting you shortly.