The World's a Stage

OK, so a lot of you have already seen this picture (sorry, it’s not what I’m wearing today, but I’m still being slow about the camera thing), but I’ve gotten a lot of questions about where I got basically every piece of the outfit. So I’ll go ahead and go through them (warning: links ahead!).

The shirt and jacket are from the same store in Japan: Ozz On Japan. This is one of the few stores I’ve seen where every time I pass it, I stop and think “Ooh, that’s nice. I wonder what store this is?” and look up at the name, and yep, it’s them again. They’ve got different … collections? I think you’d call them? Maybe themes? And each of their locations only carries a few of the collections. One thing I really like about this place is that almost all of their stuff has laces to adjust the sizing. I’m pretty fat compared to the average Japanese girl, so the fact that the clothing is a bit adjustable is pretty awesome.

A bit about the jacket itself. When I bought it, I just thought it looked awesome, and I’m often a bit wary about wearing it, because I think it can often seriously overpower the rest of the outfit. It turns out that it’s a remarkably useful jacket though. I love the sort of ruffled point in the back – often with skirts with a bit of fullness, the shape of the back creates an elegant sort of line that makes me look a bit taller and thinner. It also nicely emphasizes the shape of skirt, I think, instead of drawing attention away from it like I had worried.

The skirt, which is really what I was trying to show off in this picture, is from an indie fashion designer in Oakland called the window lady. I don’t what her real name is, but I suspect it’s … Jany or something similar? I’m not entirely sure where I got that though, so who knows how close that is. Everything she makes is made of recycled materials. The skirt is actually made of ties, and when I bought it she threw in a collar/choker type thing also made of ties for free. I haven’t worn it yet, because it seems like a party-ish sort of accessory and I’ve been too busy with apartment hunting to even think about finding parties, let alone going to them. I love the mix of colors in the skirt that make it so versatile and easy to match.

The tights are from Sock Dreams. I bought them on a whim to go with the 1880s Victorian jacket I got at Decades of Fashion a month or so ago, and they’ve been ridiculously useful ever since. I think I’m going to try to get a few more from that brand – they’ve been remarkably hardy, considering how rough I am with my clothes. The burgundy color of them match so many things so well.

And the shoes are the infamous Fluevog Babycakes, which you’ve all seen multiple times, since I basically don’t wear any other shoes (not quite true, but close). I’ve actually had people stop me on the streets asking about these shoes, and I’ve had a number of conversations with random people thanks to a shared love of Fluevog. Just don’t look too closely at the price tag …

Here are a few photos of an outfit I wore a week or two ago. Some of you may recognize the dress from my one professional-ish/published photo shoot, and I’ve made it more appropriate for work with the purple cardigan. The belt is actually the obi from a touristy yukata that my grandmother got me from Japan long before I ever made my way there.

I look a little distracted here because I’m watching Project Runway for the first time. I may have a new addiction. A lot of it was over-dramatized and annoying, but I loved a lot of the designs. We were watching the 2006 season finale, and the designer I was rooting for didn’t end up winning, which was sad.

Here’s kind of an odd-angled picture so you can see the outfit better. I think I’m still talking about Project Runway, so I’m a bit distracted and the photo has caught me kind of at an awkward moment with my mouth open.

And lastly, here’s a photo of the bottom of my shoes, which are the gorgeous Babycakes from Fluevog. My friend is trying his hand at artistic photography, which is why the rest of me is blurry and the angle sort of odd.

So I’m starting out my outfit posts with this one, even thought it’s a bit lame. I like it, and I figure if I get expectations up too high, I won’t really be able to post it later without looking even more boring in comparison to the ones I’ve already posted. So, it goes first.

In this outfit, I’m experimenting with breaking one of those fashion rules that I learned when I was pretty young and not at all into clothes – don’t mix brown and black. When I started getting into fashion a few months ago, I started reading a few blogs, and people pointed out that you actually can mix brown and black, you just need to be more deliberate about it. So here I’ve tried alternating them a bit – black boots, brown/black belt, black shirt, brown jacket, brown/black choker. You can’t see it in the picture, but I’ve also go a brown and black leather cuff on my right wrist in an attempt to balance out the black of my tattoo. Not sure how well I’ve managed, but there you go.