No Signposts in the Sea

Boy oh boy

2012-01-27T14:05:00.003-05:00

Since fashion magazines everywhere are raving about feminine pastels, 1950s and 1960s housewife looks, lace and peplums, I figured that it was a good time to get inspired by menswear.

Chris and I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy yesterday, and the entire cast's wardrobe is to die for. I got to thinking about buying a men's suit. I have been drawn to menswear for as long as I can remember. I have been buying sweaters and t-shirts at men's clothing stores for years - mostly because of fit and sleeve lengths - but there is also something that screams longevity in men's clothing. It seems to me that menswear is less fickle, less trend-driven. The clothes look like they are made to last for several seasons. There's no denying that I like to play with womenswear - I love to wear easy dresses and skirts - but there is an undercurrent in my sense of style that longs for Margaret Howell's menswear-inspired designs, nice tailoring, brogues, narrow ties and crisp shirts.

I'm considering investing in a pair of black men's boots. Nothing too rough, but something sort of sophisticated, like the pair above.

I am also drawn to narrow trousers. I still love flares, but there is something quietly cool about tailored straight-leg trousers.

Also, sign me up for pretty oxfords paired with awesome socks.

Pictures from Jak & Jill and The Sartorialist

When plurals go missing

2012-01-24T13:26:00.005-05:00

You know what I really, really dislike? This:

There is no such thing as a skinny jean. It's skinny jeans. I'm almost used to hearing horrible things like "a jean" and "a trouser", but seeing it written is much, much more offensive. And just when I thought that it couldn't possibly get any worse than that, I saw these:

Please, Elle, no! My eyes, my eyes!

On Why Fashion is not Feminist

2012-01-21T15:04:00.006-05:00

A big chunk of the style blogosphere has been tackling the complicated relationship between fashion and feminism for some time. Feminist Fashion Bloggers have written one interesting post after another, and the current must-read is the article t hreadbared's Minh-Ha T. Pham wrote for Ms. Magazine.

The unlikely marriage between fashion and feminism is one of those weird, interwoven arrangements that don't quite make sense, but where strong connections and connotations exist nevertheless. Fashion is frivolous, fun, serious, and meaningful to a lot of women, including myself. On the one hand the framework of fashion creates unrealistic demands for what women should look like and how they should behave, but on the other, it also gives women the power to use fashion as means to an end. (Minh-Ha T. Pham's article resonates this power beautifully, so I will not dwell on that.) However, almost by definition the notion of feminism doesn't sit all that well with the level of fluidity and flux associated with fashion: after all, feminism is more than an idea. It is a project and a movement whose purpose is to create and defend equal social, economic and political rights for women. When it comes to what feminism really aims to achieve, the world of fashion is a big complicated lump of consumer-driven identity politics and business, post-colonial hypocricy and active wrong-doing.

The framework where fashion meets feminism goes far beyond the notion of the consumer who uses fashion to suit her purposes and her quest for gender equality. We like to think of fashion as an inspirational, expressive platform for our feminist identities, and in this scenario, we are the women feminism talks about. What we fail to see is that we are on top of a pyramid of women, that issues global feminism must face are ugly and complicated, and that as fashionable feminists and consumers of fashion we establish demand for women to be subjugated and abused elsewhere. We conveniently forget that fashion employs thousands upon thousands of women and girls in sweatshop conditions in the developing world - women who work 14-hour days 7 days a week, women who often get paid subsistent wages if they are lucky, women who work in deplorable conditions so that we can get our fashion fix. We fail to ask ourselves: when we talk about women, fashion and feminism, where do those women fit in? I readily confess that I spent years not asking that question, and there are still times when I shy away from asking it out loud.

I have written about sweatshop labour elsewhere so I will not repeat the sad facts and figures about sweatshops and how deeply connected every aspect of clothing production, be it low-end or high-end, is to sweatshop practices. But I will say that sweatshop policies and feminism are at polar opposites when it comes to talking about rights and equality. Yet fashion production, fashion consumerism and identity politics belong to the same process: the process where clothes are manifactured, sold, worn as identity markers, and eventually disgarded. Regardless of the ideological aspect of using clothing as tools of power in the consumerist Western world, within that same process there is oppression of women elsewhere. That oppression can a) go unnoticed, b) get noticed - and then we shrug our shoulders and move on -, or c) make people act. Unfortunately, a large chunk of fashionable feminists will fall into the second category, where sure, we see the oppression of women elsewhere, but since it's not in our backyard, we choose to look elsewhere and keep buying, because we can't bear to face the reality. I've been there just like everyone else has. We don't like to think that perhaps our feminism is very limited in its scope, that perhaps it only has a white face, or that yes, in theory we do think that sweatshops are horrible, but those clothes are so darn cute and we can't resist them, or, damn, as working women we have the right to spend our money in whatever we want. Because we like to think that that's a part of our feminist vision: that we get to act as proud consumers of the money we have earned, regardless of who pays the price.

When we think of ourselves as fashionable feminists, or when we choose to see fashion as a powerful tool in shaping what it means to be a woman, which women are we talking about? Well, it's pretty obvious that we are not talking about the women who sew our clothes. We are not talking about the teenage girls who pick the cotton our clothes are made of. So could it be that fashion remains deeply anti-feminist after all? It is a framework of exclusion rather than inclusion. It is a playground where racism and colonialist thought rages on. There is nothing feminist about that, and until fashion consumers everywhere reject the idea of using cheap female labour in developing countries, it will remain so.

The Word for the Weekend: Comfort

2012-01-20T14:22:00.003-05:00

"It is perfectly astounding how fashion has knocked out the brains of people in regard to dress. When we consider that there is not anything in the world so comfortable as comfort, is it not surprising that men and women will attire themselves with little or no regard to comfort during their conscious hours? Only when about to get to bed, and enter upon a season of obliviousness to all earthly woes, do they put on garments that admit of a fair degree of physical happiness: and how many fashionable women rush frantically to their chambers when they escape from society at the close of day, to relieve themselves of their uncomfortable costumes. If 'the man in the moon' should be permitted to descend to this planet, entirely ignorant of the follies of the people of earth, it would be hard to make him believe that these discomforts were self-inflicted."

E. B. Foote, M.D. in "Health and Disease", 1900 edition.

The Plan for 2012, and five shopping rules

2012-01-19T12:16:00.003-05:00

After I had crunched the 2011 shopping numbers, my initial reaction to fix the spending and the buying was this: Don't buy anything! Ever! Or at least for a year! Second reaction: Oh yeah, I tried that. Didn't work. So I went back to my Great American Apparel Diet posts to figure out what went wrong that time. Here's what went wrong: I like clothes. I like thrifting. I don't like punishing myself. The conclusion is that total denial is just not going to do the trick. So I figured that I had some options.

Option 1: Budgeting. I've tried budgeting before; I've given myself allowances for shopping and that sort of deal. The reason why budgets don't work is that I buy stuff that's cheap. Yes, I might spend less, but I keep accumulating stuff. $10 might pay for ten pieces of clothing, and as long as I keep doing that, the wardrobe chaos will be just as chaotic as it has always been.

Option 2 (and this is it): Limit volume. I've never tried this one before, and I was quite happy with myself for thinking of this, although I am sure it is nothing ground-breaking. Anyway, I'm going to give myself a volume allowance. I tried to think of a number that was stingy enough but not depressing, and I came up with 12. I am giving myself permission to buy 12 pieces of clothing in 2012; that's one a month. If you think 12 is a lot, well, it does sound like it's a piece of cake, doesn't it? That's part of the plan. Considering that my previous number was 90 though, going down to 12 is an intense cut. The key here is that 12 sounds generous: it gives me the freedom to dream.

Here's what I hope the 12 will do: if I want something, I have to be sure it is twelve-worthy. It's sort of like trying to pick your favourite twelve movies of all time: you'll take your time before committing to a definite list, because those twelve spots on the list are valuable, and you don't want to make mistakes. At the moment I feel like this could actually work. Every craving I've had in the past couple of weeks hasn't even come close to being twelve-worthy, and I have a good example: there hasn't been a single pair of Fluevogs on the sale site that would have made my imaginary list of 12. So far (and yes, it is early) I haven't been tempted to buy a single thing. Right now I think of The Twelve as if they were some long-lost lovers or kindred spirits whom I am waiting to come along.

So that's the plan: the plan of 12. And to make things more interesting, I have a list of five rules that go with the plan.

1. There will be no online buying. Like I mentioned in the shopping post, my online purchases are often flukes, they don't fit right, and it's mostly just money down the drain. Off with their heads!

2. No multiples. If I want/need something, I'll buy one, not four.

3. No unpractical things. No sequin suits. Nothing that needs dry cleaning.

4. No hasty buying. I must shop with a particular piece in mind.

5. I must keep asking myself if money is well spent. If I can think of other uses for the money, I probably shouldn't be spending it. When in doubt, don't.

There is one more aspect to all of this. One of my initial reactions to the whole shopping disaster was to do a major wardrobe purge to figure out what I wear and what I don't. I thought that I should just be happy with what I've got and to simplify my wardrobe before embarking on a new mission. And then I thought of all the times when closet purging has actually justified more buying. I have done this a lot: I'd drag a ton of clothes to the flea market, feel good about a roomier closet afterwards, and then I'd start to fill the space. A year later, I was back at the flea market, selling, and then I'd go back to buying. This was a real revelation, and as a consequence, I've decided against doing a wardrobe purge at this point. I need to feel uncomfortable with the amount of clothes I have for a little longer.

Here's to hoping that this works.

I am wearing a second hand sweater, Gap jeans and second hand boots.

The long post on Shopping in 2011

2012-01-17T11:49:00.006-05:00

After I went off the Great American Apparel Diet last year, I decided to write all of my spending down to get a better idea as to what might be wrong with the way I shop. I've had problems with shopping for several years. I've gone from trendy high street shopping to hoarding second hand, then back to high street, then investing in more expensive items, then back to thrifting. I've tried budgeting, splurging, shopping strikes, moderation, and everything in between. And still, at the back of my mind, I've known that whatever I was trying to do at a given time, things were not making sense. I was a bad shopper. My notebook and I were convinced that keeping track of spending and buying for an entire year would be my best bet to figure out what the underlying problems really were. 2011 is long gone, and here we are - except that posting about this topic is more difficult than you'd think.

I tend to write critically about fashion, personal style and consumerism, and after a year of what was supposed to be conscious buying, the end results are horrendous. I actually thought about not writing this post to save face, but at the end of the day, I thought that perhaps it is a good idea to just face the situation publicly. If I let you guys know what's happened in my end, maybe it could help me consume more carefully in 2012. And perhaps, just maybe, I'm not alone in this. So let's cut to the chase.

Your eco-conscious, critical consumer spent over two and a half thousand dollars on clothes in 2011, $2,520 to be exact. What's way worse, I accumulated 90 pieces of clothing. 90. Nine-zero. How could this be?, you ask in horror. Well, here's the math regarding the money and what it was spent on:

On things I bought brand new, I spent $1,274. This includes three pairs of Fluevog boots, a Diesel bag and a hat (all of these were bought during our January trip to New York City), two pairs of jeans from the Gap, a bunch of jewelry, new underwear, and a top and a hat from Marimekko. That's it; well over a thousand dollars gone, just like that. But the good thing is that this group is a hands-down winner in wearability. Everything I have bought new, I have worn actively. Could it be that I choose more wisely when I have to spend more money?

On things I bought from eBay and Etsy, I spent $455. This includes a couple of pairs of second hand Fluevog shoes/boots (yes, it has been the year I got to know and love Fluevogs), a handful of vintage dresses, a pair of cowboy boots, a sequin suit, jewelry. Apart from the eBay'ed Fluevogs, my online purchases were mostly flukes, or to be fair, just not very wearable. The items may have been nice, and I still like them, but they simply haven't found their way into my value-for-money daily wear. Also, there are issues here with fit. I am more likely to make mistakes if I don't get to try stuff on before buying it.

On things I thrifted on my two trips to Finland, I spent $365. (Sweaters, skirts, jewelry, belts, tops, dresses, trousers, jackets.) The volume that comes from this group is very high. A lot of the items are wearable, but there is just way too much stuff. More on that later.

On things I bought at antique/thrifty shops, auctions and yard sales in the US, I spent $266. (Skirts, jackets, jewelry, purses.) Considering how much money I spent in antique/thrifty shops and yard sales, the value for money is very bad. The winners in this group were two skirts and a pair of Converse, in all of which I spent $3 in total. The rest of that $266... nah. Just not worth it.

On things I bought at the Salvation Army thrift shop, I spent $160. (Flannel shirts, sweaters, skirts, dresses.) This group carries a fair bit of the volume, but I bought practical things. I wear my Salvation Army thrifts all the time.

Now let's talk about the dreaded 90 items. We are talking 3 pairs of jeans, 4 pairs of trousers, +25 tops and sweaters, 5 jackets, 4 belts, 11 dresses, 4 handbags, 8 pairs of shoes, and 12 skirts. Add random tunics, vests and what have you, and we've reached that staggering 90 items of clothing. That's 1.7 pieces of clothing every week.

Clearly, what got me into trouble volume-wise was thrifting, and more specifically, thrifting in Finland. I took two trips to Finland, and on both trips I visited as many flea markets and thrift shops as I could. Thrifting in Helsinki offers a lot more variety compared to my usual day-to-day life. There are lots of shops to visit. When you visit one, you think that it would be a good idea to visit another. Before you know it, you're thinking to yourself "why not visit them all, since you are here anyway?" In addition, clothes in thrift shops in Finland tend to be much nicer than in our little town in New York, and then there's the flea marketing. It's an affordable way to score great things, and we don't have flea markets where I live. There is just an awful lot of temptation around me in Helsinki, and since trips there are "special occasions", I give myself permission to shop more freely.

Well, it is not fair to put the blame on Finland, because thrifting at home in the US is equally problematic when it comes to the sheer amount of the clothes I have bought. The real culprit behind my shopping, I find, is the price tag. It is evident that I will keep buying stuff if it's cheap. The problem: I buy multiples. If I like a certain look, I am more likely to buy 3-4 variations of that look because it feels like a great deal. "3 skirts for 3 bucks! Why not!" I currently live in my thrifted black skinny jeans, and I keep thinking that I should find another pair, because they are so great. But the truth is that I already have the one pair that works, so why would I even need another? The sad thing here is that even if I have multiples, I am more likely to wear the same thing over and over. Among the multiples, a favourite will quickly emerge, and the rest of the items are left unworn. The mistake here, is 1) giving into the idea that I need many of the same, and 2) not knowing beforehand what I will actually end up wearing.

Here's the thing that really gets to me: honest to God, I really didn't think that I had gone all crazy in 2011. I thought that I had mostly bought - dare I say it - rationally, things that seem like basics, things that I really care about. Yes, there were some obvious mistakes: I spent $60 on an ill-fitting vintage army coat, and that still unworn sequin short suit cost me $30. I bought two vintage purses at an auction ($27), and yes, they are pretty, but I doubt if I'll ever use them. I splurged $29 on an on-the-shoulder cat brooch, and I haven't worn it once. Overall though, my feeling is that I've also made some great investments. I've bought great sweaters at Salvation Army for a couple of dollars, all of my Marimekko purchases (some new, some second hand) have been worth every penny I spent on them, and yes, those Fluevogs, too. I've worn my thrifted velvet skirts and dresses, my flannel shirts, and those Salvation Army sweaters on repeat this past fall. So yes, I've bought some great items along the way, and everyone makes mistakes, and learning to shop wisely isn't as easy as it sounds. So why do I feel so awful?

Well, the answer is pretty simple, and it comes in two parts. First, $2,520 is just way too much money to spend on clothes. This is not a universal statement by any means - it is a statement about the way I feel about money, and what clothes are worth to me. As you might guess, I don't belong to that group of people who believe that it is okay to spend 10% of one's income on clothes; heck, even 1% is pushing it for me. So let's put this in perspective: the truth is that my two-and-a-half-grand couldn't even buy me that wonderfully pretty Burberry Prorsum raffia trench coat that I saw in an issue of Vogue recently. (I'd be about $400 short.) The point is not that I could have bought two pairs of Prada pumps with the money - I don't need or want Prada pumps. What I need is the feeling that I've spent my money well. Yes, it could have been worse, and when I worked in clothing retail, I am sure it was much, much worse. But the simple fact is that the clothes I've bought this year don't seem like they were worth the money I spent. Some individual pieces, yes. But as a whole, no. I'd rather have money in the bank than 90 new pieces of clothing.

And that brings me to the second part of the answer: I guess it's no surprise to anyone when I say that no closet can hold 90 new items of clothing a year. It's just crazy. For the first time ever, I've actually had to put some of my summer clothes away for the winter. There simply is no space, even after I've donated some of my old clothes to Salvation Army. No matter how you go about it, there is absolutely no justification for buying 12 new skirts in one year. Buying so much in volume is unsustainable (and by unsustainable in this context I mean something that has no longevity): aside from the question of space, the cost-per-wear gets surprisingly high, even if you've only spent a dollar here, a dollar there on your clothes. It is simply not very smart to buy clothes that are left unworn due to something as weird as "too many clothes, not enough time".

The partial solution here, as many thrifters would say, is to donate or sell the back end of the wardrobe. Some thrifters choose to buy one thing and get rid of another on a constant basis. Others do an annual closet clean-up where you either sell or donate the clothes you no longer wear (I have previously fallen into this category). This works for many thrifters. They are willing and happy to keep their wardrobes in a constant flux. But if are interested in creating a sustainable wardrobe that works, if you are tired of going back and forth between what to keep and what to donate, if you feel uncertain about your shopping habits, if you feel overwhelmed or somewhat uncomfortable with the amount of clothing you are accumulating (even if you do the annual culling or what not), and if you find yourself in the situation where your wardrobe just doesn't make sense, I have a suggestion for you: observe yourself for an entire year. Write everything down: what you buy, how much you spend, when you buy, where you buy, what you donate or sell. First, you'll realize that you are buying a lot more stuff than you'd think you were even capable of, and second, your cost-per-wear is much higher than you think it is. You are most likely buying things and wearing them just a handful of times before you get rid of them. You'll soon notice that it's not just about the money you've spent, but more about the amount of clothes you buy and whether your system of recycling and wardrobe flux is actually working for you or not. It is about cost-per-wear, and it's about your peace of mind.

And I'll say it again: a lot of thrifters are perfectly happy with the way their wardrobes evolve with time, and for some, the culling process is fun and liberating. It used to be that way with me, too. But I think I've just reached a point where that process just doesn't make sense anymore. This doesn't mean that I'll stop shopping altogether, or that I'll stop thrifting - thrifting is, at the end of the day, the only environmentally sustainable way to shop. I'm willing to admit that I've been in this situation plenty of times before: I've decided to spend more wisely, and then I've fallen off the waggon before too long. This time, I hope, things will be a little bit different. You see, I have a plan, and I have new rules for shopping. More on that next time.

Next: Shopping plan for 2012, and Five rules of shopping

T-Shirt Travels (2001)

2012-01-16T17:32:00.002-05:00

Ever wondered who ends up wearing the t-shirt you donated to the Salvation Army or Goodwill? It is estimated that up to 95% of donated clothing is sold to huge second hand clothing sellers, who in turn ship and sell the clothes to developing countries, where the second hand clothing market has killed off local clothing manufacturing. It's a big business: see how it's done, and who profits. This documentary was directed, produced and written in 2001 by Shantha Bloemen.

Movie nights, or "step aside, Justin Bieber"

2012-01-15T16:18:00.006-05:00

Have I ever happened to mention that I am married to a pretty amazing man..? No..? Well, I am. It was our second wedding anniversary on Saturday, and Chris took me to a private screening of two of my all-time favourite movies. So yeah, Justin Bieber took his girlfriend to a screening of Titanic. Well, we saw this:

And then, this one:

Pretty awesome, right?

Wearing a heavy wool sweater, black skinny jeans and Fluevog boots, all second hand. (Sorry about the grainy indoor photos.)

On wardrobe basics

2012-01-13T14:00:00.004-05:00

I've given a lot of thought to wardrobe basics recently. By basics I mean the clothes I wear on a weekly basis: my favourite sweaters, jeans, long-sleeved t-shirts, flat boots... the stuff I, to my astonishment, "can't live without". There are two reasons for my newly-found interest in basics.

First, intense observation of my own shopping during 2011 opened my eyes about what my basics are. (As I mentioned yesterday, I wrote down every single clothing-related purchase in 2011.) Every time I added another purchase in my notebook during the year, my eyes kept wandering to the items I had bought and recorded in the notebook two months earlier. I was immediately struck by the fact that quite a few of my purchases had been total misses. The reason: they weren't particularly wearable. After all the time I had spent observing my personal style, I was still buying clothes that weren't the right colour, and I was still settling for things that weren't quite what I was looking for. Worst of all, I was still buying things because I had seen something similar in a fashion magazine or a blog, thinking that I could make it work. It's one thing to be inspired by beautiful pictures or the outfits of others, but it's another to feel comfortable in one's own clothing. And I don't mean to be hard on myself here, because I made some great purchases along the way, too. A good example are these Fluevog boots that I scored on eBay. I want to wear them every single day.

The second reason for asking questions about basics came when I went on the blogging break. When I wasn't taking outfit pictures for the blog, I was noticing that I gravitated toward the same clothes all the time. As much fun as style blogging was and still is, I realized that I had been dressing up for the blog a fair bit. That doesn't mean that I was faking my style, or that I didn't actively choose to wear the outfits I wore. It simply means that I was looking for more variation than what I really needed. And don't get me wrong: variation is good. But it can also get out of control easily. It's okay to have a lot of clothes and wear different stuff every day if it feels right for you, but when you find yourself guilt-tripping over the contents of your wardrobe, it's not okay. Then it just means that you are doing something to yourself that you probably shouldn't.

During the blogging break I wore a lot of really basic outfits; jeans or a mid-calf skirt teamed with a simple sweater. I haven't worn high heels in months. I wore sweatpants at home. This doesn't mean that I don't enjoy the occasional dressing-up, because I truly do. But when it comes to buying wisely, it is worth while to consider things like cost-per-wear, or whether your purchases align with your everyday life.

I am wearing all basics: navy cotton sweater, black skinny jeans, red knitted cap, Fluevog two-tone boots. Everything second hand. Hand-crafted silver ring: Judy Bjorkman

The Waves Returns

2012-01-12T14:19:00.005-05:00

Hello, all! It's been a while!

I've been trying to figure out for a while now how to get the blog running again. I've written a post here, a post there, but when it came to publishing them, I x'd out. For whatever reason it has been challenging to write the first post; I've gone back and forth between just jumping into random topics on the one hand, and trying to write some sort of a summary of the blogging break and the viewpoints and thoughts that have emerged from that break on the other. In the end I decided to just let it all come out naturally, at its own pace. I guess that means that this post isn't about anything specific, and I'm just going to go ahead and write!

I'll say a thing or two about the blogging break. Firstly, it was a good idea. Secondly, the reasons for it were sort of complicated. At the time I told you that I was working on "more serious writing", but now in hindsight I don't think it was really about that at all. You know how sometimes when one is immersed in a particular mode of action, one becomes a little blind to what's going on around them? Or it just becomes tricky to keep track of one's own thought process? The week before I decided to take a break, my brother asked me, out of nowhere, why I had a blog. I knew that I had started blogging because I was trying to make sense of my bulging closet, and I kept going to keep track of that very same closet and to share my thoughts on style issues with like-minded people. But somehow I knew that it wasn't an adequate enough answer.

It had been obvious for a long time that I was interested in questions of sustainability and fashion ethics, but despite numerous blog posts on the those topics, I felt like my own personal process regarding those issues wasn't really going anywhere. I still desired new clothes, I bought clothes (an awful lot of clothes, even if they were second hand), and it was starting to feel like blogging was just a way of clinging into the back-and-forth battle between myself and consumerism. Blogging gave me the avenue to express my confusion about consumerism, but also to feel good about buying stuff. There was a disconnect there. I could not stop thinking about the connection between blogging and shopping. That's why I needed a break. I needed to figure out where all of this was going.

So what has changed in the time I was away? Well, a lot and nothing. I still struggle with my more serious writing, and I still ask myself an awful lot of questions regarding consumerism. For one thing, I managed to keep track of every piece of clothing I bought and every cent I spent on clothing in 2011, and the analysis of those facts and figures has been eye-opening. I hope to share some of that stuff with you once I get around to writing a coherent post about it. I've also made new resolutions regarding spending and buying, and so far it has been going well. That's another topic for a post of its own. I've kept doing research on fashion ethics. (Oh, yeah, and I did have half of my hair shaved off.)

So the question is, then, why did I want to get back into blogging now? Aside from the obvious, such as me missing the interaction with all of you, I feel like I have a better understanding regarding what this blog should be about, even if it's just in my own head. I will write about the same stuff I always write about, and there will be pictures of cats as usual, and there will be that same battle between superficiality and depth, between blind idolation and harsh criticism. So in a way, nothing has changed at all. Somehow though, I feel like I have a new sense of clarity about the way I approach the questions that trouble me. You know how much I love throwing random questions out there, and this time around I hope to tackle the questions rather than just ask them out loud. And yes, sometimes it is enough to ask a question, but other times an answer is needed. It's time for answers. I hope that you will stick around.

Signposts in the Sea

2011-08-14T14:28:00.003-04:00

I've been blogging for three and a half years. I've written over 500 posts. For the past two weeks or so I've been trying to figure out where No Signposts in the Sea is going. I don't post every day, but I spend a fair amount of time thinking about the blog, outfit posts and future topics. I am a slow writer, and posts that have more "intellectual" content take time.

Recently I've been feeling that blogging takes up too much time from living. There are things I want to do in life, such as volunteering and more serious writing, and especially in terms of the latter, the blog has become a bit of an excuse to not engage in something that is more demanding and less instantly gratifying. I have a long history of procrastination habits, and right now I spend my time drafting blog posts when I really should be working on my writing.

I am going to put No Signposts in the Sea on hiatus, just to get a better handle on the things I really want to do with my life at this point. I'll be visiting your blogs from time to time, so this does not mean goodbye. Once I figure things out, I'll be back.

Lots of love,

Tiia

Needs and Wants

2011-08-11T16:17:00.003-04:00

I thought long and hard whether to buy this skirt at Salvation Army. I absolutely love the fabric (it is gauze, and the print is beautiful) but there is an awful lot of it, and the length is a little weird. I asked myself if I needed a new skirt (no), if I could think of at least five different ways to wear it (yes, easily), if I could take it from one season to the next (yes, gauze and all), if the colour was right for me (absolutely), if the price was acceptable ($4.99 - not bad). And then I came back to the question of need. When I posted the picture of the pretty Doc Martens a few days back, asking if I could have them, Mette asked me if I needed them. Ever since, I've given some thought to the idea of need.

So no, I didn't need a new skirt. I don't really need anything, because I have plenty of clothes. And it doesn't stop there, because need is a weird concept. If you really think about it, we don't really need much at all. Can anyone really justify needing two pairs of jeans, or more than two pairs of shoes? We don't really need TV, books, or the internet - we can easily survive without them. We don't really even need music or art, and we can cope without family, friends, or love. There might be consequences if we decide that we don't need to pay taxes or obey the law, but we can actually choose over all potential needs we might have. The more I think about it, need is a pretty vague, empty concept in our comfortable, privileged Western lives.

As you can tell, I bought the skirt. No, I didn't need it. I chose to want it. I guess for me anyway, the concept of want is easier than need. I am not talking about just caving in to any random want (we all have many, don't we); I mean that getting to the bottom of want is a little more complicated and demanding. Want requires the person to go through an intellectual process of justification: Why do I want this? Do I want it badly, or just a little bit? Do I really want this, or something else entirely? By definition, there is no going around in circles around the question of need: either you need something or you don't. You can't really need something a little, or a lot. Need has an in-built justification in it, and we don't stop to ask questions about what need really even is. Come on, be honest, how many times you've thought that you needed a new pair of shoes when you actually had 20 pairs in the closet already? Or what does it mean when we say that we need a new winter coat? Does it mean that we are shivering out in the cold, or that our old coat looks worn and unfashionable? In our world of plenty, to talk about need is a bit of a cop-out. I guess the challenge, then, is to keep our wants in check. It is important to keep asking questions. The questions we ask ourselves will define our actions.

I am wearing a second hand top and a much-wanted skirt from Salvation Army, and yes, once again, the Fluevog boots. They are the best! Speaking of the best, cats are it:

EBEW: Pattern mixing

2011-08-09T11:10:00.003-04:00

This is my take on today's Everybody, Everywear challenge to wear mixed prints. I decided to go with a silk top (thrifted in Finland), a cotton skirt (Salvation Army, thrifted last week), an old second hand belt, a vintage Miriam Haskell shell necklace, and Fluevog boots.

Could I have...

2011-08-07T14:22:00.004-04:00

these?

Or any of this seller's Doc Martens? Why, oh why, are all of them in my size?

gracielouwho at Etsy

Saturdaywear

2011-08-07T14:00:00.003-04:00

I thrifted this sleeveless dress at Salvation Army (as well as the top in yesterday's outfit post). The denim jacket is from a flea market, and the boots are old as dirt, bought at Urban Outfitters in 2003. I love it when clothes/shoes/accessories have staying power like that! The watch is 1950s Bulova from Chris's collection, and the earrings are from Hietsu flea market. And now for something completely different:

Cucumbers! Zucchini! What's not to love about veggie-gardening? (Well, why yes, slugs, bugs, blight, disease, and what have you. But I won't think about any of that today. I'm just happy to be harvesting right now.) After last year's bitter cucumbers, I am pleased to announce that this year's yield is superbly crispy and delicious.

Yesterdaywear

2011-08-06T15:50:00.002-04:00

I am wearing thrifted clothes and Fluevog boots. It also looks like I have a good hair day for a change. Yay!

Memories of Grunge

2011-08-05T17:07:00.003-04:00

I was a teenager in the early-to-mid 1990s. I was the wallflower type: the one whose name no one would remember after graduation, the one whose face in the class portrait would only prompt an "I have no idea who that girl was" in her fellow class mates a few years later.

The Soviet Union had collapsed and Finland had entered a phase of serious economic downturn. A lot of people had lost their jobs. Us kids, we didn't talk about that stuff, but a cloud of anxiety floated around our lives anyway. I read articles in the newspapers about the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia, the genocide in Rwanda, and the war in Chechnya. Just like many of my peers, I escaped the impossibility of the world into my room, music and writing. My friends and I went for long walks in the woods. We didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs. We just talked for hours on end about how weird life was and how it somehow seemed to escape our grasp. We laughed at it all because there was nothing else we could do. We talked about music, books and films, and as much as popular culture shaped up our daily lives, it somehow felt like it had very little to do with our actual identities. We were plagued by the typical insecurities of teenagers; the questions of who were really were, of whom we might love one day.

I had a crush on River Phoenix, and for a long time my favourite film was My Own Private Idaho. Now in hindsight, I have no idea what my 14-year-old self really understood of the movie. I remember thinking that the world seemed limitless; the fast-moving clouds above the wide plains in the film's dream sequences provided me with a strange sense of security. Whatever might happen to me in life, there'd always be places I had never been to before, innocent and pure places with something real, places where I could perhaps start over if need be. River Phoenix overdosed in the fall of 1993. Kurt Cobain shot himself in April next year. I cut their obituaries off the newspaper and glued the clippings on the pages of my angst-ridden diary.

In the 8th grade class portrait, I sit on the front row, holding the sign with the name of our school and class. The sign lays crooked on my lap. I stare into the camera with my head tilted to the side, my long hair hangs limp. I am wearing a huge red flannel shirt, dark jeans and heavy boots, and no make-up. I look like I am really fed up with the world. If you'd look up "grunge" in a pictorial dictionary, you'd see me. Yet no one I knew used the word. There was no talk of sub-cultural groups; we didn't identify ourselves like that. No one spoke of personal style. We just were who we were, or whatever it was we tried to be. We didn't realize that our flannel shirts were oversized.

Photos: Steven Meisel for Vogue, December 1992

Pink & Orange

2011-08-04T19:50:00.004-04:00

Today's outfit was inspired by Ariel's recent post on Rufino Tamayo. I've always loved pink and orange together, but I think this might be the first time I'm actually attempting to wear it myself.

Today was a good day. I got to spend some time with my friend Rosie: we had tea and cake at Juliet's house, and then stopped by the Salvation Army. Actually, I shouldn't say "stopped by", because we were there for at least an hour and a half. Eventually we just had to drag each other out of there. I've been listening to my mid-1990s Smashing Pumpkins albums for the last couple of days, and the Salvation Army was the perfect place to get stocked up for what looks like it's going to be a very intensely grunge-inspired fall for me. Is it really wrong to want to visit a trend one has lived through in the past? Am I just trying to come up with excuses when I say that the concept of age-appropriateness doesn't apply to grunge? (Well, who cares, really. I'm going to do it anyway!)

I'm wearing a second hand silk top, belt and linen skirt, and Trippen sandals.

August

2011-08-03T15:13:00.005-04:00

We have plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures left, but it never seizes to amaze me how every year, come August, I start to think about fall and fall clothing. I am not one of those who start wearing black tights by looking at the calendar, but autumn is, hands down, my favourite season to get dressed. I anticipate the subtle hints of fall, even if a part of me dreads its arrival. I love the smells of late summer: crisp fruitiness, slowly decaying plants, the earth.

There are several things I miss about Finland. One is the gradual disappearance of sunlit evenings in late summer. One day in August you just notice that it is getting darker much faster than you anticipated. Going for a walk with a friend would suddenly involve strolling under streetlights after months of midnight sun. The apples we stole were cold on the surface. My mother would need to think of extra light fixtures for her annual garden crayfish party.

I haven't pinned down those small phases of August here in upstate New York. My instincts don't recognize patterns yet. I don't go walking late at night here. I don't steal any apples, and there is no crayfish party. To me, at this point anyway, August feels just like July. The days are so warm, the crickets loud and the evenings sweaty.

The pictures are from my inspiration scrap book.

Sustainable Style: So I Shopped in Portland.

2011-08-02T14:30:00.001-04:00

In life, finding the middle ground and working through compromises seems to work pretty well for me. I've never really been an extreme person, and usually what makes sense to me is moderation in everything. Whether it comes to shopping, eating, or opinions, it pays to consider the two sides of every coin, it is worth it to take a deep breath, to make your choices with integrity, and to continue living.

I have been thinking about clothing/consuming/style-related guilt a lot since my last post about sustainable style. I received a wonderful e-mail from a reader, Annelieke, last week. She pointed out that guilt is a pretty useless feeling unless it makes us act, and I couldn't agree more. There is no point in wallowing in self-pity or anger, just like there is no point in floating through life cluelessly and without consideration. It comes down to making sense of the world and finding balance you can live with. I think I am getting there. I am a visual person and I love clothes. I am not going to beat myself up about it. But I will stand up against sweatshop labour and I will voice out my opinion about the environmental problems of fast fashion.

The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that thrifting is the way to go for me. A close second is supporting small, independent labels that design for the long haul. While in Portland, Maine this past weekend, I actually did some shopping. I bought some second hand things, but I also spent some money on interesting, independent design. I felt good about myself. I actually spoke to the people in charge of their products, and this felt really important to me. It seems to me that it is at least in part the faceless character of fast fashion that creates the consuption trap. Who or what we don't see, we don't appreciate or worry about. We just spend the money and get something in return. It is a cold transaction. When there is a real person involved in the process, there is something different about the whole thing: you are not just buying a piece of something fleeting, you are also buying someone's experience, someone's outlook on the world, someone's effort. The meaning of that interaction is probably just in my head, but it feels somewhat significant nevertheless. (I get the same feeling when I shop at the farmers' market. When I buy cheese that was handmade by the lady who sells it to me, I feel like I am a part of a process that makes a single person important. And the cheese is so much better than anything bought in a grocery store!)

So what did I spend my money on in Portland? I finally got my hands on one of these beautiful embroidered Mexican dresses - I've been looking for one online since Teeny got hers back in February. I've thought a lot about how following other people's blogs sometimes makes me want to buy stuff, and have come to the conclusion that it's not a huge problem. I like to be inspired by others, and if I can act on that inspiration in a sustainable manner, it is okay as long as I can stand by my actions. And yes, you guessed it, I stand by my decision to buy the pink embroidered dress. It is perfect. I also bought a pair of second hand earrings from the same vintage store.

At Pinecone + Chickadee, a cute indie craftie-type-of-store, I bought a print t-shirt and an old chemistry text book turned into a notebook.

We also stopped by Corey & Co., a great local clothing store. The owner/designer, Barbara Corey was busy at her sewing machine in the store. I can't decide what I love more, the clothes themselves or her design philosophy: when I asked her about the clothing sizes, she said that she just sews the clothes and doesn't think about sizes much. When I asked her which side of this dress was the front, she said that the dress could be worn however the wearer wants to wear it. That's the way I like my clothes (and life): a little adventurous, with a touch of odd. And the dress I bought is heavenly.

I am working on more Sustainable Style-posts and hope to get at least one out later this week. I'm going to be writing about good, fair, sustainable brands, and the dilemma of fast fashion at some point. Let me know if there are other topics you'd like me to tackle!

The Maine Thing: Weekend in pictures

2011-08-01T13:37:00.007-04:00

This is what I wore on Saturday: an old Zara top, thrifted denim shorts, and Fluevog boots.

Away for the weekend

2011-07-27T22:46:00.002-04:00

Chris and I are going to take a long weekend trip to Portland, Maine. See you guys next week!

Last minute changes

2011-07-26T18:09:00.003-04:00

As I am typing this, my left arm is almost limp due to a tetanus shot. Ugh. Anyway. I wore this today. Actually, I was going to wear this:

I thrifted two cool vests in Finland last month. The one above was sort of pricey for second hand, but I bought it anyway - the brass beading just seemed too wonderful to pass. I was going to wear it today, took an outfit picture, and then some of the beading decided to come apart, just as I was about to leave the house. I didn't have time to figure out a whole new outfit, so I grabbed the other vest, and threw some jewelry into the mix.

In the end I liked this outfit much better. It's happier, more alive. It's funny how that goes sometimes: last minute changes can make the outfit.

I am wearing an Old Navy tank top, a second hand vest, a skirt from H&M, and second hand jewelry.

Sustainable Style: The Guilt

2011-07-25T19:15:00.002-04:00

There probably aren't too many people who've never ever felt guilty about buying something. I've felt guilty about buying clothes. I've spent money on clothes when I should have been more concerned about paying my rent. I've bought clothes that I didn't really need. I've bought clothes knowing that they'd be a one-season-only purchase, and I've bought clothes just to make myself feel better. Last week, as I was in the middle of doing research on sweatshops and the environmental consequences of our style choices, I stared deep into my wardrobe, and felt compelled to count how many pieces of clothing I had that were made of cotton. I was going to figure out how many pounds of pesticides had been used to help me have all these clothes. I started with tank tops and t-shirts. I got too depressed and stopped counting after 10 pounds of pesticides. Even without counting, my guess is that I have bought at least my weight in pesticides, and probably much, much more.

When I decided to write about sustainable style, one of my fears was that I was going to sound judgmental. I was worried that I was just going to make people feel guilty and that no one would comment. Who am I to tell people that they should line dry their laundry when I hardly ever do it myself? Who am I to forbid people from shopping in stores they like, just because labour rights in Bangladesh are not on par with ours? I went back and forth: on the one hand I wanted to write about these topics with a more general, informative approach, and on the other hand, I felt like I needed to study my own personal dealings with style and sustainability. To be honest, in the end it just felt easier to start with the information. It felt actually pretty easy to list the facts and the figures. Was I sad and shocked about what I was reading and then re-writing in the posts last week? Heck yes. But that was just the beginning. The more I learned about sweatshops and the environmental impact of clothes, the more and more painful it was to look into my own history of shopping and the mindless decisions I have made. Whatever guilt I have felt before about shopping was nothing compared to how low I was feeling when I started to count the pounds of pesticide hiding in my closet.

I have asked this before, but I just can't seem to get my head around it. I'll throw it out there anyway: is the idea of personal style always connected to consumerism? At the end of the day, the stuff we wear is just that: stuff. It's stuff that's been manufactured, stuff that we've somehow acquired. Often it has involved money, but that's not really the point. We develop emotional connections to the stuff. We protect it and shelter it. It is important to us. We use it to define who we are and what we love. We let other people see us through our "stuff choices". Even if we've got all of our stuff for free, we, at least to some extent, are slaves to our objects. And yet it is not just stuff. My books used to be trees. A lot of my clothes were made by some nameless young woman in a dirty factory in a developing country. My t-shirts came from pesticides in the soil. How can I possibly live with that?

An old friend of mine, Alan, used to go through odd phases that I couldn't really understand at the time. One day he'd splurge on a pair of luxurious Italian leather sandals, and the next day he'd feel guilty and decide that he didn't want to own anything. One day he'd praise beautifully bound and illustrated old books, and the next day he'd promise to read everything online, free of the weight of anything material. I was around when he took all of his books to a second hand book shop. I was also there when he bought books to replace the ones he'd gotten rid of. As much as he hated his weakness in front of things of beauty, he couldn't live without stuff. I feel like I have become Alan.

I see beauty in objects, and I feel comfortable when I am surrounded by things that are dear to me. But I also feel like those things are meaningless clutter when you take me out of the equation. The stuff in itself is not meaningful - it is the meaning that I've created for them that, in the immortal words of Diana Ross, keeps me hangin' on. I love my old, favourite clothes with a passion, and I love my collection of books on the history of psychiatry. I love my insane asylum postcards and my boxes of jewelry. I love to drink my tea from a pretty teacup and I love to walk around in pretty shoes. But take the way my brain processes all of it out of the picture, and it is all just carbon footprints. The guilt that goes with that is unbearable. I wish I could just not think about it.

My Little Friends in the Garden

2011-07-25T14:44:00.002-04:00

It took me some time to figure out if I thought garden gnomes were tacky or adorable. I eventually went with the latter. And because no garden gnome should ever feel lonely, ours also has a friend.

My gardening project has been plagued by all sorts of difficulties this year. Spring took forever to get here, and then it rained for weeks and weeks on end. Beans didn't germinate. Lettuce was bitter. Turnips were all leaves, no root. I've had plenty of success with peas, herbs, zucchini and kale, and my tomatoes and peppers have been coming along nicely. I still feel like I am a novice in all of this, but I learned from last year and I don't take things quite as seriously anymore. What grows, great, what doesn't, oh well.

This fellow was learning to fly in our garden the other day. It was rooted steadily on our deck chair for a good while, then got on its wings, then landed on the ground clumsily. The parents were frantic as they sat on the fence, calling out to their little one: "come on, you can do it!" As I was learning about the horrible events that took place in Norway this past weekend, the sight of this small bird was all it took for me to regain my faith in the world. Life is truly amazing; so fragile, so beautiful.

I am wearing a second hand knit top and an old JC skirt. The wooden bangles are from Chris, the necklace is second hand. The shoes are by Steve Madden.

How to recognise a heatwave?

2011-07-23T15:58:00.003-04:00

1) Cats mysteriously double in length.

2) The Waves wears a strapless dress for the first time in her life.

I'm wearing a second hand Marimekko dress (from eBay) and old Bronx wedge sandals.

Sustainable Style: How Green is Your Style?

2011-07-22T12:08:00.004-04:00

Textile dye

Last week, Greenpeace released a report on textile industry-related pollution in China. (1) Youngor, China's largest textile firm who has access to some of China's most advanced technology for dyeing, weaving and printing, as well as hi-tech sewage treatment systems, has discharged into the water systems near Shanghai several toxins, including liver and sperm affecting chemicals and nonylphenol, an endocrine disruptor that builds up in the food chain. The chemicals are not illegal in China, but they are banned in the EU and many developed nations. The factories responsible for this pollution manufacture clothes for H&M, Lacoste, Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Puma and Nike. It is worth noting here that China's share of the world's apparel exports is 30%. Americans buy 1 billion pieces of clothing made in China every year - that is four pieces per citizen. (2) That's an awful lot of clothes that are manufactured in environmentally questionable conditions. Chemical agents used in textile treatment become waste. They are dumped into rivers and lakes in countries with few and poorly controlled environmental laws.

China is not alone. A US Aid-sponsored study on industrial pollution in Bangladesh found that textile industries release 30 billion liters of polluted water annually into the water systems of the Kaliakoir region. The area hosted just 20 garment factories in 2003, and by late 2005, the number of factories had increased to 166. As the textile industry in Bangladesh is booming, the pollution problem is getting worse every year. (3)

And it is not just the developing countries that create textile-related pollution: according to The Guardian, in 2006, the clothing and textiles industry in the United Kingdom produced up to 2 million tonnes of waste, 3.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, and 70 million tonnes of waste water. (4) So why does textile manufacturing pollute so much? Some of it comes down to farming of cotton, some to the way textiles are chemically treated at the factory.

Cotton; picture from Wikipedia.org

Cotton is considered the world's dirtiest crop, and yet we love to wear it. Cotton farming uses huge amounts of fertilizers and pesticides - anywhere between 16-25% of all pesticides used worldwide go to conventional cotton farming. Some pesticides used in cotton farming are highly dangerous, even lethal to humans, and they leak into ground waters. 99% of all cotton farmers come from developing countries, and they produce 75% of the world's cotton: environmental and health concerns associated with cotton are the highest in the developing countries, and this is all happening before cotton is even made into clothes. (5) (5b)

The complex manufacturing processes of natural fibers and their relatively short age-for-wear contribute to the poor track record of cotton. Synthetic fibers aren't exactly clean either; for one thing, they don't decompose. Nylon and polyester are essentially thermoplastics - they are synthetic, petrol-based chemical compounds made into fabrics, and we often automatically assume that just because something is synthetic, it has to be bad for the environment. The manufacturing process of man-made fibers releases a lot of carbon dioxide, but their upkeep is actually environmentally friendly: they are easy to clean and they are durable (acrylic is an exception to the rule). In the long run, synthetic fabrics score much better on the carbon footprint scale than traditional cotton, for example. (6) (6b) This is true especially of so called semi-synthetics like rayon. (7) However, looking at the carbon footprint statistics, the most environmentally sustainable fabrics are the organically farmed natural fibers - the most ecological choice is hemp. (8) (8b) Organic cotton farmers use 3,000 cubic meters per acre of water less than conventional cotton farmers, and the organic farming practices are environmentally sustainable. (9) However, cotton, organic or not, is still a notoriously "thirsty" plant, and it always goes through finishing processing, which involves acids, chemical washing, bleaching and dyeing. Consider your favourite pair of jeans: according to a 2006 report by Levi's, the manufacturing process of a single pair of jeans is equivalent to "running a garden hose for 106 minutes, powering an average computer for 556 hours or driving a car 125.5 km (78 miles)". The washing and dyeing process of a pair of jeans consumes 42 liters of water. (10) That's a hefty price the environment has to pay for a pair of cotton pants.

Denim manufacturing in China; photo by Greenpeace

How about our shoes and accessories? The impact of leather on the environment ranges from heavy livestock-related pollution to the chemicals used in tanning processes released into water systems, from air pollution due to the so-called transformation process where hydrogen sulfide and ammonium are used, to leather's long decomposing time (25-40 years). As with textiles, leather hides are often produced in countries with lax environmental laws. (11) (11b) I wasn't able to find much actual data on the production of artificial or vegan leather and its carbon footprint, but it seems like the footprint should be much lower than that of leather: its production doesn't involve raising livestock (duh!), and its life cycle is much longer. (If anyone has additional info on this, I'd love to hear it; I'm looking at you, jesse.anne.o!)

Now let's step away from manufacturing for a while. As much as we'd like to think that the pollution aspect of our style choices comes from farming and manufacturing processes alone, I am sad to inform you that much less than a third of a garment's carbon footprint is traceable to its manufacturing, and it takes longer than you'd think before a garment's carbon footprint really takes off. Once the garment leaves the factory, it is packaged and transported, often by plane. An environmentally friendly pair of Patagonia shorts travels 10,000 miles on average before it reaches the customer. (12) The amount of plastics used in clothing packaging during transportation is astounding, by the way - I don't have figures here, but I've unpacked dozens of clothing deliveries while working in clothing retail. Tank tops and t-shirts are sometimes single-packed in plastic, coats come on single-use plastic hangers, often triple-packed in plastic bags. Every single pair of jeans is packed in plastic, even handbags, bracelets and necklaces. Whatever you buy in a clothing store, it has been packed in plastic. A delivery, of, say, 1,000 garments, once unpacked, produces an entire room full of plastic packaging. No joke. I've seen it. Add one-season-use retail marketing equipment (posters, store dummies, window decorations and stickers etc.) and the thousands of plastic bags a retail store uses every season, you'd think that this is where a lot of the carbon footprint comes from. But no, we still have to wait until the garment is bought, worn, and then cleaned, over and over again.

I was shocked to find out that 75-80% of a garment's carbon footprint comes from the way you wash and dry it. (Some sources say 60%, but that's high, too.) I thought of the thousands of miles my H&M tank top has flown from Bangladesh, how it was packed in plastic, how it was placed on a single-use plastic hanger, and how, still, 75-80% of its carbon footprint has been created by me and my washer/dryer. On the one hand this was truly shocking, but on the other, this is something where I can actually make a difference. It turns out that hand washing and line drying is the way to go. If we all line dried our laundry, each and every one of us could save 700 pounds of carbon dioxide every year. (13) (13b)

Photo from The Guardian

Once a piece of clothing is worn to the point where we no longer want it, we recycle it. Right? Well, no. Unfortunately only 15% of textiles are donated to thrift stores in the United States. Luckily it doesn't end to the measly 15%, though. Out of the 68 pounds of post-consumer textiles per person thrown away every year by Americans, it is estimated that 2 million pounds of waste is collected annually and prevented from entering into the waste stream. (14) That's something. But an awful lot of clothes and other textiles end up in landfills. A huge part of it comes down to people not caring, but some of it is also ignorance. Few people know that these days even polyester and nylon are recyclable.

So what can you do? First, shop your own closet. Reuse, repurpose, recycle. Sew your own clothes. When buying fabrics, choose your textiles wisely and buy organic whenever it's available. Thrift and buy second hand. When you buy second hand, you are buying products that have been already made. People who buy new clothes often argue that what they buy has already been made, too. What's the difference? It's pretty simple, really: when you buy something new, you create demand for more manufacturing. When a clothing retailer sells, say, 500 t-shirts a season, they'll have every reason to order 500 t-shirts for the next season. For every piece of clothing you buy new, there is someone calculating the need to order and manufacture a piece to replace that garment for that particular retailer. So, sew and thrift, and do it smartly. Consider vegan shoes and accessories - and I'm not talking about nasty plastic shoes. There are alternatives out there - if Stella McCartney can do it, we should be able to do it, too.

A clothing recycling centre

If you are not a sewer or a thrifter at heart - we all aren't, that's just the way it is - buy consciously, and buy clothes that last for several seasons. Buy from brands whose environmental pledge you can trust. Buy organic cotton, Fair Trade, organic linen, organic wool. Don't take retailers' plastic bags - bring your own. Tell retailers that you are concerned about the environment. If you order clothes online, choose ground shipping if you can. When you're done with your piece of clothing, take it to a thrift shop.

And this is the most important thing: look at your laundry habits long and hard. I'll say it again: up to 75-80% of your clothes' carbon footprint comes from the way you do your laundry. We live in a world where it is so easy to think that global problems are too big for us to handle, and that one person can't make a difference. But this is really something where everyone can make a difference. Wash your clothes by hand whenever possible. If you don't have the time for hand washing, or if you don't have the space for line drying, make sure that you wash full loads to save water and energy, and use cold water. Use biodegradable detergent, and don't use fabric conditioners - they loosen up fibers and age your clothing. Also, consider whether your clothes are actually dirty before washing them. Don't throw everything into the laundry basket after you've worn it once. Air out sweaters and jeans instead. Little things help.

Note on images: I lost some of the image credits in the process of writing this post. If you would like to add a picture credit, or want a picture taken down, please let me know.

Dead snake fashion

2011-07-20T12:42:00.003-04:00

There are times when I think that the fashion industry is peculiar and interesting, and then there are times when I just don't get it. This Chloe handbag is everywhere now, from Vogue and Harper's Bazaar to Marie Claire.

style.com

I haven't seen anything more disgusting come out of the fashion industry in a long time. There isn't a force on this planet that could persuade me to carry a head of a dead snake on my handbag.

Sustainable Style: Sweatshops

2011-07-19T12:10:00.004-04:00

The cheaper a piece of clothing you buy in a clothing store is, the more likely it is that the garment was manufactured in a sweatshop. It comes down to simple math: in order to offer the (Western) consumer cheap prices for clothes, the production costs must be as low as possible. Low production costs mean cheap labour. Cheap labour means sometimes inhumane and dangerous working conditions, low wages, and 7-day work weeks.

Sweatshops might not be all bad: after all, they offer people in the developing countries employment. Sweatshops sometimes pay high wages compared to national averages, and they shield female and child workers from prostitution. Some argue that sweatshops are the key for developing nations to enter the world of free trade and international competition, and in the long run, they benefit the economies of developing countries and the lives of the people who work in sweatshops. (1)(2) The United States has a steady history of sweatshops of its own, and look how far we've come!

Garment workers at a Nike factory

If you've read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, you know that there is nothing to celebrate about the history of US sweatshops. Just because it happened here once doesn't mean that it should happen somewhere else today. Just because we assume that this is just how world economy works doesn't mean that it is the ideal. Sweatshops employ not only young women, but sometimes children. The workers rarely have the right to unionize. The notion of steady, on-the-road-to-a-better-future employment in sweatshop factories is an illusion: the factories exist only because the workforce is cheap. They have few incentives to improve the workers' conditions or to increase wages. There will be cheaper labour elsewhere, and production moves accordingly. (3)

Sweatshops are often located in countries where tax systems are tweaked to encourage foreign investment. "Tax holidays", duty free on raw materials and exports, as well as exemptions on income tax for foreign nationals attract Western retailers, but it is unclear for how long, and what the cost of tax exemptions is for the industry and the nation in the long run. (4) It is unclear whether sweatshop workers' standard of living improves with time at all, and whether sweatshops encourage post-industrial revolution-type wealth for the countries that inhabit them. (5)(5b) Because sweatshop nations don't compete with their products but with labour, and because sweatshops exist for multinational retailers and Western consumers, their raison d'etre does not support local ownership. To claim that sweatshops are worth it in the long run is to ignore the fact that it doesn't look like we, the Westerners, are going to stop wanting cheap goods any time soon. We need other people to work cheaply for us so that we can indulge in consumerism. That's the way it works.

As for sweatshops saving poor souls from prostitution, why would we settle for substituting the worst type of work with bad work? If we want to keep women and children off the streets, why not invest in safer work conditions for them? Why not pay decent wages? Defenders of sweatshops would argue that it is precisely the cheap labour that allows the workers to have jobs in the first place - if you pay the workers more, the consumer will have to pay more for the product, hence making the production process too expensive - or that's how the argument goes. If you dig a little deeper, it is not that companies can't afford to pay garment workers decent salaries. They just choose not to. Jeff Ballinger, a labour studies professor at Webster University argued in 2007 that Nike, for example, could afford to double the wages of its 160,000 sneaker-producing workers around the world without raising the consumer price of sneakers. (6) On top of that, at least some studies suggest that people might be willing to pay more for products if they know that they are manufactured in decent working conditions. (7)(7b)

9-year-old boy sewing clothes for Primark

So who uses sweatshops? Well, pretty much everyone. On the International Labor Rights Forum's 2010 Hall of Shame are companies like LL Bean, Abercrombie & Fitch, Gymboree, and Kohl's. (8) A 2007 article in the Guardian mentions H&M, Gap, Primark, and Marks & Spencer in relation to sweatshop practices. (9) Treehugger.com lists brands like Old Navy, Banana Republic, Victoria's Secret, Nike, Express, The Limited, Calvin Klein and Wal-mart as abusers of sweatshop labour. (10) Greenamerica.org's sweatshop score card gives retailers like Target a D+, and Sears and JC Penney a D- for their use of sweatshop suppliers. (Wal-mart gets an F.) (11)

Children sew clothes for Primark

If you think that sweatshops only exist in developing countries, think again. According to the Department of Labor, over 50% of U.S. garment factories are sweatshops.They are located everywhere: California, New York, Dallas, Miami, Atlanta. (12) (12b) This month the Spanish police raided 80 illegal sweatshops in the Catalonia region: CNN reported that Chinese workers sewed popular department store brands in horrible conditions. The brands had outsourced their production to a company who, in turn, outsourced its own production to a gang of criminals. (13)

If you think you are safe from sweatshops buying luxury brands, you are wrong. In 2007 the Daily Mirror exposed Chinese sweatshops in Tuscany, Italy: the labels involved included Dolce & Gabbana, Prada and Gucci. (14) Los Angeles Times reporter Tracy Wilkinson wrote a similar story in 2008. Luxury handbags made by illegal Chinese workers in sweatshops in Italy were sold side by side with the legal Italian-made. The consumer has no way of telling if her handbag cost 20 or 250 euros to make. (15)

Many retailers have anti-sweatshop policies in place, and they sound great. H&M's Code of Conduct (16), for example, includes several clauses that should make any consumer happy: no child labour is accepted, workers must have the right to unionize, working conditions must be safe, no work week should be longer than 48 hours, and minimum wages must be met. But accidents happen. Last year, a fire in an H&M-supplying clothing factory in Bangladesh killed 21 garment workers and injured 50. H&M audits at the factory had found no serious evidence of safety violations, and yet, 21 people lost their lives. (17) Was it an accident? Without a doubt. But it was the second fire at the same factory within less than a year's time - garment factories in Bangladesh are notorious for their lack of appropriate fire safety. Last year in an unrelated incident dozens died and at least a hundred were injured when a fire blazed through a Dhaka garment factory which supplied Target and Abercrombie & Fitch, among others. (18) (18b) No matter how much retailers are doing to meet the demand for more ethical working conditions in their factories, they still need to do more.

Huge companies like H&M have the means to audit and sustain some kind of a presence in the factories they use - surely that is better than nothing. But there are also many large retailers who just don't seem to care. Last year, some reports claimed that Wal-mart actually tried to prevent the hike of Bangladeshi garment workers' minimum wage. (19) In the past, Target, JC Penney, Wal-mart, Kohl's and Sears have bought merchandise from a factory whose owner was eventually convicted of human trafficking, and where a US Department of Labor investigation reported that workers had been beaten, deprived of food, and forced to work without pay. (The factory in question was eventually closed down.) (20) Since sweatshops give any retailer a bad name, policies have been put into place, and the companies' websites are now full of information about charity work, audits and support for better working conditions. The price tags on garments are still showing incredibly cheap prices though, so one has to ask: is the change real, or is it all talk?

Garment workers in a U.S. sweatshop

More than three million people work in the garment industry in Bangladesh. Shagorika, an 18-year old garment worker in Dhaka, Bangladesh, works 12 hours a day, six days a week. She produces 50-60 garments every hour. She is paid 2,500 daka ($34) a month, even when the minimum wage for a garment worker is 3,000 daka ($40). Even though her salary is higher than the average wage for a Bangladeshi worker (1,800 daka), she is not happy. Work is tough. She wishes "to get a good job, where I can sit and comfortably work. Then I would smile." (21) I'd be very interested to know which brand's clothing she sews.

What is the role of the individual consumer in all of this? If you stop buying clothes made in Bangladesh, Cambodia or Vietnam, will you contribute to people losing their jobs? Will the women and children end up working as prostitutes? I am not going to sit here and say that it isn't possible. We live in an ivory tower here in the Western world, and what we don't see, we don't care so much about. It is easy to hide behind the notion that at least we are giving these poor people a place to work and that we deserve a pat on the back for that. The reality is, though, that the garment industry is not charity. It is a business. Let's be honest here: we don't buy sweatshop-made clothes because we want to employ women and children in developing countries. We buy them because they give us cheap thrills and fill our wardrobes. I've been there just like everyone has. But if you keep buying clothes made in sweatshops, you establish demand for cheap clothes, cheap labour, and sweatshops. The money you spend on the clothes will benefit the retailer and the manufacturer. The person who sewed your garment gets pennies. As long as we feel comfortable buying sweatshop-made products, sweatshops will be there. They might move from country to country (wherever people are the most desperate for work), but they'll be around.

Vote with your money. Don't buy from brands associated with sweatshop practices, and don't let it end there. Tell them why you don't buy from them. Put pressure on retailers. Ask questions, and start at the grass root level if writing to higher-up places feels scary: talk to the shop assistants at the mall, write e-mails to store managers to increase awareness. Talk to your friends and family. Support brands whose code of conduct or social responsibility clauses you find reliable. Tell them that you'd like to see more transparency, and tell them that you'd be willing to pay more for clothes that are produced ethically. Don't take any random babble about good deeds at face value. Don't accept "we can't change the world overnight", "we are trying", or "there are things beyond our influence" for answers. Investigate and do research on every brand, every retailer. There is a lot of information out there. When in doubt, don't buy it.

Images: The Daily Mail, Globalresearch.ca, UN Multimedia.org, Businesstm.com

Sustainable Style: Introduction

2011-07-18T13:24:00.004-04:00

Sweatshop in late 19th century/ early 20th century New York City

Did you know that it takes approximately 1/3 of a pound of pesticides to grow enough cotton for one t-shirt? Or that an average American throws away about 68 pounds of textiles every year? Did you know that garment workers for many American companies in China earn somewhere around 40 cents per hour? Did you know that 2/3 of the carbon footprint of any manufactured piece of clothing can be traced to the process it goes through after it leaves the factory?

I've sort of known about a lot of this stuff. I've read similar figures in all kinds of sources over the years. Every once in a while I've supposedly made decisions to never, ever buy anything from fast and cheap fashion manufacturers. I've made pledges to never buy anything new again. And then I might have seen a great pair of jeans online, or a dress in a store window, and all of the information, all of my promises have gone out of the window.

I've spent a lot of my money on questionably-manufactured clothes. I've turned a blind eye on human rights violations, 68-hour work weeks, and environmentally detrimental manufacturing processes too many times. No more excuses; it's time I give a real chance to sustainable style. This week I'm starting up a series of posts on sustainable style. I hope that as many of you as possible will join me in discussing issues like sweatshops, fast fashion, style and its environmental consequences, and the price of clothes.

Image borrowed from here

Airy, light & easy

2011-07-15T13:53:00.004-04:00

The weather has been beautiful for the past couple of days - not too hot, a little breezy. Yesterday I felt like I wanted to wear something airy, whimsical and easy. (Oh, the things you can achieve with a semi-romantic/goth 1990s skirt and an ill-fitting wrap top!)

I wore this for dinner with my friend Sharon. We talked about mind-over-body questions, language and perfectionism - two hours just flew by. Later Chris and I went to a bookstore and I got my hands on the store kitty (yes, the bookstore has a kitty - what else could you possible hope for, right?) as well as a new book on the history of popes.

The jewelry is by Michael Michaud, the shoes are by Steve Madden, and everything else is second hand.

On style rut and the need to update

2011-07-13T13:01:00.005-04:00

Carolyn's recent post got me thinking about the concept of style rut. Carolyn asked her readers whether replacing one's old indispensables with the "same old, same old" is smart - or if we might be better off trying to break out of our comfort zone. Certainly there might be some value in encouraging our personal styles to evolve. I've thought of this a lot recently: I am becoming comfortable with my wardrobe to the extent where I am not sure if it's healthy, but I still feel like I shouldn't settle. Let me explain.

You know how certain people kind of look like they've escaped from a particular decade? How some 50-year-olds, for example, still wear their shoulder-padded blazers from the 1980s? How your mother, perhaps, might still wear the styles she wore 20 years ago, thinking that they were the epitome of cool? I am wondering whether I might be the type of person who is vulnerable to that phenomenon. When I love a piece of clothing, I don't care if it's old-fashioned. If I like a particular cut, I don't mind at all if it looks a little dated, as long as I like it. Rationally speaking, this is a good thing. Personal style is supposed to be personal and comfortable for the person who wears it. But I also don't want to become a walking example of time machine non-cool. (Or do I? Actually, a part of me probably does.)

I used to have a pretty good hunch as to what trends would surface next, and what looks appear "timeless" in a given time frame (and no, there is no such thing as timeless "timeless"). This might have been at least in part because I worked in fashion retail - it was my job to know what would sell a year in advance. These days I look at catwalk shots and "cool" street style pictures and often just shake my head. I still buy into certain trends - maxi dresses this summer - but the hunch is mostly gone. I have no idea what skirt length looks timeless right now. I don't even know if skinny jeans are still considered trendy. I feel like I have fallen off the wagon. And yes, for the most part, this is a good thing. It helps me feel more comfortable about my own personal style choices. But for how long will it take before I start resembling those who got stuck in a rut at some point in their lives? Once I get there, will I even see it? Does it matter?

A part of me still feels the urge to appear modern in my clothing choices. As much as I talk about the need to wear clothes I love, as much as I criticize throw-away fashion, I still occasionally feel like I should be doing something to update my style. Since I don't want to buy new fast-fashion stuff, I could always just add a pair of trendy shoes or a handbag to update my look. But I look at the current shoe fashions and I just can't see myself wearing any of it. I don't see the point of buying a new handbag when I like the ones I have now. I am torn between wanting to appear almost anti-fashion, and feeling the need to still look somewhat current. I have no idea why I feel like that. Shouldn't I be able to turn by back on the commercial nature of fashion and its conspiracies that make us think we need more clothes when we actually need fewer? Why is it so hard? ("That's what she said." I am so sorry. I've been watching repeats of The Office.)

I wonder if personal style is supposed to evolve, and if yes, to what extent? What do you think? What is the crux behind our need to appear "modern"? Why do we feel the need to update our wardrobes, even if we are happy with the clothes we have?

I am wearing all second hand, except for the H&M tank top.

P.S. I wrote a guest post for the lovely Madeline Quaint, a fairly new blogger from Budapest, Hungary. She's awesome!

Cooling colours

2011-07-11T13:18:00.003-04:00

It is so hot and muggy today it is not even funny. I am not wearing any jewelry because everything feels sticky and icky! I got this cotton dress for 3 euros at a flea market in Finland. I love the print, and the colours have strange powers. I couldn't even imagine wearing red on a day like this - the fresh pastels mixed with the breezy blue and gray almost have a cooling effect.

Speaking of blue, I almost had a heart attack today when I noticed that our backyard gate was open and I couldn't find our kitty, Blue. I was convinced that she had taken off and that I would never see her again. For about 15 minutes I was in full-blown panic mode. Chris eventually found the kitty happily lazing under a deck chair - she had never even left our yard. I was so relieved I actually started to cry while compulsively holding Blue in my arms like a total freakazoid. The poor kitty was a little perplexed.

On Vogue Curvy

2011-07-10T12:31:00.000-04:00

The obvious fact is that very, very few women who are not size 0 or 2 have their picture taken for high-end fashion magazines. This is a serious problem. If you are an average-size American woman (or a woman of any nationality), it might be very tough for you to find anyone in fashion magazines who might look at least a little bit like you. This is not just a size issue, but it is also a question of race, level of income, and age. The general state of affairs is that fashion is very exclusive, and it sometimes seems to be the sole right of white, rich, young, thin women, or at least that's what it looks like when you read fashion magazines.

There have been some vague attempts to narrow the gap: Vogue Italia's Black issue was mostly a success some years ago, and generally speaking people tend to applaud casting directors when they choose women of different ages, ethnicities and body types to strut the catwalk. It is, then, welcome news that people within the fashion industry at least occasionally raise questions about whom fashion serves and whom it leaves out. This time, Vogue Italia has dedicated their new issue to curves. (And yes, it is called Vogue Curvy.) My first thought was that it is about time we hear what curvy women have to say about fashion. But looking at the editorial photos taken by Steven Meisel, they don't really say anything. They prance around half-naked and have a nice meal in a fancy restaurant without their clothes on.The second obvious fact is that women in our society are having to deal with the over-sexualized, over-eroticized, over-objectified characterization of women on a daily basis. Most women on TV, in movies and magazines are passive and pretty, not too opinionated, they wear revealing clothes and talk about their need to find Prince Charming. (A career woman has to talk like a man and wear trouser suits in order to be taken seriously.) Women in high fashion magazines are shown in weird fantasy settings and in odd, sometimes sexually provocative positions, but unlike in more commercial settings like the Victoria's Secret catalogue, they usually get to keep their clothes on. Unless, that is, you happen to be a model with curves. Then she gets to undress for us.

I have a serious problem with the fact that that Vogue Italia decided to portray these curvy women posing legs wide open, straddling a chair, and their butts up in the air. If Steven Meisel's idea was to shoot the sad reality of these beautiful women not being able to fit into sample sizes, he succeeded. But somehow I have a feeling that he took the easy way out and decided to depict women with curves in the way that men everywhere are used to seeing them: they are sex objects first, women second, and I don't even know what third. I am so disturbed by the overly sexed up portrayal of curves here that there isn't a bone in my bony body that feels happy that a high-fashion magazine in showing us something else than the usual size 0 16-year old. Am I overreacting? I don't know. I am just so fed up with seeing women portrayed in completely irrational, male-sexual-fantasy-driven settings, especially now, since the issue of the exclusive nature of fashion vis-a-vis women is real. Women of different shapes and sizes need to be heard, not put in demeaning positions as if they were posing for freakin' Playboy. And here I'll just throw my hands up in the air and say "COME ON! It's a fashion magazine, for ****'s sake! Where are the clothes?!"

What do you think? Is any imagery of curvy women a step in the right direction? Why do curvy women need their own magazine issue rather than for them to be included in the general framework of fashion? When are we going to stop portraying women as sex objects?

Pictures from Vogue Curvy

Fun for the weekend

2011-07-08T13:24:00.002-04:00

The Am-I-Wearing-Pants chart

A cat in a box

Have a great weekend!

The stolen sandals

2011-07-06T13:08:00.003-04:00

For the past ten years or so I have been asking my mother if I could have her old leather sandals. She got them in Libya where we lived in the early 1980s, and I remember her wearing them as clearly as I can visualize any meaningful, vivid childhood moment (running in the summer rain with my sister, my father teaching me to ski downhill). She hadn't worn the sandals in about 20 years and she had stored them away in a little closet with all kinds of junk. During my occasional mother's-closet-raids I'd come across them and ask my mom if she was ready to pass them on to me. Every time she said no. At times it almost seemed as if she had forgotten that she even had them, and I think she knew that she was done wearing them. But every time she'd decide that she'd hold onto them for a little while longer.

I have a lot of my mother's old clothes. We share the same shoe size, and her clothes from the 1970s and the early 80s fit me pretty well, even if I have been taller than her since my late teens. Pretty much whatever I have wanted from her old closet in the past, I could have. Except the Libyan sandals. I can only recall one other similar occasion; one where she made me wait. I waited for a pair of late 1970s bright orange strappy heels for about ten years before she was ready to part with them. But how much longer would I have to wait for the sandals? 20 years?

When I was in Finland a month ago, I was going through my stuff in my mother's town apartment (I have dozens of cardbord boxes stored away in Finland - stuff that I haven't wanted to ship over to the US in case Chris and I relocate within the next year or two), and once again, there were the sandals. My mother spends about a dozen nights a year in the town apartment, so would she even notice if I took them? The sandals had gotten dry and brittle, the soles were coming off. The least I could do was to take them to the cobbler. So I did the unthinkable.

The cobbler did a great job reattaching the soles. As I went to pick them up, I walked there barefoot so that I wouldn't have to carry an extra pair of shoes with me. I fastened the buckles and got on my feet. All day, as I was walking the streets of warm, summery Helsinki, I kept thinking what my mother would say if she knew. Would she be angry, or would she think that it was morbidly funny that her daughter would steal from her own mother in sandal-related desperation? Would she accept the fact that the sandals might be happier now too, being fixed, worn and all?

I've seen the look on my mother's face when she sees myself or my sister wear something she used to wear and love - it is the look of somber happiness, recognition of life moving on. But I know that the sandals are special, and I think I know why: she was the happiest I ever remember seeing her back in Libya. Mom, in case you are reading this, you can have your sandals back if you want. I'm sorry I didn't ask for your permission when I took them.

I am wearing a second hand dress from Salvation Army and my mother's Libyan sandals.

Summer of maxi

2011-07-05T14:13:00.003-04:00

I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing easier to wear in the summertime than maxi-dresses (even if most ankle-lengths aren't actually all that maxi on me). They are comfortable, breezy and sort of stylish, too. They look good with really simple accessories, so getting dressed in the morning takes no time whatsoever. Just add a pair of flats, a belt and some jewelry, and you are good to go.

I wore this paisley print dress on Sunday, and the hot pink one on Saturday. I don't know why I felt the need to layer a little with the pink dress - now in hindsight I wish I had just belted it. Oh well, there is always next time!

I got many compliments for my sea urchin necklace. I bought it at a craft fair in Ithaca last year.

All washed out

2011-07-01T13:21:00.005-04:00

When I started blogging I mostly wore faded pastels and grays. I've since taken a dive head-first to the world of colour, but every once in a while I look into my wardrobe and reach for things washed out. It hit me yesterday while Chris and I were watching Never Let Me Go that it is not necessarily the washed out colours that appeal to me. I think it is more about texture, the look of being worn that I feel drawn to. I like the look of wrinkled linen, boiled wool, surfaces with wear and tear; I like everything that looks aged, consumed, a little ragged.

Never Let Me Go is haunting, beautiful and probably one of the most depressing films I have seen in a long, long time. I am considering getting my hands on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel the film is based on. As you might guess, it took me about five minutes to fall head over heels for the movie's wardrobe.

I am wearing a second hand linen top from Salvation Army and linen fisherman's trousers from Hietsu fleamarket.

Sun, shadows, cats

2011-06-30T16:59:00.004-04:00

Masa and Illusia show how it's done.

Believe it or not, Masa is actually sleeping in the picture above. When I adopted him three years ago, he was wild, scared and angry. He has finally learnt to relax and to even accept affection.

On style blog inspiration and consumerism

2011-06-30T13:17:00.005-04:00

I have been meaning to write a post about my Finland thrift finds, but this post by RK (listed in Sal's Lovely Links last week) really got me thinking about the problem of style blogging vis-a-vis consumerism. I, like many others, feel like style blogging encourages other people to buy more clothes, be it second hand or new. I, for one, often get the urge to go second hand shopping after I've seen a favourite blogger post about her new thrifted treasures.

I have started to feel increasingly uncomfortable listing where my clothes are from. I don't want to be a walking advertisement for any brand or clothing store. But even if I skip all outfit details, aren't I still potentially inspiring people to go out and spend money on clothes, just because that is sort of the crux of so many style blogs? After all, style inspiration often leads to spending money. I've actually noticed that I very rarely read other bloggers' outfit information listings, but if I see something I really like, I'll just go on Etsy or eBay to see if I can find something similar. (Shey's gorgeous harness boots are the latest item that I've been searching for online.) I try to keep a balance between blog-induced inspiration and to-be-consumerism, but sometimes it is hard to draw the line between the two. I wonder if style blogging exists at all outside the framework of consumerism.

Everything I am wearing is second hand.

Paging all jewelry lovers!

2011-06-26T21:30:00.003-04:00

My friend Lynn is now selling stunning vintage jewelry and handcrafted pieces at her newly-opened Etsy shop. High-quality beading supplies are also for sale.

Visit

JBLChicBoutique!

Pictures from JBLChicBoutique at Etsy.com

How much is second hand worth?

2011-06-24T16:53:00.003-04:00

Out of all the things I thrifted in Finland, this skirt was by far the most expensive. It cost 18 euros in UFF, a chain of second hand stores linked to helping developing countries. UFF's prices have been going up steadily within the past couple of years, but 18 euros (even on their scale) was a little crazy. The reason for the high price: a tag on the skirt that says Lanvin. I thought about the price and how much I liked the skirt, and found myself annoyed at the fact that I had to pay for vintage Lanvin even though all I wanted was the skirt. I grudgingly paid the 18 euros. I figured that I couldn't get a skirt I like as much at the high street for that price.

I have no idea what the prices of second hand clothes are based on. A lot of times people assume that clothes with a nice label should automatically be more expensive. At flea markets in Finland it is common for sellers to hike up their prices if they have brand clothes, no matter how old, ugly or in poor condition they might be. Is anyone going to pay 15 euros for a moth eaten, stained Diesel cardigan? I sure hope not. I do think it is okay to pay more for timeless quality pieces, or ones made with excellent materials, but a brand label is not a guarantee of that.

While thrifting, I often try to put myself in my old shoes - I'll think back at the time when I bought most of my clothes new. It has slowly started to occur to me that I have spent a whole lot of money on clothes in my lifetime, and putting my second hand purchases in that perspective helps me get my head around what my clothes are, or should be worth. I think of the times when 50 euros was an acceptable price to pay for a new dress, 100 for a pair of jeans, or 150 for a new coat. I try to remember the actual clothes I have in my closet, how much I paid for them, and if they've ended up being worth the money. Very few newly-bought clothes in my closet pass that test. Some of my second hand clothes don't fare well either, often because I've bought them because they were so affordable I didn't think twice about whether I was making a good purchase. Now that I feel I know more about what types of clothes I actually end up wearing, I can more comfortably focus on the price factor.

I think the most I've ever paid for a new t-shirt is 20 euros (now in hindsight 20 sounds awfully high), but considering what every time I've worn those t-shirts is worth to me now, I'm more comfortable putting my t-shirt limit at 1 euro at flea markets, and $2.99 at Salvation Army. (I accept the fact that thrift- and second hand stores sport higher prices than flea markets.) I've paid around 20 euros for many of my vintage dresses, but to be honest, I am more comfortable with the range of less than 10 to 15, if the dress in question is something spectacular. If it's any more, my thoughts on worthiness start to make me feel that I am paying for something I don't really need. Usually I refuse to pay more than 10 euros for a coat or jacket, or 5 euros for a skirt. But there are exceptions. And funnily enough, many of my second hand purchases have been exceptions. They will always end up being worn.

I am wearing a thrifted silk top and skirt, a second hand pendant and shoes from Asos.

Unexpected lengths

2011-06-22T17:11:00.002-04:00

I am really getting into awkward skirt lengths. At first I started finding just-below-the-knees length appealing, then came mid-calf, and now the total no-no of all style gurus, just-above-the-ankle, is looking fresh to me. I bet this linen skirt is actually meant to be a maxi skirt, and when I bought it at Salvation Army this spring, I had every intention of hemming it. As I found the skirt today in my fix-up pile, I figured that I actually really like the way it looks with a bit of heel. I got the shoes at Hietsu fleamarket in Helsinki.

Come to think of it, everything I am wearing today is second hand. Yay for all-second-hand outfits! (Sorry about the wet hair, btw. I don't like blow-dryers.)

Two more things: first, really insightful and interesting comments have been coming in about cultural appropriation, so do check them out! And second, is anyone else having major trouble with Blogger not co-operating with Internet Explorer 9? I can't edit my posts at all, or even send out posts (!) with IE 9, but Firefox works fine. It seems like Blogger and IE 9 are not compatible, even though I've reset my compatibility settings.

On Cultural Appropriation

2011-06-20T14:52:00.006-04:00

English sailor, ca. 1900, photographed by F. Urakawa, in Ethnic Photographs of the Nineteenth Century

I happened to come across the style aspect of cultural appropriation recently. Sandra, a Finnish fashion blogger living in London, wore a Native American head dress to a photo shoot and got some very aggressive feedback about it. Wanting to know more about the beef people had with her, I visited several blogs (see end of post for links) discussing the question of cultural appropriation. I got to thinking about whether I am just a burglar, breaking into the house of sacred beliefs and cultural history by occasionally wearing dream catcher earrings, a kimono jacket or a Saami witch drum pendant. It seems that according to many, I am a lowlife ignorant hipster trying to act cool at the expense of minorities. I mock people who have faced genocide, and I deeply offend the representatives of "real" traditions that go deeper than the blank canvases of white sad-excuses-for cultures. According to some, as a white privileged female, I actively participate in imperialism by wearing moccasins, prints inspired by ethnic designs, or by hanging onto my said dream catcher earrings. Thank goodness I don't have henna tattoos on my body, or I'd really be nailed to the wall.

This whole issue reminded me of a Finnish ice dancing duo, who decided to wear ice skating interpretations of native Lapp costumes in one of their performances in the mid 1990s. The majority of Finns were thrilled (how original, how pretty!), the Saami minority appalled. To this day, every time I see a "neljän tuulen hattu" ("the hat of four winds", as worn by the male ice skater Petri Kokko above) in a trendy Helsinki thrift store, I think of the ice dancers and their good intentions, and the handful of Saami minorities who got upset.

Picture taken from here

I guess it is obvious that some things should be left alone; I can feel it in my bones that the picture above is probably offensive to many Native Americans. But when it comes to wearing culturally specific jewelry or clothing as style statements (when we do so without sitting our legs crossed in front of a mock teepee), where are we supposed to draw the line? Who owns the rights to traditional prints or symbols? In our multi-layered, troubled and troubling multi-identity-filled melting pot of a world, can we even talk of cultures belonging to their representatives anymore? Isn't mixing of cultures in the heart of mankind? Haven't we always done it? Is it even possible to wear anything without making direct, sometimes uninformative references to (or stealing from) some culture or another? Are kimonos off limits? What about Ikat prints, China red, Celtic symbols, Navajo jewelry, the star of David, Peruvian blankets or Turkish evil eye pendants? What about saris, or Thai fisherman's pants? Does silk belong to the Chinese? Is "Egyptian revival" costume jewelry offensive? Which Native American tribe has the right to make or wear dream catchers (they were originally made by the Chippewa, but were later adopted by the Sioux and the Navajo)? What about sub-cultural appropriation? Should someone like Donald Trump not wear jeans or a Sex Pistols t-shirt?

"Indian chiefs who counciled with General Miles and settled the Indian War", 1891, in Michael Lesy: Bearing Witness - A Photographic Chronicle of American Life, 1860-1945

Personally, I would not wear a Native American head dress as a fashion statement, even if I felt drawn to them for whatever reason or another. I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing one because I've read about a warrior's need to earn the right to wear one; the cultural context of a head dress would weigh way too heavy on my shoulders. I've also seen too many fashion magazine editorials where a white model wears some culturally specific gear in a purely eroticized manner, or poses next to indigenous people of colour in an "exotic" location. That type of stuff just makes me feel uncomfortable. (The issue falls in line with the Westward-Ho!-cowgirl rhetoric in American Vogue earlier this year, which I posted about at the time.) When historically and culturally sensitive issues are portrayed as being cool, trendy and disposable, yes, I have a problem with that. But if this means that I can't wear my dream catcher earrings without someone labeling me as a trend-driven, mindless, exploitative imperialist just because I happen to be white, I have a problem with that, too.

Vogue Italia, photo by Steven Meisel

A blogger's guide to avoiding cultural appropriation in style issues claims that if you are drawn to culturally specific items for aesthetic reasons, you should not wear them. Just by definition, this is a little troublesome; aesthetic pleasure is inherent in the way people all over the world have always dressed. That, of course, is not to say that whatever spiritual meanings might be associated with the items in question are trumped by their physical appearance - I, for one, like the look of dream catchers, but their origin and meaning only make their beauty more interesting and inspiring. Do I have the right to wear dream catchers, then? What if I had no clue about the meaning of dream catchers? To the latter question, the blog posts I consulted say absolutely no, obviously. Wearing culturally specific, sometimes sacred items can be insulting and hurtful if the wearer is not aware of the meanings attached to the symbol by others. (Think of a crucifix worn as a fashion statement by someone who doesn't know who Jesus is, in an environment where Christians are a suppressed minority.) But when it comes to the first question, the bloggers seem to think that as long as you know the cultural and spiritual significance of the item you are wearing, you are not automatically doing something wrong, but - and this is a major curve ball- if a representative of that culture calls you out on your choice, you have no right to defend yourself. If they say you are diluting their traditions, there is nothing you can do. If they say that you are practicing imperialism, regardless of your origin, their word is what goes. I don't know about you, but I have a serious problem with someone, anyone, telling me what I can or cannot wear.

On the one hand, diluting the meaning of cultural iconography is, of course, awful from the standpoint of tradition and cultural conservation. Being a representative of a nation whose own indigenous cultural traditions were wiped out in the Northern Crusades and only live in one awkward chapter in the comprehensive school's history book, I get it. But on the other hand, cultures and cultural symbolism are living and breathing entities, and they are known to have their ebbs and flows everywhere. The fact is that cultures mix and overlap. They have always done so, often at the expense of spiritual traditions and "purity". Cultures don't exist in a vacuum, they never have. And the unfortunate fact is that some cultures die, too. The indigenous culture of the Finns is long gone, dead, buried. What remains is an awkward collection of folk stories bound in a national epic, and a handful of de-spiritualized traditions like the sauna. The Finns' ancient god of the water and fishing, Ahti, is now a brand of pickled herring on the shelves of the supermarket, dressed in Poseidon's costume. That's the way it goes. But of course, this does not mean that we should consciously try to destroy whatever symbols of threatened cultures are still out there, and the cultural appropriation bloggers feel that that is exactly what the Western world (I use the term loosely here) is doing.

Ahti.fi

When we are talking about cultural appropriation within the framework of style, clearly the role of fashion and multinational clothing retailers is huge. It is pretty obvious that companies have no interest in securing traditional understandings of potentially sacred symbols or culturally specific pieces of clothing. They, of course, are only out there to make money as quickly as possible. Fashion is notorious for this-that-and-the-other-culture-inspired fancy collections that then get reproduced cheaply by mass-market manufacturers, only to be forgotten when the next season arrives. It might have been Ikat prints last year, Navajo the next. The cultural or in some cases spiritual connections are lost. For most consumers, they are nothing but cool prints. As if that wasn't bad enough, these types of fashions are often portrayed in a horrible way. Like I wrote earlier, fashion magazines continuously set their editorial photo shoots in "exotic" locations. What we often see is a pretty white girl in a Versace jacket next to a child who doesn't have shoes. Some magazines are worse than others - sometimes reading British Vogue is like taking part in a one-on-one lesson in Orientalism.

Vogue UK, photos by Mario Testino

An often-heard argument for fashion/style-related cultural appropriation is that what looks like appropriation is actually appreciation: that whoever chooses to wear a culturally specific piece of clothing is actually doing a favour for the culture in question, out of respect, or that portrayal of indigenous cultures in desirable settings can also create awareness for cultures and their symbols, prints and pieces of clothing that might otherwise be lost eventually. The cultural appropriation bloggers would be horrified to even suggest anything of the sort, and I agree with them completely. Labeling indigenous cultures "exotic", "exciting" or "erotic" and portraying them in the light of superficial consumerism is demeaning, no matter what the intentions might be. But I do wonder whether there might be at least a handful of teenagers wondering where the design of their cool new H&M feather earrings comes from, and if so, perhaps one of that handful will go online to look for information on feather use in jewelry. Perhaps they might buy their next pair of earrings from a Native, and perhaps they might educate their friends on the importance of supporting handcrafted Native pieces rather than getting a quick fix at the high street. But I guess that's just wishful thinking.

In the end it comes down to personal decision making, and the role of the consumer. It is unlikely that any free, thinking individual is going to let a stranger (regardless of what his or her cultural heritage might be) dictate what he or she can wear - in this sense, the cultural appropriation bloggers are the ones who engage in wishful thinking. It is individuals who eventually make the final decision as to what they want to wear and what they feel comfortable with. It is us who create meanings to our style choices: we pick, choose and wear our clothes to show the world who we (think we) are. Whether it is choosing eco-friendly materials or recycled clothing, whether it is all bought at H&M on the cheap, whether we are aware of the cultural references behind our clothes or not, choosing what to wear can be a pretty tricky enterprise. A lot of people in the Western world don't care about anything but looking cool, but others feel the need to make their clothing choices emotionally meaningful: we might wear our parents' old clothes or jewelry, for example, or religious symbols, or styles typical of where we are from. Our clothing choices can also represent a spiritual quest, an attempt to show that we are looking for ourselves. I am sure that these polar opposites exist in all cultures.

But there is one more question I haven't asked: why are we "Westerners" drawn to culturally specific and indigenous fabrics, jewelry and pieces of clothing? It is just because we are greedy thieves and imperialists? Or are we looking for beauty? Is it only human to be attracted to something that is different from what we know? Or perhaps our quest for indigenous cultures and their spiritual symbols and fabrics is telling of the lack of meaning and spirituality in the lives of many Westerners today. What many cultural appropriation critics see as "one destructive, white, void Western world" carries with itself a tragic, torn history of many complex, destroyed or disappeared cultural heritages that we, as citizens of the world, sorely miss.

So, any thoughts?

My Culture is Not a Trend (blog about cultural appropriation)
Oi With the Poodles Already (posts tagged "cultural appropriation")
The most abrasive bitch of them all (post about hipsters wearing head dresses)
The Sadness of Pencils (post about cultural appropriation)

Finland bye-bye / Back in the USA

2011-06-16T19:14:00.006-04:00

These are, I think, the last pictures from my trip to Finland. I've been back in the US since Saturday, but as always, it has taken a while for things to get back to normal.

On my second-to-last day in Helsinki, I grabbed a portion of fried vendace at Hakaniemi market.

I also went to the beach with Minni and her kids. This is Aivi, running into the freakishly cold sea. I don't know how kids do it.

And this is what I am wearing today. I bought the top last year at a flea market, the jeans are from Gap. Chris got me the copper pendant and the bracelet from a yard sale while I was away.

The weather this spring and early summer has been very challenging on this side of the Atlantic. It has been colder and a lot rainier than usual, and my gardening project has got into a very rough start. After having come home to bolted radishes and lots of unsuccessful germination, the sight of healthy, perky peas was more than welcome.

Thank you so much, all of you, who have been leaving comments and visiting No Signposts in the Sea while I was in Finland. I haven't had the time to respond to comments or visit anyone's blog in almost a month. I promise that I will get my act together very soon!

Hair, as of today

2011-06-08T15:56:00.003-04:00

There are very few things that I am willing to spend money on. One is a good haircut. Sometimes a good haircut changes the way you feel about yourself, the way you see yourself. There are moments when I feel silly for spending money on something as fleeting and frivolous as hair. Every time I have a haircut I realize that it is worth every penny.

Maybe it has something to do with my hairdresser Teea, who time and time again finds new ways to transform my look.

Memories of the Sea

2011-06-07T15:06:00.009-04:00

My sister thinks that people can be divided into two groups on the basis of what kind of body of water they identify themselves with: there are lake people and there are sea people. My mother is a lake person; she even lives right by one and calls the lake in question "the scenery of her soul". My father, my sister and I are drawn to the sea. My father has lived at sea in some form or another for as long as I can remember. Even if he hasn't exactly resided next to the sea at all times, he has traveled to it often and taken my sister and I with him.

These days my father lives on a small island off the coast of Helsinki.

As children my sister and I spent countless weeks during our summer vacations with our father on the beaches of Southern Finland. The beaches there are not your typical pretty sandy paradises - the landscape is rugged, torn, rough. I remember vividly the prickly, mussel-shelled dunes with crookedly grown pine trees and the small pine cones in the sand, scattered around like stones, as well as the smell of salt and wind in my hair at night. I remember what it felt like to walk on the barren ground barefoot, how the dry pine needles sometimes stuck to the soles of my feet with sap.

After a day spent on my father's island, I took a little trip to Hanko, the most southern town in Finland, where many of my childhood summer trips with my father took place. I can't explain why I wanted to travel there after all these years - I hadn't been back there since the days of my childhood. My husband and I have been entertaining thoughts of moving to Finland one day, and I had an odd gut feeling that I should go see what Hanko looks like these days.

The affinity I felt with Hanko today was immediate. I got out of the car, and there were the dunes, the pines, the sea; I felt a strange, almost primordial rush of memories, all in one neat package, focused in and around this small town by the sea. In an instant, just like that, I could see my husband and I living there happily ever after. Moving to Hanko wouldn't necessarily be the most rational choice: the town's economy is bad, and it is considered by most people "a nice summer town but just wait for the winter"-type of place. But there is something about it I can't quite explain, something that made my heart almost skip a beat today as I stood on the beach and gazed out at sea. It was the type of breathlessness you feel when you encounter a place (or a person, or a piece of art) so beautiful but so heart-wrenching, that you almost have to look away.

So call me crazy, but I think I might want our family to move to Hanko. I guess there have been sillier things people have dreamt about, and there are sillier things to base one's dreams on than childhood memories.

I am wearing a second hand dress and necklace, both bought at the Hakaniemi market. Second hand sunglasses and belt are from Hietsu flea market, the shoes are from an online store.

Kallio-a-Go-Go

2011-06-05T13:35:00.006-04:00

My sister lives in the Kallio area. It is the old workers' district in Helsinki, a short tram ride away from the tourist-y centre of town, but a lifetime apart from it in spirit. I always get confused when I try to figure out what actually counts as Kallio; the area around here has many sub-districts and each one has its own characteristics. The long-term inhabitants tend to get very defensive about what area their particular street actually belongs to. As I am writing this, my sister has noted out loud to me that she lives in Alppiharju, not Kallio. Oh well. The tall building in the first picture is the Kallio church, and it is about three blocks away from where we are in my sister's apartment. I could try to differentiate between Alppila, Alppiharju, Harju, Sörnäinen, Hermanni, Vallila or what have you within ten minutes' walking distance, but I am going to use the more generic Kallio. The name means bedrock, by the way.

Kallio and its nearby area has a lot to offer: interesting architecture, bars and music, ethnic restaurants, small shops of all sorts. Kallio is notorious for its public drunkenness (the old drunks wandering the streets in daytime are sometimes called "professionals" by the locals) and sex shops, but those phenomena live side by side with old grannies, families with small children, vintage stores and organic cafes. It is an odd mix.

I feel comfortable in Kallio. The sometimes pretentious-seeming hipsters of the rich parts of Helsinki are mostly absent, except in the weekends, when they flock here to get drunk. Most of the people who live here don't seem to have the need to leave Kallio much. Compared to Kallio, the centre of Helsinki and the fancier parts of town seem impersonal somehow, even sterile, a little lifeless. Kallio has a certain roughness to it, a real character. Kallio is an old lady who tells a story. She has her ups and downs. There are days when she is horribly achy and angry, sometimes she gets wasted. Sometimes she has to line up for her dose of daily bread from a church charity. But then there are days when she looks young and beautiful, full of vigour, full of poetry and song.

I am wearing a second hand t-shirt, belt, sunglasses and earrings from the Hietsu flea market, Gap jeans and random online-purchase shoes. Oh, did I mention that the Kallio area has great second hand and charity shops..? Hakaniemi's Fida and UFF are the best charity stores in Helsinki.

Vaasankatu has a couple of good second hand stores: Keisarinviitta's selection is mostly sort of newish second hand, and Hoochie Mama Jane offers awesome real vintage. Last year the latter was chosen by a local paper as the best vintage shop in Helsinki.

Another great vintage shop, Ansa, is located on Fleminginkatu.

Alongside the charity shops and the vintage stores, Hakaniemi market, Valtteri flea market in Vallila and numerous small flea markets in Kallio make it, in my opinion, by far the best second hand hunting area in Helsinki. It has been almost a little too handy for me to be staying here with my sister for the past two weeks. I've bought enough old gems to last me for the entire summer and long into the fall.

Hello from Helsinki! Hietsu fleamarketing

2011-06-04T09:25:00.006-04:00

I've spent the past two weeks in Finland. Apart from a two-day visit to Pohjanmaa to see my mom, I've stuck to Helsinki, my hometown. There has been a lot of seeing family and friends, and a lot of fleamarketing with my sister. Today we went to Hietalahti fleamarket (aka Hietsu). There are two ways to approach fleamarketing at Hietsu: one is to go super early and find the best (in terms of quality) stuff, and the other is to go later and find real bargains. I am not a morning person so the latter is what I usually end up doing. (I've also figured that going early isn't always necessary for me: my taste seems different compared to many other fleamarketeers and there is plenty of interesting stuff for me to buy later during the day.)

These days there are some professional sellers at Hietsu who sell new stuff, which is always unfortunate for those of us who are looking for someone's old treasures. Some even sell knock-off handbags (even though it is not allowed). For the most part though, the sellers are there to get rid of things (clothes, shoes, trinkets and what have you) they no longer need, and others cater for a wide range of collectors of porcelain, design glass or semi-antiques. Some sellers have hand-crafted jewelry, mittens or rugs. This type of stuff is always a little bit more expensive than what you might normally expect at flea markets, but for collectors or people who appreciate hand-made things, the prices are still reasonable, and often below market value.

Prices for used clothes are way lower at Hietsu than in second hand stores or thrift shops in Helsinki. You can find tops for 50 cents, and shoes, jackets or jeans for a couple of euros. Occasionally you might encounter a seller who thinks that her old t-shirts are worth their weight in gold, but regardless of what kind of seller you are dealing with, you can always try to haggle. Sometimes you'll even meet cool sellers who will give you stuff for free.

This is what I wore today:

The t-shirt is an oldie-but-a-goodie, the skirt is a new thrift find (I bought it yesterday from UFF), the shoes I ordered somewhere online years ago and the second hand earrings are from Etsy.

These are some of the things I found at Hietsu today:

The vintage leather belt was 3 e, the crazy sunglasses 8 e (a little pricey, but they seemed very unique and unworn), the long silver earrings were 12 e, and the other earrings were 1,75 euros together. I did also find some clothes, but I'll save those to another post.

To pack (or what to pack)

2011-05-20T19:05:00.003-04:00

The weather has been horribly rainy this week. I've been reading Tina Fey's Bossypants (very, very funny) and trying to figure out what to pack. I am leaving for Finland tomorrow, and will spend the next three weeks there. For whatever reason, packing for three weeks seems to be particularly difficult. It's a long enough time to be left wondering if any selection of clothes will prove satisfactory, but short enough to make one feel silly to want to pack all contents of one's wardrobe.

I usually go along a rigid ten-step process when I pack. It goes as follows:

1) I write a list of clothes I think I need.
2) I lay out clothes on the bed and cross things off the list as I go along until the list is complete.
3) I look into my wardrobe and pick at least twenty more things I might want to take. Many of these are shoes.
4) I realise that I can't take everything, and start putting clothes back into the wardrobe.
5) I notice that after a lot of culling, I am left with a pair of jeans and two t-shirts. In a moment of intense glory I claim out loud: "I CAN PACK LIGHTLY!"
6) I feel silly, because of course I can't just pack a pair of jeans and two t-shirts.
7) I re-consult my list, and decide that the whole list thing is stupid. Then I repeat step 3.
8) I go back and forth between steps 5 and 3 for as long as possible.
9) I freak out.
10) I settle for whatever step I am stuck on when it's time to close the suitcase. Usually that's step 3.

The end result is almost always bad. I am never happy with the clothes I have packed. You know what I say to that? Oh well.

This is what I wore today. The tee is an old H&M animal print one, the jeans are from Gap, the cardigan is old, too, I think I bought it in Zara ages ago. The denim jacket is from a flea market, the vintage boots are from Etsy. Moth necklace is a present from Dana and Chuck, the earrings are from Rosie.

This is what I wore yesterday. The tunic is second hand (Plato's Closet), denim jacket is from a flea market, jeans are by Denimbirds, the Converse are from a yard sale. Second hand earrings are from Etsy. Scarf is a present from Chris.

And this is what I wore on Wednesday:

Silk top is from Salvation Army, cardigan is from Urban Outfitters, jeans are from Gap, vintage boots are from Etsy, the Mexican vintage necklace is from eBay.

Next time I'll see you, I'll be in Finland!

The Best of Saturday's Yard Sales

2011-05-16T12:17:00.004-04:00

This is what I wore on Saturday. We went to a bunch of yard sales, which was a lot of fun. You just never know what you might find, you get to meet interesting people, and the prices are always more than reasonable. I got these vintage Tarot cards for $3...

...and a pair of bright red Converse for $1.

I also found some cool jewelry. At first I thought this huge enameled gold-tone necklace might be too much, but it has a great Egyptian-Revival-meets-Art-Deco feel to it and it looks surprisingly good on.

The same lady sold me the silver-tone hoop earrings, a cuff and a lonely brass earring...

...as well as these two pairs of cowboy-themed earrings.

She only asked $2.50 for all of the jewelry, but we paid her $5. I figured that the necklace alone would be worth that much.

I am wearing a tank top from Target, a second hand silk wrap-blouse and Gap jeans. Lynn made the necklace, the earrings are from an art co-op in Owego, and the vintage cowboy boots are from Etsy.

Illusia and Masa enjoy a ray of sunlight.

Back to good ol' basics

2011-05-13T13:37:00.003-04:00

So that's what it feels like to not be able to access your blog for 24 hours! I sincerely hope that Blogger retrieves all the lost posts soon (I lost only one).

There isn't all that much going on in my end. I'm really getting into larger earrings again (I used to wear huge hoops all the time), and I think a lot of it has to do with my hair getting longer. For some reason big earrings just look better to me when I have more hair.

I am also obsessed with flared jeans at the moment. I used to wear flares all the time, or if not flares, at least boot-cuts. Then came the whole skinny jeans craze. For a while I resisted, then my eye got used to them, and I bought some. It just seemed like a good idea at the time. For whatever reason I felt like I really wanted a new pair of flares last year, and I found a suitable pair at Gap. It immediately hit me that flares are so much more flattering than skinnies. Ever since I have kept wearing my skinnies occasionally, but I have to say that I am starting to really feel the change these days. Flares are just more fun, relaxed, comfortable, not-trying-too-hard. For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about my old flares, especially a great dark blue pair that had gold paint splattered all over. I bought them in Italy, back in 1999. I think I might have got rid of them some years back. Or perhaps they survived the purge for emotional reasons and are waiting for me somewhere in storage, in Finland.

I am wearing an old H&M men's t-shirt, a vest from Urban Outfitters, jeans from Gap, second hand clogs from Plato's Closet (I'll be wearing these all summer) and the earrings are from an art co-op in Owego. By the way, how wonderful is the colour of these tulips?

Our crab apple is in bloom, too.

All Second Hand

2011-05-12T12:57:00.000-04:00

Everything I am wearing is second hand. The navy silk tank is an old flea market find, the skirt (which is actually solid tomato red without strange orange patches - the sun and the shadows played on it a little in the pictures) is from Ansa, a vintage store in Helsinki. The earrings are from a yard sale, the clogs are from Plato's Closet and Chris got me the modernist pendant from eBay.

On Container Gardening

2011-05-09T14:07:00.003-04:00

Donna sent a comment my way last week asking about gardening in raised beds. Last year when we decided to try out our own veggie garden for the first time, it became obvious early on that if we wanted to grow anything at all, containers and/or raised beds would be our best bet. The reasons for this are pretty simple: 1) our soil is mostly clay, and 2) we don't have much space. Year 2 of our container gardening has had a slow start due to the weather. (We are currently in the first 5-days-in-a-row cycle of dry weather since November.) Little by little, things have started looking up though.

We have four larger raised beds in our garden; two 4 ft x 4ft ones (like the one above) and two 4ft x 8 ft ones (below). In addition, I have a couple of small tubs for herbs and lettuce - small containers are easy to cover in case the weather is colder than expected - as well as deeper but pretty small containers for plants that bear fruit, like tomatoes and peppers.

Containers and raised beds keep gardening simple: there is less weeding, less overall hassle, and you learn to use your imagination to fit everything in. I have to say that I have nothing but love for container gardening. There are certain veggies you can't fit into containers, like pumpkins, but even potatoes are doable, although I haven't tried them yet. Raised beds, however, will host just about anything. Depending on the vegetable, you might have to be prepared to put in a lot of work to make sure that the soil in the raised beds and/or containers has enough nutrition, but apart from that, gardening this way is very straight-forward and easy. Even if you don't have a yard, balconies, decks, porches or even driveways fit containers of different shapes and sizes. All you really need is any outlet, no matter how small that gets enough sun, to have a container garden.

I am no expert on books on gardening, but I have found The Bountiful Container by Rose Marie Nichols McGee and Maggie Stuckey very helpful. It is a good, concice, no-nonsense guidebook that helps you get through the entire process of having a container garden without losing sleep over it. I say this because gardening can get intense at times: the weather doesn't co-operate, there are pests and blights (although container gardens are not as often hit compared to traditional ones), and sometimes you just make mistakes. And then you learn. You can always try again next year.

Apart from our raised beds and containers, we have some herbs growing on our front yard as well, without containers, but in a contained area nevertheless. Because our soil is mostly clay, we edged off a little section, and piled on mulch and topsoil. Last year this section housed an awful lot: zucchinis, tomato containers, broccoli, herbs, peppers... it got a little crazy, and the end result was not particularly pretty. This year we are keeping things simpler. We are reserving some space for the tomato containers, because the amount of sunlight here is unbeatable, but we have other plans for broccoli and zucchinis this year. (They'll be placed in our last year's sunflower container. And sunflowers will go elsewhere.)

So there it is, our veggie garden, waiting for more sun and more warm weather. My tomato and pepper seedlings are very tiny still, and it will take a while before I can take them outdoors. (I guess that's what you get for months and months of rainy weather with no sunlit window sills.) All in good time, I guess. In the meantime I'm focusing on culling my turnips, lettuce, kale, radishes and what have you. I'm enjoying every minute of it, too.

On personal style, blogging, and our narratives, part 2

2011-05-04T15:10:00.003-04:00

I have a confession to make. Both before and after my last week's post on style blogging and style narratives I have spent a good amount of time browsing through blogs and style websites that I don't normally follow. I do that every once in a while, to get a feel of what type of world exists beyond my own blog and the blogs that I read actively. I do it to reaffirm my own commitment to spending less, thrifting, and writing about clothes in a way that makes me feel good about my own style and spending. In a sense, I look at "the other side" of style blogging to recognize what my own blogging is about. There are times when the end result is a harmonious sigh of relief, an awareness that I am in a good place, and then there are times, like last week, when the whole concept of style blogging feels overwhelming and meaningless. I think this is a good thing. As you all know by now, I have the tendency to complicate simple things by engaging in excessive thinking and over-analysis, and in order to shake that system that inhabits my brain, it is good for me to tap into my gut feelings at times, even if the end results look a little ugly. With your help, my dear readers, I always reach at-least-momentary clarity and enlightenment about why I have a blog in the first place. Milla's comment last week echoed the reasons behind my blogging beautifully: that at the heart of my style blogging is the need to belong, to meet people who understand why I make the types of style choices I do, the need to share my love for beautiful things that make me happy with like-minded people.

The reality gets to be a little bit more complicated though. When a bunch of people share their narratives, in the words of Katie (whose comment I am sort of butchering here a little), we "[let our] observations of style bloggers influence [our] interpretation of [ourselves], which in turn will influence others' observations of [us, and we] lock [ourselves] in a tension in which [we] are a conduit, not a result." This can be a problem, because like I wrote last week, the narratives start to feel repetitive and meaningless at times, and I, for one, occasionally feel completely lost in the framework of too much inspiration and too many surfaces to reflect upon.

Since I started blogging, my personal style narrative has gone from general frustration to a happier place and back to occasional moment of frustration, from pale pastels and girly vintage-y clothes to studs, faux-leather leggings and superficial fashion, to circle skirts, and now, to flared jeans and dreamcatcher earrings. It is not just that the clothes have changed. It is at the heart of all narratives to move forward, to hit highs and lows, to make some sense of (or simply portray) our choices, and to show those choices to others the best we can.

Just like with any written work, or any piece of art or imagery, some narratives are more successful or fascinating than others. The most interesting narratives are born when they flow effortlessly, when they seem organic to us, despite how much work might actually go into them. Personally I find it easier to tap into the type of written or pictorial narratives that don't actually seem to be saying anything at all; they truly appear to come from a place inhabited by a living soul. Those narratives are compelling because they appear honest and straight-off-the-brain-and-off-the-heart. I cringed at style narratives last week because the work that goes into them is sometimes too visible, and it doesn't always seem truthful, original or anyway natural. Let's face it; there are some god-awful blogs out there; the ones where mindless consumption trumps everything, where professionally shot pictures are sure pretty but lack any context, where writing is so poor that it makes the reader blush, where all heart is missing. But here's the important thing: I need those god-awful blogs too, to keep myself in check. It is not about gaining the higher ground compared to someone else's narrative; it is more about finding one's own way, and sometimes that comes with the help of the types of bloggers I in no way associate myself with. And it is not just about my personal need for those types of narratives; the narratives of those "others" are important in the grand scheme of things, too. Elly's comment was an eye-opener for me last week: "I don't feel that those "wanna-be" stories [Miu-Mius-in-the-woods-type blogs] are necessarily less true to ourselves or hinder our trying to understand our self-identity stories. [...] I see that the kind of art, the stories we choose to create, reveal powerful information about ourselves."

This means, then, that all narratives matter, despite how fictional they might be. Like Cynthia wrote in her comment, "any time a deliberately self-reflective person sits down to construct some kind of narrative about themselves, it becomes like art and not quite like reality." All narratives are fictional, to some extent, because fiction is in their nature. And there is nothing wrong with that. They still provide us a way to understand the human experience, or in the case of style blogging, the experience of being a woman in postmodern times attracted to beautiful things, and surrounded by a culture that encourages, to use Jesse.anne.o's brilliant term, "consumption unexamined".

In this sense, style blogs are very valuable. Whether we look at narratives of completely mindless spending and fashion-victim-ity, or narratives that portray our attempts to keep ourselves in check, the story is what matters. Whether we blog in order to simplify our cluttered lives, to parade our weekly fashion or thrift fix, to seek rational solutions to our wardrobe dilemmas, or to share our thoughts on clothes and style, I think we all do it to share our style narratives with each other. In the community that I actively engage in, we support each other when someone has decided to go on a shopping ban, we share our ideas about responsible consuming, and we help each other feel good about ourselves. We put our own faces out there because it is not just about the clothes; it is about real people coming together and sharing their narratives. For too long women's interest in clothing and style has been labeled superficial and frivolous, and too many times we've all heard the claim that style bloggers are only looking for admiration or approval.

Katya raised great points in her comment, by first announcing that there was no need to label style blogs as "just" style blogs, because: "A blog [...] is something in a way artistic. Not artistic in a sense that it's great and innovative, but artistic as creating something. Transforming yourself and the world near you into something else, something better. It's not self-deceiving but self-expression. And style blogs seem to be the epitome of such thinking." Style blogs are about giving voices and faces to a movement that allows women to be happy about who they are, about what they look like, about what they wear and how they consume. Our style narratives offer a small glimpse of what can be seen with the naked eye and the brain that guides that eye. At the end of the day, we long to relate to narratives that somehow touch us, and we long to make narratives that help us understand our own behavior. This is what I want to channel to everyone out there, both as a blogger as well as a part of the audience.

That George Harrison song title

2011-04-26T14:23:00.003-04:00

After a day of frustration and ranting about style blogs (thank you, so many of you, who reminded me that a) style blogging is fun if you approach it the right way, b) that mine isn't just a style blog, and c) that my writing matters) and major thunderstorms last night (our streets resembled rapids), the sun came out today and the temperature soared. The weather has been awful for the past, sheesh, couple of months, and just like that, it's summer! 82 degrees! (That is 28 degrees Celcius.) I planted some beans, onions, turnips and carrots today. My radishes are already growing enthusiastically.

I love this first, slight haze of green in spring time. It usually only lasts for a day or two.

I feel like I have a million things to say about my post yesterday, and about the comments you have sent my way. I think I will have to let my thoughts sizzle and mature for a day or two. Part II will follow.

I'm wearing a thrifted denim shirt, thrifted denim shorts and an old t-shirt from H&M.

On personal style, blogging, and our narratives

2011-04-25T12:39:00.003-04:00

For the past couple of days wearing clothes has felt very organic to me, just natural. I haven't thought twice about what to wear in the mornings; I've just grabbed a pair of jeans and a shirt and gone with it. The interesting thing is that I have felt really good about the clothes I have worn, but that I haven't thought of taking outfit pictures, because the clothes have not felt blogging-worthy, and this worries me a little. Actually, it is not even the blogging-worthiness. It is more about the problem I am starting to have with style blogging in general. I feel like the style blog narrative is starting to escape from my grasp, or perhaps that my own issues with personal style are escaping from the world of style blogging altogether.

I have often wondered what long-term style blogging does to our style. I started blogging a little over three years ago because I had become a clothes hoarder and a bit of a shopping addict. I felt like I needed to get my head around what I really thought about fashion, personal style, shopping and body image. Through my own writings and the writings of others, I feel like I have learned a lot from blogging. Most importantly, I have become a more of an ethical consumer, and I have learned to trust my instincts when it comes to what I should wear. But I do feel like in some ways, blogging has made me completely over-think the meaning of the clothes I wear. On the days when I don't post an outfit picture, I see my personal style differently. I settle for less, and it all comes together without any effort. Aside from complicating my personal style, I also feel that style blogging has, at least to some extent, encouraged the shopping habits I wanted to get rid of on Day One.

Overall, I feel that style blogging in general (my own blogging and that of others) encourages me to want to consume more. Us style bloggers write about the clothes or the styles we want, the clothes we can't afford, and the clothes we thrifted and stuffed our closets with. When another blogger has scored big time in a thrift shop, my instincts tell me to go visit our local Salvation Army: perhaps I will find a treasure myself. Since I got off the Great American Apparel Diet, my long-term objective has been to really love the clothes I wear. I want to buy less. But there is a bit of a conflict between wearing the same things over and over again, and style blogging. In many ways, style blogging is all about re-inventing and over-narrating our personal styles, and it often means buying (or thrifting, or swapping for) new things. In many ways, style blogging clutters our lives. It is not just the stuff we buy, but also the time we spend making sense of it all.

Due to the countless links between style blogging, buying and wearing clothes, I have become suspicious of the idea that we should actively use fashion and clothes to express ourselves and our personalities in the first place. I read somewhere (for the death of me I can't think of the connection) about Derrida's theory of personal narratives; essentially, that we define ourselves on the basis of the stories we tell about ourselves and the stories that others tell about us. This is sort of what style blogging is, right? We take photos of the clothes we wear and portray ourselves in a particular way to define and re-define how we feel about ourselves. There is nothing wrong with that, but a part of me feels uncomfortable anyway. Do we really need to establish particular narratives about our clothes to know who we are? When it comes to clothes that essentially are image enhancers, how can we tell the difference between "real" narrative and a wanna-be narrative? We know that fashion magazines are full of the latter. But there are a lot of style blogs out there that have nothing to do with what those people really wear in their day-to-day lives. (Really, they went for a walk in the woods wearing the latest Miu Miu heels?) These types of personal style narratives that we encounter can be completely false, and yet we often let them influence us to create our own narratives. So could our intense search and portrayal of personal style be leading us astray from who we really are? In our increasingly layered lives filled with different types of social networks, various forms of consumerism and our multiple identities, what do our clothes say of us, if anything at all? Could our need to define our personal style be just a front, an avatar of sorts, to help us navigate the seas of endless confusion?

I have written countless posts about how personal style is an outlet to have fun, and that clothes are a great tool for expressing myself... but do I really mean that? Am I just saying that because perhaps it allows me to buy more clothes and not focus on the person behind the clothes? Or am I just trying to figure out who I am with the help of clothes, because other markers are too difficult to manage? Or am I just doing what everyone else is doing? For some reason, these questions seem important to me at the moment. I guess what I am really after is the following: who wants to see me wear the same pair of jeans every day? The only answer I can come up with is, well, that I do. I suppose that's the only answer that really matters. I don't really know what all of this means. This blog is not going away, that I do know. But a part of me feels frustrated. The endless personal style jargon isn't doing it for me anymore.

I am wearing a thrifted stripy tee and plaid shirt, a cardigan from Urban Outfitters, Gap jeans and vintage boots from Etsy. Illusia likes to hang out by the window.

New jewels, old photos

2011-04-19T13:43:00.005-04:00

My spring cold has taken a turn for worse. Chris and I were going to visit a local antique show on Saturday, but we got lost trying to find the location and it started raining. We got completely soaked, and it didn't help my cold any. But we did eventually find the antique show. The prices at the show were pretty high in general, but I did find a couple of pieces to invest in, including this silver ring. According to the seller, it was a part of a set designed by the Finnish designer Elis Kauppi for the jewelry company Kupittaan Kulta. The ring is not signed, but that unfortunate fact was reflected in the price.

I thought this three-strand bracelet was superbly whimsical but still interesting. It is not signed, but the style and the clasp suggest that it is pretty old.

I also bought a couple of old tin photographs. I have been thinking about love and relationships recently, and I find myself drawn to pictures of couples and families. Sometimes people are brought together in strange, even inconvenient circumstances, and at times we find love in times, places and people we least expect it. This picture below was taken at the Indiana Fair in April, 1925. I love the closeness of these two individuals, and the girl's dress and her coy smile are beyond beautiful. Her side-swept hair reminds me of someone I know.

I was drawn to this photo below because of the girl with the white bow in her hair. Just look at her strappy shoes! I ended up buying the photo because of the overall dynamics, though. I love the way the photographer has worked the fence and the surrounding nature into the picture, and I think the portrait is beautifully balanced.

This one I wasn't sure of at first, because it is not a particularly happy photo. It seems that perhaps the family isn't all that wealthy, and considering how young the parents look, they might have their hands full trying to support the size of their family. I bought the picture anyway. Actually, it was the sense of seriousness that I was drawn to.

These following pieces of jewelry are not from the antique show, but from my friend Lynn's vintage jewelry stash. The micromosaic brooch and clip earrings are Italian.

Lynn re-wired these cute grape earrings.

And I can never resist a big crystal brooch.

That's it for now, folks. I hope to get well soon enough to post some outfit pictures, to visit your blogs and to write about things more substantial. Oh, and before I forget, thank you, Terri, for giving me the heads up on Wisconsin Death Trip! I found it on Amazon and ordered it. And Madeline, thanks for letting me know about the film Opium. I will try to find a way to get my hands on it!

Instant relatives

2011-04-15T14:02:00.004-04:00

Last year I came across a fantastic book on the medical photographer Dr. Hugh W. Diamond and psychiatric photography (the book from 1977 is called The Face of Madness, and it is edited by Sander L. Gilman). In the 1850s and from then on, portrait photography was used to help diagnose mental illness. Countless "insane" were photographed and their facial expressions and body language recorded and analyzed in great detail to reveal the physical characteristics of madness. The book got me hooked on portrait photography in general. There is something special about the time in the past when it actually took a lot of effort to take one single photograph.

Ever since, I have been collecting old portrait photographs. I have bought them for a couple of cents a piece in antique stores. Because a lot of people are after old photo albums, antique dealers go through the albums they encounter in estate sales, strip them off their content, and sell the albums. If I am lucky, they will not throw the photos away and sell them to me instead. In antique-dealer-speech, these loose photos of unknowns are called instant relatives.

I choose the photos I buy on the basis of instinct. I buy women, men (old and young), children, and families. Usually there is something about the person that just draws me in. It could be the clothes or the facial expression. Sometimes the text on the photo frame (usually, the name of the studio) reveals an odd location. There might be writing on the back that even gives the name of the person. There have been times when I have found the same person in a pile of a hundred photographs in different stages of his or her life.

I try not to think too much about how sad it is that these people's real relatives no longer connect with their ancestors. I might be the only person who knows them without knowing them at all. This girl below was Margaret Bolfe, and her photograph was taken in Lewisburg, PA at the J.W. Cornelius studio.

These guys are the Campbells. The two names I can make out are John and Ida.

There are times when I get overwhelmed at how small human life really is. All it takes is time, and we turn to dust, and we no longer live in anyone's memories. And yet every once in a while I come across an old photo where life is so palpable, so current. A laugh, a shared moment, friendship, love.

These people live alongside my life now, as vagabonds and adopted friends. When I am gone, perhaps someone else will take them on.

My United States of America

2011-04-14T13:01:00.004-04:00

When I was growing up, there were two distinct ways to prove your status as a cool kid in class. One was having MTV at home, and the other one was wearing Levi's jeans. (I had neither.) MTV at the time showed music videos rather than Teen Mom. I specifically remember going to my friend Anna's house after school to do our homework together and to watch MTV, and we'd both hope to see Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal. It was the coolest music video EVER. Anna also wore Levi's. She loved The Bangles and Bon Jovi. I, in contrast, wore my sister's hand-me-downs and liked Kim Wilde. (Anna, at that point, hadn't fully figured out that I was very un-cool. That time would come later.)

The few kids in my class who took vacations abroad occasionally came back with a suitcase full of Levi's 501s. You could buy Levi's in Finland, too, but if my memory serves me right, a pair cost up to 500 Finnish marks. That was a lot of money back then. If you knew that someone was going to the US, you'd just hope that you were in the right crowd and that you could persuade the child in question to bring you a pair of Levi's that would perhaps fit. Even if they didn't, you'd wear them anyway. It was all about that little red tag. Needless to say, my friends never went to the US and I led a very Levi'sless existence. That didn't stop me from admiring the kids who had got their hands on American gold. In America, I thought, everyone wore Levi's. Everyone had MTV. Everything was fancy, big and impressive. The people all looked like Brenda and Brandon of Beverly Hills, 90210. America had Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. I thought that Born in the USA was a song about how wonderful America was.

Gradually, my idea of the United States crumbled. I became aware of world politics and realized that America had done nothing to prevent genocide in Rwanda. American popular music had started to change dramatically, and I gravitated toward British music instead. Eventually MTV stopped airing Beavis and Butt-head. Regional MTVs took over the American original. Nothing was quite the same. The Levi's jeans just looked ill-fitting. I became disillusioned. Even Anna turned her back on the US and moved to Argentina.

I had a very negative impression of the US in my late teens and 20s. A lot of it had to do with my studies in the field of international relations. I took to the streets in Budapest (and later, in London) to protest against the war on Iraq. The Americans, in my opinion, had chosen a stupid president to represent their nation. That decision, in my eyes, must have been made by equally stupid people. I swore I'd never set my foot in the US.

In the end I did, in August 2003. I remember getting off the plane in Chicago, and I was stunned. As much as I had grown to dislike America over the years, I was still under the vague impression that things looked a certain way there. To my shock, the O'Hare airport was stuffy and dirty. The people were rude and every other person was horribly overweight. The toilets smelled. Everything looked old and worn. I spent a month traveling in different cities around the US: Chicago, Kansas City, St Louis, Cleveland, New York City and Washington D.C. (I have a picture of myself in front of the White House, making insulting gestures at George W. Bush). Overall, I met a lot of wonderful people and saw a lot of beautiful things. But nothing had fully prepared me to face the pot-holed roads, the buildings that desperately needed fixing, the homeless people, the consumerist mania and the income- and race-based segregation, in pretty much every single place I visited. It was only then that I fully realized that the greatest country in the world was also internally troubled and divided. The United States of America was just like any other country. It seemed to me that it had just done a lot of extra foot-work to look a certain way to the outsiders, to the ones who had no access to its realities.

Since I moved to the US almost two years ago I have learned a lot, but there is still so much for me to learn. I have become increasingly curious about this country's history, and have spent the past couple of weeks learning about the American Civil War (that wonderful Ken Burns documentary series has been playing on PBS). It has occurred to me that in the past I saw America as a foreign country only. The US acted very visibly and aggressively in the complicated framework of states, but I had no idea what its internal workings were. To a foreigner, it almost seemed as if it had no internal workings at all. It seemed as if its outside was all that there was. These days, every day I learn something new about those internal workings. Every day I try to understand the current political discussion, only to realize that I have to go way back to get a glimpse of the process that got us where we are now. I have come to understand that America has a fascinating, deeply divided, rich and multi-layered internal history. It is a crying shame that foreigners in general don't know much about it. As much as Europeans in particular bash Americans for their lack of general knowledge, the history of the United States is largely hidden from those outside its borders. A huge part of me feels ashamed of that silly, glorified image I had of the US as a child, but I am equally embarrased of my ignorant, hate-filled rantings later on in life.

But let's get back to where I started this post. I eventually got my first ever pair of Levi's when I was 14. They were my sister's old, faded-black 501s. When I grew out of them, I made them into cut-offs. I wore those cut-offs to my first ever music festival when I was 16. I saw Aerosmith.

I thrifted these Levi's jeans at Salvation Army recently. In the memory of the good old days, I made them into cut-offs. The pink hoodie is also thrifted. The boots are by John Fluevog and Lynn made the bracelet. I think the tights might be from Urban Outfitters.

How to beat spring cold

2011-04-13T14:09:00.003-04:00

I have a spring cold. Yesterday I lounged around in an oversized hoodie and sweatpants and felt like crap. Today I decided to pull myself together. I still feel like crap, but at least a monster isn't staring back at me from the mirror. For the past two days I have been spending way too much time a) watching The Office non-stop on DVD, b) browsing through fancy style blogs and feeling unstylish, and c) feeling sorry for myself because my tomato seeds are not germinating. Today I decided to a) read books, b) enjoy the way I dress, no matter how unpolished and uncool it might be, and c) appreciate my alive-and-well broccoli seedlings. I also decided to brush up the look of the blog a little. So long, the cannibals and dusky belles header, and welcome, the floor plan of the old Binghamton insane asylum! There is something to be said about the power of getting dressed.

I had been looking for dream catcher earrings for some time. There are plenty of them out there on Etsy and eBay, but I waited until I found the perfect ones. I am very pleased with myself for not buying anything before I found exactly what I wanted. The earrings arrived today from CucumberWind, an awesome Etsy shop, which is on vacation right now. (They'll be back in action in May.)

The ring is from America's Attic, a local shop that has an extensive selection of vintage jewelry. Lynn bought a bunch of scrap jewelry, found the ring in the bag, and gave it to me. Yay!

These are the books I am reading. I had been waiting for the reprint of Samuel Edward Dole Shortt's Victorian Lunacy (originally published in 1986) to come out since late last year, and I finally got my copy. The book reflects the trends of Anglo-American practice of psychiatry through the eyes of Richard M. Bucke, a prominent Canadian psychiatrist and superintendent of the London Asylum in Ontario. My other pick is Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom. I was looking for a no-nonsense book on the Tarot, and this one was highly recommended by many, including Charlotte, whom I partly blame for my sudden fascination with Tarot.

I am wearing an old cardigan from a Benetton sample sale, a Target t-shirt, thrifted camouflage shorts and lace-up boots from Urban Outfitters. I stole the scarf from Chris.

Springwear, kitties and thank yous

2011-04-11T11:45:00.005-04:00

This is today, before it got really warm:

Second hand blouse: Salvation Army

Second hand cardigan: Plato's Closet

Jeans: Gap
Second hand belt
Converse
Moth necklace: present from Dana & Chuck
(Leather jacket: Diesel)

This is what I wore on Saturday...
Maxi-dress: Target
Second hand denim shirt: Salvation Army
Second hand Diesel denim jacket: Aino fleamarket
Second hand wooden beads: Plato's Closet
Boots: John Fluevog
Men's messenger bag: Diesel Black Gold

And then some kitties:

Audrey (above) would like to go outside...

Blue seems pretty happy...

and Masa is fascinated with himself.

I'm sorry for the lack of any coherent writing today. I woke up this morning with a horribly sore throat and I'm feeling under the weather (which, by the way, is superbly warm today - it's just so typical to get a cold this time of year). I just wanted to thank all of you for your comments to my previous post. I was very happy to hear from so many of you, and I am excited to check out the blogs of those of you who I haven't had the pleasure of "meeting" before. A big shout out goes to Sal of Already Pretty. It seems that a lot of you found your way to the post via her lovely links!

Standing tall

2011-04-06T11:54:00.003-04:00

I came across some random Finnish style blog a few weeks back. The author, a very sweet, beautiful young woman, had received a comment in her inbox about her height. The comment went somewhere along the lines of "why do you insist on wearing ballet flats because you are so short ". Rightfully so, the girl defended her right to wear flats, as well as admitted that she was perfectly okay with her height, and that there was nothing wrong with being petite. Her post got me thinking about the numerous times I have been told that I don't "need" to wear heels, or that I shouldn't.

I was relatively tall growing up; I was the second tallest girl in first and second grade, but then for a few years several of my classmates towered above me. When I was 13, I was told by the school nurse that I probably wouldn't reach my big sister's height. My entire family was tall, and I was going to be the shortest. I remember feeling devastated. I was 5'6", or 168 cm. The school nurse was wrong, though, because I grew until I reached 5'11" (180 cm) at 18.

Being tall doesn't really carry a stigma per se (in fact, studies suggest that there are advantages), but there are certain obstacles tall girls face anyway. In our teenage years we look even more awkward and clumsy than our friends. Hiding from attention is difficult, but boys don't like us because we are taller than they are. We tend to slouch and have bad posture because we try to be on eye-to-eye level with our shorter friends. Some of this carries through to later in life. The clumsiness goes away and some of us re-gain the control of our limbs and look poised. We certainly draw a fair bit of attention just because we stand out, quite literally. But a lot of tall women try to look shorter than they are, a lot of them have really bad posture, and a lot of men steer away from us. (When I started going out to bars and such, I spent nights out with friends, almost always without any male company. If I was approached by men at all, it was always by idiots with a tall-girl fetishism. Yep, nothing makes you feel more special than a man whose first words to you are "I have always wanted to sleep with a really tall woman.")

I learned to really enjoy my height and started to wear heels in my late teens and early 20s. Some of this was due to modeling; I was surrounded by girls my height and they all wore heels. A huge factor was my mother, who at 5'9" always wore 4" heels when I was growing up. But even more importantly, my first-ever-boyfriend was not afraid to be shorter than I was, and he encouraged me to wear heels. I didn't realise it at the time, but in hindsight, it meant the world to me that I met someone early on who didn't have a problem with my height. Later, however, there were times when I was told to not wear heels so that whichever-boyfriend-at-the-time (or sometimes even female friends) would not look "stupid" next to me. I'd often take that as a challenge and wear the highest heels I owned, just to spite them. I was not going to look like Nicole Kidman next to Tom Cruise; there was no way I was going to start feeling uncomfortable with my height next to anyone else. I don't wear heels as much these days, but there are still occasions when I hear the dreaded "why do you wear heels? You are tall already." I just say that I like the shoes, and that I don't mind being tall. There really isn't much else you can say.

Being tall makes buying clothes difficult at times. Most clothes are cut for the bodies of women with average height. I have a hard time finding properly-cut short jackets, blazers, blouses or shirts because my back and arms are too long. I am lucky that my upper-body type is boyish - I often end up buying men's sweaters and shirts because the sleeves are long enough. Luckily, these days a lot of clothing manufacturers offer 36" inseam lengths for jeans and trousers or collections specifically tailored for tall women. Properly fitting tights and leggings are tough to find, though. I usually end up with a pair of tights whose crotch is somewhere close to my knees, unless I go up two sizes and have to deal with loose waistbands and extra fabric.

My only real problem with my height is posture-related. I immediate hunch when I am with shorter people, it is almost like a reflex. The posture issue is a work in progress and I will have to live with it and keep figuring it out for the rest of my life. The fact that my torso is very long doesn't help any. In connection to this, most chairs feel ergonomically wrong somehow, and my body wants to slouch automatically when I sit down. I can never feel comfortable traveling on a plane or a bus. I also have to watch my head in low spaces, but that's the type of stuff that comes with the package. You learn to adapt. The flip side is that I can always reach the top shelf of my bookcase. I can always see the band at a concert. If Chris and I lose each other in the supermarket, he can find me easily. I don't have to change seats at the cinema because another tall person is sitting in front of me.

I have come across a lot of short women who wish that they were taller, and a lot of tall women who wish that they were shorter. It is weird how it goes; we are so rarely comfortable in our own skin. We worry about other people's perceptions of our bodies, and often only see what we don't like. As a tall woman, it is important to me to have the freedom to be who I am, to live comfortably in the body I have been given, and to do it boldly and proudly. As a tall woman, I choose to wear heels if I feel like it. I have found my own comfort zone hovering above others. There is serenity in that extra space.

Men's sweater: Kohl's

Polka-dot skirt: Salvation Army

Boots: Vialis

Pendant: Petrune Vintage

Vintage hair pin: Rambling Rose Antiques

Kitties: Masa and Illusia

Wearing today, with rest of the cats

2011-04-05T16:08:00.003-04:00

Second hand patchwork tunic: Plato's Closet

Cardigans: Urban Outfitters and Lindex

Jeans: Denimbirds

Second hand belt: flea market

Vintage boots: Tony Lama, Etsy

Earrings: JBL

Since yesterday's kitty post didn't include all six of our feline friends, here are the rest. Lyric is shy:

and Masa lurks behind the dresser.

Weekend Cats

2011-04-04T14:54:00.002-04:00

Audrey is keeping clean, Blue covers her eyes with her paws while sleeping.

Illusia is pissed off - just look at those ears. (It is not food time yet.)

Willow is feeling sleepy.

Let the Gardening Project begin! Vol. 2

2011-04-03T16:45:00.004-04:00

One of the mistakes I made with my first ever veggie garden last year was planting leafy greens too late. I didn't get much of a crops before the weather got too hot and everything bolted. Either last spring was exceptionally warm, or this one has been colder than usual. Either way, I was planning on getting things on track much earlier this year, but since we just barely got rid of the snow this week, there was no way for me to plant anything before today. The ground was completely frozen even a week ago.

The weather forecast looks very promising now, though. I planted two types of lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula and pok choy. I hope I am early enough to get a decent crops, but late enough to avoid any frost that might still follow. Luckily lettuce seeds can even germinate on ice, and most greens tolerate moderate frost reasonably well. I still have plenty of seeds to spare even if the weather gets colder again and I lose the greens I planted today. I was going to plant my radishes and peas today as well, but that will have to wait until later this coming week.

Blue, the little helper:

Spring is here, finally!

This is what I wore yesterday:

Top: Target

Second hand dress: Plato's Closet

Cardigan: Urban Outfitters

Tights: Noa Noa

Boots: John Fluevog

Second hand earrings: yard sale

edit: typos

No love, no wear, must go

2011-04-01T15:17:00.003-04:00

After this Monday's post about my intense need to love the clothes I wear, I have been engaging in some wardrobe purging. What's the point in holding onto no-matter-how-pretty shoes that are so uncomfortable that I can barely walk in them? Or clothes that make my body look completely disproportionate? Or sunglasses that hurt my head? As usual, in hindsight, it seems weird that I have spent so much time and money buying clothes or shoes that don't work for me. What's even weirder is that all this stuff (a big garbage bag full of clothes and ten or so pairs of shoes) has survived so many wardrobe purges before. Come tomorrow, and I will not even remember what I got rid of. As always, there is a bunch of clothes that I have decided to hold onto just for a little while longer. Until next time, that is.

Purple top: Target

Gray wrap top: Max&Co.

Cardigan: Urban Outfitters

Jeans: Gap Boots: Vialis

Wooden peacock earring: present from my sister

Second hand wooden beads: Plato's Closet

Come on!

2011-03-31T13:19:00.003-04:00

Greetings from upstate New York, the hellhole, where yet again we are preparing for a winter storm. It is freakin' April tomorrow, and I don't want any more snow! I'm feeling grumpy. I could really use Gob Bluth here. "Come on!"

I am also going to say "Come on!" to these Weekday jeans of mine. I bought them the last time I was in Finland, and picked a size so tight that I could barely get them on. In a day, they gave in just the right amount. I was convinced that they were a good purhcase, because so many Finnish bloggers wear them. A month or so later I started to worry. The shape seemed to be all over the place even if I had just washed them. Today I could fit a monkey inside the waistband and I could just as well be a well-endowed man; that's how loose they are now. I don't even know why I try to wear them. Lesson learned: I am never buying Weekday jeans again.

Do you guys have luck with a particular brand of jeans? Do share.

Second hand sweater

Star print blouse: Salvation Army

Crappy jeans: Weekday

Boots: Nine West

Time flies necklace: Etsy

"Personal" in personal style

2011-03-28T13:44:00.003-04:00

In the late 1990s I wasn't all that interested in fashion. I did like clothes, though, or more precisely, I knew what types of clothes I liked. For two years straight I wore nothing but flared second hand jeans, a tight tiger or dragon print t-shirt, gold-tone sneakers and a denim jacket with a multicoloured stripe detail and the name "McQueen" (that would be Steve, not Alexander) printed on the back. My accessories included a huge bird skull ring and a cowboy hat. As far as I can remember, nothing in particular influenced the way I dressed. I didn't admire anyone else's style, I didn't read fashion magazines. I bought clothes only if I saw something I really loved (and if I happened to have the money).

I remember the moment when things started changing for me, and shockingly, it wasn't all that long ago. I lived in London at the time, and needed a new pair of jeans. I found nothing but skinny ones. I remember thinking that skinny jeans seemed profoundly unflattering to me and that I thought I looked ridiculous in them. I bought a pair anyway. It might have been the first time I bought (into) something because I knew it was trendy. I don't really know what had changed. Perhaps it was my exposure to intense, all-over, cheap high street fashion in a big metropolitan city. Maybe I felt insecure, like I didn't fit in. Maybe I just needed a change. I think that particular purchase (the skinny jeans) was the first link in my long, turbulent chain of compulsive shopping, the one that eventually led to the launch of No Signposts in the Sea a couple of years later. I shopped, I shopped and I shopped, and I lost my personal style in the process. Buying new things was like a drug. Essentially, I forgot what it was like to have a favourite pair of jeans, or what it felt like to want to wear the same jacket day after day.

I am writing about this today because I got to thinking about the meaning of personal style the other day. I was channel-surfing and came across some indie band performing on the Jay Leno show. It hit me that the young men in the band wore the typical indie/electronica gear that all the other bands in their genre wear: slightly oversized retro glasses, neat haircuts, button-up shirts and skinny trousers. They all looked the same. The band's style looked so over-referenced that I didn't even know what to think. It occurred to me that as much talk as there is about personal style today, there seems to be an awful lot of style but very little personality.

Read any fashion or style blog, and you'll encounter elaborate statements of self-expression through personal style. Many blogs feature inspiration boards and images of "style icons". We are inspired (and influenced) by 1960s French cinema one day, the new Topshop catalogue the next day, and the day after that, Alexa Chung. One could argue that all style is referenced from somewhere else. Whether we realize it or not, we filter our clothing choices through an intricate maze of the things we see: a cool girl in a street style blog, the selection of clothing at the store we visited the week before, the old picture of our mother we stumbled upon in our family photo album. Some of us might be open to influences and directly copy what we see and like, and confess to doing so. The process can also be more indirect: we might not even notice where our ideas come from. In this sense, nothing in our style is organic. It all comes from somewhere. So where does the word "personal" fit in?

For me, it comes down to love. I loved my McQueen jacket so passionately that I wanted to wear it every single day for many years. (I still have it, of course, and I still love it.) There are clothes in my wardrobe that are practical and easy, there are mistakes, and then there are the clothes I love. They are not what fashion magazines would call "cornerstones" of my style, because there is no logic in the way I operate them. They are not a "foundation" for the rest of my clothes either. They don't belong to one particular clothing genre, nor do I feel like I wear them to express my personality. I just love them, and I want to wear them. The love is natural, instinctive. There is nothing forced about it. I don't try to do anything with those clothes. The less I think about what kind of style they result in, the better.

The short time that I was on the Great American Apparel Diet was very useful. It allowed me to see my wardrobe in a different light. I realized that I had bought a lot of clothes I had never loved. I saw very little of that late 1990s passionate love, the one that I used to have for my clothes. At some point some years ago I just started to think too much about what I wore. Maybe I tried to be someone else for a while, and got lost. Working in clothing retail certainly didn't help. That moment when I chose to wear skinny jeans without loving them - I will try to keep that in mind for the rest of my life. I want to wear what I love. And there is nothing more personal than the love we feel.

Long-sleeved tee & denim shirt: Salvation Army

Cardigan: Urban Outfitters

Jeans: Gap

boots: Vialis

Vintage necklace and bracelet: presents from Lynn

Best of spam

2011-03-25T15:07:00.002-04:00

Blogger automatically gets rid of most spam in my comment inbox. I received this particular piece of spam art a couple of months ago. I was immediately smitten by the awful grammar and punctuation, not to mention the desperate tone of the message itself (they had me at "how to go on living" and "why me?"). Needless to say, I saved the darn thing, and I have gone back to my spam box at least once a week to just look at it and laugh. Yes, I agree, it is almost not funny. And yet it is.

"three weeks ago i have problem which is usual of all of us ! what should do and how to go on living, I did not understood ((I stopped smiling at ALL!!!! :( yes!!,i have bad teeth because of heredity ... why me? Teeth is the first thing you see when chat anybody,or doing smth like that, I have found a solution in putting [dental product x] ! and i need to say it has guaranteed 100% result,also i think its a good investition"

So there you have it. Personally, I have not "stopped smiling at ALL!!!!" Good investition, indeed.

Can I have...

2011-03-24T14:53:00.002-04:00

... Faiths / Rahab by John Fluevog. (They also come in orange and black.)

The AA dilemma

2011-03-24T13:16:00.004-04:00

Here we go again. More snow, just when things were starting to look up! I am lucky that I resisted my urges to plant lettuce seeds last weekend.

This isn't a great day to be wearing an American Apparel skirt, because the company's CEO is once again accused of sexual assault. I am sure we all remember the weird dress code rules for AA employers, too; not that AA is alone in this - other retailers have odd rules as well. Still, the whole sexually charged image of the company, combined with a wacky-seeming CEO makes me very uncomfortable. I have not bought a single piece of clothing from AA since the dress code stuff was made public, and I do wonder how long I feel okay about wearing the couple of AA pieces I already have.

Since nothing cheers me up like a cat who thinks she's human:

Yes, the doctor will see you meow.

Sweater: men's All Saints

Skirt: AA

Tights: Target

Boots: Merrell

P.S. My hair is making me think of Kate Jackson in Charlie's Angels.

The Fool

2011-03-23T13:08:00.005-04:00

A few weeks ago, Charlotte's post on Tarot cards got me looking into symbolism and the history of the Tarot. Chris got me a vintage Rider deck, and for the past week I have been reading Arthur Edward Waite's book, The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, which accompanied the cards back in 1910 when these particular cards were first issued. The book is complicated and rich in symbolism. Waite was a mystic, a member of The Golden Dawn, a Freemason, and later, the founder of the Fellowship of the Rosy Cross. He was not pleased with the way Tarot cards were being used for divination. For Waite, the cards (particularly the 22 Major Arcana cards) served the purpose of preserving the divine, universal secrets of the humankind, which had been carried through the ages with the help of the trained, dedicated few and the chosen. It seems that Waite wrote his book as an attempt to clarify and fix some common misconceptions about Tarot cards, only to rely so heavily on age-old secrecy and symbolism himself that it is no wonder the Tarot have a bit of a reputation.

As I got my Rider deck, one card jumped at me immediately: the Fool. I had seen it before. In my continuing research in the history of psychiatry and concepts of madness I had often seen the image of "the traveling idiot" in strange clothes, carrying a staff and a pouch (or bladder, as they say) attached to it, often accompanied by a dog.

Back in the 14th century the fool was pictured with a tree branch, also known as the staff of madness.

The fool in a 14th century manuscript

Giotto: The Seven Vices: "Foolishness", 1306

In later imagery the fool is seen carrying a wider range of long, wooden objects. In some cases he leans onto a simple cane, in others he carries a child's pinwheel, with or without a pouch attached to it. (The staff or wand is also seen in imagery of witches flying on broomsticks.) The fool was often associated with the wild man, the man who lives in the forest. The branch or the wooden staff would fit this imagery. In some images his coat is also made of leaves, and in others, he wears a headpiece made of feathers.

Bedford Book of Hours, 14th century French manuscript

In all images, the fool's attire is questionable. Apart from wearing leaves and feathers, he is also shown in ragged or otherwise ridiculous clothing. By his appearance, he portrays someone who has lost all normalcy by abandoning proper clothes and a proper habitat. He is, then, in denial of all order, and of God. (Those who deny Christ are "foolish", according to Hans Holbein the Younger's 1547 work on illustrated Psalms.)

Giuseppe Maria Mitelli: Proverbi Figurati, 1678

The fool has often shared his imagery with the madman, especially the melancholiac. The planet Saturn has been linked to sadness and melancholy since the first century by the poet Manilius, and here lies the connection to the fool's common companion, the dog. The dog is an old symbol of melancholy and the planet Saturn. A 16th century author even called the fool's pinwheel "the Saturnian pinwheeler". In this sense, the fool becomes the representative of the sad and the morose.

Cesare Ripa's Iconologia: "Madness", 1645

Hans Holbein the Younger: Icones historiarum veteris testamenti, 1547

Bonifacia Bembo: Tarot card from 1460-1470 in Visconti-Sforza deck

From what I have read, the Fool card in Tarot seems to represent the old myth of the blessed, traveling fool of the Middle Ages. As the story goes, the village idiots (that is to say, the mentally or developmentally challenged individuals) were shut out of their towns and families and left in their own devices in the countryside. For a very brief period of time in history toward the end of the Middle Ages, the idea of the traveling fool represented someone in the search of their lost wisdom. The fool was childlike, innocent, unaware of the complexities of human existence. The fool was nearer to happiness than anyone with reason. Strangely enough, even though the history of the fool eventually took him from the countryside to confinement, the portrayal of the fool as a staff-bearing wildman persisted, even in semi-medical portrayals of the insane, the idiot, or the melancholiac.

Detail of Daniel Chodowiecki's plate "The physiognomy of illness and deformity", from Johann Gaspar Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente, 1774-1778

Detail of Charles Aubry: Album Comique de pathologie pittoresque, "Saint Guy's Dance", 1823

Jean Louis Alibert: Physiologie des Passions, "Portrait of Anselm", 1826

The myth of the traveling fool seems to occupy the meanings attached to the Fool of the Tarot: the card depicts the journey of man through life, his childlike connection to the workings of the world. The rose the fool carries has come to symbolize his appreciation of beauty, and the meaning of the dog has changed from that of melancholy to the call of the physical, material side of the world. The number given to the Fool is zero, nothing.

Images: Sander L. Gilman's Seeing the Insane, and Wikipedia.

Happy clothes

2011-03-21T11:29:00.003-04:00

I made a conscious decision to wear happy clothes on Saturday. Bright colours didn't feel quite happy enough, so I added a happy hat. I noticed throughout the day that people were doing double-takes. People in our town don't wear happy clothes often. The few young people who experiment with their personal style around here tend to lean toward the edgy and the dark. Chris used to get passive-aggressive remarks from people for wearing a pair of red Converse to work, and no, it was not because of a specific dresscode, but because "men aren't supposed to wear red shoes". I know that I stand out here more than many others, as does Chris. He boldly mixes stripes and plaids like anyone I have ever met. For the most part, I don't mind being looked at. But there is looking, and then there is staring.

At Target a couple in their late 50s stopped about ten feet away from us, parked their shopping cart, and stared at me with their heart's content. The woman's mouth actually hung open. I met her gaze, and she didn't turn hers away. Her eyes were close to bulging out of her head. The man stared, too. There they stood, next to one other, staring at me as if I was a zoo specimen. I couldn't figure out if they stared at me just because I looked different, or because they had a problem with the way I looked. It might have been both, and I instinctively felt uncomfortable. I never know how to handle those types of situations. I am too shy to stare back intensely, and I can never come up with anything witty to say either. So I ignored the couple, and we moved on.

At home, as I was singing made-up songs to our kitties and silly-dancing in our kitchen, I felt pleased. I mentioned to Chris that I was very fortunate to have such an open-minded husband who appreciates and encourages me to wear whatever I like, who goofs around with me and laughs at my stupid jokes. I also said that it was really important to me to not act like a stuck-up adult. This also goes to the way I dress. I have no need to take my style too seriously. What would be the point in that? I enjoy my happy clothes, and a big boo-hoo to those who don't like it.

By the way, Blue's diabetes test came back negative. (Yay!) She is in very good health considering that she is 14 - that's 76 in human years. As I saw her stretching out on the back deck, rolling on her back from side to side, I got the feeling that she didn't feel like an adult either.

Men's sweater: Kohl's

Vintage shirt: Hietsu fleamarket

Jacket: Urban Outfitters

Cords: fleamarket, re-sewn

Boots: John Fluevog

Hat: men's Diesel Black Gold

No title required

2011-03-17T13:55:00.002-04:00

Top: Target

Linen shirt: fleamarket

Cardigan: Urban Outfitters

Skirt: JC

Tights: Target

Boots: vintage Tony Lama, Etsy

Necklace: JBL

Copper pendant: present from Chris

Gardening plans, and kitty outdoors

2011-03-15T15:11:00.004-04:00

Today feels like spring. The sun has been out for most of the day, and I am working on my gardening plans even if there is still plenty of snow on the ground. I have bought most of my seeds already and should start working on planting some indoors soon. I feel like I learned a lot from last year and I'm much better organized this spring. I have a pretty good idea as to where everything is going to go, and I know so much more about what to expect.

Blue got to spend time outdoors today, and boy was she happy! She is actually going to see the vet on Friday. As wonderful as it is that she has lost a lot of weight (she used to be very heavy and has been on a diet for the past two years), we are a little concerned that she might have developed diabetes. Here's to hoping that she is okay.

Dress: made by Tuuli. I think the fabric is old pillowcases or sheets!

Cardigan: Benetton sample sale

Tights: ?

Boots: vintage Tony Lama, Etsy

Necklace: vintage Miriam Haskell

Leather belt: second hand, Plato's Closet

Earrings: present from Chris

Weekendwear

2011-03-13T21:06:00.004-04:00

Sunday

Shirt: Salvation Army

Cardigan: Urban Outfitters

Trousers: Diesel

Boots: vintage Tony Lama, Etsy

Rings: Etsy and America's Attic

Earrings: gift from Shey at Modesty is Pretty

Saturday

Sweater: Coldwater Creek

Jacket: Urban Outfitters
Jeans: Gap
Shoes: John Fluevog
Pendant: fleamarket
Wooden beads: Plato's Closet
Earrings: JBL

On the Appeal of New

2011-03-09T13:35:00.007-05:00

As Marc Jacobs re-defined the question of "does my bum look big in this?" in his latest collection for Louis Vuitton today, I read Cathy Horyn's recent Paris fashion week update with great gusto. Her review of the LV collection wasn't in yet, but she did point out some important issues regarding the pressure fashion designers are constantly under, or in her words, "the nearly brutalizing feeling that something new and relevant must be communicated each season".

I got to thinking about "new". Ever since I got off the Great American Apparel Diet I have been eyeing clothes that would ease my seasonal transformation which always kicks in when the weather is about to change in the way that signals the arrival of either spring or autumn. I have found myself wanting a hot pink maxi dress (like the one by Michael Kors below), and something in that denim-look-a-like fabric that you see in catwalk pictures for this coming summer (even if I already have a blue linen shirt that sort of fits the description), among other things.

I honestly can't explain the logic behind wanting new clothes. I have plenty of clothes already, I have plenty of clothes I could play around with to achieve a different look. The Sex and the City-logic of "a girl can never have too many clothes and should treat herself" has never fully appealed to me. And yet I want new things. The feeling comes from the inside, but the desire's target can be whatever I see and get fixated on. Last year it was circle skirts. This year it is a hot pink dress, something in light-weight denim, a pair of moccasins and a long vest, namely this one from Free People. To make things more complicated, as in the case of the FP vest, it seems that there exists a particular appeal of the new "new" that's hard to beat.

Shey of Modesty is Pretty wrote in my comment box recently that when she buys clothes new (as in from a store rather than thrift), she wears them more. I think I am the same. I buy second hand clothes often and get a fair bit of wear out of them. I like to think that I consume more ethically than some when it comes to clothes, and I rant about the bad quality of mass-produced clothing all the time. But the items that have true staying power in my closet tend to be the ones I have bought brand new. This is a little disturbing. It seems that there is some weird, distorted magic in new "new", be it on the level of ideas or in the actual product. Or maybe when I have thrifted in the past, I have ended up buying things that I haven't really wanted all that badly. We all know the temptation of just buying stuff because it is cheap and gives us a quick thrill.

I eventually got my hot pink maxi dress from eBay a few weeks ago. It is just the right colour, just the right length, it is practially unworn second hand Ralph Lauren green label, and it cost about $10. I found my light cotton denim-type dress (Talbots!) at Salvation Army for $8.99 (I swear the prices at SA have been going up recently). I hope that these clothes have at least some level of true staying power. I have a feeling that the fact that I hunted down things I specifically wanted and didn't settle for anything that wasn't just right will change things and make these second hand finds worth while.

I don't really know what the point of this post was, or is. Maybe I just struggle with the idea of buying things when they really aren't all that necessary. Maybe I still feel a little guilty for abandoning the GAAD and getting back on the bandwagon of consumption, even if it seems, for now at least, that I learned something important along the way.

Catwalk images: style.com

Spring! Err... no.

2011-03-07T09:47:00.003-05:00

This is what I wore on Saturday. The snow pretty much melted entirely, and it felt almost warm. We went to see The Adjustment Bureau which really wasn't a great movie, but I did enjoy seeing the trailer for Apollo 18. I love looking forward to sci-fi movies. Apollo 18 and Super 8 seem very promising. Anyway, from no-more-snow-here-comes-the-spring, here we are this morning. I don't think I'll be taking outfit pictures on our back deck anytime soon:

Mother nature, you amaze me. Everyone on our street seems to be both shoveling their butts off and waiting angrily for the snow plow to come. Personally, I don't think the venting and ranting gets the plow here any sooner. The city actually recommends that people stay off the streets until 5 pm.

Sweater: Tuuli's old

Jacket: Urban Outfitters, present from Chris

Skirt: JC

Tights: Target

Knee socks: H&M

Boots: Urban Outfitters, since 2003!

Scarf: present from Chris

How old is too old for braids?

2011-03-04T13:48:00.002-05:00

Hello, I am 33 and I braid my hair. I don't usually worry about age when it comes to my personal style: for me, clothing and style choices arise more from personal comfort and happiness than anything else. I did think about hair-related ageism this morning when I was braiding my hair.

Hair braiding has been around for thousands of years in different cultures all over the world. It has had the function of keeping hair clean (Renaissance Europe) and socializing among women (Africa). Braided wigs were worn by royalty in ancient Egypt, and in the Native American Hopi tribe, only married women braided their hair. Braids are practical, and they have long served as different types of social markers.

These days we in the Western world tend to associate braid-wearing white women with little girls. Women in their early 20s can still get away with braids, but once women enter serious employment, braids become very difficult to pull off. It seems to me that African-American tradition of hair braiding carries with it the notion of empowerment and appreciation of culture, but as a white, 30-something woman, my braids mark innocence, softness and playfulness instead, as if those were the character traits that were reserved to (female) children. I know this not because I have been told that only little girls wear braids, but because it is an unpleasant gut-feeling, like the one that instinctively dismisses the idea of wearing a pink suit to a job interview. Infantilization of women is everywhere, from hair braids to grown-up women wearing pink.

Anya asked me to do a braiding tutorial, but since my own skills are so limited, do check out video tutorials for braiding your bangs here. To be honest, I don't really know what I do when I braid my hair; I use random techniques to get to a completely unplanned end-result. The one today is a basic French braid. I am actually wearing three braids in total: there is a half regular, half French one (meaning that one side is gathered, the other not) on the left side, and a third braid on the back of my head. So screw you, hair-ageism. Braiding is fun.

Sweater: men's All Saints

Denim shorts: Benetton sample sale

Tights: Sears

Boots: John Fluevog