FRESH

Goooood morning everybody! Happy Monday! I hope it's treating you well.

This is my outfit from yesterday afternoon. I had a slow start and a lazy morning, impacted by the fact that I accidentally stayed up until 2 am goofing off with my housemates. This was really just one of those days that took forever to get started. It was beautiful outside, but I was feeling sort of trapped by work and anxiety. I did have plans for the early evening to go to a production of Heathers: the Musical (which, by the way, was amazing), though, so I decided that getting dressed was the best way to get me out of my funk.

Side note: For me, getting dressed is almost always the best way to get out of a funk. Unless, of course, I'm in a style rut, in which case it sort of adds fuel to the fire. 

Anyway, spending the time to get dressed and then playing around with flowers and props and backdrops and stuff made me feel significantly better. And though these photos elicited a call from my mom asking if I was doing okay and eating enough (I am), I'm really happy with these images because it was really empowering to turn my living room into a very make-shift photo area.

Last thing: music is a really integral part of how I get dressed and experience my day, so I've decided that I'm going to include links to songs that I was listening to while getting dressed that made me feel really good. This time around it's "I Can't Stand It" by The Velvet Underground. Enjoy!

CONCERT

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All layered up for an outdoor concert! But what's underneath the layers?

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This afternoon, I went to an outdoor concert to see the ALLAH-LAS play. I knew it was going to be chilly, as it's been cold and gray all day today. I also knew that I was going to go to the studio after the concert to clean up some work I've been doing this past week. I was faced with the challenge of looking concert ready, being warm, and ultimately being able to do studio work in whatever I ended up wearing, all at the same time.

The answer? Layer, layer, layer. I started with a base of my studio uniform and added two pieces on top of that: the first was a black sweatshirt with artwork by Nathaniel Russell on the front. The image reads "RESIST FEAR/ASSIST LOVE." I'm not one to wear sweatshirts outside of the PJ context, but this is one that I treasure, and it makes me feel strong and protected at the same time. I also really love this sweatshirt because Nathaniel made the PDF of this design free to the public around the time of the election and inauguration. All of my friends got together and printed a bunch of stuff (posters, bags, shirts, pull overs, bed sheets, etc.), so this sweatshirt sort of feels emblematic of our cohort, too. On top of the sweatshirt, I added my burgundy velvet blazer, which I usually keep adorned with a rotating cast of pins. Today, I'm sporting a square brooch made of stamped clay and a little brooch of two little ladies' heads.

As soon as I got to the studio, I stripped off all those layers (I was getting hot anyway) and got to work. Bada-bing bada-boom: back in my studio uniform! Natalie recently wrote about the virtues of uniform dressing for work, and clearly I'm in her camp. I love the way that a uniform can not only work as something you wear every day, but also as a versatile base that pivots as you need it to. Uniform dressing is a great way to keep things simple and to expand the potential for an outfit to last throughout the day.

Let me know what your uniform looks like!

PRINT SALE

Yeeeeeeew! I'm so hyped up on this monochrome look. Seriously, if I wasn't so scared that I'd stain everything, I'd dress like this every damn day. Today's outfit is pretty simple (obviously). I'm wearing: a white tee hand-stenciled by the captain of my old improv team about three years ago, these white high rise flair jeans that I got from H&M probably six years ago, little woven leather slippers from Urban Outfitters, and a silver cuff. My bag, though, deserves special attention. It was printed and sewn by hand for me by friend Bella. Cindy Sherman (whose name is printed on the bag) is on of my all-time favorite artists, and this bag is just RAD on its own. Today was day one of a big print sale that happens every year, and a bunch of my friends were selling, so of course I had to buy all of their work. The prints were all wrapped up in what tissue paper, which was a nice little touch to this outfit as I walked home while trying not to inadvertently smash my precious purchases! 

INTERVIEW

 

This morning, I interviewed an artist over Skype for a story I'm writing for an art magazine. I once heard in high school that you should always dress up for a phone interview since it makes you feel more put together and it will make you perform more seriously. Now that I've heard, that, I can't imagine taking a phone call for anything important without having gotten fully dressed first. Plus, since this story I'm writing will include screen shots of our video conversation, I wanted to dress up a little bit. Today I am wearing a very sneakily layered ensemble: I have a red long sleeved button-up shirt under a red an purple ombre bowling shirt (honestly I don't know how to describe this shirt because it is a lot of things at once). Then on top of all of that, I'm wearing a little navy blue velvet jacket top thing (again, at a loss for how to describe this. If you know what it's called please let me know!). The jacket fastens all the way up to the neck with a long row of hook and eye closures, which is a cool detail. Then on the bottom, I'm wearing my regular fit Wranglers and my little black sandals! Makeup today is blush on my cheeks and eyelids with a little highlighter and some taupe-y eye shadow for a bit of extra pizzazz. It's been a while since I've done full makeup and it feels good to be more put together today!

STUDIO

 

This is me today and nearly every other week-day: zero makeup, black top, jeans, boots. This is my studio outfit. I'm an art student, with a focus in sculpture, so wearing anything else is pretty impractical. I've developed a uniform, and straying away from the uniform means risking ruining clothes that are delicate, potentially getting paint all over things that I care about keeping nice. I kind of like how I turn on and off my creative dressing. It means that outfits are more special when I get to dress up, and there's less pressure to churn out bangers every day. I know this outfit isn't revelatory, but I like it because it's honest: I have spent the majority of the last 8 months in these garments, when clothes are worn so frequently, they retain the shape of your body. This turtleneck I've had since I was 12, and the elbows and neck are both awkwardly saggy. The jeans are newer (I've had them for about a year and a half) but they are still very much my jeans. So this is the reality of the majority of my days: work clothes to do good work. But when the weekend comes 'round, you betcha I'm dressing up!