Filed under: clothes, fashion, style, things we love | Tags: black friday, clothing, dress, fashion, flip flops, fuzzy slippers, holidays, jeans, orange, petite, scarves, season, shoes, shopping, skechers, style, sweaters, winter, wishlist
So Halloween has come and gone, and Turkey Day’s on the way. Do you know what that means? BLACK FRIDAY!!! It’s one of my favorite holidays of the season. 
Black Friday is something I definitely get into the spirit of. Unfortunately, I don’t think I can participate this year (see preceding post about being broke), but it’s always fun to window shop and look at all the stuff I can’t afford even if it’s marked down, all the way down to the underworld!
In anticipation of this glorious day, I have compiled a list of things I want and adore but can only admire from afar. (It’s like unrequited love, isn’t it?) I’m making part of this up as I go along, so I wonder how long this’ll get. Gee, I have a lot of time on my hands! But it’s a Sunday and we just gained an hour to Daylight Saving, so why not? Here I go!
- Scarves. Knit ones in dark red, forest green; silky ones in turquoise and an obnoxious shade of orange.
- A dark wash, straight-leg pair of Joe’s Jeans. They have a line of denim made especially for petite people called Provocateur. I’d love to splurge on one, but I can wait. I think I’ll get one at Ebay or snoop around at some consignment shops in the nicer neighborhoods of San Francisco. I actually saw a pair of Joe’s Jeans at Crossroads this afternoon, but I didn’t grab it because it wasn’t from the Provocateur line. Darn, so close! Also, I specically want a dark wash, straight leg jean because they’re the more flattering than lighter washes, skinny or flared jeans.
- Shoes. Lots of ‘em! Especially sneakers by Skechers and cute ankle boots.
- Fuzzy slippers. To wear at home so I don’t have to get my socks dirty all the time. And so my feet won’t have to come in contact with the cold, wooden floors in my apartment.
- Havaianas. Hmm, a pair of flip flops aren’t exactly appropriate for the winter season, but they’re always nice to have! I love the design on this one:
- A beanie or a slouchy beret. A slouchy beret would be nice because since it’s loose, it won’t be too tight on my huge head. Plus, when I’m wearing one, the fog and rain probably won’t be able to get to my hair and make it frizzy after I’ve spent so much time trying to get it to look decent. This one from Urban Outfitters is cute!
- Cable-knit sweater. This one from Abercrombie is nice.
- Betsey Johnson bobby pins. These aren’t necessary, but they’re so cute I couldn’t *not* put them on this list!
- Orange BCBG Max Azria Dress. I love the cut and color of this. My favorite color may be orange, but I find that a lot of clothes in orange are in hideous shades of orange.
I’m going to stop here. There are so many things I’d like to add, but this is good enough for me… for now, anyway.
- Ms. Mouse
Filed under: clothes, fashion, style | Tags: dumb, economy, financial aid, guilt, idiocy, jobs, poor, rambling, recession, rent, retail therapy, shopping, stupid, style, wardrobe makeover
So just over an hour ago, I did something kind of stupid. I went to Macys and purchased a jacket. It cost me about about $41 including taxes. I feel bad. But to justify for my moment of weakness, it’s a really nice jacket. And it actually fits me off the rack, unlike the vast majority of clothes out there. I’d show attach a picture to prove it, but for some reason there isn’t a picture of it online at Macy’s site, and I’m really too lazy to take a picture. I don’t really think $40 is too much, but I’m already financially strapped. I live on financial aid. It sucks. I know, most college students do. But I was also depending on my older sister to help me out with rent and whatnot. Well, she got laid off recently. Recession hurts.
So what am I doing shopping when I probably won’t be able to pay my own rent in a few months?
I’m torn, as ridiculous as it sounds, between looking good and maintaining a stocked fridge and a roof over my head as long as I plan to go to school in SF. I’ve started to take pride in my appearance and looking polished and sophisticated and just plain put together (not that I didn’t care about how I dressed or looked before, just not as much as I do now), and I’ve begun to develop my own style. I want things that are well made, that suit my proportions and flatter and compliment me. Unfortunately, several of the pieces currently in my wardrobe seem very juvenile and clash with my style now. Some of the most important staples, such as jeans and jackets, are ill-fitting as well. It’s really too bad that my good, or at least better, taste has just hit me now because now I really haven’t any money to throw around on getting quality pieces that fit right.
And I don’t want to settle for less just because I don’t have disposable cash. I’m not going to go to Forever 21 and pick up something that’s sort of my taste, something I kind of like but don’t love, and just buy it anyway because that’s what I can afford. No! Because if I do that, I won’t like wearing the piece, not to mention it’s bad quality, so it’d just be a waste of money in the end. I’m trying to live by the concept of “quality over quantity.” So it looks like I’m stuck with these clothes until I can actually afford to do something about them.
*sighs* I need a job, stat! I’ve been looking for a long time, but I haven’t been very successful. No one really wants to hire anyone who’s young or inexperienced, and then there’s that factor of the economy being down. Recently I thought I had a shot at a restaurant in the airport, but apparently they don’t hire people who don’t speak or understand Chinese seeing as how it’s a Chinese restaurant and all the workers there speak in the kitchen and yaddayaddaya. I’m disappointed because they sort of strung me along until they finally told me I wasn’t qualified because I couldn’t speak Chinese (even though they said on the listing that knowing Chinese wasn’t required… psh).
Filed under: clothes, fashion, random, rants, style, things we hate | Tags: coat, cold, freeze, pea coat, petite, rant, shopping, short, size, winter
The other day, I went shopping in search of the perfect pea coat; actually, I’ve been on the lookout for a great pea coat for a while now, but I have always walked out of stores empty-handed every trip.
There just isn’t anything that fits me right. Everything is either too big, some parts of the coat are off or fit weird, the sleeves are too wide and long, the armpit areas are too low (not unlike how the crotch of pants can be too low if they don’t fit right), or the overall length of the coat is too long. Even the petite sizes are all wrong, mainly because they’re made for older petite people who are kind of differently sized from young petite people such as myself. I just end up looking like I’m playing dress up in everything I try on. It’s unbelievably maddening. I’m only 5’2″ and average weight, about 110 lbs! It shouldn’t be this hard to find a damn coat!
It doesn’t help that I’m picky and hate many of the styles of coats that are flooding the market these days, so that leaves a very narrow selection of what I will even consider trying on. I just want a simple, normal pea coat like the “Classic Peacoat” by J Crew (picture below on the left), but they seem to only have these online, and I don’t like purchasing such items over the internet. On Friday, I was close to getting the “New York Pea Coat” by Kenneth Cole (below, right; looks much better in real life) since it seem to suit my proportions, but they ran out of size 0 in the charcoal color I wanted. Snickerdoodles! It was on sale, too.
(jcrew.com, kennethcole.com)
But it’s hard to find classic peacoats like the ones pictured above. Most of the things I see in store is ridiculous crap like so:
(nordstrom.com)
Well, that’s actually a jacket, but they do have coat versions of this cape style, all of which may look okay on “normal” sized people but are actually overwhelming on a petite frame–it’s just too much fabric and volume (and the design is stupid because it doesn’t even cover the entire length of the arms, which kind of defeats the purpose of wearing a coat)! I don’t care if that’s what’s in style now; this is one trend I am NOT jumping aboard on (then again, I’m not a trend follower). I despise swing coats and other coats with lack of real structure, which seem to be abundant in stores now as well. Trenches are also horrible because they make me look like I’m drowning.
I suppose if I found something I really, really favored, I could get it tailored, but tailoring is only for small problems, and many of the coats I’ve encountered have so many issues, it’s not even worth spending the extra time and money to take to the tailor.
The search continues…
I’ve been doing all right in the past winters without a coat or jacket, but that’s because in San Jose, it doesn’t really get all that cold in winter. In San Francisco, it’s a lot less sunny and warm, and the relentless wind doesn’t help. *sighs* I guess I will just have to freeze this winter.
-Ms. Mouse
