In My Closet--February 14, 2013

Dress: Lilly Pulitzer (older)
Tights: Spanx
Shoes: MIA (from DSW)(older)

First of all, please excuse the pile of hanging clothes stacked behind me. That is every shirt I own that's not a t-shirt. It was all part of the Great Closet Reorganization of 2013. Fear not...I fit everything back in there. Now, that's not to say it's not packed so tight that you pull out the two items on either side of what you're aiming to pull. But for now, it's gonna have to do. That said, I had this "Trying to Go to Sleep" epiphany last night about something that MIGHT work to alleviate part of the problem. It would involve a trip to Goodwill/Red, White and Blue, some Pinterest-y craftiness and a complete Soviet-era Re-Education as to what's allowed to be folded and what simply MUST be on hangers. I'm actually kind of excited about it to tell you the truth.

Anyway, yesterday, I mentioned that I had lost something. Other than my mind and my patience. Back in the late spring, there were still a few things in my closet that were winter-y. I guess they would be termed "transitional pieces". All the rest of my winter stuff--and I mean the REAL winter stuff like cords and wools--had long since been packed into Rubbermaid tubs with cedar blocks and stored away. But these things, I had left on the off-chance that the sometimes persnickety New Jersey weather took a turn. Only last spring, it never really did and so when it became clear that summer was really gonna happen, I took the clothes and put them, to the best of my memory, in a Kate Spade shopping bag, which I stuck in the corner of my room. The idea was that at some point, I would go into the attic for something else and at that point I could take the bag up and put it in the Rubbermaids with the rest of my stuff. Only...I don't remember doing that. And now I can't find the bag. I can't even remember what all is IN the bag, although I know off the top of my head three pieces of clothing that I cannot find anywhere. I know they aren't things I would have loaned to friends. I know they aren't things I would have sent to a better home. I wouldn't have even sent them away on accident, at least not in the Kate Spade bag, because that thing was HUGE and pretty sturdy, so I would have swapped it into a different bag. This is driving me BONKERS. I have looked everywhere in the house I can even begin to imagine I would have put it. Admittedly, the cold has made me reluctant to do more than a cursory search of the attic or the under-the-deck storage room, and if it's gotten lost or misplaced or picked up and thrown out because someone thought it was in the discard pile? Well, that's my fault and I can live with it. But LORD it is making me NUTS. Okay...it's making me nuttier.

So, when I post the pictures of myself, they are a day behind. What I mean is that I take a picture every day, but I don't USE that picture until the next day. What I'm really hoping is that I can post on Monday through Friday, but I'm ALSO hoping that I can grab a picture or two on the weekends (like this weekend? I'm going to NYC for brunch with one of my best friends so I'm going to need to look awesome.). That way, if I have a day where I'm cleaning closets and never leaving the house, I don't have to get dressed beyond yoga pants. Well...yoga pants and a shirt.

Here's what I like about what I'm wearing in the picture. Obviously, I like the Spanx tights. If you've never had a pair, they are a revelation. They're not as tight as actual Spanx, but the are definitely tighter than these amazing pantyhose my friend, Carrie, discovered in college that were super sheer in the leg but tighter than any control top known to man in the top and were known forever in the sorority house lore as "Suck 'Em In Pantyhose". They take away any number of bumps and lumps. The dress is an oddity in that of all the Lilly Pulitzer I own, it's one of exactly two Lilly pieces I own that's not ferociously summer season. The other is a cord skirt that's so old that it's got the 1990s tag with the Lilly logo in black. We have Lilly Pulitzer Signature store right in Palmer Square in Princeton. It's called Palm Place and it's absolutely lovely, as are the couple who own it. They have an incredible sale in August and pretty good ones at other times of the year. I got this dress--you can't see in the picture, but the pink part is pink high heels--right before Christmas before last when I was checking the sale rack to see if there was a dress for my niece's gift and ended up wearing it to my family Christmas party. It was actually in the pile of stuff to go in the Lost Kate Spade Shopping Bag when I decided to pull it out to wear over the summer and I ended up wearing it a couple of times, with a pair of sandals on days when the temperature dipped down into the 70s. But the real find is those shoes. I got them at DSW over a year ago to wear with one specific outfit and I have ended up wearing them over and over and over with EVERYTHING. It took me a while to get the hang of the wedge-heeled booties but once I figured out that it was okay to wear them with something other than jeans, they've become my shoe of choice. I got another pair of MIA wedge booties this fall in brown and I've worn the hell outta them, too.

In other news...I tried a different approach to the whole picture thing today for the picture you will see tomorrow. Part of that was out of necessity--everything I did today took longer than it should have in a sane world so by the time I stopped long enough to do it, it was so dark that I got NOTHING from my window (the easiest way to explain this is that my window looks, not outside, but into a small sunroom that's an addition to the house.) and partly because I wanted to see if this might be a better approach. And yes, this was one of the more exciting parts of my Valentine's Day. But for those of you who had awesome Valentine-y stuff going on--I hope it was great. And if you're STILL having awesome stuff going on--I hope it's STILL great. Happy Valentine's (or Single Person Awareness) Day!

Dressed to Kill--I'm lame. And neglectful--August 9 & 10

I lasted a whole three posts before I didn't post. Most of that is due to our somewhat delayed move to the beach. We generally spend the whole of August here. However, this year there were kids visiting colleges and kids on trips and kids at summer programs and kids getting ready to go to college. It was crazy. So although portions of us had been spending at least the weekends here since early July, it wasn't until last Wednesday that we made the trip down for good.

The B's beach house is awesome. Like most of the houses in Bayhead and Mantoloking it was built in the early 20th century. It's just lovely, right across from the beach, beautifully decorated. It's also located in the middle of one of the preppiest places I've ever been. No, really. This is a kind of intense and virulent preppiness that even make ME notice. We generally eat dinner at the Yacht Club at least one night per weekend and it's like if you fail to wear Lilly or Vinyard Vines, you have somehow violated some secret code of conduct. There's lots of Sperrys and Jack Rogers. Pearls. Seersucker. Nantucket reds. Bowties. It's awesome. Of course, on a day to day basis, there's a lot of that stuff, too. Albeit, slightly more casual. I didn't take a picture yesterday, but we went to the Yacht Club's trivia night and I wore...Lilly. One of my favorites, too. In any event, the move down, the horrible weather we've had the last few days, getting settled and such have made me fall behind. So here's a two-fer from last week. I also have today, which I will get to shortly.



I'm 5'3" tall. Which was the major, if not only, consideration when I bought these shoes. Short girls everywhere have to be joining me in rejoicing in the return to fashion prominence in the last few years of the wedge. Wedges are a short girl's friend. The make your legs look longer. They make YOU look longer. They help in the purchase of pants because it's actually occasionally possible to buy pants and not need to hem them at all (much less the 6 to 9 inches which usually end up lopped off my pants). I bought these, which are BCBG, specifically for the bridesmaid's luncheon when my best friend got married about three years ago. I wore a maxidress which dragged behind me without big shoes. So these were a godsend. I love this skirt from the Gap, not in the least because it's actually all-season. I grabbed it off the clearance rack mainly because I noticed the color, which is a much more plummy purple than shows up in the picture. I love this blouse, too. It was a Christmas gift a couple of years ago and it has a tie belt that I removed. It's piped (hard to see in the pic) with a vivid turquoise, which has become one of my favorite colors of late. I have a pair of earrings--I'm actually wearing them with this--that I got at Anthropologie that inspired the fascination.



What I like about this outfit is...everything. Not so much that I think it's the best looking thing I've ever worn. 'Cause it's not. I don't even think it's particularly flattering, but the individual pieces have really great associations for me. The dress itself is from Gap. It's one of those colors that I just adore. I have a similar Gap dress is navy--it has pleats instead of the fabric balls at the top--and while I like it and it actually fits me better, I am enamored of this dress because of the color. I love coral. And this is a particularly deep coral, almost closer to a tangerine, but darker than that...I don't know what it is, really, but I love it. I also love the sandals (also from Gap) and I'm pretty sure that one day, in the not too distant future, my gold flower sandals will break. And I will involve myself in some sort of nervous breakdown over it. The best piece in all of this is the scarf in my hair. It belonged to my very fashionable, very awesome grandmother.

So brace yourselves, y'all. I'm guessing it's gonna be seersucker city for a while. At least the next couple of weeks.

Dressed to Kill--My Great Love Affair: August 8, 2011

I honestly think that for the rest of my life, I could happily shop for all my clothes at only two stores: Anthropologie and Target. If not for one little thing...

Lilly Pulitzer.

I love it. I love it so, so much. I love it in a "troll eBay for vintage Lilly" kind of way. I love it in a "participate in a celebratory dance when they open the new Palm Place in Palmer Square" kind of way. I can walk into a thrift or consignment store and immediately walk straight to every piece of Lilly in the joint. I have pants and shorts and dresses and skirts and shorts and shoes and luggage. And also animal crackers. And stationery. Just...a lot.

Anyway, Lilly Pulitzer the person was a pretty awesome lady. Total East Coast Old Money. Her mother was an heir to the Standard Oil fortune. Lillian went to school with Jacqueline Bouvier. She married into the Pulitzer family (THAT Pulitzer family) and moved to Palm Beach where she used the fruit from her husband's several citrus groves to open a roadside juice stand (she was into non-rich people stuff like this, having dropped out of finishing school to be a midwife's assistant in West Virginia). Her juice stand was a success, but she found that her usual attire--tennis whites or linen shift dresses--took the brunt of her work. Every single drop of juice spilled which she squeezed oranges and lemons and limes made very visible stains. And so, she made herself some brightly-colored, wildly-patterned shift dresses that were easily washable and hid the stains while she worked! Her juice customers became dress customers and the brand was born.

I told that story, because today...was a Lilly kind of day in my world.



This particular dress is an oddity in my collection...it's the only Lilly wrap-dress I own. It's the only wrap-dress I own AT ALL, actually. They never fit me right, tending to gap at the top. I have to use a tiny safety pin at the top of this one to rectify my, shall we say, lack of endowment. I like the print on this one, too. It's pink and green-ish. Pink and green? Hands down my two favorite colors. But sometimes Lilly is ULTIMO PRIMO PINK AND GREEN. And that's okay. But sometimes something a little softer works, too. Plus, when you're bored and wearing it, you can spend your time trying to find where the word "Lilly" is worked into the pattern--all Lilly prints have it. I have Lilly in all kinds of colors--one of my newest, which I got in a matching toddler dress for my niece, is navy and red and white and yellow. And really, with any Lilly dress, the obvious answer is to wear Jack Rogers. I went off the reservation on this one. For one thing, the last time I wore a pair for the entire day, I ended up with these huge blisters on the BOTTOMS of my feet. Instead, I'm breaking in my new Rainbows! Yay! I finally found a pair in size ladies' small. And I only had to go to the bookstore at Wake Forest University to do it!!