Truth be told, I hate the rain. Now, don’t get me wrong – I know we need it. Without rain, life as we know it would pretty much not exist. But, I still can’t help but sigh when I wake up and see grey and gloom outside my window. Rain is not a friend to a suede shoe or an appliqué prone to color bleed. So, in the middle of a two week bought of nothing but grey skies and soggy sidewalks, I decided to turn the weather into inspiration.
Despite the fact that it’s 90 degrees outside, the minute the fall semester starts, my brain immediately clicks into autumn mode, and my wardrobe quickly follows suit. I think it’s been this way since childhood – whether the crisp temperatures have caught up or not, there is just a feeling that comes with a new school year. Without fail, late August always brought with it shiny new trapper keepers and as-yet-unused pens. Fresh fears and new possibilities. You can practically clock the smell of the academic anxiety as clearly as a you can identify the smell of new box of…
This past week was a pretty big one in the Dressed household – Mr. D and I celebrated our 10-year wedding anniversary. This level of togetherness usually involves a fair degree of extra (especially because the Mister and I are no strangers to going ALL out). However, circumstances being what they are, we had to scale the celebrations down several (thousand) notches. But, perhaps that’s the measure of true love – when you’re just as happy with a quiet night in as you are with fireworks and fanfare.
When I was a teenager, one of my favorite movies to watch with friends was Rocky Horror Picture Show – it was silly and weird and just on the right side of scandalous. Huge fans of musical theatre, my best friends and I knew all the words by heart and would unabashedly belt them out while zipping to the mall to wander around and buy literally nothing. Our favorite song was the Time Warp (no originality there. But we were 15…).
You know the old cliche, the Grass is Always Greener? Well, never is this more true than when peeping at another vintage lover’s wardrobe. No matter how much you love your closet, your eye can’t help but wander to the next wardrobe over and start gawping at the covetable, lush contents within…
There are a lot of funny ideas you get in your head as a kid – things you absorb that you don’t realize you’ve carried into adulthood. We all have them – we follow a certain family code, abide by rules of our social group, and accept certain ideas as fact (until we become old enough to question them). We also randomly assign certain aspirational characters that make perfect sense to an 11-year-old brain, but certainly bears re-examination years later…
There are some sewing projects I feel I can do on auto-pilot – I barely have to think about drafting a circle skirt or creating a complex vignette out of felt pieces. But, while I love my comfort zone, I’m always itching to try new techniques. Even if they fail spectacularly, the scientist in me has a relentless need to find something new to learn.
When I was a kid, I remember getting to watch the Wizard of Oz each year – I can’t remember which aunt’s house marked the annual occasion, but I can still feel the carpet on my elbows as I propped myself up, the excited butterflies that would come a-flutterin’ when the MGM lion would roar at the start of the film, and the brave face I would (un)successfully put on any time the witch would appear (all I can say is, she had some serious unresolved anger management issues).
Ever hear the phrase, “If you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain”? Never has this been more true than the strange world we currently find ourselves in. Between important protests worldwide, quarantine, murder hornets, and sandstorms, the world feels like it’s experiencing some important long-overdue changes, coupled with apocalyptic catastrophe. I feel we are somehow both barreling forward and standing completely still. I guess this is the very definition of the rain before the rainbow….
As much as I’m a gal who likes to take risks now and then, there are always certain old favorites I come back to. It’s no surprise why, no matter how far I stray, you’ll see me inching back to circle skirts, nipped waists, border prints. I mean, tried and true exists for a reason, and there are a lot of cases where one just shouldn’t mess with perfection. And nothing says perfection like the perfect appliqué skirt…