I’m not sure about you guys, but I’ve never been much of a hat person. And yet, I find myself wearing a lot of different hats lately. And not just the hats on this most amazing vintage dress from Trunk of Dresses. I have my Exhausted Professor hat. My Disillusioned with the World hat. And I’m sad to say, my Eternal Optimist hat has been languishing on a shelf, not worn for months.
In a discussion awhile back with my fellow vintage maven Mimosa, we came to realize that we immediately associate certain prints or design details with certain people in our community. Almost as if they don’t have a name. Cat prints = Blue Wren Vintage. Floral = Jamie. Cactus prints = Rose. And (no shocker here), I am synonymous with trompe l’oeil. I’m not sure I even need to justify that one, as my heart literally faints when I see prints that trick the eye into thinking they’re actually leaping off the fabric…
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…
The USDA recommends eating between five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables per day as part of a balanced, healthy diet. I don’t know about you guys, but my isolation dietary habits has been pretty shocking of late. I’ve always been someone who tries to eat healthy (I actually crave salad more than sweets. I know, I’m weird). But, all bets are off nowadays, as the only thing on my mind to crave right now is comfort: pasta, cheese, warm glorious homemade bread, and wine (ohhhh the wine). So, while I’m sure the USDA (and my waistline) are looking at…
I think it’s always important to be proud of the things you do well – either from an inherent skill or years of practice, there is no harm in patting yourself on the back. It’s just as important to acknowledge the things you do not excel at. Come on, we all have them. The things that, no matter how hard we try or how many books we read or YouTube videos we memorize, it’s just never gonna happen.
A huge part of the last few months of our lives has been in redefinition. Redefining Normal. Redefining a successful day at work. Redefining a Friday Night. And, most recently: redefining a reason for having a dance party. Reason being: I simply needed it. And I have Trunk of Dresses and this spectacular hand painted vintage skirt to thank for a moment of pure, indescribable joy as I twirled and jived and forgot the world for a moment or two in my garden…
There are a LOT of different coping mechanisms we all use to get through a crisis. For me, my go-to place for breathing out my problems has been the seaside. Lucky for me, I’ve always lived by the coast (occupational hazard), which has made it very convenient when I need to throw my problems out to sea.
We have all experienced personal tragedy in our lives. Moments that throw our world upside down and off track, where we are just scrambling to find a foothold. And the weirdest thing that happens, is lifting my head from the weight of personal sorrow to find the world kept turning. I’m surprised every time. To see it didn’t pause for my grief, or wait for me to get back in my feet. It continued to spin as if this huge, tragic thing never happened.