A Domino Effect

Some weeks my highlights posts are harder to put together than others.  In fact, sometimes I completely forget what I actually did with my week let alone what was good about it. Then there are weeks like this one, when the highlights come flying in from all directions and I have a hard time choosing what merits a place on the list and what doesn’t (I realise I could just list everything, but really, too much talking about oneself is rarely a good thing):

• Films films glorious films.  I’m taking full advantage of my new-found cinematic freedom at the moment by gobbling up as many sittings as I can find the time for.  I saw Harry Potter Part 7 Mark II for the second time on Tuesday (a perfect slice of escapism for a drizzly August afternoon) and Horrible Bosses on Wednesday (watchable, but highly likely to induce spontaneous and prolonged bouts of cringeing.  Do not see this film on a first date).
• I also watched Fair Game this week, which made me really rather depressed about the state of the world.  Good film though, so a highlight nonetheless.
• Devouring Tina Fey’s book Bossypants in two days.  Read my review of it here.
• Cooking up several storms over the course of the week.  On Monday I made chicken adobo, the recipe for which I found on the fabulous Budget Bytes; on Tuesday I made carrot and coriander soup (using my home-grown coriander shoots – oh the self-sufficiency!) and on Wednesday I made chicken and mushroom risotto.  Delicious, and leftovers a-plenty.  Win.
• Finding THE jeans I’ve been waiting for my entire life in a charity shop on Friday.  Dark indigo denim, low rise and straight legged as opposed to skinny (my round-hipped, full-assed figure needs that extra width on the ankle to stop me looking like an upsidedown pyramid teetering on its point). Originally from Gap, but snapped up for a princely £6.  Huzzah!
• A late-evening walk along the Union Canal on Wednesday.  A quiet drink at the other end and a slow stroll back.
• Visiting the recently re-opened National Museum of Scotland on Friday.  Or to be more specific, visiting two rooms plus the coffee shop of the recently re-opened National Museum of Scotland (the place is HUGE).  All marvelous.
• Caravanning the weekend away with my boyfriend’s sister and her friends.  Eating lots of cheese (totally fell off the skin improvement wagon – will haul myself back on it this week), drinking lots of red wine and completing the infamous Elie chain walk in one piece despite being chronically underprepared in the footwear department.

So to this week!  I’m currently sans plans, but thinking I might try and sniff out some cheap/free Fringe tickets and see some comedy.  I’m also going to scour the charity shops for work attire, given that my new job starts exactly four weeks today (eep!).  What are you up to?

Image above from here.

I’ve committed many a crime against style in my time, and I make no bones about it.  I’ve told you all before about the time I wore one of my Barbie’s tutu skirts as a hairpiece, haven’t I?  And I used to have quite the thing for those circa late 90s sports trousers that had the popping buttons up the legs (I used to wear mine with the bottom three buttons left ‘unpopped’, as though that somehow marked me out from the rest of the popping trouser crowd).  Seriously, I could make you cringe with the tales from my bygone years style scrapbook.

Having said that, the one thing I’ve never EVER done is attempt to pass a pair of leggings off as a pair of trousers.

Heck no.

I’ve seen many girls in Edinburgh buying their way into this odd form of sartorial behaviour, but I’ve never yet seen someone make it look even mildly OK.  Firstly, it makes the wearer look as though they forgot to put the rest of their outfit on.  Secondly, it has a habit (although I suspect this might be the intention) of drawing the attention of whoever’s walking behind you straight to your ass, whether they want to look at it or not.  Thirdly – and this is why I don’t understand why so many people do it – it’s about the most unflattering thing you could ever possibly hope to do to your figure.  Leggings are effectively magnifying glasses for bumps, lumps and other undesirable conditions of the ass, no?  Even for girls with bums like Beyonce (who are still affected by reasons 1 and 2 above), would you seriously want to run into your boss/grandparents/boyfriend’s mother while wearing what is effectively an UNDERGARMENT – and an UNDERGARMENT that often turns out to be see-through at that – out in public?

Yes, I know I sound embarrassingly prudish, but it seems I’m not alone in my loathing of/confusion over this leggings-as-trousers malarky.  The above diagram (originally from here, but I found it here) has had me laughing all day.  I’m almost tempted to print hundreds and spend an afternoon afixing them to lamposts and hammering them to trees.  I love it.

If I weren’t currently engaged in a no holds barred wardrobe sale, I’d likely be found in the charity shops, rifling through the rails for some vintage versions of these pleated delights.  Aren’t they gorgeous?  And don’t you want to eat them, just a little bit?

What’s on your wardrobe wish-list?

Set created at Polyvore.

One of the reasons I feel fairly certain that I’m not destined to have piles and piles of clothes in my wardrobe is that I’m a favourites girl.  Through and through.  If I find a dress that I love I will wear it time and time and time again, completely forgetting everything else hanging in my closet.  This Summer, there are five things in my wardrobe that I’m pulling out before anything else.  If you encounter me in the street over the next couple of months (it could happen!), the chances are I’ll be sporting at least one of these…

1.  The cheaper than cheap vintage

I found this skirt in a charity shop sale several weeks ago (that’s right, charity shop SALE.  Otherwise known as HEAVEN).  To tell the truth, I felt slightly bad buying it because it cost only £1.39.  I know that’s all the shop wanted for it, but still, £1.39?  For something as lovely as this?  I still feel like they made a mistake somewhere in transit, but I’ll leave it there (my perilous financial state of the moment means I can’t really afford to be too principled about these things).  So the skirt.  Yes.  Gorgeous.  And eminently wearable.  It’s far too big for me on the waist, but where there’s a safety pin there’s always a way.  It looks lovely worn high over almost any basic top or vest and I can’t WAIT to get it dressed up with some high heels and a smattering of red lippy.  It’s already earmarked for a celtic music festival I’m going to at the end of the month.  This’ll look great with Guiness slopped down its front, right?

2.  The canine cardi

A good cardi is like a good dog in my opinion.  Trustworthy.  Dependable.  Unfalteringly affectionate.  I have three favourite cardigans: oversized black mohair; long, cable-knit gold and this: light, cream, crochet-style.  This is a great cover-up for Summer, mainly because it’s a light colour and it’s covered in holes.  I bought it last year for £22 which, for someone who thinks twice about any piece of clothing that costs more than a fiver, is pretty steep!  Having worn it innumerable times already, however, it’s scoring pretty highly on the old price per wear front and as such has probably earned its place in the wardrobe of carefully calculated ratios…

3. The church-friendly maxi

3. OK, apologies for the photography here – it was never my intention to allow the doorknob to make a cheeky appearance in the bottom left hand corner.  Ahem.  Anyway, this skirt was an H&M find, bought for going to Italy a couple of months ago.  It was the most perfect thing to travel with – long, floaty, cooling, and oh so eager to cover up all those bolognese sauce stains.  It was also a winner for visiting churches and cathedrals where bared thighs (and bared cleavages, come to that) are a most definite no-go.  Unlike many of my skimpily-clad fellow tourists, I saved myself the embarrassment of being turned away at the door and sashayed on through in this.  And now I’m home, I’m still wearing it all over the place.

4. The promiscuous denim

So named because of its propensity to want to go with absolutely every Summer outfit I put together.  It literally has no shame.  I’ve had this jacket for three or four years now, having bought it from New Look when I worked there during my uni days.  This is about the only survivor of my 50% staff discount, of all the many truckloads of clothing I remorselessly acquired when I worked in retail.  The reason why it’s still standing when others fell is simple: it’s a classic.  Girls are probably buying jackets like this in Topshops across the land as I type – it’s a Summer wardrobe staple, and it goes with EVERYTHING.  I’m so glad I hung onto it.

5. The impulsive deck shoes

And finally, the shoes.  These boating style pumps were a tad of an impulse buy on my part (it still happens, occasionally!) but I’m actually quite glad I did buy them.  They’re from Next, and are lovely and summery, with lots of ‘wear with’ potential, which is the one thing I always look for in shoes (and which perhaps explains why 90% of my footwear collection is tan).  I’ve replaced the original lighter laces with these chocolate brown ones, just to make them a little less high street and a little more me…

So there you go my lovelies.  My Summer wardrobe staples.  Now, tell me yours!

Last week I read a book called In the Red by Alexis Hall.  It’s the diary of a self-confessed shopaholic who, having mounted up an impressive £30,000 of credit card debt, suddenly comes to the realisation that this might not be such a good idea (shock!), and that perhaps she should try to curb her ravenous appetite for shopping and, y’know, pay some of it off.  So Alexis quits shopping for a year, and attempts to channel every penny of her spare income into her creditors’ coffers rather than the tills of Harvey Nichols.  Easy.

What struck me most while reading this book (aside from the fact that a woman in debt to the tune of 30K thought that it was entirely reasonable to spend £40 on birthday presents for HER DOG) was Hall’s description of her spending addiction.  At one point she confessed to having bought so many things which she had then flung at the back of her wardrobe and forgotten all about that sometimes she would actually buy the same things twice without even noticing.

Now, I know what it’s like to have so many clothes that forgetting about the odd skirt or top isn’t that unusual, but to not even remember buying something is another concept entirely.  People laugh and joke about being “shopaholics” all the time (which, just while I’m at it, I don’t really rate as something to brag about), but when you’ve bought up the high street to the extent that you start buying it all over again, surely then it’s time to hand yourself over to a doctor, no?

But why am I talking about all this?  Well, Alexis and her mad spending habits came into my mind this morning while I was thinking about shoes, and how they fit into the capsule wardrobing jigsaw.

Which in turn got me thinking about shoe mania, and how completely bonkers it is.

Someone enlighten me: what is it about shoes?  More than clothes, more than bags, more than perfume, make-up, diamonds or pearls, shoes seem to possess a unique power to turn highly respectable, sane women into shrieking, salivating hyenas at the drop of a (I was going to say hat but I think stiletto is probably more appropriate).  Since Sex and the City exploded into our lives in all its “Who needs a man when you’ve got Manolo?” glory back in the day, the humble shoe has acquired an almost mythological status among much of the female population.  Blahnik and Choo are now household names, and I’d be willing to bet that there are women out there who would happily trade in the rest of what they own (or perhaps even their long-suffering partners) for a pair of $400 platforms to coo over at night.

It’s not that I’m unable to appreciate a nice-looking shoe when I see one, it’s more the fact that shoe-worshipping as a sport seems to me to be utterly, utterly pointless.  As far as I’m concerned, shoes (like clothes) are for wearing, not licking.  If they don’t fit, if you can’t walk and dance in them, and if the thought of them making contact with, like, an actual pavement makes you want to hurl, then to my humble mind they’re either not worth buying or were a complete waste of money.  End of.

And that’s not to mention what happens to our high heeled shoes when we DO wear them.  They get dirty.  The heels wear down.  The buckles lose their shine and the straps fray and sometimes they even snap.  And anyone who has ever been clubbing (not even in your local grunge emporium, just your average club) will agree with me when I say that our shoes have to negotiate sticky, drink-splattered floors, broken glass, other peoples’ heels and yeah, occasionally the odd pile of vomit as well.  Surely this speedy rate of stiletto depreciation ought to give us some clue as to how much it’s reasonable to spend on them?

Such are my musings on heels.  My opinion on other kinds of footwear, however, couldn’t be more different.  When it comes to the shoes I wear every day, I’ll quite happily spend the extra money for something that won’t pinch, leak or fall apart at the first signs of bad weather.  I’ve had too many bad shoe experiences courtesy of the house of cheap crap to even consider spending less than around £15 on footwear these days (unless the goods are in a sale, of course!).  As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to flats, and whether they’re Summer sandals, Winter booties or heavy duty hill walkers, it’s investment all the way.  Your feet have to last you your entire life – show them you care by not subjecting them to torture every time you step outside.  And with that sentiment firmly in mind, here are my top five tips on capsule-ising your shoe collection:

• Always keep a pair of (ultra) cheap shoes nearby for accidental ruining.  Paintballing, DIY and muddy camping trips will be much more fun as a result, and you won’t embarrass yourself coming over all “I can’t ruin my shoes” either.
• Have at least one pair of semi-formal shoes (no ridiculous heels, no provocative patent and no garish colours), and keep them in good condition.  Dressing for job interviews, funerals, and impromptu ‘look smart’ occasions will be much less stressful.
• Keep your shoes somewhere you can see them.  Mine sit on top of my wardrobe, so whenever I’m putting an outfit together I can select the right shoes without having to bury my way into Narnia.  Simple idea, massively helpful.
• Think about what’s in your wardrobe when you go shoe shopping.  If they won’t go with a single thing you own then please, for the love of God, don’t buy them.  Stick to your own style and buy something that’ll work with your clothes.  Remember that capsule wardrobing is about making dressing easy as well as fun.
• Finally (and it’s a biggie) LOOK AFTER YOUR SHOES!  It’s easy to do and it will bring you dividends.  Have them re-heeled when they need it, polish them with love and replace laces and buckles when they start to look tired.

What are your thoughts on shoes?  Do you have five pairs or five hundred?  I’d love to hear your thoughts!