Your Back to School Backpack

Me in freshman year of college (in 2010), Me just out of college (in 2014), in the same room. The more things change, the more things stay the same.

College is an experience..... a good one at times, a bad one... ultimately I'm so thankful I went, especially to a public school institution, and that I studied what I wanted and not what my parents wanted me to study. I had a really rocky freshman year and a very strange senior year.....and as my friends still settle into their post-grad lives and some of them, back into academia, I find myself contemplating if I miss it or if I plan to go back. I don't think so, to either of those things. I wanted to graduate two years early! But I'm glad I had enough time and resources to learn what I did learn, and I'm excited for all of you who are still in school or just jumping in. School was so fun, and you should be excited about it, too. So with that in mind, I've put together a little back to school guide of my favorite materials, articles, and videos as well as a back to school supplies list so you're both practical and super babely in your educational endeavors. There are zines, self-help books, calming videos, and my favorite #takewhatisyours supplies after the jump. 

wardrobe destiny part two: hunting down your dreams

My last post on budgeting seemed to help a lot of you and I've gotten a bunch of follow up questions -- here is one I thought would good to answer as a follow up to that post. Thank you as always for commenting and reading, nothing makes me happier than talking about clothes and consumerism in a way that helps people be more informed (and ultimately more empowered) individuals. Anyway -- how to hunt for out of season clothes.

Oldschool Tao CDG shirt, a miracle find at a thrift store cross country via a friend, for $10. Original post.

Online, your best bet for a huge range of past season designer, bridge, and even contemporary lines (there is a difference -- Mary Kate Steinmiller of TV breaks this down a little bit in her TV interview, it will give you insight as to what Market Editors actually do), is Yoox. Yoox has literally thousands of designers and sources from all around the world. I wouldn't say they give the best prices on CDG you can find anywhere, but they do have pieces that are hard to find, consistently, and the sheer amount of designers they stock, you are bound to find a good deal on past season designer. My aunt got a Y-3 capelet for $99 and that's pretty fantastic. I wouldn't buy any CDG from there though, because mostly the prices they have on everything mainline at the moment is the original retail price, and I've gotten the same exact pieces for less than 1/3rd the price at sample sales or archival sales etc. Still, if you don't have access to these events, this is often your best bet for a continual stream of off season labels.

Some other places you can look that aren't ebay......Farfetch, which also sources from international places, and their sales are pretty good. It's only the sales that are not current season though.

Consistent eBay searching will lead to niche re-sellers of specific brands, and you should save those for frequent visits. Maybe even contact them and let them know you're on the lookout for a specific item, and they might have the means to find that for you and sell it to you. This isn't uncommon and it's actually how a lot of re-sellers get their rent paid. Re-sellers are often just as fanatic as you are about brands, so make friends with them! I try to maintain relationships with consignment stores and retailers in general because they'll sometimes set things aside for me because they KNOW I will buy it when they call me up. Shoutout to dot.COMME for putting me on their newsletter as soon as they launched -- they know their market.

FW2010 CDG jacket via eBay. Original post.

Offline? Look up consignment stores in your area and keep a folder. And then bother them constantly. Just last week I visited my favorite (Tokio 7) and came out with CDG, Prada, and Vivienne Westwood all for around the price of one of the items on sale anywhere else. The CDG skirt I got was $200 for FW2005 and that wasn't available at either archive sales CDG has had in the past, or online on ebay hunts. Sometimes the only way to get things is luck and foot traffic.

You can also of course, contact the brand directly via a sales associate and maybe they'll be happy to help. This would truthfully work better if you've already purchased from them before and have some kind of relationship with them. But regardless, if you let them know specifically that there is a piece you MUST HAVE in your life, they will maybe be able to help, either by checking their warehouse or by notifying you when the next archive sale is. Either way, you never know unless you ask. You've got to be proactive and resourceful, really. This is all encompassing advice.

Long post for simple advice: you have to be obsessed. Really. Obsessed and resourceful! Constant online searches and networking with people with similar obsessions will get you many places. If they trust you they'll share their secrets, too. Birds of a feather flock together, you know what I mean? I knew to go to Tokio 7 for lots of CDG last weekend because a little birdy told me there would be good finds. If you make your desires known people will keep you in mind if something pops up. Look out for sample sales, archive sales, get to know stores that stock your favorite brand, get to know their sales associates, get to know online resellers, get to know brick and mortar resellers, and then: pursue and pursue and pursue until you get what you want. It works.

how to budget for your wardrobe destiny: a verbose guide to black crow existence

Got an email the other day -- and quite a few similar -- that I'll address them all in this post for future reference. Here's the email:

From this post : A CDG mix of gifted clothing and clothing I bought. The TAO CDG shirt was a $10 thrift find from a friend, the CDG skirt was around $120 at the annual archive sale. Shoes were a gift from the brand and the jacket was on loan. I bought my glasses at a local vintage store. 

Let me give you some background on how I accumulate nice things, first, so you know where I'm coming from. I won't give you my like, tax records or specific details about my class status (y'all don't really need to be that much up in my business, I come from a working class background and I receive financial aid from school, that's the basics) but essentially I afford my luxury lingerie and CDG via a lot of bargain hunting and budgeting of my income from working 6 days a week. It might seem like I have an endless amount of CDG, this is just because I only like photographing and memorializing the items I'm wearing and love the most and those happen to be it. I'm presenting to you an editorialized version of my life and you shouldn't forget it. Anyway, I buy the majority of it myself, though there are a few pieces here and there that were gifts from friends or from the designers because I'm a lucky girl. Mostly it's all me working a little bit above minimum wage and budgeting seriously for months at a time. This is going to be a LONG post, so half of it is under the cut.

How do I budget?

This post operates on the premise you have some source of income, if you don't, I'm sorry, this post will probably be useless to you. Moving on from that point, to manage income & expenses, I use the app called Mint on my phone (available on both android and apple products) to track my finances and have multiple budgets laid out for my finances. 

• By being specific. I have my monthly budget laid out pretty specifically into four to five categories, but I tend to adjust it every two months according to my income and priorities at the time. 
• By holding myself accountable. If and when I go over budget, I pay myself back so I don't fall behind on my budgets or goals. If I over spend in a category, I make up for it in another that month and sacrifice one thing for another. This is super important: self-restraint and recognizing your discipline is the really the only thing that keeps you on track in the end. No one is (I hope)  making you buy things outside of survival necessities like rent, groceries, medications, transportation -- it's you making these choices, so you need to be very conscious about your limits. 
• By making it simple. I mark down my paydays and automatically have a certain amount of money go from one account into my savings every payday. This is super simple, lazy budgeting, you don't have to worry about it that way. It's just done for you. Putting aside $50 a month automatically into savings, taking into account interest, means you're automatically saving minimum $600 a year. That's awesome and basically effortless.
• By using every resource available. I use financial calculators on a regular basis. There are plenty of them online, I use the ones on Mint.com, but you don't need to. Here is one, I just plugged in an example amount. $900 can get you so much CDG on ebay via resellers, or multiple items at their annual sample sales, etc. 

Source: Time Value Financial Calculators

shopping moments

I'm not a huge holiday person (strange considering my love of sequins) and I guess I'm pretty hard to shop for. I'm putting together a wishlist of things I'm lemming for. Strangely, Bona Drag sells it all. I hadn't visited the store in awhile but they have so many good brands right now.

 Lovely Longline Bra, To Be Adored Black Sheer Etta Dress,  Lover Shelley Bodycon Dress (here in gray), Shakuhachi Lace Block Cutout Dress , Pamela Love Snake Ring

celia visits

I've been grossed out and grumpy towards the internet lately (bye tumblr) but I love my internet babies and when Celia said she was coming to town I naturally was first to hog up her social calendar so I could touch her hair fondly and bond over sugary alcoholic drinks with her. Tyler is also as babely in person and I just really enjoy hanging out with them both because it was just the most natural thing ever, like we don't live  in different countries but actually around the corner from each other. I seldom bring my camera with me places so these are from her and Tyler.

I find it very amusing that she and Tyler both tower over me (not hard to do, I'm 5ft 2) that even on this platform she's still taller than me. THIS IS WHY I HARDLY EVER WEAR FLATS. Also bummed that black on black on black outfits are so hard to photograph? This looked way better in person.

Me figuring out directions to the nearest thrift store. We went to Beacons and Odd Vintage and I bought some nice stuff. Some outfit details: 

Vintage dress, gift from my local vintage store, I did a post on them ages ago here.  Jacket is also a gift and repeat seen here  (Comme des Garcons), bag is c/o Rebecca Minkoff. Shoes were a gift from Elizabeth. Pin c/o Luna on the Moon. Very lucky and humbled about all of it. 

Inside Odd Twin vintage, place that caught my eye from across the street so we all went in and it was destiny. (we met up with Celia's friend Billy and Billy's friend). It's a really great vintage store with reasonable prices, gonna be a pitstop for me for sure. 

I'll do a haul video or something with all the stuff I've gotten recently to show you all 'cause I doubt I'll get around to doing individual outfit posts. To note: Alice + Olivia grey jacket that defies description, Zac Posen skirt, weird knit sweatervest, transparent plastic blazer. Amaze. 

See ya.

pretty clothes pretty clothes this is an interesting title isn't it

Yesterday (or was it the day before? Time flies so fast I honestly haven't sat down for more than an hour this entire weekend) I went with Kat to the Manhattan Vintage Trunk Show. We originally had planned to also go to the FIT exhibit on Japan Fashion, but we spent so much time humping the pretty fabrics at the show there was no time to go to the exhibit before the museum closed. Ah well!

The Trunk Show was absolutely amazing -- I've never seen so much beautiful and well kept vintage all in one place. I'm taking a costume design and fashion history class so I spent a lot of time poring over the vintage pattern books and Vionnet and massive collections of old Chanel that were all around for research on a project I'm working on. Unfortch I couldn't take many pictures (it's bad etiquette at the show) but here are some that I did take.





There was literally more Chanel at this fair than I've ever seen at the Chanel in Uptown Manhattan. Walls of Chanel. Booths of all Chanel. Chanel Chanel Chanel. Chanel is, as you all know, not my thing -- I was making keening noises at the vintage Comme on display -- but it was pretty amazing to see so much Chanel from different decades all lined up next to each other.





Totally obsessed with the twenties, it's probably my favorite decade in fashion. Vionnet was just coming in, meaning everything was still not yet cut on the bias of fabric and hung on the body rather than form fit for it. Lots of creativity and innovations to make dresses different from each other.



It was a very long day full of camwhoring, so I've decided to break up the actual photosession I had with Kat from our visit at the show. More soon! We got pretty things that deserve their own posts, after all.

Note: you can click the last picture to be directed to the flickr lightbox, where you can see all the photos in better quality and larger dimensions. 

i went to hello again a few days ago

If you've been following my blog since the beginning (for which I applaud you, I go into my archives sometimes and want to punch myself in the face) you'll know I basically only shop at goodwill and my local vintage stores when I can. I haven't visited Hello Again in a long time because it's pretty out of the way for me and also happens to be awkwardly close to some people who I'm not close to anymore, but I went because I missed it. And they changed the layout and it's lovely!





Local designers often sell their work at the vintage stores here; Hello Again has tons of Jersey artists. Those necklaces are pretty rad, I want the green/white/pink one.












You can always get cheap vintage shoes here. Actually everything here for the most part is REALLY cheap. I'm talking $8 vintage, not $55 like in most vintage stores.



They have a small selection of menswear (they are a MINISCULE sized store, about the size of my room) but it's all good. I found this amazing Peter Jenson like ensemble in the mens section but it was too small for me. Sob.


For such a small store they always pack it to the top with good stuff. Abigail used to always leave with a ton of accessories.



I left with the pink hat in this picture and a slinky black dress (once again, the influence Kristin has on me is pretty scary) that I've been wearing under 23423424 layers of black and long long layers and peplums and chains.

H.A is owned by the sweetest people ever, I mean it. I haven't been there in ages, I went in there with a completely different look than the one I had last time I visited -- months ago -- but they still remembered me and were the sweetest people ever. If you go in there with even just a $20 to shop you can leave with a bunch of stuff and some new friends. I adore them.

On a different tangent... every so often I get emails asking where to shop in Jersey and NYC and I don't go shopping that often, but I did a post on it awhile ago. Hopefully it helps!

MY BAD, GUISE

Woops, I guess I went on an unofficial hiatus there huh? Life is busy busy busy busy busy. I hope you'll forgive me for not coming back with an outfit post.... pretty much all I can offer you is this. Please forgive me darlings, there hasn't been a day that's gone by that I haven't missed you all terribly. [okay, one day all i wanted to do was watch Hana Yori Dango and honestly it is a lot more emotional than blogging, I'm not gonna front] To beg for your forgiveness, I give you many things.

Dresses we all need to band together and mob the stores for. You'll notice how a lot of these dresses are ALWAYS in my polyvores. This is because I'm really fucking obsessive over things I want and will obsess over them until I get them, then I will wear them to death (see: hooker shoes, prada lace skirt thrifted, my only comme skirt).

I am very close to talking to the chinese knockoff store on the phone about the tsumori chisato knockoff skirts (the second and third) because I really need them in my life but like, you know, since they're coming from KNOCKOFF ASIAN SWEATSHOP POSSIBLE SCAMMERS you know I'm kinda hesitant.

Maybe if I speak to them in shitty Chinese they'll be all like, "Oh, it's my brethren, I totally wont scam you, and also here are 5 more things you might like to get for 2 american dollars because I love you so much." and not rip me off 60 dollars. Maybe I can discuss asian dramas with them to gain their trust. Good idea, y/y/y/y/y?

This polyvore is dedicated to Jane and her future husband, fishsticks.

so like, your draik WN RC 4 my robot kau oh wait WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN

So Tavz got me all addicted to neopets again and I've neglected the blog, amongst other things. Oh, and did I mention I was 1,500 emails BEHIND? REALLY DUDES? Am I THAT interesting to talk to?! I am not Ghandi or the pig in Diane Duane's wizard trilogy that is everywhere/anytime/knows the meaning of life. Anyway, I'll get to your emails like... eventually. You'd be better of sending smoke signals or throwing a rock at my window (though I would probably come downstairs to throw a cane at you for doing so).





^ my response to ~artsy fotos~. Yeah my photos are hella edgy, did you not know rotating 270* is the new selective coloring?!



Abigail sometimes says, "Good shit just gravitates to you like you have your own personal orbit and also you are a flaming ball of bitchface," and so the former part being right, I got some stuff from Goodwill / my dads friend the past few days.



She gave me 1 lace batwing dress top (^) and this epic silk and lace flapper dress, amongst this gorgeous hat that merits an entire post of its own.

Not including that, last goodwill trip for Isabel I snagged this batwing sweater from the fat kids section. (Seriously, thats what it's called!). I am too selfish to give it away, and so I prance about in it in my Comme skirt and Helmut Lang boots. Here I'm wearing it with some Cheap Mondays from the News Showroom.

I would also discuss with you the fashion weeks... but they kind of fail miserably and hugely. they are a huge sack of disappointment and lame so far. Sadface.

post soon! I have a great surprise for ya'll after.

insert something amusing yet very offensive here

Yeah I dropped off the face of the blogging world for awhile, huh. I especially apologize to the lovely people who've emailed me, sorry for not answering; I needed a break from the internetz. I indulged in having a social life rather than internet friends, and it felt goooooodddd.

Me feeling good = pedo glasses.

I spent most of Black Friday buying things on free gift cards and dorking it out at the ITG machine with my boy fairies and intimidating young children. You know, the usual for someone of my high class and pedigree. Hyuk hyuk hyuk.

Yard sale cardigan ($3), Vintage Vest, Hanes T-Shirt ($3), Cheap Mondays ($10), Black Leather Lace Up Combat Boots (Marshalls Shoe Superstore)

I went to Goodwill with my parents today; we've gone to the same one since I was a baby. It's a religion, practically. Here are my buys.

Insane silk blazer. It's so pimp fabulous, y/y/y? It looks kinda asian on Ingrid (one of my dress forms) but of course you'd wear it with the sleeves scrunched up anyway. I want to wear it with my black jodhpurs and odd printed heels.

I am very excited to make people have seizures when I clash the crap out of this blazer. Or wear black lame leggings I wish I had with it and be all cool about it. Mostly the seizures.


And got these shoes this week too.

Nine West from Marshalls Shoe Megastore, Deadstock from Goodwill, Marshalls Shoe Megastore.

If you haven't gone to check out your local Marshalls for shoes you're definitely missing out; I have absolutely. terrible. luck with vintage shoes so I fulfill my craving at Marshalls. I can't stomach buying anything at full price so getting epic new shoes for an epic price difference is pretty sweet. I'll write more about them laterz.

The lady I dogsit for pays me in clothes now. I don't mind, because the clothes are awesome. Last time they were the Zara jodhpurs I wanted, and another time it was a beaten up vintage t-shirt, and now it's a lace paneled structured denim jacket. The bags she gave them in: Prada, Givenchy, and Hermes.

I love my neighbors.