living beautiful

In my note, I mentioned thinking about life/Fickle Kitsch, and this is the product of that. I will say now that it's a bit (very) self-indulgent and doesn't have any pictures, so if that's what you're most interested in, check back after Christmas and I should have something for you! But I'd love to hear some thoughts from those of you who might have the same feelings.

I've always loved reading fashion/lifestyle blogs; the outfits and decorations are great, of course, but the real attraction has always been one of a slightly voyeuristic nature. I love seeing other people's lives, what they do all day, where they go, the things they see. It's a desire that both feeds from and deepens my sense of envy; I've always wanted to live a "beautiful" life.

Trouble is, I've also always been a waiter. Not the kind with a menu pad (though I will admit that another secret desire I've harbored is to be a rollerskating drive-in waitress), but the kind who's willing to sit and wait for things to get "better." When I was in high school, I was waiting for college. College would be better. And hey, it was better! But by now, I'm waiting for college to end. Because after college comes apartments, jobs, new clothes. I'm convinced that will be better, and, hey, it probably will be. It's totally legitimate to be excited about things coming. But what my problem has always been is letting the things coming (maybe) eclipse what I could do now.

You (and by you, I mean me) can't just wait for something fabulous to fall into your lap. Maybe it will one day, and maybe not. You have to chase after the things that you want in your life and find the things you already have that are pretty damn fabulous. I've always had a fantasy of a beautiful life, great clothes and places that would need time and money that I don't have right now. I was reading one of my favorite retro style/life blogs, The Freelancer's Fashionblog, and in response to a question about whether she looks "vintage" all the time, she said that although her inspiration comes from older days, she doesn't aim to look "anything except than just good." That really stuck with me and made me smile when I read it. I don't have to have a great camera or the perfect dresses or figure out how to transform my life into a "beautiful" one. I don't have to aim for anything besides looking and feeling good.

If you (actually you this time) read all that (and good on ya!), you're probably wondering why I said this related to Fickle Kitsch. Well, I feel that, because of a perceived lack of awesomeness in my real life, I've kept the blog at arm's length. I've shared my opinions, but not much of my self. Everything somehow got slotted into "themes" or "series" without much space for organic writing/discovering/thinking. Don't worry, this isn't going to become a "what I ate for lunch" today type of blog. But I would like to share more of myself, be that through pictures of outfits I've seen and enjoyed in real life (I'll try to borrow Sparrow's camera if I do that), or just a bit more embracing of what I personally can contribute to you. Who knows, maybe somebody out there would be gleefully envious of my beautiful life.

Okay, I lied, if you made it this far, you deserve a picture:


Via Caps-and-Pics

I want to be that girl. Gorgeous dress, fierce shoes, staring down at the whole wide world.

stop the madness: why we wear

I have not posted in a very long time! There is a perfectly logical and trifold explanation for this, which is this: School (agh), Nanowrimo (AGH), and my struggle with how "serious" I want to get in this blog. If you haven't noticed, I've tried to keep Fickle Kitsch a pretty fun and frothy part of this grand old internet, but sometimes there are relevant things that aren't quite so fun. And I think that they're more important than keeping a "tone" to the blog. I read an article last week that really struck me as a woman, a feminist, and a fashion blogger. I don't want to link to it, because articles like these don't deserve hits/attention and because it was the same kind of nasty sexist drivel that I (and most of you, probably) have seen a million times before.

So I just want to say: You are not obligated to be attractive. Not in any way, shape, or form, not on alternating Tuesdays, not when another human might glimpse you, not ever. I like pretty clothes, and looking nice, and I write about those things because I like them. For whatever reason (and I don't pretend to be unaffected by social pressures), I like to get dressed up. I like to shop, I like wearing makeup, I like doing my hair. But if I didn't like any of those things, I wouldn't do them. And on days that I just don't feel like it...I don't.

I know this sounds ridiculously simplistic and like a serious "no, duh" moment, but I really feel that it's important to say. There are so many cultural stigmas and pressures that basically add up to "Here is the ideal. You'll never be able to achieve it, but you have to spend your entire life trying to and feeling like a failure when you physically can't." And that's awful. The worst part is that a lot of people who don't mean to, fashion-related people in particular, just feed into it without knowing. It feels kind of silly to continually hedge a post with "for me!" or "when you feel like it!", so I'm going to say it now: do what makes you happy.

Sometimes I hesitate to call myself a fashion blogger, because while pretty clothes definitely are a huge part of my blog, I don't really care about runways or trends (which is another post entirely) or any of the things that people think of as Fashion. What I care about is style, because everyone has their own. I can share mine with you, and share ideas I might have about developing your own, but your style is singularly you. Magazines tell you what looks good and what doesn't, what's in and what's not, but that's all based on advertising, a bottom line, and the need to convince you to keep buying. If you see something in a magazine that you like, that's awesome, but not everything in magazines is awesome, and not everything is awesome for you--your style, your needs, your budget, whatever. That's the part that really matters.

Finally, I want to touch on that lovely (ugh) old piece of advice, "Dress like you're going to meet your husband today!" Actually, I want to dig the heel of my combat boots into it. I do understand the point behind it, but the idea that all girls just want husbands is incredibly irritating on many levels, as well as the basic principle that the person I am meant to fall madly in love with wouldn't love me if I was wearing, say, sweatpants. Any man who doesn't find me just as loveable in sweatpants as in the frothy ensembles of my dreams is definitely not the right one. I don't think any reasonable woman or man would disagree.

Now that I have that off my chest (phew), I hope to have you back to our regularly scheduled programming posthaste. As always, please feel free to comment with any ideas/questions, or drop by my askbox (I do continuously update my tumblr with new images, so it's always there if you need a fickle fix *rimshot*)

stop the madness: where rompers can go and why

Romper. It's a word that conjures a veritable steaming cauldron of thoughts, emotions, and vitriol. Is the romper the next great piece of clothing? Is it better off left to those who traditionally have worn it (i.e., babies)? Is it the most hideous thing on the face of this planet? Is it flirty or foul? Cute or crap? Summery or scurrilous?

As a (self-proclaimed) fashion blogger, I cannot in good conscience refrain from comment. I refuse to sit back, sit on the fence, or sit anywhere wearing a romper. I am 100% on the against side in the Great Romper Debate.

Rompers have one big plus going for them that should, by all rights, thrill me. Speaking as someone who most often gets "what do you look so nice for?" comments on days I'm too lazy to put jeans on, I honestly do want to jump all over what is basically a grown-up onesie. I would wear footie pajamas if I could find awesome enough ones (the day that my Beauty and the Beast ones didn't fit any longer was a dark one indeed); I have no problems with getting pre-K up in here. The problem I have is that any ease of wear bonus is eliminated by the issues of wearing just one piece: fit.

I wear a lot of dresses. It's one piece, easy enough to put on, and most importantly, easy to fit (at least in the styles I like). A romper is a top and pants all in one, and the odds of both fitting properly? Slim to none. Now, the fashion industry (particularly the Pants Division) has done its level best to convince me I'm some sort of horribly misshapen beast, but though that very well may be true, friends of all shapes, sizes, and distributions have reported the same: the majority of stuff doesn't fit. I don't know what that one mysterious body type everyone is designing clothes to fit is--my research has shown it's not fat, thin, average, rounded, square, big hips, small hips, no hips, or any discernible combination of the above--but if you have it, congratulations! Feel free to buy anything you like without trying on every pair of pants in the store in three different sizes hoping to find one pair that doesn't look terrible. But for the rest of us, rompers represent that horrible sinking feeling. Allow me to provide an beautiful and instructional illustration:


Art by me.

I tried on a romper for, what else, the lulz and blogging fodder last time I went shopping. These are truths: it was baggy on top, giving the impression my chest had deflated, and tighter than a good pair of Spanx on the bottom, causing both thigh-bulge and stretching across anything in my general abdominal area I might not want accentuated. In short, it was the worst pair of shorts and most unflattering tanktop I ever tried on HYBRIDIZED like a multiheaded hydra of fashion horror.

Secondly...they're just silly, okay? I like to have a touch of silly in everything, be it my beloved computer key earrings or a bottle-cap necklace with Neil Patrick Harris' smiling face inside or a Threadless t-shirt. But rompers are woven from silly as surely as the tapestry of fate is woven from the individual threads of our destiny. You can't take someone wearing a romper seriously. If someone wearing a romper tried to give me advice or directions or something, I would say "Go back to California, Katy Perry, and take your whipped cream with you." And that's the truth.

How do you feel about rompers? What piece of fashion makes you go off on enraged semi-coherent tangents, as rompers obviously do to me?