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Julianne

May 31 Day Fashion Blogger Challenge: Day 1 – My Wardrobe

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As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve been updating this blog very sporadically for the last couple of years. I even described it as being on semi-hiatus in a few blog threads on forums and other communities.

I love this blog, and have many fond memories attached to it, but the idea of posting again has become such a huge deal in my mind, like planning to run the marathon (love how I say ‘the marathon’, because if you are from London, there is only one) or climbing Mount Everest or something. A couple of weeks ago, Amy of Stripy Tights and Dark Delights linked to one of my old posts and I clicked through to read it myself, not recognising the title particularly well. My reaction was pretty much – ‘I wrote this? How? When?’

I suppose excuse number one is that I haven’t been buying a lot of new clothes or make-up for the past few years as I’ve been what-I-call ‘sporadically employed’. However, I have still bought a few bits from charity shops and I have received some hand-me-ups from my sister. And this excuse really shouldn’t fly for the person who wrote post after post about reworking your wardrobe and followed Tricia‘s wardrobe remix posts religiously back in the day!

Excuse number two is that I’ve been focusing on my book blog, and it has paid off as I now have actual followers over there. But, I actually still have about three times as many subscribers to this blog! I have a whole audience I’ve been neglecting.

Excuse number three, which is slightly true, is that I’ve been really busy: firstly with my MA, then with job hunting and volunteering.

But the truth is I haven’t made time for it. I think it’s a confidence issue. I know this sounds like pretentious nonsense, but when I started, there really weren’t that many fashion blogs. I’m sure that when I started using Google Reader, I subscribed to less than a dozen. There were certainly only a couple of alternative fashion blogs out there. If I’d kept posting multiple times a week and put the effort in then maybe my blog would be really well known now! But truth is, I never had that much confidence in my ability to opine on the fashion world. So when I became busy for a while, I let it go, finding it too difficult, with everything else going on in my life, to keep battling the fear and keep posting. And then all these other people came along and made it look so effortless, and it took me a while to get over that.

Fashion and style is such a personal topic, and I was only just discovering how much fun clothes could be when I started blogging. Happily, now I’m pretty set in my self-assured ways. But there are still things to learn, and to think about.

A lot of blogs are all about the hauling and shiny new stuff now, and I got sucked into reading a lot of make-up blogs and bookmarking loads of reviews in my ‘lemming’ folder. But I still advocate not going to the shops/looking at online stores as the best way to save money and force yourself to think creatively about the clothes you already own. So maybe my niche is still there, waiting.

Only one way to find out, and I’ve been wanting to for a while. Selina of Flying Saucer, one of those half-dozen or so blogs I originally subscribed to and still enjoy even though her style is so different now from mine (No body-con dresses for me. Floaty for life!) is running a 31 Day challenge for May, so I thought, might as well!

Day 1’s theme is: My Wardrobe. I have two. One for normal length tops and one for long tops, skirts, trousers and dresses. Both have a shelf above the hanging space.

The normal length tops wardrobe (above) also has three drawers, filled with tights, knickers, pyjamas, socks, vests and various rarely-worn stuff. Some of which is crap I should really get rid of, but I just haven’t been able to bring myself to donate. For example, the spray-paint-and-glitter effect jeans I got when I was about 14, and thought would make me look like such a rock star. I don’t think I even wore them out of the house before they went completely out of fashion, probably forever! I expect they’re much too short for me now as well. What am I doing.

Bras are in a separate drawer unit. They were originally in the drawer with knickers and tights but then my collection of tights got so large I had to move them out and squish them into one of my tiny bedside drawers. More on the tights tomorrow.

The normal length tops wardrobe is alright, you know, apart from the whole hosiery addiction thing (in the photo above you can see two pairs still in their packaging – I have at least three more pairs that are entirely unworn in the drawers or on top of them) but the long tops wardrobe is dire.

Now, I know you’re thinking, that looks much less crowded. But you can’t see the shelf above. Or the floor. The floor contains my shoe rack, loads of bags, a magazine rack holding all my precious copies of J-17 magazine, and loads of wrapping paper from Christmas that I aim to reuse. And I don’t even mean that it’s from just this Christmas. Oh no. Some of it is from the year before. Plus one of my dresses has clearly been falling off the hanger, again.

But I don’t want to focus on the negatives. Although there is a lot of crap I need to sort out/get rid of (e.g.. the spray paint trousers), my wardrobes are otherwise quite organised. Skirts are hung in order of size, shortest to largest. Then I’ve hung all the trousers, followed by long tops, dresses that can be worn as tops, dresses I can wear any time, and finally on the right are all the summer-only dresses that are too easily creased to be folded up and store in boxes (on top of the wardrobes) during the winter. I also have a really long evening dress in the middle. All the longest items are supposed to hang towards the middle so that I can put stuff on the floor and up against the sides of the wardrobe.

The normal-length tops wardrobe is in sections: cardigans/jumpers, collared shirts, long sleeved tops, short sleeved tops/t-shirts, and strappy tops. It’s also organised by colour within those sections. I used to have it organised just by colour but I couldn’t find things efficiently enough!

Maybe these photos will serve as a ‘before’, and will remind me to get working on clearing them out. There are so many things I’d like to rehome. I’d love to have a more cohesive theme to my wardrobe, but at the same time, I enjoy the eclectic range. Most days, I want to dress in my typical purple-goth manner. But others, I just really want to wear a brightly-coloured long top and some jeans.

Hopefully I’ll be posting about tights tomorrow – the thing I have the most of!

this lace obsession

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I’ve been meaning to write a post about lace for ages, so it’s just right that the arrival of October, and Sophistique Noir‘s monthly theme, should spur me on. I’ve always loved the idea of lace, but it’s a tricky kind of fabric. A lot of people are afraid of it, because it can often look cheap and tacky. It’s either In Fashion, or very definitely Out of Fashion, and I think the only type of fabric that is more at the mercy of trends is velvet. At the moment lace is very much In Fashion, especially on the sleeves of dresses, the lingering influence of a certain wedding dress, I expect.

However, I’m not sure how I feel about lace sleeves! I’ve seen few dresses with lace sleeves that I actually really like. It’s all because of the pattern – I’m really fussy about any kind of pattern and lace is no exception. Most lace sleeves are not to my taste, I’m afraid, and my lace dresses and tops are sleeveless, with the exception of one almost-tacky goth top I bought from Camden Market when I was a teenager (it just about works. Under another dress).

I have decided to use this post as an excuse to look for pretty things on the internet and create a list of lace things that I do like, and things that I don’t. We’ll start with the don’t likes, because there are no pictures so it’ll be a more boring list.

1. I don’t like lace ruffles around the neck/shoulders. Amongst other aesthetic issues, I never know what jewellery to wear and I like jewellery, so I don’t want to have to skip it.
2. I don’t like plain shift dresses with lace overlays. The simplicity of the shape seems to make the lace dull by association.
3. I don’t like lace leggings. This is because I despise leggings in general. Unless they are jeggings that really look like jeans. Those are fantastic. I digress.
4. I don’t normally like crochet, there are exceptions, but those are rare, I don’t like the blocky look it has.
5. I don’t like lace trims on tulle, it just reminds me of net curtains.
6. I don’t usually like that cream colour often called ‘nude’ (why? It’s not skin colour for the vast majority of humans) as a backing for lace, but that is because I despise that colour in general. Exception:

I just have no idea how to stand for outfit photos. I’m sorry. This photo also makes me laugh because it looks as if I have cleavage and this has never happened in a photo before!
 (Hat – M&S current season, dress – H&M Summer 2005, wrap top – H&M no idea when, long cuffable scrunchable socks – Sock Dreams, shoes – Clarks, necklace – Agatha via charity shop, lipstick – Sleek Pout Paint in Pin Up)

I think this dress gets away with it because it’s a very cool neutral, not warm at all, almost grey. Plus it’s obviously darker than my skin colour, when shades are too close I feel they just look orange in comparison. The socks and the hat (post coming about the wonders of M&S cloche hats) are quite a dark blue-red, so there is no clashing. It’s still a bit too yellow to be worn with purple though, I don’t think I’ve even tried. On top of the dress I’m wearing a wraparound top with black lace trim that I love because I can convert sleeveless or short-sleeved tops into longer, warmer, more interesting tops, as soon as I put it on. On that note, onto things I do like!

1. Bright colours behind black lace. This dress is amazing! It’s so amazing I can even ignore the presence of leggings in the photo.
2. Lace that is almost-off-the-shoulders. I love the shape of this dress though it’s hard to judge the quality of the fabric from the picture. It’s simple without being dull. Plus, it’s purple.
3. The odd bit of lovely weirdness, like a lace dress with a hood.
4. Two different colours of lace together. This dress is way too short for my tastes but I love the way the purple and the brown look together.
5. Lace gloves.When the quality is quite high, anyway. I can’t supply a link here as it’s so difficult to find a pair I like.
6. Lace on hats. As you may already know.
7. Lace effects on other things. Lace makes a great stencil, whether you’re painting your Docs or your nails.
8. Knitting lace. SO DIFFICULT. Just wonderful. I do like a challenge!
9. Lace + floatiness = great. As seen today on the cherry blossom girl.

I haven’t actually bought any thing from the new influx of lace onto the high street, but I did get a lovely long dress that is aqua-green with black lace over it from a charity shop recently. Unfortunately it’s still in the wash right now (gaaah hand wash gaaaah) but here is a size 14 version on eBay (disclaimer: I am not the seller, I do not know the seller, I am not responsible for this listing and the quality of it).

I would like to invest in some more lace items as those that I do have, I’ve been wearing for years. The dress in the photo above is from Summer 2005. I didn’t actually wear it that year, I was too shy, but I’ve been loving it since Summer 2006, it’s now one of my favourite summer dresses, and by wearing it over thick thigh-high socks I was able to wear it during the autumn. Then the autumn was replaced by summer in the UK, and I wore it with red tights to go to a few pubs earlier in the week. Heatwaves and lace are best friends. The worst thing about lace is that it’s not particularly warm and it looks best when it’s slinky and at least partly figure-hugging. Not ideal for the winter, but then again, lace shawls can be warm, when made with the right yarn.

You may have noticed that I’ve gotten into the habit of posting these monthly theme posts a bit late. That’s because I like to read some of the other participants’ posts so I can feature those that I really like. If I were more organised I might make two posts out of it, but I’m not, especially not at the moment as I’m coming to the end of employment. I kind of wish I’d had SalKaye’s idea to feature some free lace knitting patterns, except that would have taken me ages.

I really like the dress in the first picture on The Irish Phantom Cat’s post, probably because it’s green. I actually have a top that is green underneath with black lace on top, it’s even older than the dress in my picture, I think I’ve had that one since I was 17! I also love Unlacing the Victorians’ top, and it has lace sleeves. Whee!

How do you feel about lace? Yay or nay? Any lace dress recommendations?