How to Wear Brooches (Summer)

My brooch collection

Styling for Short Legs: Skirts

It's not so bad being short. I never have a problem with legroom. I have excellent balance. I can squeeze through crowds. But buying pants is a lost cause and petite sections are so lame.

Moreover, clothes aren't designed for us short-legged people. I don't know how many times I bought a "knee-length" skirt only to have it reach my shins, or, even more common, a maxi skirt that I could wear as a full-body dress.

Personally, I think it's a great time to be a short-legged person, as we have a lot of style options to create an optical illusion of longer legs:

(shorter paper dolls represent short person, whereas the left-hand doll is the tall/average height. I noticed that I'm about a head shorter than most people my size, so I just chopped off a head-length from the legs above)

knock-offs

left, real. right, knock-off

Few weeks back, FIT did an exhibit dedicated to counterfeits and knock-offs. While not visually their best exhibit, it was informative. I'm not disappointed... you see knock-offs every time you step into a fast-fashion store. Don't need to see it at a museum.

Anna Sui and Forever 21

Killer Heels Exhibit: Brooklyn Museum

So, over the weekend, I checked out the Brooklyn Museum's Killer Heels Exhibit. The shoes were cool of course, though the space design sucked for cell phones. They had the lights below the shoes, messing up my camera's autoexposure, so all the photos came up a bit dark. 

Here are my highlights. I tried to frame the caption with the shoes, otherwise I'll write down the caption info under the photo, if I have it.

the 90s were a good time for shoes

Nu-Goth, Haute Goth, Rivethead

Roses and Vellum and Little Corp Goth Girl recently did a post on dark fashion "stereotypes" featuring those fun illustrations by Trellia. I thought I'd join in too.

I first got into dark fashion in a real way (beyond band t-shirts) through the whole rivethead thing. I don't really listen to too much industrial (though I was listening to Combichrist today) anymore, I still love the old look. Like the little description says, I never considered myself a goth. The clothing is pretty masculine, tough, grungy, futuristic, military--quite the opposite of the fussy, feminine, vintagelike goth fashion.

That's where I started dark fashion. I still think it's awesome, and it reminds me of Chicago of course. I've moved on though. These days I'm wearing what Trellia calls the "Haute Goth"--I watch the runways and can name many of the high-end goth designers. Also, with the benefit of living in NYC, I can get high end stuff for a sliver of the price. We still have the old-school department stores that actually sell designer stuff at a discount, unlike TJ Maxx and outlet stores that license the brand name and make it at some slave-labor factory for pennies. Oh, what a snob I am. Personally, I love how weird and creative it all is. I get too bored staring at the same old same old.

New Arts+Crafts Earrings

Silly me, I left my camera in Florida at my mom's house. So, shitty camera photos till it comes back. Just wanted to show two earrings I bought recently. 

Red + Black Week: Baby Bats

left, not baby bat. right, baby bat.

Motorcycle Jackets

http://www.vice.com/read/crusty-leather-362-v17n3 (great article, btw!)

So, I just came back from the FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) museum, where they had a motorcycle jacket exhibit. Learned a few things about motorcycle jackets that I never new before. They've actually been around since 1928! So, a flapper and a biker coulda happened. Bizarre.

Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit

Just came back from the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum. It was pretty cool. I know you guys know all about him, but if you don't, he's the guy who did Madonna's famous corset. (btw all the photos here are photos I took at the exhibit). I went with my mom (who's in town), who's a huge fan of his work since the 80s.

Horror in Dark or Goth Fashion: The Uncanny

heady post today: the uncanny. Freud's uncanny, which I'd argue is the cornerstone of dark fashion. The Uncanny is also the cornerstone of Horror as a concept+theory. The definition:

an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange or uncomfortably familiar.

Corsets do this to some degree. Yes--she looks like a woman, but something seems slightly off. Even a basic corset is uncanny. Oh, her waist is exaggerated. "Cool! I love it!" says the dark fashion fan, who enjoys the uncanny more than most. But then you get to the more extreme corsetry, which becomes a form of body modification. Beautiful? If you like the uncanny, yes. If you're terrified of something appearing human and not at the same time, then probably not. 

When we talk about how "hardcore" someone is, we could be talking about where in the Uncanny Valley this person stands....literally: