Mara can do no wrong
I love Mara Hoffman. Always have. Always will. Luckily for me, she has a cool line of shaving cream cans for a shaving cream company (without that nugget, I’d never be able to afford to own anything from her line). When I found out that I could buy a genuine Mara Hoffman at my local grocery store, I proceeded to buy four bottles of the stuff. I figured that even if I couldn’t afford to buy anything from her clothing line, I could see her cool designs every time I step into the shower.
Still, my real fascination is with the prints she chooses for her fabrics, not from the imprinted design on a can of shaving cream. Her clothing is exotic, fun, and sexy, and we should all be so lucky to be able to wear these items.
Now there’s even more to covet. See below:
At more than 500 bones, it’s a steal!
But look at that cool pattern…..
If that wasn’t enough to make you salivate, she now has a gown line.
I neeeeeeeeeeeeeed this! (even though I’m not going to a gown-worthy event any time in the near future).
My god. That’s gorgeous (and very hipster, as my friend Katie says). Bahhhh, I say. Hipster, shmipster. Just elegant and beautiful is what I contend.
Again, at $1045, it’s a steal!
Smelly Feet in the DC heat
Now, this is a good look, don’t get me wrong.
(Well, maybe not the fringe…)
However, if you lived in a city where you just might look like this as soon as you leave leave the comfort of your air conditioning….
(no, not the over-botoxed look, although I have heard you can inject botox into your pits to stop the sweat too….I digress…) No silly reader, I’m not to referring to the sweat, although that too is bound to happen (but that can’t be helped… at least not without botox). I’m instead referring to enclosing your feet in a leather (or faux leather…who am I to judge?) boot. Yeah, I admit it looks cool. All the it girls are doing it (I think.) But in DC, you just don’t want to do this….
unless you want to subject yourself to hot, sweaty, inferno-trapped feet that will literally SMOLDER after two nano-seconds in the humid DC swamp. ……..
(nice legs…)
Please. Don’t subject your friends, loved ones, co-workers, and hell, even perfect strangers, to the nasty, putrid stink that will be your feet, your socks, and your once pretty shoes just to be a slave to fashion. Even if you do indeed look like the coolest girl in the room, that won’t mean a damn thing when no one will dare to get close to you because of the noxious cloud of smell that is emanating from your feet.
If you do dare to venture into such fashion victim territory, take my advice after the fact: pitch those suckers that were once your shoes into the trash (there’s no hope for their salvation). Then bathe your two ugliest appendages in loads of gold bond powder to ward off the decay and bacteria that will naturally grow like weeds when allowed to fester in such rancid conditions.
Or… you can just wear sandals like the rest of us.
Broken Open
Now that I’m once again single, I no longer have to endure the drab minimalism of my (ex)boyfriend’s aesthetic. I can return to the magical whimsy of color, print, texture, and….color! As I try to unravel the tight ball of pain that is in my heart and make sense of my life, I realize that my taste, wants, needs, and desires were completely supressed for four years. I had no input in much of anything in our relationship, including in the design of our home. In retrospect, I wasn’t so sad to leave that home, not because I wasn’t sad to leave him, but because nothing in that home conveyed any of my personality. It was all about him, from the boring color scheme of the apartment to the lack of any sense of warmth or comfort. It’s interesting to note that everything in our relationship was about him, him, him, so why would our home be any different?
Now, as I look for the silver lining inherent in all things (even terribly painful experiences), I see that there is no shame in enjoying the ostentatious, the colorful, the whimsical,even if the one you’ve loved thinks differently. It’s not shameful to be a thirty-three year-old woman who is still obsessed with Mary Poppins, ferris wheels, anything Victorian, twenties-style….. If someone truly loves you, they’d accept these tastes instead of constantly criticizing them. I’m thankful to recognize this fact, and I hope to learn from this experience. Although heartbreak is something I’d never wish on anyone, it truly allows one to examine one’s own weaknesses and attempt to make change. I realize that for four years, I LET someone call the shots without ever once speaking up for myself. That’s my fault, not his, but I will never let that happen again. See, there’s a silver lining in everything.
On that note, I pay tribute to the women and men who have dared to let whimsy rule their personal worlds–their homes. I hope I can follow suit one day.
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Encompass
These installations by Lee Jung perfectly encompass my feelings as of late.
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Although now that I think about it, I don’t particularly feel this way anymore….I’m more at the “fuck you and your Madeline too” stage….
As pretty as a New Mexican sunset…
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Source: pursenboots.blogspot.com via Elysa on Pinterest
Source: pursenboots.blogspot.com via Elysa on Pinterest
Source: pursenboots.blogspot.com via Elysa on Pinterest
Source: pursenboots.blogspot.com via Elysa on Pinterest
Source: pursenboots.blogspot.com via Elysa on Pinterest
These looks from Cynthia Vincent’s Holiday Collection are as pretty as a New Mexican sunset. Compare for yourself:
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Source: flickr.com via Elysa on Pinterest
Animal Collective at Merriweather-part dos
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Animal Collective reconvened at Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday night. It was quite the psychedelic concert, to say the least, as you see from the pictures above. The colors coupled with the beautiful summer night made this concert quite the memorable one. The only issue with it is that people went expecting Animal Collective to partially replicate their performance from the aptly named album “Merriweather Post Pavillion” and were rightly disappointed when the band didn’t play any of the songs from said-album.
As I left the concert, another concertgoer justified the dearth of songs from the popular album by saying that ” the band was being ironic”. Irony doesn’t hold a candle to the fact that the majority of the attendees paid around thirty bones to hear songs from the renowned album, only three of which were to be found on the set list. It would have been nice if they would have played the mesmerizing “My Girls” during the encore, but alas, it was a no-show. The concert attendees left with a sense of satisfaction at seeing Animal Collective but also with a sense of disappointment at not being able to dance to beloved songs. After all, people pay good money to sing and dance to their favorite songs, not to be subjected to the ironic whimsy of the artist. Why bother putting any effort into the show, the lights, the sounds, the atmosphere, if you’re intending to disappoint the fans for the sake of irony?
That elusive, ideal future…
I am trapped by my life. Every Sunday night, I whimper to myself because I simply do not want to go back to work. I feel sadness at the prospect of my future. If someone asks me what I do for a living, I’m ashamed to tell them and usually end up saying that I’m still in the process of figuring out what I want to be when I grow up. Work is painful. Every morning, I get on the elevator, look around, and think to myself that there must be more to life than this.
School was also painful (except for English and History class, which I must admit, I greatly enjoyed). School teaches us to be good little worker bees, subjecting us to long hours of study at the expense of play and leisure. It prepares youth for work not only by teaching arithmetic and science, but by subjecting children to long hours stuck in a classroom and carrying out the often repetitive and boring gruntwork disguised as learning. School is usually something to be endured, not to be enjoyed.
Those students that thought outside of the box and weren’t consumed with trying to follow society’s expected agenda are probably much happier in their current position than I am right now. I always thought that by trying to get the best grades and by subjecting myself to long hours of study, I would surely find myself in a successful (and of course, success begets happiness!!) station in life. I worked hard in school, not realizing fully that attaining a normal job would subject me to an excruciating existence of paper pushing, long hours, lack of creativity, and dread (and I mean DREAD.) Now, I realize that by not allowing myself to cultivate my interests as a young woman, I have absolutely no direction as an adult. I was so blinded by society’s idea of happiness that I didn’t listen to my own wants and desires.
Now, I look back and realize that those things that I enjoyed doing in my spare time could have indeed been cultivated into a professional endeavor. Unfortunately, I pushed these loves aside, convinced that study and good grades were the right steps to take to ensure a happy future. If I’d only known… When I was a girl, I used to lock my self in my closet and listen music- tape after tape-song after song.. I’d write down all the lyrics to every song, learning each word, attempting to discern the artist’s meaning, singing each song over and over again until I knew every melody, breakdown, sigh, break, and bassline by heart. I would make up dance routines to the songs, and I would perform for my parents. Every year, I got the Sing and Dance award at summer camp and the Underwater-Singer award on my swim team. I sang so much, everywhere, at any time, to such an extent that it would annoy people. I couldn’t stop. I would also write stories about little fantastical creatures. I wrote and wrote and wrote and would be become completely lost by the mythical world I’d created. Later, as a pre-teen, I received my Seventeen magazine in the mail every month. As soon as it arrived, I would call my friend Malissa, and we would pore over the pages cover to cover, critiquing the layout, the ads, the models, the articles, everything. If I’d only pursued my interests-writing, music, and fashion, instead of pushing them aside, perhaps I’d be a happier and more fulfilled adult right now.
There is that saying, “do what you love.” Well, I have not followed that mantra, not by my own fault necessarily, but because I’ve never realized how important it was to live by it until now. I see a myriad of others who are working as fashion designers, architects, musicians, even press agents, and I am envious of them. However, all is not lost. There is another saying, one that says that it is better late than never. Well, although I have not cultivated my passions, I do indeed have them. I dream of writing–novels, short stories, magazine articles, anything. I dream of singing, playing the guitar, the piano, and making quirky little love songs that experiment with strange, new sounds. I dream of dressing to the nines while working at a magazine, drinking large cups of coffee while meeting writing deadlines and putting layouts together. I dream of traveling, seeing strange and distant lands, learning new languages, and interacting with people that see the world from a completely different perspective from my own.
Today, I proclaim that I will work day by day, step by step, word by word, to avoid the dread that I has become inherent in my life. I will no longer settle for a life with which I’m not completely happy. I will work toward my goals, even if they aren’t what society deems successful. Hopefully, these steps will make me happier, and that will be reflected in everything I do, including in the words that are written in this blog.
