Sunday Best: Pink wall

My friend, Minah, is visiting from Tokyo. On Monday we did Melrose. We got really excited by Paul Smith's pink wall. As for our outfits I think mine is very L.A casual, Minah's is very Tokyo-folky and Yoko is Tokyo-mod. :)

sweatshirt: vintage
shorts: vintage
boots: vintage

Elle!

I had a little mention in Elle Korea and I wouldn't have even known about it if my friend hadn't seen it. :)

early sunday best: new jeans!

I got these jeans this Wednesday at H&M. I had been looking for high waisted wide-leg jeans for awhile. It was a futile effort in Japan because I can never find my size there. I'm 5'7" and have been known to eat big meals, what can I say? But in America they always have my size. God bless, America. I am so glad I was born here because I am genetically hard-wired to live among my kind: gentle giants. Anyways, this is the best(most flattering) angle I got of the pants(nothing a good wall lean can't fix....).

Top: Forever 21
Jeans: H&M
Shoes: Betsey Johnson

pink and bows.

Some new images for your viewing pleasure. It doesn't get anymore saccharine than this....or DOES it??? dun, dun, dun.

death by denim.

No one bats an eye at expensive jeans anymore. $130, $150, $200, $260....It's quaint to even talk about being shocked at the prices but it really amazes me how much people are willing to pay. We definitely crossed a threshold in the early 2000's with Frankie B, Seven, Diesel, Earl Jeans, etc. Suddenly jeans became a premium item; no price was too high for the "perfect" pair. A lot of my friends were worshippers at the alter of Seven(It's called Seven for all Mankind now(so fancy)). They reasoned that since they wore jeans almost everyday of the week that it was a good investment. My most expensive pair of jeans were $130 Bisou Bisou jeans I bought when I was a junior in college. They were super low rise, had an exposed zipper and a slight flare....sends shivers down my spine...ugh, gross!!!!

But besides that foray I never got into the whole designer denim thing. I've never tried on Seven for all Mankind, Diesel, Hudson, Acne, Ksubi, etc....It was too expensive for me to even get in on it in the first place but what really irritated me was the birth of a genre of girls that always wore designer jeans, cute blouse, heels type outfit/uniforms. It was just so cookie cutter. Floral blouse, jeans, heels, tiny, tiny Louis Vuitton pochette or Coach bag...argh, blegh, so boring!!! So I stopped wearing jeans for about two years. I just wore dresses and I still wear a lot of dresses but I rediscovered denim about a year and a half ago. I was lured back by all the new, cheap-y, cute denim. It started with Uniqlo's 4,000 yen skinny jeans. They totally rocked my world. I was like "denim is awesome!!!!!! I can wear these pants everyday and no one will notice or care!!" I had forgotten how easy they were. The other thing that lured me back were the cute shapes and styles. Lowry's Farm was my spot in Tokyo for cool styles like wide leg jeans with overall straps and skinny leg overalls. In the states it's Cheap Monday, Levi's and H&M jeans. Fashionable denim for the non-fanatical jeans wearer is hopefully here to stay. Denim is cheaper, cuter, easier to access and more diverse!!! It's win-win. So you see I'm not a hater, I just needed more options.

Royal T

So as far as I know a wealthy lady with lots of Japanese contemporary art opened a cafe/shop/art space. There was an opening last night to celebrate the gallery and the book published by Phaidon Gothic Lolita. The collage above is a visual summary of the night.

sunday weekly best.

From here on out I think I will post my favorite outfit of the week on Sunday instead of what I'm wearing on Sunday on Sunday (Sunday mornings were becoming too stressful). This is what I wore out to the Royal T/Gothic Lolita book signing/opening last night.

dress: vintage
shoes: Betsey Johnson

Fast food fetish.

I'm surrounded by vegans and all sorts of healthy, educated foodies. It's mostly a good thing and has influenced the way I eat. I definitely make better food choices which makes me fetishize things that are bad for me, like fast food. Fast food is like abominable acne scars in that it makes you unsightly and shows that you have bad habits. I know that, I do, but I still want that sugary, salty, fries and coke two-punch from time to time. I don't do meals cause than I feel bad in a "Supersize Me" the movie my-pancreas-is-going-to-fail-way, than my guilty pleasure is no longer fun. Mostly, I like to get curly fries at Jack in the Box. They're the best!

jay-z

I met my friend last night. He asked me why I stopped writing my blog and I sheepishly told him I had already started again. I'm such a Jay-Z, all saying I'm retiring and coming back with a Mary J. Blige World Tour. But I really thought I was through....

I really like making proclamations about my plans of productivity because somehow I feel like making it public is a way to shame myself into getting things done. I fight my procrastinating tendencies with public proclamations. Maybe that's what Jay-Z was trying to do. Maybe deep down inside he didn't want to retire but he thought it would help him get more work done and focus on his empire....but that wasn't to be.

Jigga-man, I feel ya.

:)

shortest sabbatical ever.

Okay, I'm back. I know, I know, what's the point of saying I left if I'm going to come back in two days. Well, here's how it goes I was feeling overwhelmed by life, period. So I stopped the blog because it felt like a chore. But then today I went to the L.A. Times for a journalism club event and I met Tony Pierce, their online blog director, anyways, he was talking about how great blogs are and that a blog could be about anything: just write. Basically, he was saying if you want to write: write. It's a deceptively simple comment but it untied some of my writerly worries. From now on I'm going to write more freely on this blog. Trying to stay on topic has been really stultifying. My head is not as filled with fashion as I thought. I just want to write about random stuff, more of a what's on my mind kind of thing. So through this serendipitous meeting today I bring back the blog.

To start off the random blogs.....Here we go...

I've been itching to just pick up one of those books that you can't put down and just finish something. It had been awhile since I'd done just that. I made the mistake of trying to read Nietzche for fun. Don't get me wrong his stuff has been amusing. I didn't expect a nihilist to be so cuddly. He writes like an English professor with a beard would speak in a lecture, kind of conversational....sooooooo- not what I was expecting. Anyways, I've been working on that for a couple weeks and I've been working on an Anne Frank diary, IN JAPANESE, for months. It's elementary school level but not easy going for me. So I've been at a book impasse but this weekend I finished two books and in grand style, too. I finished each in a day! I feel soooo-- much better, like I cleaned my arteries and pumped in new blood.
I read Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut on Sunday and Entre Nous, A Woman's Guide to Finding Her Inner French Girl by Debra Ollivier on Monday. Vonnegut I knew would be good but the inner French woman book was surprisingly good, too. The French and Japanese have really similar tendencies and characteristics and it was interesting to read about how French women think and compare it with my experiences in Japan. Anyways, I am so glad to have finally finished some books.

Thank you for listening.

for now.

I love having a space to express myself through uploading and typing but it's taking too much of my time. I'm going on a sabbatical from my blog. I might come back better and bloggier or....not. I don't know.

easter candy at seven eleven.

cute girls: on a roll, yo.

aja!!!

new, gnu, new!

My friend Aya, from Charm School East, just redid her website. Go check out her dreamy drawings and subtly chic designs.