The cut is beautiful, I love the unusual colors which are of the type that tend to look vomitrocious on many, but surprisingly flattering on me and the subtle sexiness. However, the sleeves... *sigh* Those sleeves would no doubt cut my upper arms off in the worst possible place and make my arms look oogy.

Shallow end of vanity pool, party of one.

If I want to wear this in July to present at the RITAs. Simple, because really, can't top last year, but still elegant as all get out with a nice touch of unique.

What do we think of this? I tend to be so wary of prints—but I know she's a wee thing and it doesn't seem to be overwhelming her.

Isn't it?



Very Carmen-esque.

Last week, we were lying in bed and I was browsing through a sale site and he was watching SpongeBob (You know—it was Christmas night and there was nothing else on.)

At any rate, he would glance over from time to time, commenting on what I happened to be looking at. Finally he said, "Those are hot. They would look so amazing on you—you should get them."

So I did.

And he was right. They do look hot.

What I'm going to wear them with, however...

This dress? That I thought I had ordered?



Was apparently sold just a couple of days before I ordered it. They still haven't updated the site to reflect the sale. Bad site, no biscuit.

However.

This is me we're talking about. I was disappointed, yes, but not deterred.

I was lying in bed, scrolling through one of the sites one evening, when the hub went "Whoa, back up."

He looked at the picture, looked at me, looked back at the picture, looked back at me, then let loose with another "Whoa."

That's pretty much all I needed for I am a shameless 'ho and anything that makes my husband say "whoa" like that?

Yeah, total no-brainer. So we will be going from timeless elegance to, well...

this:

Yes, I caved.




1970s Mary McFadden.

Signature Fortuny pleating.

The colors remind me of the desert.

And the price was scorchingly good.


ETA: To see if I like the way these shoes look with the dress.

The Empress, AKA aimeejmc hath done it again and turned me onto a nefarious site.

Nerfarious, I tell you!

AntiqueDress.com

Such pretties! And she honed right on in on the dress that would most make my little heart go pitapat:



Because she knows me, she does, Evil Empress.

And of course, I started looking around and oh! Such Pretties!

Like this one:




And am I bad for wanting this semi-slutty Bob Mackie? Somehow, I'm not sure it's me, per se, but I'm sort of irresistably drawn to it. The sequins, they are like crack, I think.



I'm thinking the RITAs perhaps will be a vintage affair for me this year...

Behold, the Carmen Shoes (as I have dubbed them, in honor of the new book sale).



I am planning on debuting them at the Literacy Signing with an absolutely ADORABLE black with champagne polka dots and trim dress. It's strapless! I haven't bought a purely strapless dress in... well, pretty much forever.

I think I like Spanish-language magazines better.

Which is bizarre. It takes me longer to read them since I think first in English and if I come across a colloquialism I don't recognize, I have to go after the dictionary.

But they help keep my mind supple and I find myself thinking more and more in two languages, which is good.

But lately, I've been finding myself actually enjoying reading them more than some English language magazines. Spanish-language magazines are refreshingly honest, in a lot of ways. They don't candy-coat indiscretions by celebrities. If a male celebrity has messed around on his wife, they're not going to pussyfoot around with coy language. They'll just up and tell you. Ditto if a former Miss Universe has been seen cavorting topless with a man who's not her husband. And they'll acknowledge that a guy is both absolutely gorgeous and talented and still a total dog with women. Like Alejandro Fernández, for example-- leaving the wife with whom he has three kids for a girlfriend with whom he has two more kids, then cheating on her with some twenty-five year old. But hey-- he's still really, really talented! And it's true! It's like his personal life doesn't really have any bearing on his professional achievements, which is a weird concept when you're American-bred, because we tend to be so Puritanical from that standpoint, tying everything up together in one bundle and unable to objectively look at one without casting judgment based on the other.

And in fact, the celebrities pictured are often so much more real looking than their American/English counterparts. They don't look as if they're always "on" like so many American celebrities are and for that matter, they just flat out look more normal. Not to mention, what's considered beautiful in Latin American culture versus what we tend to objectify in Anglo culture. All of this occurred to me as I was thumbing through the new edition of People en Español's Los 50 Más Bellos issue. (Isn't it nice of them to put it in English on the website, too?)

I found I enjoyed it far more than the American version that was released the week before. There were more men and women in their thirties and forties, for one thing, which is very common for the Latin culture. We have this thing where we think people get more attractive as they get older. And the women! Wow. They have thighs. Like, real, rounded, thighs and arms with flesh on them, rather than having the bones protruding through. I almost hadn't realized how unhealthy most of our perceptions in the the U.S. were getting until I saw a lot of those photographs. And best of all-- no one's going to make a big deal of J. Lo's butt because in our world? Her butt ain't nothin' special. It's just another Latina ass.

Just some pretty pictures from the issue:

Angélica Vale


Adamari López


Jaime Camil


Eduardo Yañez


José Reyes

And respect the Shopping-fu, for she is strong

Had some time to kill before I picked up the rugrats from school, so I wandered into the Quaint Shopping District known as San Marco, which is but a couple of blocks from their school. (How convenient, I know.)

I was distressed to discover that a former Favorite Store was gone and a new store, with oddly identical merchandise was in its place. So, I wandered in, as you might have guessed I would and found myself drawn to the sale rack, where they had placed the leftover merchandise from Former Favorite Store.

Lucky me-- I spotted a lovely, lovely leather bag. A A lovely Botkier bag, bag of choice for starlets who need large bags in which to hide items of a questionable nature. I still liked the bag in spite of that dubious distinction. Then, I looked at the tag and about had a heart attack-- $765.00.

Not in this lifetime or any other. Admittedly, I'm a fashion whore, but not that bad.

Then, I flipped the tag over and saw the $765.00 crossed out and a bright, cheery, $100.00 written in there.

For a hundred bucks, I'll buy a purse of fabulous quality leather in a timeless style and classic color, you betcha. I could give a rat's patoot that it's from Fall 2005. How many people are actually going to know that? I didn't know it until I went looking for a picture of the bag so I could show y'all. It's not the pink in the picture I found-- it's a deep, beautiful bronze leather.




Seriously, people. Fear me!

If in a former lifetime I wasn't a stripper, a high class call girl, or a dominatrix. Because really, my prediliction for the shoes, shows some interesting trends.

Tell me these don't look like they belong wrapped around a stainless steel pole. Yet I sit there and think, "Hmm... the heel looks pretty stable and solid. I can work those."



Then there are the high class call girl shoes:



And these should just be classified as dangerous weapons.





Oh, and Amy Winehouse's CD is the album Florence Ballard should have recorded as a big ol' finger to Diana when her skinny diva ass forced Flo from the Supremes.

This article is being discussed on a writer's board I frequent and I found such a fascinating exercise in context and human behavior that I wanted to post the link to it here, see what you fabulous people think. To me, one of the most fascinating aspects is that without fail, it was children who wanted to stop and look and listen. Tell me there isn't a lesson there.

Pearls Before Breakfast.

And because it's Monday and it's sort of dreary and cold outside, I thought I'd post a pretty for my own enjoyment. (And others' of course, but mostly mine... *g*)

( Monday Morning Pretty )

Off to proof galleys.

They fit.

The pretty red dress that I bought to reward myself for the Bronze medal finish in the Florida Book Awards?



Didn't fit.

It was clearly designed for a person with the World's Shortest Torso, because if I put my boobs where, you know, they're supposed to go-- the waist wound up somewhere in the vicinity of my rib cage. If I put the waist where, you know, my waist actually is? The top of the bodice covered maybe, half of my nipples. Not a good look unless you're a stripper.

But the shopping gods, they were shining on me today. (Good thing, considering the day I had yesterday and the week, overall, that I've had.) Because when you can exchange one thing (that was on sale to start with) and come out of it with five items and money left over? That's a good day, baby.

( Frippery behind the cut )

New week-- it's going to be a better week.

The Empress, aka, aimeejmc did a Very Bad Thing yesterday. She introduced me to a lovely, lovely, dangerous site, TheFrock.com.

Couture, vintage, clothing, in stunning condition and all things considered, fairly reasonably priced. Swear to God, if I had scads of disposable income and you know, a career that had a few built-in red carpet or high formal appearances, that would be all she wrote.

Anyhow, I spent WAY too much time browsing yesterday-- being me, I first hit the Designer and Couture pages. Yeah, um, the silver beaded Sonia Rykiel goddess gown on page 14 and the ivory satin and red beaded Pierre Balmain at the bottom of page 6?

Yeah-- I'll be saving my pennies and hoping for a late career in film or music to blossom. See, the thing that makes this site so very, very dangerous for me is that forty, fifty years ago? My proportions were a perfect sample size 6-8 so the measurements for probably ninety percent of these gowns? Waaaaaay tempting. One of those secrets they don't tell you about the fashion industry-- twenty-five years ago? Sizes like 2 and 0 and this latest-- 00? Didn't exist. The sizes when down to size 6 for Misses clothing and then you had to go to the Juniors dept. to find anything smaller.

Reason I know all this is because I grew up in the fashion industry-- my mother made her living for many, many years as what's known as a Production Pattern Maker. This is the person who takes the designer's sketch and makes it work by creating a master pattern from which a sample is cut and sewn and then, after the flaws have been worked out, creates another master pattern. And that's what's used to cut the designs for mass-production. One of the companies she worked for was an evening gown company called Rose Taft. For years, they made not only evening gowns, but gowns for pageant contestants. Not cut on such a high volume as some of her other jobs, but you'd be amazed at how many pattern pieces can be interchanged between gowns to create a new gown without having to go to too much effort.

Anyhow, this is my very long-winded way of saying that once I got through drooling over the couture clothes, I toddled over to the Mid Century section. That's a little bit of a misnomer, since they had clothes that clearly went into the seventies and eighties there-- and how do I know this? Well, I get to page twelve of that section, stopped, and thought-- I know that dress. Then I read the description and realized that indeed, I did know that dress. It was a Rose Taft that I had probably seen some iteration of during my childhood. Of course I picked up the phone--

"Mom, you'll never guess what I just found--a Rose Taft dress on an online site."

"What's it look like?"

"Green chiffon, three layer skirt, top layer is assymmetrical, waist is natural, cut straight, not on the bias, bodice is also cut straight--"

"Spaghetti straps and a rhinstone sunburst coming from the left side of the waist, right?"

"Right."

"Yes, that's one I worked on."



(Woman's got a memory like a steel trap, I swear.)

If it wasn't probably the worst shade of green on the planet for me to wear, I'd be whipping out the checkbook right now. It's still tempting, if only to have a piece of my mom's and tangentially my, history, but I do have a couple of Rose Taft gowns of my own in my possession.

And there's still that ivory and red beaded Balmain to save for...

You knew I'd celebrate my Bronze medal and my final from last week, right?

It's a bit of a change for me-- I rarely buy anything in this color, but I kept coming back to it.

What do we think?

Last week, I was on some pretty powerful meds. Never mind the reason why-- I'm doing fine and no longer need them, but last week, I did. And of course, the term "pretty powerful meds" is misleading when it comes to me because I am the World's Biggest Lighteweight.

How lightweight? Half a dose of DAYQUIL and I'm down for the count. Let's just say what I was on last week was considerably stronger.

Yesterday, I received an email from one of my very favoritist places on the Interwebs, Bluefly, AKA Clothes Crack.

This email read, "Your order, placed 2/22/07 has been shipped."


My order placed 2/22/07? WTF? As far as I knew, on 2/22/07, I was out of my head on meds. Apparently, this is not enough to stop my fingers from doing their walking, nor is it enough to knock the credit card number, complete with security code from my brain.

Apparently, I went shopping while on my happy meds. Thing is, I had no clue what I bought. I looked for the confirmation email, but apparently, my subconscious didn't want me to see what I'd bought, since it appeared to have deleted that from my files as well.

Oh goody, surprises! The husband did not find this as amusing as I did, since in his words, "When you're sober, you immediately hone in on the most expensive item without even looking, but then, you're at least conscious enough to not buy it-- I can't begin to imagine what you did under the influence of drugs!"

It showed up today and really, it wasn't that bad. It was actually a very charming dress, Betsey Johnson, aqua and cream day dress-- not a color or style I would normally choose for myself, so I guess this is where the drugs came into play. The unfortunate thing is, it's a bit small through the rib cage, since I have a pretty massive rib cage compared to my waist, so back it goes.

Bummer. But it's kind of funny to see what the mind does when heavily medicated...

Well??

(And yes, I cut my head off, but my hair was doing bad things. Trust me.)

Blue Oyster Cult comes on the radio and you immediately flash to an image of a '67 Impala, roaring down a long, desolate stretch of road with a whole lotta pretty behind the wheel.

Yep.

Too much.