i'd say spring brings out the goth in me, except that everything does

I'm going to gracefully pretend the long hiatus away for the sake of my dignity -- mostly it equals "winter sucks" and "I get miserable and barely wear real clothes under my six quilts anyway". Today is warm and lovely, however! I celebrate by... wearing fur? Okay, Jo, you may be unclear on the concept here.

New favourite skirt! From Maurices, which is normally out of my price range -- even at half off several months ago this skirt was $25... but a couple of them hung around the shop so long I managed to snag it for four dollars, and was delighted. It's the perfect combination of gypsy-wear and gothery. 

My twenty-nine cent thrifted leather jacket is the funnest possible thing to wear bicycling about town; it flaps magnificently behind me and I pretend I'm in a film.

 

And you see, it really is spring. There were flowers and cats in the yard.

blouse: Rue21, quite long ago
skirt: Maurice's
stockings and boots: Kyra, on separate occasions
pendant: Michael's
gloves: Claire's clearance rack (a dollar!)

fur collar: Hot Topic
coat: thrifted

why yes, i am dressing for my eyeliner

I HAVE GOT MY CONTACTS BACK. This is a source of great and unending joy, as much as I heart my crimson geekspecs -- not only do I prefer my face without glasses, but I also no longer twitch my nose constantly to keep glasses from sliding off my face, and I can wash my face, shower, put on makeup, open hot ovens, and don turtlenecks without undue discomfort. And wear dramatic eye makeup. 

Anyway, I've been wearing favourite dresses of late -- it is definitely the weather for long dresses that will flow nicely in the wind. I've had this one for three years or so and I love how I don't even have to wear much with it to look very impressive. The pattern on this dress, guys. My oh my.

 

All items thrifted, save the cameo necklace, which is from a pendant I bought at Michael's and the cord to another necklace.

 

 This next dress has been my favourite item of clothing this autumn. For whatever reason I tend to latch onto a particular outfit every autumn, and this seems to be this year's -- I'd passed it up at Goodwill several times, thinking it was too large and not very fitted, but I love vintage floral housedresses, so I finally tried it on and it fit like a dream. Also, by then it was twenty-nine cents. \o/

I've probably worn it about ten to fifteen times since I bought it about two months ago. It is cosy and pretty and suits multiple aesthetics! Somehow, it has always resisted being blogged, however. No more!

I've been wearing it in a sort of rural, New England-gothic way mostly, although with my heavy brown boots and a cardigan it passes for something cosy and gentle as well. 

Dramatic eyeliner (how I've missed you!!) + Forever 21 Celtic-esque headwrap, hooray!

You've seen this necklace before, but I do, in fact, love it incredibly. Bonus close-up on dress pattern.

 And yes, I'm still highly enamoured of my wee Hot Topic bat necklace. And my lovely owl ring, which is beginning to be a bit tarnished. Perhaps absurdly, I tend to like my jewellery more when it no longer looks new.

It was actually quite chilly outside when I took the last set of pictures, but it's been cosy in the house all day, really! I didn't want to hunt for a jacket that I hadn't even been wearing! It would be disingenuous.

pretty things from last week

 Backlog tiiiime! A slightly grainy photograph -- taken on the way home from a shopping trip as the sun was going down -- of an outfit which greatly pleased me. So many autumn favourites coming back to play! That brown sweater with its very distinguished buttons was a mainstay of my wardrobe-of-ultimate-cosy last winter. The stockings I must have bought at some point, but I found them in my drawer last week with no memory of how or when they arrived there, and have been wearing them almost incessantly since. Skirt thrifted by way of Rue 21 two autumns ago -- I have the same skirt in a different, softer-and-darker-coloured pattern which I bought on clearance, but I missed this one and was pleased to see it turn up later. It has pockets! And large buttons showing you wear the pockets are, although both of them are off at the moment, as one fell off and I can't find it, so I cut the other one off so I can actually wear this very lovely skirt.

 

Autumnal gothic streak activate! I found this lovely blouse with corset lacing up both sides at Goodwill (of course) and can finally bring myself to throw out my former little black blouse which has holes in the lace at the neck. (I... get very sentimentally attached to my clothing.) All things thrifted, save accessories (Hot Topic, Rue 21, Claire's).

 

And once more, with my lovely long red jacket! I wore this to my weekly open mic session at the local coffee shop, although I hadn't remembered it was That Day when I was dressing. When I show up tonight in a slightly oversized cable-knit sweater, dark jeans, brogues, and a flat cap, the other denizens may be confused.

 

GLOVES OF MY DREAMS. From Claire's, ring from Rue 21. 

 

 The true root of the outfit was, of course, this exquisite little fur collar from Hot Topic -- my best friend alerted me to an online clearance sale by linking me to things I might like. Usually I say "ooooh" and then hide my wallet from myself, but. But! I have wanted a detachable fur collar for an age! And had no idea where to get one, though I keep seeing them on blogs. It ties with a little ribbon! Also it was less than three dollars. It kept slipping, so I fastened it with a cameo brooch my mother bought for me on eBay two Christmasses ago.

There are no Hot Topic stores near me at all. This is a source of great sadness.

 The root of this next outfit? I HAVE BROGUES. I HAVE BROGUES AT LAST. Real proper cosy leather ones, which I will never, ever take off. I was so close to spending irrational amounts of money to snatch some very similar ones up on eBay, but a pair finally turned up at Goodwill -- you can find anything at Goodwill eventually, but rarely when you actually specifically want it -- and I am over the moon.

 

 

They have a very slight heel, but not so much that a day of walking in them bothers me overmuch. I also ordered a lace scarf from Hot Topic with my fur collar (it made the shipping charge count for more, okay -- and it was approximately two dollars), and it was very entertaining digging around for the right sort of girl!Englishman pieces to suit everything. 

 Cosy button-down sweater, a staple of two winters ago; stripey shirt (I have a weakness for stripes), beloved peacoat, lovely lovely brogues: thrifted. Scarf: Hot Topic. Gloves and hat: Claire's. (The hat I just bought at full price omg because I have been eyeing it for months and there was ONLY ONE LEFT, HORRORS. I adore flat caps, but for whatever reason a lot of them do not fit me properly, and this one did. My father used to wear these all the time, and I've been rather cross that I could never find girl ones in the nifty patterns his came in -- no more!) Trousers: Ross Dress For Less.

Cameo bracelet, below: Walmart, from back when I occasionally found wearable jewellery there -- three years ago? Four? One of the bits fell out and it's sat in my jewellery box for several years until I suddenly remembered a) it and b) the existence of super glue and fixed it.

 

wild wind, take me home to the mists of down below

My acre-wide goth streak isn't exactly buried: but it is especially prevalent in October. It is windy and fey and dead leaves skitter eerily across the road! It is high time I pretended to be a gothic heroine! 

Yes, it's another case of having stored away a summer-bought dress till cooler weather permitted the wearing of it: I have always wanted an old-fashioned black dress with a white Peter Pan collar, and Goodwill discount racks always have what you are looking for: you know, eventually. (Sometimes it takes a few years, but hey! Surprises are fun!)

I have been having difficulty not wearing my little bat necklace every day this month. Kyra got it for me at Hot Topic, and my new hobby is wearing it with otherwise very non-gothy things and seeing if it suits (and it often does). Today it was just right and nestled neatly under my collar like a brooch. And yes, I have removed my spectacles for Exciting Eyeliner Action! (Of course when I am stuck wearing my glasses for a month is the time to finally buy and try out liquid eyeliner. The application is going to require more practise, but I am liking what I can do.)

I wanted to wear my black button earrings, actually, but could only find one; and anyway I just snatched up a set of multiple earrings from a Rue 21 clearance rack, including these pretty, elegant little crosses.

I try never to be without striped stockings of some kind: these are thigh-highs, as they were about a dollar at Rue 21 and my trusty old black and white stockings are/were in tatters. The problem is that these keep rolling themselves down. Ah well. And my beloved granny boots, thrifted by my beloveder Kyra.

 And while I've shown off my little skull-and-crossbones owl (Rue 21) before, I quite liked how this picture turned out, and I quite like the lace on these sleeves.

bat-girl?

I feel I ought to warn you lot early on: I may appear to be a GunneSax-wearing lass of the moors on occasion, but I also have black ribbons tied around my heart. In short, my gothic streak is pretty wide. I mean, it's only fair to warn you. My wardrobe is sort of like my iPod on shuffle: two outfits next to each other sometimes make no sense at all -- it's all little white dresses and floral stockings one day, eyeliner and stompy boots the next, lady-of-the-vampire-manor in sweeping lace skirts and black bodices directly afterwards, and then I might just lie about in dark jeans and a quirky t-shirt the day after that, So, you know. If you fancy a nice regular style blog you may want to go elsewhere.

Anyway, this morning I got a BOX from KYRA, my best friend, who fate has decreed to live in Alaska, for some reason. Kyra packages are always the most magnificent things ever, especially when I think I know what's in them. She found these granny boots for me, so I knew she was sending those, as well as some records (I got a gorgeous turntable for my birthday, eee!). Amusingly, they turn out to be the exact same ones I just threw out last week for having been loved actually to death, except these are, um. Well, a size that actually fits me, so I suspect fate will be a lot kinder to them. (The old ones were 7 1/2s -- how on earth did I get my feet in those? I am a 9). I had those for years and wore them everywhere until the heels kind of... broke, and the zippers got full of mud in Canso, Nova Scotia, where we attended the Stan Rogers Folk Festival and nobody told us to bring wellies. Fortunately, me being me, I had packed three pairs of boots, though none of them properly waterproof and two of them high-heeled. They kept my feet drier than my sneakers, anyway: but the zippers of my too-small already-battered granny boots never did recover. 

Anyway, not only did Kyra's package contain boots and records (Chopin! Suzanne Vega!), but also an assortment of lovely knick-knacks, and I was sorely disappointed that I could not actually wear all of them at the same time, but you will see them cropping up in future outfits no doubt. 

And then I traipsed off to the library, where... nobody even gave me an odd look, because they are all used to me, apparently.

Drink Me shirt // JC Penney; gift from Kyra
vest // Rue 21
skirt // Bonton

striped thigh-highs // Rue 21

boots // Kyra <3

lace gloves // Claire's, and... I totally bought these at full price with birthday money but love them too much to regret it

button earrings // Claire's

bat necklace // Hot Topic; gift from Kyra

hair bows // Icing? Hot Topic? I forget which; they were in Kyra's birthday parcel