Take My Clothes - Please!

So I decided it was time for a closet clean-out, I was feeling frumpy, dumpy, and worst of all, like my mother.

With the assistance of the lovely girls (and new friends) of Youth League and the Spies, I have a cleaned-out closet, a list of new things to get, and a fresh attitude about my clothes.

My new motto for my clothes is, "Try everything with everything! You never know what's going to work."

As in shrunken cardis work with wrap tops*:

, crazy jackets work with silk acorn-print shells, and skinny jeans work with everything.

Now that the crud is gone, I can see the forest for the trees.

I know I'm mixing my metaphors, but what a good time we had! You can read all about it here.

Now, the only question left is how do I haul all this stuff to consignment? I figure any money I can make off my old clothes can be turned into... New clothes!

*Kindly ignore the gawky pose, I had not yet had a coffee!

Stockings Stuffed to Perfection

Although Michael and I don’t always necessarily agree when it comes to fashion*, sometimes he’ll surprise me with a gift that is so out of left field and awesome I just have to crow about it. One year for my birthday it was a fabulous silver hinged necklace, that same year for Christmas it was coordinating earrings (Asymmetry! Wonderful!), and this year it was my Christmas stocking.

Along with the obligatory jewellery (“What do you want for Christmas, Jes?” “Sparklies!”), he remembered how much I love nice leg wear. The first pair I unwrapped was a lovely charcoal heather pair of Ralph Lauren angora socks. They are toasty warm and best worn in boots – especially since the boots I’ve been wearing this winter are cheap plastic numbers. But he outdid himself on the second pair – Givenchy Chevron Opaque 80 denier black tights.



These tights are fantastic with skirts and flats, or capris and boots (although I am nervous about the second combination, given my penchant for catching my tights on the zipper while crossing my legs).

Here’s the thing with expensive tights – you get what you pay for. These tights are so stretchy that it would take some pretty ragged fingernails to do damage to them. (This isn’t to say I didn’t put a teeny tiny little hole in them the first time I wore them, but I’m especially gifted when it comes to ruining new tights. I patched it up with clear nail polish, and it’s high up on the thigh, so it’s nearly invisible.) They are warm, the pattern is beautiful, and I can’t wait to go and buy more Givenchy tights!

On the subject of leg wear, I must say one thing I hate about tights is the gusset. When I am wearing stockings I am a fan of the garter belt/stocking combination, but I have yet to find a pair of high-denier tights which are a stocking style. If you see some anywhere, let me know!

*Examples include:
“That coat is weird. It looks like five coats all mashed together.”
“You look cute. And swashbuckling”
My personal favourite, starting with a scan from the feet, “Yeah, that’s a great outfit.” Then he gets to my head, with my hair in a pseudo-pompadour, tilts his head to one side, and wrinkles his forehead in consternation. He looks a bit like a cocker spaniel when this move is preformed.

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I’ll make a confession – I love high heels. And if you don’t, you should. Here’s why: when you wear high heels you walk differently. If you know how to manoeuvre them, you can flirt, tease, and drive potential partners wild without ever opening your mouth. They elongate the leg, make you look taller and slimmer, boost your calves, and make your butt stick out just enough.

Having said all that, I am a high heel addict. I am smart about it (two days on, then one day in flats), but I love shoes and my shoe collection is threatening to take over Michael’s closet as well. Last night, after tripping over a pair in the hallway, he hollered, “Your shoes will be the death of me!” But he never complains when I’m wearing them.

I have recently discovered a fabulous brand of shoes and I simply must tell you all about them. The brand is Kenzie, and I recently bought a second pair. (Up until that point, the only shoes I owned more than one pair of were Chucks.)

I fell in love with the Kenzie Marathon shoes last spring – they were so unique and cool, but unfortunately, due to governmental incompetence, I hadn’t been paid properly in about six months, and therefore could not afford them… I went back to visit them several times, and the last time I went to visit them, they weren’t on the shelf! I was devastated, and decided to check out the clearance racks. There, sitting on the rack, marked down and down and down again, were my Marathons. They were the last pair and were my size – I mean, how’s a girl supposed to resist?

A couple of months later (which is to say mid-January), I was trolling the racks at Winners looking for a decent pair of black pants for work. I found the pants, but I also stumbled upon the Kenzie Aston shoe. Needless to say, I snapped that pair right up (even though the right one seemed a little tight, which I just chalked up to my right foot being slightly bigger than my left), and took them home with me.

That evening, while lounging in front of What Not To Wear, I decided to take the stickers off my shoes. I took the sticker off the left one, and as I began to peel the sticker off the right, I noticed something strange. The size. The shoe was a full size and a half smaller than the left. “AHA!” I thought, “So that’s why it didn’t fit!”

Suffice to say, I called Winners right away, and spoke to a surprisingly helpful person, who located the correct size and set it aside for me. I picked it up the next morning and never looked back.

The moral of this story is, Kenzie shoes are super-cute, crazy-comfortable and well worth their price. However, if you want them, you might have to work for them. Because anything worth having comes at a cost.