Outfit - Oct. 24

Oh snaps! Two outfit posts in and I think I already made a mistake.


To be honest, I'm not exactly sure where I was going with this. I saw the jester tights on clearance at SockDreams and thought, "Oh man, those are too quirky and awesome!" They were a little less awesome in person because they felt kinda itchy and were less opaque than I was expecting. Being a stubborn mule, I was determined to find a way to wear these. My boyfriend said it wasn't half bad but it needed some red in my top.

Turtleneck - ????
Miniskirt - Target
Tights - SockDreams (items on clearance)
Shoes - stage dancing shoe from ages ago. Still my favorite and most comfortable heels
Earrings - Strawberries with glass diamonds. Goodwill, I think.

It was not a total loss. I went to my boyfriend's place where he has a backyard that leads to a stream and is beautiful. So I began acting like a five-year-old child and started kicking up leaves and messing with his cat.

This woman will be turning 6 years old soon.

Outfit - Oct. 20

Oh yeah. This blog is about clothes. Maybe I should do a post about that.



Yep. That's the creator of Good Looking Corgi in all of my 5'7" awkward camera pose glory. I have a tripod but it was elsewhere at the time, so I set the camera on a box o' stuff in the room.

Shirt - American Living. It has the cutest buttons on the shoulder but my hair is hiding them.

Skirt - Goodwill. Tag says Worthington. It also says petite but that's a pretty long skirt on a tall person.

Tights - Gray. Came from a cardboard suitcase I had in my room.

Shoes - clearance rack at... somewhere.

Strangers are talking to me

Yesterday, a boy in one of my classes asked me suddenly, "You got that coat from Delias, right?"

I was surprised that an unknown person was not only speaking to me but he was a boy who also knew exactly where my coat came from. It unnerved me a bit. For a brief moment, I felt paranoid. How could he know exactly what I was wearing and where it came from? Did he want my coat for himself? Would he murder me for the coat or was there the possibility a stranger might skin me to make a new coat? I don't think I would make a very good trenchcoat at all. A jacket maybe.

"Uh, yeah," I responded, so gracefully. "I had my sheepskin jacket and marshmellow shaped parka. Nothing for fall."

"I was so going to get that for my girlfriend!"

And then we had a conversation about how pea coats are awesome. Yay! A new friend!

Shame on me for reverting to gender stereotypes. I often forget that men can be interested in women's clothing in a non-transvestite way . Just because my boyfriend looks like he fell into a Goodwill bin and climbed out dressed doesn't mean all men are like that.

Halloween - Part 3 - Costumes to avoid

There are few things more awkward than showing up to a costume party wearing a sexy bee-girl costume that you bought at the last second because you didn't know what else to get. What is more awkward is showing up to a party in a last-minute-decision sexy bee costume and seeing that a dozen other girls have the same awkward costume that they picked up at Wal-Mart that day on their lunch breaks.

Maybe that sort thing of doesn't bother other people but when I see people in identical costumes, I assume they are henchmen for a supervillian or a chorus line for an impromptu musical number.

Being a lackey isn't that great

This is part of my beef with store-bought costumes, but there's many other reasons. Halloween is about fun and you can't be having too much fun if you're itchy and sweaty from crappy polyester. Plus a lot of costumes are expensive and not worth a fraction of the price.

But mostly a lot of costumes suck. For example:

Target - Transformer Optimus Prime Costume

This is a sad Optimus Prime costume. Take away the helmet and it'd be the coolest pajamas an eight-year-old boy could have, but it's terrible for Halloween. Also note that the kid isn't wearing shoes. He's wearing matching socks with his costume. Poor kid will have bullies giving him books on Halloween just so they can dump them.

Target - Kids Goth Ann Costume

It used to be that people go as "a goth" for Halloween. This year a new trend emerge: gothic versions of classic costumes. So now we have gothic lolita Raggedy Ann for all the little girls who want to be a hit at the next preschool rave.

UPS Worker toddler costume

Putting your child in this costume is a red flag for child protective services. I'm not saying you're a bad parent but maybe you're the opposite of a good parent.

Rat trap costume

The kind of guy who wears a giant dead rat (with no arm holes) to a party is not the kind of guy you would want to date. He's probably the type of person who tells the family dead baby jokes over Thanksgiving dinner and then whines that his family doesn't understand his edgy sense of humor.

Boy's Freddy Kruger costume

As a rule of thumb, if a child is not old enough to see the movie, he cannot dress up as a character from it.

Teen's Pinhead costume

To be honest, this isn't a bad costume, but I am a little bit worried that this was listed under "Children's costumes".

Kids' Yu-Gi-Oh! costume

This costume is frightening with its bizarre inhuman face But once bullies recover from the immediate anime-induced shock, they will beat the crap out of this kid.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this costume will probably sell very well with the cool kids. Not because of the subject of the costume, but because you cold turn the purple suit into a decent Joker outfit if you're mom would buy you that costume because she thinks Heath Ledger was too scary for your age group.

I don't have a beef with pet costumes. After all, they can be hard to sew and it is pretty funny to see your confused dog or angry cat wandering the house dressed as a frog. It is pretty harmless-

Harem dog costume

Holy crap, it's a sexy dog costume. This is unacceptable. That dog is wearing a bra!

I love "The Devil Panties"

And lastly, a personal story about Halloween stores:

Every mid-sized city has a skeevy costume store that's rented and open for about two months of the year. It will be a store far too large for its inventory and, instead of actual shelves, will only have peg boards to display their wares. It will be dimly lit and just barely meets the safety and fire codes. But there will be a lot of intricate decorating items for your yard. (My favorite was a life size robotic zombie that realistically threw up toxic waste into a barrel.)

The other day I popped in one of places just to see what they have. Eventually a greasy employee caught me playing with the wigs.

"Can I help you?" he asked.
"Uh... no, I was just playing," I answered truthfully.
"No, that's cool," he said. "But if you are wondering, we have a ton of sexy girl costumes in the back. You can even try the on here. As many as you like." *wink wink*

Nothing says "We are creepy and there are cameras in the dressing rooms" like encouraging female costumes to try on many sexy girl costumes.

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For further research:
Fashion SWAT: Halloween Edition - Please see #7
Halloween SWAT 2

Halloween - Part 2 - Inspiration

"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

To be honest, I have no idea what this is
but I'll go as it next year

"But," you say, "I don't know what to wear for Halloween this year and I don't have a spare change of some country's traditional costume to wear. Should I go to the store and get a costume?"

Stop right there, civilian! Halloween is fun because you either 1) spent months painstalking making a detailed costume that about three people will get, or 2) throw a costume together from whatever you have lying around the house. Store bought costumes usually blow and should only be bought as a last resort, such as if your planned costume perished in a fire and you have a party to go to as your house is still smoldering.Usually store costumes are itchy, expensive, and barely hold together through the night. (Store bought parts of costumes are OK though.)

But where to get an idea for a costume? Fear not, citizen. The Internet is here to help you.

I present The Something Awful Forum's Halloween thread. Over 30 pages of freakiest and geekiest people posting past costumes and current plans for this year. If there is one thing SA goons like, it's nerdy costumes. Frequent favorites are the classic cardboard box robot, Portal themed costumes, Daft Punk, Hunter S. Thompson, zombies of all careers, beer box/playing card samurai, Captain Hammer, Pyramid Head, and horse heads.



Thirst for Savings's Pyramid Head costume. Myspace Pose.


Henchmen #21 and #24 from "The Venture Brothers" and some women flashing their undies


Rorschach


Fnordia as Mothra! (Bonus: The tiny psychic twins)


Kalho Freida by spoch

Other Ideas:

• For people who majored in art history: Consider Van Gogh. Tape over one of your ears. Carry a wax ear with you in a bloodied tissue.
• Get a couple friends and go as The Bag Brothers: Plastic, Paper, and Sleeping!
• If you can pull at your eyelids, dress completely normal and wear these "Jaws" sclera contacts. This is much more frightening to see in real life than you'd expect.
• Dress normally but wear a horse head mask.

• To be one of the "Golden Girls" is easy to do. Don't tell your mom though what you're borrowing her clothes/jewelry for. She might get upset and have another midlife crisis.
• Going with a date? Forget the tired cliches of Cleopatra/Mark Antony, pimp/ho, or devil/angel. Go as Carmen Sandiego and Where's Waldo.
• Failing anything, decapitate a Carebear and wear its corpse.

Do Not Want: Peep Toe Oxfords

Nine West. Picture from Amazon.com

I do not understand peep toe oxfords.

To be fair, I didn't really like peep toe shoes when they came back in style a few years ago. As a cold limbed person, I thought, "Not only are your toes going to be freezing but a lot of people nasty looking toes." Eventually I realized cold feet don't bother most people, peep toe shoes are actually cute, and I'm just gonna have to deal with people with waaaaay too long of toes, even if their toes are the same length as a normal person's fingers. It's freaky but I can deal with that.

Then oxfords came along. "Aww!" I said in the store, a little too loudly. "Saddle shoes but for sexy grown ups!"

But it seems weird that these two shoe genres have met. Oxfords are very strict looking, like something a stern but unnervingly attractive school teacher would wear in an imaginary pep school. Peep toe shoes are playful and summery, flashing ankle and toe clevage to the delight of foot fetishists across the world. It's two different shoes philosophies that are contradictory and may actually cause a philosophical rip in space and time.

So I just don't get why you get a pair of oxfords shoes and then cut a bunch of holes in it.

Halloween - Part 1

Halloween is a-coming! It's the Christmas for goths!

October 31st is the best holiday for many reasons. As a kid, you dress up, run around the neighborhood, and get free candy which you will quickly gorge yourself sick on if you mother was quick enough to take all the cheap chocolate away from you. As a teenager, you go to haunted houses or engage in vandalism. As a grown up, you dress up in kinky costumes, go to parties, drink too much, and then come home and drunkenly pay the babysitter the wrong amount. Way better than Christmas or Thanksgiving. No awkward family get together and you're more likely to have sex because the family won't throw all the coats on the bed.

Every August I start making plans for elaborate costumes or pranks and then get tired with it by the end of September and rarely ever carry through with my planning. You will never know how many times I have given up on a zombie Marie Antionette only to go as a sexy cat girl or generic gothic angel.

This isn't me in the picture.
I'm nowhere near that stereotypically hot.

Last year I was in Germany and bought a dirndl as part of my collection of bizarre souvenirs. So this year I'll be abusing another country's traditional dress for Halloween. If any Germans are offended, you can dress up as a drunken Uncle Sam if it will make you feel better.