After two years of living in Long Beach, and two years of schooling at California State University, I finally made a visit to the Earl Miller Japanese Garden. It’s a lush, gorgeous sanctuary tucked away on campus. A wonderful area to meditate, nature watch, take photos or just relax with a friend.
Wearing:
Hat: sample sale
Cardigan: Nordstrom Rack
Dress: Lush
Necklace: H & M
Belt: Anna Klein
Bag: Big Buddha
Sandals: Do you love them? I got them at Ross! 
Last year I had the pleasure of attending a fabulous little flea market on Treasure Island in San Francisco. Trinkets, gifts, jewelry and vintage galore! I came across a seller with a ton of vintage hats, and immediately had love at first sight for this beautiful beaded hat.
I’ve had the hat for over a year but I haven’t had a chance to wear it because I didn’t have the right dress. Finally, I stumbled upon the perfect dress.
Who doesn’t love mint? The texture, the taste, the color? Mint is all around fabulous and a fantastic color for any skin tone. I recently bought this dress off the 50% off rack at Blink in Downtown Disney.The perfect dress, in the perfect color to go with my perfect little 1950′s beaded cap.
Pastels, feminine frills (and polyester) were all the rage in the 1950′s, so this outfit might as well have been pulled out of a time capsule!
On this day, I ventured to the mall with my girlfriend to do a little shopping. Of course I get a lot of blank stares from most people, but it’s always worth it when I see little girls faces light up, their eyes widen and I hear “Mommy, mommy, look at the beautiful lady.” And as the mom whisks her off the other direction, without even turning around, the little girl’s head is turned all the way around watching me as long as she can. It means a lot to me because, I was SO that little girl when I was young… being mesmerized by glamorous women as they walked by. I hope that every one of those little girls grows up to love and live their own fashion fantasies and maybe even have a blog to go with it!
Everything in this look just came together how I dreamed it would when I bought the hat. Don’t ask me how I got that crazy wavey bouffant on the one side of my head, because that was a one time deal and I haven’t replicated it since. Sometimes my hair just does what it wants.
Shoes: Guess
Bag: Big Buddha
Dress: Almost Famous
Hat: Vintage (Marshall Field & Co.)
Another day of the year for me to dress up. I love it!
This year I didn’t have an actual “costume” I just threw a bunch of stuff together to create a look. Sort of a hippie, gypsy, gothic tribes woman sort of deal. I nicknamed this look: Diamond Sinclair.
A few of my favorite Halloween moments from this year…
Top photo: My dear friend Lisa is now… a ZOMBIE!!!
Middle photo: Willow giving us the best La Llorona.
Bottom photo: Andrea monitoring the halls and writing people up. (The wig was not an original part of her costume, but was added later due to the pure hilarity of it.)
I hope your Halloween was filled with fantastic costuming, candy and memories!
Ahhhh yes, a day in the park… not just any day in the park, but the 10th annual Burning Man, Los Angeles Decompression festival at LA Historical Park.
This particular event can be described as a small taste of Burning Man culture in the heart of Los Angeles. You’ll find large scale art installations, interactive theme camps, fire dancers, aerialists, art cars, happy people and my favorite… outrageous fashion. Burners (people who attend the Burning Man festival) love to exercise their radical self expression with fashion, one of the reasons I LOVE the Burning Man festival.
A few weeks ago my mom came over and had sewn me three items. The first and second items didn’t excite me too much, however she then pulled out a sparkly, silver, disco ball wad of cloth and wowed me!
Here’s the thing about my mom and me… We are almost complete opposites. I am very out-going, social, adventurous, playful and eccentric where as my mother has always been a homebody, and on the quieter side. If we were an ice cream flavor… she would be vanilla and I would be cotton-candy-bubble-gum-birthday-cake-marshmellow-explosion.
So she shows up at my apartment with this awesome sparkly, wearable disco ball and I LOVE IT! My mom makes several attempts through out the year to get my “fashion tastes” and doesn’t always hit the nail on the head although I appreciate her efforts. So here we are, and she has sewn me this awesome top and is thrilled that I love it so of course I had to wear it to the Decompression festival.
Isn’t it fabulous?
The top runs a little big, so I gathered it in the back and safety pinned it to fit to my figure a little better. I thought it actually looked cuter with the way the cloth folded in the back.
My hat was decorated by me with a hundred or so Swarovski crystals glued to the top in the shape of the “Man” (the Burning Man icon), also a few more crystals glued to the roses on the hat. The band across my forehead I made that morning. Just glued a bunch of hematite Swarovski crystals to a thin ribbon and tied it on. The ring on my finger is so futurisitc looking and can actually be worn two different ways. Whether the point goes forward or backward, it’s an awesome ring. I found it a jewelry boutique in downtown LA.
As you can see, this particular day in the park brings out the most fabulous of fashions and you really get to see so much creativity. The last guy was great, he made his hat and his friend made him his suit… I thought he matched me quit well.
All in all the day was fantastic and everyone LOVED my top, and frankly the best part was saying, “My mom made it.”
If you are regularly following and reading my blog, then you must know by now… my style has a lot of “edge” to it. Sure, I can do the feminine, girly, frilly thing and it is fun (sometimes). But for the most part, I love to incorporate studs, black, leather, spikes, lace and unique jewelry to create an edgy appeal.
On this day I chose to re-create an entirely different look with my gorgeous burn-out velvet kimono featured in a previous post.
By simply pairing the kimono with all black and silver accents I’ve created a look with a lot of sass, punk, glam and edge!
Easy outfit made up of black skinnies, a black tank, and the kimono. As always, an outfit is never complete without at least two accessories. Think rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings, headbands, hair clips, etc. ALWAYS accessorize to complete the look!
Feather earrings: Beth Nouveau
Bag: Big Buddha
Shoes: Jeffrey Campbell
Kimono: eBay
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Remember when yellow gold was really popular in the 80′s and early 90′s??? Then it became unpopular, and silver and white gold reigned for about a decade and a half and now here we are, with yellow gold going strong alongside various other metals (silver, platinum, white and rose gold). Crazy how even the color of a metal can be “in” one day and “out” the next.
I personally favor all silver, platinum, titanium, stainless steel AND all shades of golds. A different metal to match a different mood (and outfit of course!)
I recently picked up a few gold toned pieces that I adore and wanted to share:
All of the jewelry except the wrap watch are from sample sales that I attend in downtown LA every month. The wrap watch comes from a store called Blink (a sister store of Wet Seal) and was a gift from a friend.
Find your gold (even if it is just cheapy costume “gold”), dust it off, and let it shine.
And by tea… I mean pure, hard liquor.
Let me start by saying this outfit was created around the shoes. My new Jeffrey Campbells. I’ve been creating a lot of outfits lately with gold accessories, and yet I didn’t have the shoes to match, so I’ve been on the hunt for some edgy Jeff Campbells with gold hardware instead of silver. As you may or may not know… JC shoes are rather expensive and these particular shoes I’ve had my eyes on for a while and were originally almost $300. Yikes!!! I checked online a few days ago and what do you know… they are on sale for $185. They were practically screaming at me to buy them. And I was going to buy them, oh yes…. I was going to buy them! Just before I clicked the “commit to buy” button, a thought popped into my head.
Check Craigslist.
First of all, I am a HUGE fan of Craigslist. Craigslist has brought me SO much good in my life and zero bad. Many people are hesitant to use the site because some idiot murderer had to go ruin it for all of us CL fans. I personally have used the site well over 100 times to buy, sell, meet and greet.
So on this merry day, I searched “Jeffrey Campbell shoes” on Craigslist in the Los Angeles area. What do you know… a girl is selling the EXACT shoes I want, in MY size…. AND!!!!!! She lives in Long Beach. It was truly meant to be. She sold me these babies BRAND NEW, still wrapped in the box for $120!!!!! Whaaaaaat?!?!?!? I KNOW! Thank YOU Craigslist!!! Here they are, in all their shiny, metallic, spiked glory:
You’re probably thinking either of two thoughts:
a) WOW! Those are crazy or b) Doesn’t she already have shoes like that?
Yes and yes. They are pretty wild… and sharp, and I do have similar style JC shoes… however the ultimate difference is the gold hardware. One of my fashion rules (and many other fashionistas) is that you simply cannot mix metals. You can’t have a bunch of silver jewelery on, with gold heels. Or vice versa. Pick a metal, and stick to it. Hence why I wanted to add some gold hardware shoes to my wardrobe. You get it.
The blazer is from Ross, $20. The bag is by Big Buddha which I scored for wholesale cost ($36) since I interned for the company. The Union Jack tank I’m wearing is by Forever 21, however I found it at a tiny little sample/factory sale store in downtown LA and paid $5 for it. The lovely little gold circle pins on my blazer are all vintage pieces that I picked up at a flea market in San Francisco.
Meeting with the Gov’na to grab a spot of “tea” at my local piano bar.
I dedicate this post to Craig.