Fall Fashion to Look Forward To! And Why I'm Excited :D

Well, guess what? I took the last year off from school because I was burned out and actually managed to fail a few classes (including my thesis because I totally lost interest in doing research). The goal was to get my life in order by pondering my priorities, motivations and goals. I did alot of that. I also did alot of nothing :P Ok, well, not NOTHING, but not much.

So here I sit, less than 2 weeks away from my fifth year of university! Click the logo above if you want to check out my school's website. I'll be re-taking the math class I failed, and instead of doing a thesis or other full-year research project, I'm taking a half-year research project and a course called Applied Anthropology. Those three things are all I need to get my Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology (Honours Program, which is 4 years instead of 3). I'm rounding out my course-load with 5 Native Studies classes, which I've already taken... 4 of? Maybe 5. Or 6. I'd have to check my transcript. I'm wondering if it's enough credits to count as a minor. I have to take all 8 courses to qualify for yet another student loan. I'm already up to my eyeballs, but it's either that or give up on an education.

Naturally, going back to school necessitates a discussion of fashion!


Having been out of the public eye for the last 16 months, my fashion choices were usually dictated by comfort and wearability. I chose a hoodie over a chic cashmere sweater, for example. Not to say that ALL of my "everyday" wardrobe is un-fashionable. I've been wearing my fringed black leather motorcycle jacket now that the evenings are getting distinctly cooler, and I've been wearing my purple wool/mohair overcoat at night almost all summer. Most of my tops are casual but generally "nice," like my sailor-striped tank tops with lingerie lace at the hems, or my extra-long tanks in hip colours like yellow, orange, olive and coral. I'm more upset about bottoms, which is why I have added the "angry face" tag to this post. Most of my nicer jeans are too small. Or rather, my butt is too big :( I hate to say it, but I've definitely put on weight. Ten pounds is NOT insignificant. Two of the pairs that fit are shredded at the knees. One of those pairs is getting scarily thin at the thighs and could fall apart any day now, (they ARE over a decade old, after all). My Calvin's are getting really worn at the hems. My bellbottoms shrank, so they're only barely of respectable length and get worn only when my other pants are dirty or when I don't care. Then there's my skirts! AGH! I bought *3* short skirts during spring of fourth-year (brand spanking new, so they were NOT cheap). I didn't even get to wear one of them. Now my butt is so large that they are OBSCENELY short!

So, now I shall discuss what I intend to do about these horrendous gaps in my fall wardrobe. First, I intend to EXERCISE. I have barely exercised in over a year. I have barely walked anywhere. I have been depressed, anxious about my future, and eating only once or twice a day. Hence the fatness. Secondly, I'm going to eat vegetarian as much as possible. Not to say that I'm cutting meat out. Just that I'm going to have alot of meals consisting of heaps and heaps of veggies. That will take care of my too-small jeans and my ultra-short skirts. It's not unusual for me to get results within a month when I actually *TRY* to be healthy.

I have alot of OUTRAGEOUS things that I enjoy wearing that my boyfriend just doesn't appreciate and that I've not even had much opportunity to wear lately. For example? Well, I have 2 waistcoats. Last autumn, I wore one over a sweatshirt with a Victorian-style brooch and Todd thought it was plain-and-simple wierd. Ditto with my fuschia genie-pants (NOT the same as those wretched things with the low crotch that look like you're wearing a diaper that someone for some godawful reason decided to resurrect from their 80s grave). Todd tries to ignore my motorcycle jacket because all that fringe makes his mind boggle. Let me apply the caveat that Todd does indirectly watch various iterations of Project Runway with me and can talk intelligently about fashion. There's just ALOT that he doesn't like. And now that he's seen Project Runway: Phillipines, he's always saying "If Aries was there, they'd be so screwed" or "This is crap compared to Phillipines." Ok, not always. He is slightly impressed with a design on occasion, and there is the rare "Hey, I like that!" Mostly it's "meh" or "too bloody weird" or "that looks stupid." Can't blame him, though, cuz half the time I agree :P

Stuff I really miss wearing? Well, I have an obscene white 80s belt with dangly bits at my pubis that I used to wear with my black corduroy blazer and Silver (the brand) jeans with snaps at the ankles. I used to play hackey-sack in my Steve Madden 4-inch stilleto sneaker boots. I really wish I could fit into my 70s denim catsuit (and by fit, I mean I *can* get into it right now, I just look like a sausage), as it is the pride and joy of my vintage clothing. Here it is almost 4 years ago:

So I have this thing with vintage clothes, for sure. It doesn't have to be vintage, just vintage-style. Retro, if you will. I have been keeping an eye on ModCloth for awhile now and *DROOL* I loooove their clothes! Simple tank dresses with gathered skirts, 40s-style shirtdresses (ok, ANYTHING 40s!), tulip skirts, puff sleeves, rompers, lumberjack shirts, ruffles, lace, a focus on shoulders... Wow, just, OMG! This season, there is just SO MUCH that is fashionable that I happen to *LOVE*!!!!

Like, how simple and cute is this?

Now if only BurdaStyle's JJ actually ends up in usable form instead of baggy and huge.


On an aside, I really really really HATE Blogspot's formatting. HATE IT. If you hadn't noticed before, I use a period in between my paragraphs, otherwise it refuses to preserve the double-return. On other occaisions it does THIS bullshit where I press enter once and it auto-double-returns. Halfway through a bloody post! Not to mention the picture-posting tool is a piece of garbage. It always wrecks my formatting (it adds a return between each paragraph for every effing photo you post!) and why is it that no matter where in the post my cursor is, the picture is posted to the TOP of the post??? I usually post things with the html straight out of photobucket, but when something isn't *IN* my photobucket (for example, I'm linking to a pic on someone else's website), I'm forced to use the picture-poster from hell. And I'm not packing up and leaving for the far more user-friendly TypePad. I'm established with too much info here, boohoo. I'll live. And complain.
Anyways, onwards to my fall fashion intentions! I have that Vogue jacket (view B) to finish up. Not exactly outerwear this far north, but I can leave my over-coat in the Anthro lounge (unless I wanna pony-up 10 bucks for a locker, which I haven't done in all the years I've been there).

Those are the fabrics. The green stretch-satin is the lining, the brown denim is the shell, and the bronze pleather is the accent fabric (piping and buttons), and all the exterior detail stitching is the same green as the lining. Like I said a couple posts ago, it's almost done. Just a matter of gittin'er done.
I bought some fabrics last time I was in Timmins, because Fabricland is having a moving-sale. Half-price, oooooh YEAH! I spent about $70 on well over $140 worth of supplies. I mentioned this a couple posts ago, so I'd better get to talking about it.
Here's the knits I bought, enough for at least three shirts with various combos of fabric as accents. The patterned fabric is like a bright olive green with white, 2 metres. The purple is more of a plum colour (it's pretty reddish), 2 metres. I bought only a half-metre of the pink with dots so that I wouldn't be tempted to use too much of it.

I might make something like this McCall's dress out of this GORGEOUS purple plaid wool suiting that I've been eyeballing since it was first released 2 winters ago. It went from 18 bucks per metre down to 12 per metre, down to 8 per metre in the discount area, and then with the moving sale, it became a whole 4 bucks per metre :D I bought 3 metres because I don't know precisely what I'll do with it.

There was this fabulous buttery-gold garment-vinyl in the remnant bin that my BF pounced on, thinking it'd be perfect to redo the driver's seat of his dad's Eddie Bauer Bronco. There was a total of 3.3 metres for $9.08 + tax. Too bad it's the wrong colour! It's too light, and they DID carry a slightly darker wheat colour that would match better, but it was only half-off, not remnant-bin. So I'm pondering making a short trench coat for myself out of it.

This isn't fall, but I promised I'd talk about the stuff I bought at the sale, didn't I? Todd found this gorgeous border-print fabric the previous time we'd been there (to get hunter-orange fleece for his dad's hunting shirt). I snapped it up for half-off (I think it was $5 per metre) simply because Todd liked it so much. The colours didn't quite turn out in the picture; it's lighter and not so FUSCHIA. I also got a pattern to use for it. I'll be changing the skirt to reflect ACTUAL 50s gathering techniques (at the sides or all the way around; it looks so dumb with it at the front and back). I'm doing either view A or B (sleeves or not), because I like that bateau neckline that was so popular at the time. *EDIT* I found out there's pockets on the sides made from panels that extend below the waistline from the bodice. Now I'm not sure how I'm going to alter the gathering. I'll jerry-rig something, I'm sure.

The other non-fall thing is going to be pretty cute and casual, but DEFINITELY summer, unless I visit the Phillipines or something. I figured I have one retro pattern with a full skirt, so here's a retro pattern with a straight skirt. I like view B the most, the yellow dress in the middle, as it is nice and simple for such a busy print.

An just cuz I'm at it, I'll show off the fabric I got for boyfriend-stuff. Todd is getting a pair of undies in the blue patterned stretch-satin and a long-sleeve button-down out of the fabulous plaid seersucker. Is it called seersucker? Puckery cotton, anyway.

There's some crafty things I may or may not try. I'm seriously loving the slashed top tutorial that got second place on ThreadBanger's Generation-T recon contest. The creator calls it a "fringe halter top," but it's not completely fringe, just the bottom is. You can see the photo-tute on the ThreadBanger forum. I would do it differently, though. I'd make it from scratch using a seperate collar and waistband because I want the waist part to sit at my actual waist by being tighter than the rest of the shirt. I'll figure it out.

The other thing I may or may not do involves psychotic shoulder pads. Do you read OutsaPop Trashion? Well here's all the posts about shoulder pads, and the third one down (DIY AnyWho Shoulder Decor) will lead you to AnyWho's tutorial for making removal shoulder decorations. It's weird, and it's gonna be out of style by this time next year or sooner (just like those godawful atrocities known as "hammer pants" *SHUDDER*), so I'm not sure if I'm willing to do something so wacky in a city that's not exactly known for it's fashion scene. But hey, I wandered around campus with dangly things at my crotch, and in a wool cocktail skirt and Steve Madden sneaker boots, and a 70s denim catsuit, and a pink polyester 80s neo-Victorian blouse. I went to the gay bar in denim short-shorts with silver sparkley tights under them (some people loved it, some thought it was way too hoochy). Then there's the matter of my baby-pink fur-trimmed down-filled parka. Yeah. I've worn some wierd things. Maybe I CAN handle the shoulder pads :P (Hunting down the original source of the photo below, all the way to Facehunter through Style Copycat, took some effort!!! Click it to go there).


There's a few other things I'd like to talk about, but this post is already pretty long! Holy crap, my brain vomited all this out and now I think I should go eat something :P Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments :D
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