hero worship

earrings - Anthropologie / purse - Athens tourist shop / cardigan - Ann Taylor / henley tank - Target / wide-leg jeans - Gap / ring - Amsterdam shop / shoes - Target  

Yesterday was another long, rainy (why are they always rainy?) moving day, complete with tram strikes in Amsterdam, delays due to hail-damaged train tracks, and exploring a whole new bizarrely-stocked apartment kitchen ('Ooh, this time our only knife is... a cheese knife! And we only have dessert-sized plates! Awesome!'), but after all that, we're now all moved in to our new home for the week - Cologne!

Our first order of business today was to pay a visit to the Kolumba Museum, an art museum built by Peter Zumthor (my absolute favorite architect) on the archeological site and ruins of a Roman house turned medieval church. The new museum building manages to incorporate those ruins (and a 1950s chapel) into a single, elegant brick volume. The gallery interiors are incredibly spare, but a close look reveals numerous bespoke details that give Zumthor's minimalism its characteristic richness. (Have I mentioned how bummed I am that we probably won't be making it to Vals on this trip?)

Unfortunately, while Zumthor's building managed to bring a multitude of disparate elements into a single, cohesive whole (I mean, just look at that second photo - dude can pattern-mix!), I can't say I quite managed to do the same with this outfit. This is sort of what happens when I wake up with something to wear in mind, then look at the weather forecast and second-guess that first instinct - I wind up in something a little odd and undercooked. I love the print of this sweater, and the way it looks with the olive color of this tank, but I think the proportion of the cardigan looks a bit off paired with these wide leg jeans. Of course, in retrospect I now know exactly what I wish I'd worn to visit my first Zumthor project in person (mixed patterns in neutral monochrome, all the way), but I suppose you can't plan everything.

de stijl

earrings - handmade by Carie of Pretty Little Mountains, won in giveaway / purse - Athens tourist shop / linen blazer - vintage, thrifted / black scoop-neck tee - UO / belt - vintage, thrifted / maxi skirt - Target / ring - Nasty Gal / sandals - UO  

Tomorrow is another moving day, so I am completely out of brain juice at this point - I have already deleted this post by accident once already!

I wore this over the weekend on a day trip to Utrecht, to see, among other things, Gerrit Rietveld's Schroeder House. Because I am a huge nerd, I dressed to match the house, and was beyond tickled to title this post 'De Stijl'. Because in addition to being the last good White Stripes album, 'De Stijl' was an early twentieth century Dutch movement in art, design, and architecture, but literally translated it just means "the style." And this is a style blog. Get it?

(See, I told you I was a nerd.)

hot 'dam

necklace - Forever 21 / purse - Athens tourist shop / pink v-neck - Target / braided belt - vintage, thrifted / rings - Amsterdam shop / shorts - thrifted and hemmed (check out great tutorials here and here) / woven flats - UO 

So you remember waaaay back at the beginning of the month when I posted this little snapshot of some Massachusetts thrift finds? And then you caught a glimpse of some fancy little scallops peeking out of my suitcase? And then last week I griped about 'dressing my best' when so much of my best still needs to be bundled up under sweaters and scarves, lest it freeze off?

Well, evidently the universe heard me loud and clear because today the Netherlands experienced a little one-day heat wave, and I finally got to break out these shorts and show off some leg! I love my legs - I rowed crew in eighth and ninth grade, and they've been sweet enough to hang on to most of that rower's muscle tone for almost fifteen years now. Their slim-ankled, feminine silhouette belies some serious power; I can easily beat my soccer-playing boyfriend in leg-wrestling (what, you don't try to best your partner in physical combat?) and my left calf is almost certainly my strongest body part. (It's also bigger than my right - driving a stiff-clutched manual transmission for a decade will do that to you.) So while I wasn't thrilled to be sweating buckets on an un-air-conditioned tram ride, I was still glad for the opportunity to show off my gams in my frilly pink shorts.

(To continue our tour of Dutch architectural landmarks, this is one of the Borneo-Sporenburg bridges by West 8.)



To learn more about Dress Your Best, and to find other bloggers who are participating, please check out this post at academichic.

shorty

necklace - vintage, great-grandmother's  / pink striped sweater - H&M / gray v-neck - Target / wood & brass bangle - vintage, thrifted / jeans - UO / brogues - Primark

With this outfit I decided to challenge myself a little by highlighting something about my body I'm still working on really loving - my height. Or rather, my lack thereof. As a kid, I grew fast. I hit my current height at ten and was taller than everyone in my fifth grade class - and then, I just stayed there. At a little over 5'4" (I confess - my driver's license claims I'm 5'5"!), I'm certainly not unusually short, but I doubt anyone will be describing me as a 'tall drink of water' anytime soon. (Case in point: both these 'ankle' length jeans and my 3/4 sleeve sweater have to be seriously rolled up to fit that way!)

Since I'm not too likely to get another growth spurt, I've been working on getting more comfortable with my stature, and doing my best to resist the idea that looking taller (and/or thinner) should be my first priority when choosing what to wear. To that end, with this outfit I tried to break as many rules for shorties as I could - I've got horizontal stripes, a boxy top layer, a long shirt that cuts me off at the hips, cuffed jeans, and flat shoes. I even eschewed the lengthening effects of a long pendant in favor of a shorter vintage necklace. According to a million 'dress your figure' magazine articles, everything about this should be unflattering, but while I don't look tall, I do look like me.

(And for all my fellow arch nerds, that's Stephen Holl's Sponge Pavilion I'm standing - nay, trespassing - in front of. That's right, I will totally break the law for you guys.)




To learn more about Dress Your Best, and to find other bloggers who are participating, please check out this post at academichic.

face it

scarf - import shop in Copenhagen / necklace - vintage, Brooklyn flea market / blazer - vintage, thrifted  / tote - Forever 21 / striped shirt - H&M / overdyed skinnies - Zara / sneakers - Target

Well, we're once again canalside - this time in Amsterdam! We took the bus from Brussels yesterday (more like a series of buses, with a long, unexpected visit to Antwerp en route), and we've since been walking all over the city, taking in the whole chaotic mix of charming neighborhoods and trashy tourist-traps and doing our very best not to get run down by texting cyclists. While we don't have much of a kitchen (at the end of this trip, I may be writing a cookbook on one-pan, no-utensils hot-plate dinners), our skylight-illuminated shed off a back courtyard might be the most charming place we've stayed yet, and our neighborhood is fantastic.

Along with exploring our new city, over the next week I'll be participating in Dress Your Best Week, the brainchild of the ladies over at academichic. The concept is simple, and yet can have such an impact on how you feel - rather than dressing to hide your less favorite parts of your body, to participate in Dress Your Best, all you have to do is think of a part of yourself that you love and build an outfit that highlights it. I know that so many women (myself among them) struggle with body-positivity, and it's all too easy to let the way you dress be dictated by body-insecurity, so DYB is a great way to shake up the way you see yourself. To learn more about Dress Your Best, and to find other bloggers who are participating, please check out this post at academichic.

Of course, all that being said, I hadn't exactly counted on Low Country weather when I made my list of favorite body parts - it's tough to rock a pair of shorts, or a collarbone-baring deep v-neck top when the temperature rarely tops 63 and the wind won't die down! So today I was forced to just go for it and celebrate one of my favorite (even if I feel a little silly saying so) parts - my face. It's been with me my entire life (and completely unchanged - just top with blond curls and you have me at age two), and I think it is the one part of my body that I have never wished to change. I love my brows, my dark blue eyes, my incredibly forgiving skin, the dot under my right eye, and the front tooth I chipped on a microphone at drama camp. More than any other part of me, my face feels like me - so today I circled it with a bold orange scarf, kept the rest of my outfit simple, and let my face be the star.

unruly

sunglasses - Nasty Gal / necklace - Forever 21 / jacket - Forever 21 / tote - Forever 21 / silk shirt - vintage, thrifted / overdyed skinnies - Zara / sneakers - Target

I really wanted to post these pictures yesterday, but the last minute scrambling of another international move got in the way - honestly, you'd think I'd be better at planning those by this point! Of course I'm now completely exhausted from the moving day from hell (honestly, I'm a very non-confrontational person, but I came this close to physical violence today - but more on that another time) and have a rapidly dying laptop battery with no hopes of a quick recharge (when you plug in your adapter and it emits visible sparks and pops back out of the outlet with a crack, that's a bad thing, right?), so I'm afraid this will have to be a little short and sweet.

I wore this outfit on a day trip to Bruges over the weekend; since I knew we'd be doing a great deal of walking (and having become accustomed to the highly variable Belgian weather), I opted for lightweight layers, a tote bag big enough for a few umbrellas, and comfortable sneakers. We managed to avoid getting rained on until the very end of our walk back to the train station, but the breeze was pretty stiff all day - I had a hard time finding any photos in which my shirt hadn't blown up or my bangs weren't flying around like crazy. I loved the color of this blouse with my jacket and necklace, and it kept my outfit easy without leaving me feeling sloppy or underdressed. Naturally, I managed to get a little teeny ketchup stain on the hem while sharing some frieten with Chris, but I've chosen to just think of it as a distinctly Flemish souvenir.

stripes again

necklace - Forever 21 / jacket - Forever 21 / tote - Forever 21 / striped dress (worn as a top) - Old Navy / belt - vintage, thrifted / skirt - homemade / brogues - Primark

We snapped these pictures on our way to the incredible Victor Horta house museum over the weekend - it's a good thing they didn't allow photos in the house, or you would be absolutely inundated with Horta pictures right now! I knew going in that I could expect the incredible (some might say obsessive) attention to detail that I've always loved about Art Nouveau buildings, but what I wasn't expecting was how much I would love the colors of the interiors! In particular, the real pièce de résistance was the central staircase, with its warm, cognac-colored wood, blush pink carpet, and incredible pink, mustard, and gold ornamental painting on all the walls - all of my favorites!

On an entirely unrelated note, I was recently interviewed by Smashion.com - if you haven't heard of Smashion before, it's a cool site where you can shop for (or sell, without fees!) new or gently used clothes and accessories from other users - so there are definitely some great deals to be found! You can read the interview here.