black magic

jean jacket - LOFT, thrifted / necklace - clyde's rebirth / v-neck - Old Navy / friendship bracelet - gift from high school boyfriend / watch - Arkanoplatz flea market, Berlin / pleated skirt - vintage Liz Claiborne, thrifted / clogs - Target

Both this jacket and skirt were scored on an incredibly fruitful thrifting trip with Tania last week. I've worn the jacket nearly every day since, but this pleated skirt felt like the real 'find' of the day. I've been itching for a longer sheer black skirt for a long time, and for just $2.50, this one really fit the bill. The pleated chiffon feels so dreamy and perfectly floaty, I'm afraid these photos really don't do this magic skirt justice. For a day spent birthday shopping with my mom (tomorrow I'll hit the big 2-7), I loved it with high platforms and this amazing wood and brass necklace I recently bought from Merl, and I'm looking forward to pairing it with tights and cozy sweaters as the weather continues to cool off.

And just in case you haven't seen it yet, yesterday Elaine of Clothed Much featured me in her 'Blog Crush' series! Hers was one of the very first style blogs I ever read, so I'm quite flattered. You can read the whole interview here.

stung

necklace - vintage, Brooklyn flea market / silk blouse - mommed  / belt - vintage, thrifted / shorts - vintage, thrifted & hemmed / watch - Arkonaplatz flea market, Berlin / ring - Primark / woven flats - UO

Happy Yellow Day! If I could only wear one outfit for the entire rest of the summer, this would probably be it. This cheerful shade of sunny, marigold-y yellow is my absolute favorite color, so I couldn't have been more pleased when yellow was chosen as this month's Everybody Everywear theme. I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to debut these awesome yellow shorts that I thrifted in Massachusetts last month and subsequently hemmed - paired with this dreamy silk blouse and a few favorite pieces of gold jewelry, this was a perfect outfit for a sunny trip to the awesome flea markets of Mitte and Prenzlauerberg on Sunday.

My sunny shorts did have one drawback though - bees like them too. A curious yellowjacket flew right up the back and stung me on the leg! It had been a while since I'd been stung, and man, I'd forgotten how much that can hurt! Fortunately I'm not allergic, so aside from some awkward public cursing and flailing (having a bee up your shorts can lead to some highly embarrassing gestures), I haven't suffered any real ill effects.

A few of you have asked me for a packing tips post over the last few months, and your requests have finally been answered - I have a guest post over on sartoriography today that's all about how I pack! You can read it here, and then be sure to head over to Everybody Everywear to check out how other bloggers are wearing my favorite color!

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.

banana banana

earrings - Boston street vendor / chambray button-down - thrifted Banana Republic / braided leather belt - vintage, thrifted / wide leg jeans - Banana Republic / red T-strap sandals - UO 

I've been a big fan of the double-denim look for the last year or two, and have been especially smitten with a few recent looks incorporating wide leg jeans, so I was especially excited to get back this great chambray shirt in my recent bunch of clothes from home. While Chris wasn't too crazy about my Canadian tuxedo (when I ask him what he thinks of my outfit, getting a silent half-smile does not mean good things), I absolutely loved it - it was the perfect outfit for our last day in Paris, a day of frantic packing and cleaning followed by an incroyable dinner out (confit de canard avec aligot - my arteries do not thank me, but my tastebuds sure did) and an awesome, cheesily romantic trip to the top of the Eiffel Tower at dusk.

I already tweeted about this earlier, but my little blog seems to be on a bit of a hot streak today - one of my photos popped up on WearColor (one of my absolute favorite tumblrs, courtesy of Mallory of Where the Lovely Things Are), Tania gave my milkmaid braid tutorial a shout-out over on What Would a Nerd Wear, and the other emily officially hit 500 followers! It really does mean so, so much to me that you guys take the time to stop by my blog (and sometimes even say hi!), so thank you. And although we're still reeling a bit from our most recent move, I hope to get back to answering all your lovely comments (and letting you in on where we are now!) by tomorrow.

funny thing

sunglasses - H&M / necklace - vintage, Secondskinstyle via etsy / tank - Anthropologie / purse - Athens tourist shop / wide leg jeans - Banana Republic / shoes - Toms

Saturday marked the start of Culture Week here in Italy, in which many museums and cultural institutions offer extended hours and free entry to the public (and into which we stumbled unawares, entirely by blind luck). We decided to make the most of it by visiting arguably* the most popular tourist destinations in the city - the Colosseum and the Forum. Despite my awful musical theater reference of a title (thanks, high school Emily!), nothing particularly funny happened on our way there, although we did develop a theory to explain the behavior of tourists at busy landmarks. It seems that as soon as you leave your home country, those around you cease to be 'people' and become 'physical obstacles,' to be shoved liberally as needed. A screaming red sunburn also seems to be the preferred style for American and British visitors; while the occasions upon which I've been mistaken for an Italian have been quite few, I've still been assiduously applying and reapplying my SPF+50 in hopes of at least being taken for a Swede.

Neither this outfit nor these high-contrast mid-day photos are particularly my favorite, but I'm still trying to get the hang of dressing for such suddenly warm weather. I picked up these new shades on a surprise trip to H&M last week - while they're probably not the most flattering to my face (nor anywhere near as beautiful as the RetroSuperFuture Ilarias of my dreams), it's nice to be able to switch things up a bit from my decrepit Wayfarer knockoffs.

In blog news, the wicked talented Katie of I Go by Katie wrote a sweet little feature about my blog on Friday, so be sure to check that out here (and get addicted to her pretty, pretty blog. I did.). I took a little time last night to copy my posts from Turkey over from my Tumblr to my archives here on Blogger, so now you can read them all here. I also went through over a month's worth of posts and updated my 'in the bag' page, where you can see just what's crammed into my suitcase right now and how I've worn it on the blog.

And to all my subscribers (including a lot of new readers - welcome!), I just wanted to say a little thank you; I have so been enjoying blogging as a creative and social outlet while traveling, and I am so ridiculously flattered by your sweet comments, tweets, emails, and support. I have been a fairly sucky correspondent in the few weeks, but rest assured - I want to internet hug you all.

*I say 'arguably,' because based on my entirely unscientific research, the most popular destination in Rome is the Vatican - but as the Vatican isn't technically 'in Rome,' one could argue that it doesn't count. Semantic footnotes are just fascinating, no?
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eternal city

earrings - Anthropologie / sunglasses - thrifted / trench - H&M / bag - Athens tourist shop / dress - thrifted / tights - Target / boots - Steve Madden

While I usually wind up posting my outfits a few days after I wear them (and I still have more photos to share from Greece), I just couldn't wait to share these photos we took today in our new home-away-from-home - Rome! After dragging ourselves to the airport at an ungodly hour this morning, we arrived in Italy early in the afternoon, did our best to rid ourselves of the smell of airplane, and set out in search of pizza and piazzas. Naturally we found both in spades, and wound up walking from the Colosseum to Vatican City, with a long break for some excellent pizza con funghi e vino (molto, molto vino!). While I may have gotten an asymmetrical sunburn from sitting perpendicular to the sun, it was a beautiful afternoon, full of inspired dialogue like, "Oh! That building looks familiar, what is that?" and "Man, I should have paid better attention in all those architectural history courses..." Fortunately we have the whole week to figure out the landmarks that left us stumped.

My post-flight outfit was directly inspired by three gorgeous Italian girls I saw at the baggage claim - all three were sporting incredible long hair, killer motorcycle jackets, and flat boots with tall socks, and two were wearing short dresses with sheer tights. While I can't do much about the hair or the jacket, I hoped to swipe a little of their effortlessly cool look with this dress-tights-boots combo, and the golden tufts of tree pollen swirling through the air on the banks of the Tevere offered a little extra magic for my photos. I've been looking forward to wearing this cute little crossbody bag I bought in Greece; it's a lot easier on my shoulders than my usual enormous purse, and by wearing it under my trench I felt reasonably safe from pickpockets - while Rome is the Eternal City, it's also known as the City of Thieves!

P.S. I discovered tonight that I've recently been featured on Where the Lovely Things Are and Miss Moss, both incredible blogs full of gorgeous style and design inspiration - I'm super flattered to be on their radar, so be sure to check them out! And to my new readers, welcome!
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home again

I'm back!

Yes, after a month of exile to tumblr, I am happy to say that I am finally back to my regular blogging home. While tumblr was a pretty good way around the censorship issues I experienced in Turkey, and an incredible way to stumble across some great new-to-me bloggers, I am very excited to be back to regular posting here on Blogger.

Otherwise not too much to report here – just spent the day getting brunch, visiting a museum, and shopping for groceries, all while walking around some kind of acropolis thing…

!!!

That’s right, we’re in Athens! You’ll have to excuse my giant cheeser grin in nearly all of these photos, but I am just ecstatically excited to be here. Greece wasn’t on our original itinerary (much to my chagrin), but as we made our post-Istanbul travel arrangements a few weeks ago, I was thrilled to discover how much easier (and less expensive) our plans would be if we stopped here along the way! 

Of course, that whole 'easier' part didn't really seem to be working out so well for us last night - as those who follow me on Twitter already heard, our travel day yesterday featured the zipper on my bag splitting open on the street (twice), a crucial stretch of our metro line in Athens being closed, massive confusion about where we were to pick up keys to our apartment, boyfriend promptly breaking one of said keys in half trying to open the door of our apartment, and then both of us later getting locked out because we'd failed to realize the broken key was actually the one that opened the street door. Yikes. After a few frantic phone calls from the internet cafe down the street (which sells tallboys, is packed at 10:30 on a Thursday night, and whose internal atmosphere is at least 70% B.O.), we managed to make contact with our 'landlord' here, who called the very sweet building super to let us in.

Since then things have been on a determined upswing - after a surprisingly excellent brunch this morning (cappuccino, simple omelet, grilled ciabatta drizzled with olive oil and herbs, and incredible surprise brownies with fresh whipped cream on the house!), we roamed around Psyri and scoped out the streets of the flea market, then worked our way through Plaka and eventually circled the entire Acropolis. We climbed Areopagus hill (where we took the first and last photos), then headed over to the new Acropolis Museum. We were both a bit surprised at how much we liked Tschumi's building (nerd alert!), and how tangibly one feels the absence of the Elgin marbles. While I don't support repatriation unconditionally, the British Museum's position on their 'stewardship' of the marbles smacks to me of a fairly indefensible 'finders-keepers' ('thieves-keepers?') imperialist attitude.

Ok, end rant. Now pictures!

jacket - Zara / gold chain necklace - Forever 21 / gold pailette necklace - Anthropologie / watch - La Mer / cat print blouse - Zara / wide leg jeans - Banana Republic / brogues - Primark

This is actually the second day in a row that I've worn this outfit, but with all the craziness of traveling yesterday we didn't get a chance to snap pictures. Getting to wear outfits you like multiple days in a row is just one of the many blessings of traveling in a country where nobody knows you. Yesterday I wore it with boots, and I didn't have much in mind putting it together beyond keeping my heaviest pants and shoes out of our suitcases; however, I suspect that somewhere along the line this image wormed its way into my brain and gave me a little nudge of inspiration. I also felt like my wide leg jeans and army jacket gave me just a little bit of a grown-up Lindsay Weir vibe, which is never a bad thing.


In case you haven't seen it yet (although you should have, because you should seriously already be reading Off of Broadway religiously), the unfairly chic vintage vixen otherwise known as Amanda featured one of my recent outfits in a post chock-full of gorgeous blogger inspiration. I am so flattered to be in such great company, and promptly nerded out about it pretty hard and tried to explain to my oh-so-patient boyfriend (yet again) just how cool it is to get to know some of my favorite bloggers a little better. He smiled and nodded, because he is a very good man.

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to open up a bottle of wine left for us by our host. Happy Friday!
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on a boat

Hey y'all! Just a quick little blog update for you - I've got a few more new outfit posts up on my tumblr* (wild turkey, archived, & feribotu). I also guest posted for Archives this week while Lisa was road-tripping to Austin (so. freakin. jealous.) - you can check out my post on her blog here.
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EDIT: In the interests of maintaining a reasonably contiguous blog archive, I have amended my posts from Tumblr below - you can now read them here, or in their original home (with all the original comments) on Tumblr (click to read wild turkey, archived, & feribotu). Enjoy!
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3.14.11 WILD TURKEY

brass whistle necklace - vintage via etsy / painted wood bangle - vintage, childhood dress-up box / watch - La Mer / navy striped sweater - H&M / overdyed jeans - Zara / socks - Target / boots - Steve Madden / coat - UO

One of the things I still haven't gotten used to while traveling is the prevalence of stray animals. So far every place we've visited has had its own distinct character, but one thing they have all shared is a plethora of feral fauna. For years I'd thought that the legions of cats that roamed Parque del Retiro in Madrid were a particular kind of local color, but since then it seems they're found absolutely everywhere that isn't North America. In Spain, they hunted mice and dropped chorizo in the parks; in Morocco, they lived on the rooftops of the Medina and were offered goat scraps by street butchers; they disappeared in the UK (guess they couldn't swim the Channel); and now in Istanbul, they live in a cardboard box on our balcony and sometimes try to photobomb my outfit shots.


I still don't really know what to do when approached by friendly strays. My animal-love-starved soul is like, PET-IT-PET-IT-PET-IT-NOW! But the cat-fearing germaphobe in me insists that they're all diseased/filthy/will bite me and feast on my eyeballs. (Realistically, I'd say most of the time only two of those possibilities are true.) This may have something to do with the cat at Montserrat who acted super friendly until I tried to touch it (honestly, sometimes I still count fingers when I think about it). I did make one exception in Marrakech, but that was for the smallest kitten I had every seen in my entire life (who only had one eye! Stay strong, little cyclops buddy!) My internal struggle has only grown worse as we're finally in a city with almost as many stray dogs as cats, and even the ones in really rough shape where you can't even tell what color their fur is inspire me to yell, "PUPPIES!!1!" every time.

So for now, my solution is to do as you see in the above photo: chat with them, on subjects varied and erudite. "Hello kitty! You are fluffy! I am totally afraid to touch you! I am also probably the only person in this park who does not have a fish sandwich to share with you. Sorry, buddy!"
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3.15.11 ARCHIVED

necklace - vintage, Brooklyn flea market / purse - custom via etsy / jacket - Zara / wood & brass bangle - vintage, thrifted / watch - La Mer / pink striped sweater - H&M / pink button-down - custom / jeans - Target / brogues - Primark

I really think the Man Repeller is on to something with these buttoned-up collars - after trying it a few times now, I think I am hooked! (Boyfriend is not quite so sold, although he admits that it's cute when worn with a '60s mod look. I'll wear him down yet.)

These are just a few outtakes from some pictures we took over the weekend - today I am guest blogging for the lovely Lisa over at Archives, so to see more photos of this outfit and to read about my own road trip to Texas (Hint: It was not for a blogging conference.) go check out my post here!
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3.16.11 FERIBOTU

scarf - vintage, thrifted / purse - custom, valhallabrooklyn via etsy / jacket - Zara / cardigan - Primark / fox print tee - Zara / belt - vintage, thrifted / ring - Primark / overdyed skinnies - Zara / shoes - Toms

The other day we took a spur-of-the-moment ferry ride up the Bosphorous to Ortakoy. We headed up to the top deck of the ferry just as the sun started going down and managed to snag an unoccupied corner for some quick outfit shots. I think I'm slowly building up my immunity to embarrassment over taking pictures in public places, although I wouldn't mind if my photographer were a little more inconspicuous about it - something about how he backs a full twenty feet away from me and bends halfway over to waist height really attracts strangers' attention!

This outfit is maybe not the most original thing I've ever put together, but it's a pretty good representation of what I wear when I don't have a ton of time to think about it. We decided pretty late in the day that we were going out, so I just grabbed the sweater I'd worn least recently and went from there. I wore almost the same thing on our first day in Turkey, but I felt like pairing it with my army jacket this time around gave the whole look a much-needed color boost. As much as I'm sick of hearing about color-blocking as a trend for spring, it will be nice to have my recent desire to wear every single color at once pass for 'stylish' instead of 'colorblind.'
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