GET IN MUH CLOSET

Sport meets sandal meets soccer ball meets tuxedo. (Here)

Shut up shut up shut up I can't handle these. (Here)

More perforated black and white leather and you KNOW these are comfortable. (Here)

Sooooo over the years, (read: millions of hours spent hunched over my laptop mumbling things like, "Oh gawd. BIG TIME into these pants...big time into these pants...” (click-click-click, coffee-gulp, click-click-click) to myself) I have amassed around a thousand wish lists/perpetually filled shopping bags on about a thousand different e-commerce fashion sites, each filled with about a thousand things that I want/need/crave/like to think about (these numbers are pretty accurate). 

I am steadfast in my maintenance and upkeep of these lists, periodically purging the stale or already purchased or “meh, I’m tired of looking at this” items out back into internet oblivion from whence they came in order to keep things fresh and relevant and OBVIOUSLY NOT CRAZY. As I mentioned previously, black and white is everywhere this Spring, and my shoe appetite has been no exception. These three lovelies have managed to make their way to the tippy top of my lists lately, and all that remains to be seen is which pair I will purchase first, muahahahaha!

(Whatever I can’t afford those Jimmy Choos—NEITHER CAN YOU—but I love looking at them and pretending I’m going to get them.)

Gridlock

Blouse (J.Crew, similar here), Trousers (Zara), Shoes (Zara on major sale, similar here), Belt (J.Crew, similar here) Necklace (Dogeared)

Thanks largely in part to the Marc Jacobs S/S '13 show, the crispy Spring trend of monochromatic stripes, grid patterns, geometric pattern play, and black and white color blocking that has all of us swooning is providing endless amounts of outfit inspiration. 

Lately I've been obsessing over checkerboard prints and black and white everything. The trend has been cropping up everywhere over the last few months (LIKE MY CLOSET), from Zara to Tibi to Proenza Schouler, and I can barely contain my hair-pulling-out euphoria. (If there’s one thing I've always had in my closet more than anything else, it’s black and white striped shirts...like, a stupid amount of them.) And aside from my (I'll admit sometimes tiresome) obsession with mixing prints, I love the idea of playing with print proportion—like a larger open grid pattern with a classic houndstooth on a smaller scale. That, and this fuchsia windowpane blouse I scored for next to nothing over the holidays makes my eyes bleed it's so gorgeous.

Photos by the lovely and talented Rose Garrett

Better Late Than Never...or Early...or On-Time...

And I should know because I am rarely on time. I’ll chock my johnny-come-lately-style foray into fashion blogging up to that. I’m not sure, but I think I might be breaking some tacit and hallowed fashion blogging rules—I don't know what these are—in that I’m 26-soon-to-be-27 (this is apparently too old to start anything... Kill me.), I haven’t been blogging for years, or actually even days for that matter, I don’t think I know any other bloggers (although I am an avid follower of this lady, this lady, this lady aaaaaand this lady), I don’t have a personal street style photographer in my posse—or a posse, I probably exceed the height limit by a good 6 inches, and my hair sometimes looks like tumbleweeds.

But living a rather unapologetic existence as a fashion devotee and style enthusiast—the unfamous kind—sort of makes me qualified, right? Eh. Regardless, over the years, the depth and breadth and form of that devotion has manifested itself differently, (i.e. 10-year-old me was obsessed with Hush Puppies and Wet Seal. Wait, can you say “manifested” on a Fashion Blog? Or “Wet Seal” for that matter?! Two more rules most likely broken...) and I suppose this venture is yet another permutation in my expression of that devotion.

Mostly, I just want to make an outfit diary and have a place where I can write about leather skirts ad nauseum and say things like “SQUEEEEEEE POLKA DOT PANTZZZZ!!!” and have it be OK. And anyway, saying, “It’ll look great on my résumé” means you can write off just about any retarded thing you do.

At least I’m here. Better late, I say.