The Perfect Dress - Paperblog

I currently have a small stash of dresses never before worn on the blog sitting in my room. Some of them, I have had for a while. Some of them, like this dress, I found on my most recent thrifting trip when I had a little bit of extra spending money in my pocket. A very little bit. And one of them was kindly sent over to me from Sunday Millie in support of the Dressember Campaign; hopefully I’ll be wearing that one tomorrow. Wait till you see it; it is gorgeous!

When I pulled this dress off the rack yesterday, I knew it HAD to be mine. This is such a gorgeous dress, and possibly one of the most amazing finds I’ve ever come across at Goodwill! It’s a 1950’s dress, and judging from the oft-let-down sleeves and the seams that have been let out along with Davina’s comment that she has the same one, it’s most likely a school uniform. (Speaking of Davina, you need to check out her and the band. They’re kind of amazing. We went to see them a year or two ago when they were in town, and I was immediately obsessed. I’m constantly starstruck that she follows my style.) I think because of Dressember I am quickly discovering in more solid terms what I do and don’t like with fashion. Yesterday’s outfit was not me. It was cute, and I like that dress and that shirt, but I’m not sure if I want to keep the dress. I feel most myself in outfits like this one, or the quirky shirt over a floral dress, the cherry print + polka dots, the horse-print 60’s shift, or the mushroom dress. Things with a little bit of quirky and a lot of retro. Of course, today I didn’t style it with anything quirky. Just a whole lotta fifties style. I always have trouble styling my hair in the 50’s way, though. It’s so long now that it doesn’t want to hold a curl, and even when it does I just never quite get it high enough, curled enough, retro enough… whatever. I’m working on it, though, because I LOVED how my hair was when I started pictures. By the end the shoot, when I realized I preferred the outfit with my glasses and re-shot most of the pictures, the hair was already falling. It happens. I really should do pin-curls or soft curlers instead, to reduce heat damage and for better holding abilities. I would really like to get a routine at night going of putting my hair in some sort of no-heat curl to make life easier, but… right now it’s low priority. Especially with a baby around, where most of the time my hair ends up in a bun anyway. After I came in from pictures, I tried my first-ever beehive in an effort to not always do a ponytail or a bun, and it actually worked quite well. I also had to change my dress, because the seams on the back of this one at the arm are so old they started popping. Thankfully, a very easy fix! So you’ll be seeing another dress from today later (I don’t know, I could double-post or I could save it for a rainy day), since… I liked that one too.

And I just realized that I’ve made this entire post about fashion. Which I suppose is not a bad thing. I think sometimes I feel as though I should write about much more intelligent or creative things, but then I remember that this is really just my online journal. I write about what I’m thinking in the moment, because… that’s who I am. I like to share my thoughts and my life with you no matter if it’s frivolous or deep. And I have to keep reminding myself that I shouldn’t apologize for whatever it is that I write (unless, of course, it’s a horrible thing) even if some days it is rather mindless. I’m thinking about going back to brown hair, after three (or four?) months of the red. After I dyed my hair red, at least four other women I know followed suit. Some because of me, some because it was fall. So now that there’s a gaggle of bottle-redheads around, I feel like… I want to be different again. Obviously it’s not going to be that different– apparently everyone goes red in the autumn, dark in the winter, who knows what in spring, and blonde in the summer. I went red because I wanted to, not because it was a seasonal fad. I’m going back to dark because my husband likes it better and I can’t make up my mind. Belt and vintage 1950’s dress, thrifted | heels, Target | brooch, antique | earrings and necklace, gift | glasses, c/o Firmoo

It’s funny, previous to these frames, I always preferred myself without glasses. I never liked to take pictures with glasses on, or go anywhere with spectacles on my face; I always hid them in my purse and only pulled them out when I had to drive or in the darkness of a movie theater or amongst people I knew really well. But then I got these, and suddenly I much prefer myself with glasses. I feel much more confident in these frames. Not to mention, it’s much easier to emote when you can see.

Someday I might get contacts. But for now, I think glasses add so much more character to a person… and these look very retro to me, which is probably why I love them.

I hope you are all having a good day! I think I’m going to go bake some Christmas cookies, find a way to hang our stockings (which I made last night because we couldn’t find our stockings from last year), and probably eat too many of those cookies I’m going to make. (Christmas is exactly a week away. I don’t know how I feel about that.)

Happy Thursday!