Yellow Skirt Freak Show Update!!

Grab a fruity drink and put up your tootsies...

The freakish thing went to CUBA!!

We're speaking of course of the

Travelling Yellow Skirt Freak Show.

Caressed by tropical breezes

Dipped in the healing waters of the Caribbean

Twirling, billowing, sweeping blindingly white sands

A R I A N E   of

Style Sud-Est

has taken the skirt on an equatorial adventure

See her magnificent styling!!

Go!  G O  N O W!!

You've been dress-slapped

All my clothes have been such floaty, twirly MADNESS lately that I haven't been able to stop them slapping passersby at the slightest breezy provocation. Skirts flying into children's gaping mouths, skirts snapping fists clutching laptop cases, skirts skimming head-tops, torsos, and slouchy jeans. Really, it's no laughing matter.

Don't you just love a good flyaway? Nothing maximizes one's bodily air-conditioning better than a maxi. Does anyone realize we're naked under there? Except for underclothing of course. There ought to be laws!

This one is for Patti. Don't get too close or I'll love-slap you silly at her garden party, Visible Monday, unless you've already slapped yourself up. But please, no food products within 50 feet of these flyaway skirts, if you please.

Details

priceless bolt-of-fabric cotton skirt made in India, thrifted, required several hours of mending

gauzy cotton top, souvenir from Athens when I went to my friend's wedding

cotton orange tube top thing, thrifted

platform orange sandals, thrifted

Swoosh. One caress by my magical sidewalk-swept hem and you will be mine forever. Bwa-ha-ha!

I hope you've all had intensely exciting weekends.

There will be a Yellow Skirt update soon - maybe you already know what it is...

PS - After all the Google Friend Connect techno trauma, it seems that it's still working. I could have saved myself the freak-out and had a piece of chocolate cheesecake instead.

My Isadora Duncan spooky photo

Channelling Isadora Duncan for Anne's link-up at Spy Girl - Go with the Flow: Long, Loose, and Drapey.

While I was in this outfit I felt lithe and also like a big tropical fruit, but able to kick ass as well with these madly fringed sandal-boot contraptions. I wore the purple garb, which is a kimono-like cover-up, even though I would have preferred flinging it dramatically about my person while gasping and sighing with theatricality like a bullfighter in a chiffon showdown at a fabric shop surrounded by shoppers watching me dazedly, perhaps aghast, with their children pulled in protectively by their sides. Ole!

But looking at the first photo, the desaturated one, I felt very Izzy D. I can almost hear the Victrola playing in the background. Although a beach setting would have been much better for this vibe. 

What I'm wearing:

• filmy see-through orange maxi dress, thrifted
• reddish slip with neon-orange lace trim worn over the dress, thrifted
• green shag carpet sandal-boots, retail mega-sale
• purple leopard-spottish kimono-style jacket thingy, retail mega-sale
• black and white beaded neck pouch, thrifted
• broken wrist watch tied around my neck, vintage, new gift when I was 15?
• magic pendant and loupe, O made them for me

I cover my arms most days because I don't like sunscreen and my skin needs a break from the rays after too many years as a sun worshipper. This is probably my palest summer ever but I'm starting to warm to the idea. 

And of course my heart also belongs to Patti, Visible Monday, so I'm linking to her fantastic garden party in my previous post featuring my Warhol hair and me-as-a-product clothing. I think my hair was shiny in those photos because I didn't put any product on it and I combed it properly for the first time in months - I usually only finger-comb my hair. Also, I used a colour-revitalizing shampoo called, fetchingly, "Silver - Color Cocktail," by C:EHKO. My hair also maybe looks whiter because the contrast between my roots and the bleached hair is more noticeable now.

I'll see you at Patti's and Anne's. Keep cool. Keep warm. This hemisphere action is groovy.

Would you come to my Factory?

Smack, smack, SMACK! THWACK! That's the sound of me slapping big labels - trampling our divine bodies like many crawly advertising people suck suck sucking at our skin. I hear them, slurp, slurp, slurp, aaah. And we pay for the privilege! But why not pay myself for the privilege?

A sucking leechoid at my own skin?! Shamelessly promoting me, moi, myself, my lonesomeness, my fabulousness, yes!! Why not? Shy exterior hides vampire-bat-like tendencies, although I look like I just rolled out of bed, which I had almost done, except for staggering to a local cafe (carefully in my platform shoes) as no milk in house, for one very weak brown liquid poured down my gullet (coffee) and a solid thingy I chewed on, which had various flavours and I had to pay for and crumbed up my journal. Aaaah! This process woke me up a little bit.

This is my Andy Warhol hair. I wish to cultivate (or decultivate) my personality to be like him, saying almost nothing, not moving my lips when I talk, parroting interviewers, looking vacant, smart, and sexy-ugly  - but only when I appear in the media. With my friends and colleagues I shall be a loud, boisterous person with suitably artsy eccentricities, such as spouting poetry at odd moments, drawing on people at random, doing drugs (chocolate) at every opportunity, and painting cardboard boxes. Care to work in my Factory? I'd make movies of you too, sleeping, cleaning your ears, putting bandaids on your corns, and trying to act all normal. I'm sure you'd be schtars, not that you aren't already. 

I don't buy labels for being labels, but I feel great when I snag humongously famous label pieces for less than $10 at the thrift store. I wish Hollister would go away (big label), OR, better yet, that I could duplicate Hollister's brainwashing capabilities as crawly sucking advertising wizard of my own. That's all. (PS I like advertising - without it I wouldn't have discovered Polly Patty, the amazing plastic parrot that chirps back anything you say to it. Act now and get a second one absolutely free.)

Details

• Gap T-shirt (slurp, slurp, slurp), retail, mega-sale, upcycled with my Sharpie and then washed to create very awesome purplish stains everywhere - deliberately. I love that effect. 
• flowy pants, thrifted, down-sized many sizes, ELASTIC WAIST disguised as fashionable, hurrah
• platform sandals, thrifted
• gauzy white cotton shirt, from Athens when I went to my friend's wedding there

This is the most breezy cool outfit, especially for my morning outings before it gets hot hot. And, no, I'm not selling these t-shirts, just my own self.

How's your weekend? If I wear this to Patti's on Monday (not sure if I'll post again), I'll be not moving my lips when I talk to the media, trying to look vacant, smart, and sexy-ugly, and perhaps breaking into poetry at odd moments. I'll bring my movie camera. If I post something elsein the meantime, like something drapey for Anne at Spy Girl, that's a whole 'nother story.

(Ed. note: Yes, I'm linking this up with Visible Monday. Anne's link is in my next post. See you here, there, everywhere.)

(Another note: I am linking this up with Shiny T Tuesday at Jane George's Flight Platform Living, theme, Undeniably Me)

Fleeting twirly madness and captured in paint

Just a quickie twirly madness as feebly captured in the park -

My vintage evening gown with leather jerkin. The photo is small, I know. I'm still learning all the functions on my camera. Gurrr. Why can't I upload them directly into my brain. Surely a feature such as that should exist by now. But twirl I must. The breeze did most of the work for me.

During my inspiration walk I ever-so-lightly dusted passersby with the dress's magical powers as I brushed the silky folds of the skirt into the fresh wind. I had several laughter-filled conversations along my travels with different groups of ladies who had descended on the city for shopping and site-seeing adventures. The dress called them to me and enveloped them with new worlds of possibilities. Just fabric on skin? Maybe. Maybe not!

Details

• gown, vintage, gift from wonderful Ariane of Style Sud-Est, first worn here 
• leather fringed jerkin, vintage, thrifted
• D&G shoes, thrifted
• magic pendants twirling everywhere, made for me by O
• sunglasses, vintage, thrifted

I hope you all have something to twirl madly about this week. I'm linking this up to Patti's Visible Monday at Not Dead Yet Style and Jane George at Flight Platform Living for her Shiny T Tuesday (Leather on Chiffon). I wouldn't normally do two-fers but my schedule demands it be so.

Also...

Anne of Spy Girl painted me! 

The image above is just a sneak peak. You'll have to click here to see the bigger version on Anne's blog Spy Girl. I love how she used that wild technique to do my patterns. Anne is an incredibly talented artist who widely exhibits her work in a range of media. You must see it, look here. Hugs, Anne. I LOVE that piece. Art camp is awesome!!

That's all.

PS I put on blue lipstick a couple of days ago for my morning outing but took it off because it gave me the pallor of a fish belly. The addition of eye shadow and blush would have helped balance things out but I was too lazy (!) to do it. I'll try again later. Thanks for your comments on my blues. I appreciate your feedback.

I'm feeling blue - really, REALLY blue

Too matchy matchy? 

Question: What makes blue lips all right for a fashion magazine or Halloween but usually questionable for, say, the office, church or shopping? How do cultures define the prevailing boundaries of style decorum and why are people who don't conform often shunned or ridiculed? What causes the anxiety created by difference? Are slips of conformity in aesthetics evidence of dangerous slips of conformity in thought? And why would that be bad, especially when humankind's greatest inventions and works of art usually result from non-conformist thought?

In this shoot, I simply wanted to wear blues in places you don't often see them, in non-conformist ways, on my eyebrows and lips (MAC blue cake makeup and blue pencil) and on my head. I exaggerated the blue cosmetics with drawn-on white eyelashes and white lipliner (Sephora pure white eye pencil) around blue lips drawn double their real size. I was curious to see how the blues changed how I felt about myself and how that change would be reflected in my photos. The silver sequins around my neck are a man's tie clamped at the back with a metal clothespin, and I'm wearing a thrifted blue slip.

Results

In the first photo above, clearly, that's not me. I get a Deborah Harry or Jean Harlow vibe from that one. This photo was not edited; yes, those are blue blues. I like how my eyes grey-down.

The next photo has been edited, obviously. I was just having fun.

This next shot reminds me of an anime space traveller, a doll-like creature that does not compute.

And there I am without the wig at the end of the shoot. Yay! I was getting hot.

And then one final photo below in black and white. My hair has never been shinier - too bad it's because I'm wearing a petroleum-based product on my head. I am reminded of a Sophia Loren-type movie, a tempestuous woman with a penchant for flowers.

And I wrote the following to go with the mood I felt in this photo.

"Pah!" she sneered. She savagely pulled a green onion from the flower box. "This, THIS is what I think of you!" Giuseppe, her paramour and a top vegetarian chef, watched in horror from the bar as she savagely bit off the bulbous hairy root. He could hear the soil grinding between her magnificent white molars. The chewing was interminable, like fingernails on a blackboard.

"Bwa-ha-ha," she laughed after an audible gulp. She flung the remaining stalk onto the floor with vehemence and ground it under her shocking stilettos, careful not to skewer the stalk as she did so; everyone knows kebab heels are only good for walking across hot coals. "If THIS is what I can do as a vegetarian, just imagine my wrath as an omnivore, you virus-sucking worm." Saliva dripping down her chin, she grinned a horrible movie-star grin that revealed tiny furrows of black dirt between her teeth. "I shall never come here no more. Farewell, venal brute. We are FINISHED!" 

This shoot was fun but it made me question even more why certain ways of personal presentation are acceptable only on defined occasions and in art, but not for every day. Imagine if Picasso couldn't paint women in blue. Now I want to wear this look out shopping and I hope it's only a matter of time until we see blue lips everywhere, remembering when black or blue nail polish was shocking and when dying your hair was only for "bad" women. Heh, heh.

Of course some of the bloggers I admire have no qualms about dressing in and making themselves up in what they want exactly when they want. I cheer!!! I am trying to do the same but sometimes I still feel constrained. Even today it's frightening how often ridicule can stem from as little as wearing a dress too short or cutting one's hair, or, as we learnt recently from a post by fabulous Desiree of Pull Your Socks Up, from wanting to wear a vintage dress for graduation. I'm wondering if we've all felt like outsiders at one time or another because of our styling.

Thoughts?

And...
Shoe Shine
Finally, these are my shoes for Bella's Shoe Shine. Camouflage legs. I wore that maxi dress (backdrop) and those socks today with shoes almost identical to these ones, but these are the shoes I wanted to show you for Shoe Shine. They're not red but there is red in what I wore with them. Does that count?

_________________________________________________________________________

Maybe tomorrow I'll go shopping for a pink wig. That blue baby only cost $8. 

I hope you all have a happy weekend. Signing off. See you at Patti's later. This weekend I'll be catching up on my commenting. You're all schtars!!

Yellow Skirt Freak Show Update!! and more...

AHOY!

The billowing wonder of a mainsail unfurls in full splendour -

the Travelling Yellow Skirt Freak Show 

hits Toronto, Canada,

enveloping the city in its golden glow

eliciting gasps of awe and amazement, of

JOY, FREAKISHNESS, and PRIDE

"Fly High Almighty Skirt" we cry!

Courtesy of Pirate of the Eternal Seas

Megan of 

The Fashionable Bureaucrat

worn at Toronto Pride Parade 2013

Go!    G O   N O W!!

________________________________

Lovely Megan has also posted photos of the embellishment she added to the FYS (freakish yellow skirt) and a closeup of all the other embellishments to date, here. Crazy quilt sail, FLY, we command thee. How much higher she goes with your additions. Thanks, Megan, and thanks to everyone for your ongoing support of the FYS. If you would like to style the FYS, be sure to email Shelley at Forest City Fashionista to be put on the flight schedule.

And now in other news...
My Checkered Past

This is for Shiny T Tuesday, Jane George's link-up at Flight Platform Living. Here's the checked outfit I wore on an inspiration walk last week, hence the sub-title, My Checkered Past, as my interpretation of the Shiny T Tuesday theme on dressing square. I think these are all the checks I own.

I'm sure you've all seen poses like this in high fashion magazines, at art openings, in swanky hotel lobbies, or  in ladies' rooms. But this is an example of how I stand every day, for example, whilst I wait for the barista to prepare my coffee or stand in the check-out line at the supermarket. Usually I carry two compact mirrors with me so I don't have to look down at all. The schtar quality I ooze out so naturally wherever I go ensures that I always have plenty of free space around me, even in the most crowded of situations.

I like the high waist and wide legs of these pants. They are made of light cotton and are slightly large, which makes them comfy summer wear. And the turned up collar is deliciously annoying.

Details

• blue-and-white-checked palazzo pants, thrifted
• blue plaid shirt with front ruffle, thrifted, Diesel
• platform sandals, thrifted

See you at Jane George's. How do you dress square? I look forward to seeing what you've got!

And I look forward to seeing how YOU style the FYS.

PS - Thanks for all your laundering tips for my rockstar pants and my Sharpied T-shirt!

[Ed: I linked this to Anne M. Bray's Spy Girl 52-Pick-me-up: Plaid, Dec 15, 2013]

Rockstar pants meet rockstar

These pants were beige, were beige, until yesterday. Now look what I've done.

These beggarly beasts of beigy blandness were headed straight for the trash bin barring immediate colour intervention, so I attacked them viciously with my Sharpies and acrylic paint. 

Who cares that they are now slightly crusty to the touch? Not I. 

Who cares that the earth may shake and split open and swallow them live if I try to wash them? Not I. 

Who cares that a sudden downpour would tan my legs blue? Um, yeah, that would suck.

In these photos taken by O I'm wearing flats because I was walking on boardwalks, but this morning on my inspiration walk, for the debut of these psychedelic pants, nothing but heels would do, you betcha. My legs beamed electric rays at everyone within eyeshot - we're talking hundreds of meters here. I warped into an echoing world of rockstars and strange hotels and room service with rubbery eggs and toast held upright in metal thingies. And mini bars. And chocolates, wrapped, on my pillow. Helping to create the mood was the satiny shirt that O used to wear when he played gigs in Tokyo. 

Details

• upcycled pants, thrifted, DIY
• satiny top, from O, I won't say vintage
• heels not shown, D&G, thrifted
• magic loupe, made for me by O
• airship whale and ghost-on-a-swing pendants, from friend Monique
• black leather belt, thrifted

On my way home, Sandra and I dropped by an upscale shoe store where I delivered a couple of t-shirts I'd made for the managers who'd fallen for my "I have nothing to wear" shirt they'd seen me in a week ago. I couldn't deny their pleas - they are such cool women.

Then later, at a stoplight a few blocks from the store, Sandra turned and asked me, "You know who that was, right?" "Who who was?" I had no idea what she was talking about. "That was Paul Stanley (me: blank face) - of KISS." Apparently he had been smiling at me in the store. Gaaa! I was completely oblivious. Clearly he had been HIT-NO-TIZED by my rockstar pants, sucked in by their colossal rockstar tractor beam. Or, wait, maybe it was my larval brows, aqua pools of wriggly wonder, or maybe it was my yellow eyelids! Quickly I asked Sandra if she'd like to go back and watch Mr. Stanley - after all, she is a true rock fan. But, nah. What for? I didn't even know his name when she told me anyway. So we continued down the road preferring to create our own little rock star moments than pick at the flecks of glitter in another celebrity's wake.

It's very freeing once in a while to realize there is no Celebrity Mall with special Celebrity Stores. We're just people, often with two arms, two legs, some with better teeth and manicures. And it's not who you know (unless it's someone tremendously powerful who is a nice person rather than a power-rapist-type person) but rather what we make of ourselves that counts. Blah, blah, blah, birds sing, flowers sprout. But I have to say, KISS rocks, by definition.

See you over at Patti's truly delicious rock garden, Visible Monday, at her blog Not Dead Yet Style, where we can all fantasize about KISS platform boots! Have you had any brushes with celebrities lately? Have a great weekend everyone. (I wrote this post on Saturday.)

I have a Yellow Skirt update coming up...