The Guide to Geek Glasses

I fully admit that I am probably maybe a little bit sort of definitely a hipster, despite the fact that I don't know a whole lot of bands and I could take or leave PBR and I don't use Instagram for the very simple reason that I don't have a smartphone. I'll give you all a moment to recover and go light a hemp candle or whatever it is you need to do to return to normalcy. I'm kind of ish very close to being a hipster mostly because I love scarves and flannel and wearing glasses when I have 20/20 vision.

Rachel and me. And YES. I'm wearing a scarf. And plaid flannel. And an Explosions in the Sky shirt. And fake glasses.

I'm not the only one, right? Spectacles are GREAT. They're excellent accessories (they're in that rare category of being okay as Third Accessory), they make you Look Smart (if you choose the right pair), they can cover for you if you're having a bad mascara day, and, I've found, that they can even help get you in the right frame (badumpsh) of mind to be productive. True story.

1. Much like being funky, the key to wearing geek glasses is to Own It. Be confident! You have miles of hotness for which the glasses are simply a window!

2. Don't be afraid to get super large frames or a funky pattern, just don't do BOTH.

3. Retro is always a good play.

 

I was trying to find a picture of ugly retro glasses that no one could pull off, and I just couldn't find any. Seriously. It is possible to rock all kinds of vintage looks.

Wear glasses, friends. Even if you have 20/20.

Hannah and Rachel Talk: Accessories

Dear friends in fashion, we've gathered you here today to talk about accessories. They're a problem. They're smaller than your clothes, but they're also pretty limited in terms of what they GO with and then there's the whole pressure of keeping up with trends and if you're anything like me you have all this stuff that you feel guilty about since you never wear it and it's not like it's the accessories' fault and geez, just grow a pair and wear the necklace made of walnuts you bought at the flea market that one time. One morning I was getting ready to go to class and I spent probably a whole five minutes debating which earrings to wear, even though I was giving up my opportunity to eat breakfast in the meantime. One of my roommates quietly watched this process for a bit and then rhetorically asked, with something like admiration and amusement and pity and horror, "You do this every day? What is your life?" What indeed. So yeah. Accessories. They can be a pain.

The lovely Rachel, who is all things lovely, is aware of the sort of agonies I suffer over accessorizing, so she asked if I could lend her a hand in that department. Since my summer wardrobe is mostly raggedy jean shorts and a Dartmouth Football t-shirt, I was more than happy to reawaken that part of my brain.

Damn gurl, you lookin' fine. Anyway, the first consideration when it comes to accessories is to ask yourself what you want the focus point of your outfit to be. This is the easy part: what's your favorite thing that you're wearing right now? Exciting: you get to choose. And you can choose your accessories. That is allowed. Now, I don't know how Rachel feels, but my favorite part of this outfit are her shoes. Luuurrrrvvveee the color. Focus point: identified.

I'm a pretty big fan of the whole "less is more" rule, so this outfit really doesn't need that much. I love stripes because as long as there are only two colors and one of them is in the white-brown-black family, they can act as a neutral. Your accessories should either direct the eye toward your focus point or stand out on their own. Rachel's shoes already stand out pretty solidly, so I would recommend a funky belt or bracelet, maybe with a tinge of blue in them. Or a blue-ish pair of earrings maybe. Stay FAR FAR AWAY from the matchy matchy. Trust me. I went down that road in high school and it was NOT PRETTY. Frankly, she's got lots of options here, since basically everything she's wearing can act as a neutral or solid without too much distraction. She could wear a scarf or a righteous hat or a chunky gold necklace. Notice that I said OR. OR, people. Not AND. Pick two max.

Talk about SHOES. I dunno if you can tell from the photo, but those are glittery zebra print heels, dears. They should DEFINITELY be the focus of the outfit, even though the color and the neckline of the dress are pretty and eye-catching. It's all about the sparkle here. The dress is colorful enough without needing any assistance from the accessories to give it a bolster. If Rachel put her hair up, either in a ponytail or a top knot, and then wore some dangly sparkly earrings, she'd be ready to rock and frickin' roll. Maybe a bracelet too, as long as both the bracelet and the earrings are only sparkly (no colors or heavily-colored metals, like gold) and sort of go together. Matchy matchy in that instance is okay. They just can't be zebra print too, basically.

Rachel, godspeed on your journey of accessorizing.

Books That Make You Look Good: Angle of Repose

As any person with more than an ounce of style and fashion sense can tell you, accessories matter. It's not just about the clothes, it's also about what you wear with the clothes. Yes yes, this means purses and jewelry and scarves and shoes, etc etc etc (more on all those later, including the etcs). But it also means the magazine you read on the subway (no Star or People or Celebrities R Gr8, puh-leez), the color of your laptop case, and the book you read on the plane-train-automobile. Is this horribly snobbish? Definitely. Should you care if someone is judging you for your splashy tabloid rag? Definitely not. Will you care? Maybe. So if you're anxious to be judged as a stylish and smart person with the sort of gravitas and opinions one would want to invite to dinner parties AND/OR (this is very emphatically an and/or situation) you just want to read a good book, read on.

Angle of Repose is blooming brilliant. It's about a historian by the name of Lyman Ward, confined to a wheelchair in his retirement, who is chronicling his grandmother's life in the West. As Lyman digs through all the hardship, triumph, grief, and wind that one expects from a pioneer story, he reflects on his own life during the tumultuous 1970s.

Why it's a Good Book:
-Stegner's writing is simply great. It's beautiful while still being conversational, it's perfectly descriptive without being overwhelming, and he creates a page-turner without letting his readers skip over anything.
-The characters are 100% believable and all of them are sympathetic. You just want the best for everyone and suffer the pain of knowing that it just can't possibly work out that way. It's a Pulitzer Prize-winner. I'm fairly certain there's a requirement for it to be somewhat depressing.
-Even when it's depressing, Stegner manages to make it uplifting and hopeful.
-Even if you've never been there, it wonderfully captures the feeling of the Midwest.

Why it's a Book that will make you look Good*:
-It's a Pulitzer Prize-winner.
-The title is sort of ambiguous and implies that you're smart enough to know what it means. It uses the word "repose."
-Wallace Stegner is well-known enough to make people furrow their brows and say, "Hey, he sounds familiar..." but not so famous that people think you're reading him to look good.**
-It uses a nice font. And the colors are eye-catching without being garish. Same goes for the cover photo.
-It's respectably thick.

*Yes, I'm joking. But let's face it. I'm also right.
**The real key to Looking Good, both with your clothes and your books is to not look like you're trying too hard. Preferably not at all.