My Weekend Escapades

I promise that I have not abandoned you, readers. I was laptop-less for some time and unable to provide you with the normal epic reading experience. Thus, we have a couple weekends to catch up on, outfit-wise.

My first weekend back in the wonderful city of Chicago, I met the Tony McGuinness from Above and Beyond (he was small and British, and pretty awesome) and Nikki Reed, who happens to be Rosalie from Twilight. The place: Studio Paris. The event: Samsung SIII Launch Party. You can check out photos from the event here. The only picture of me is highly unflattering, so I'll just let you peruse at your leisure.

What I wore:

This blue oriental off the shoulder dress is one of the softest, silkiest things that I have ever worn. This makes it good to go braless (in addition, it's loose fitting, so the boys won't notice if you happen to get a little cold). I grabbed it off the clearance rack at Maurices for $12 (!). If you live in a big city, you're not as likely to find one of these boutiques, as they are trying to stay in smaller towns.

These are my booties from Chinese Laundry (thanks, DSW!). >>>>>>>

This is what my feet looked like after wearing them for hours:

But no worries, I was back in heels again in a couple days. My feet just have to get used to it :)

Last Weekend in July. 

Sequin Top by Express
Skirt by Audrey 3+1
Belt by Express

This past weekend, there were shenanigans on shenanigans. I chose to wear wedges for both. Friday night was Release Fridays at Sound-Bar. I put on some killer wedges and headed out with the BF for some house music and wubs. See how happy my face is? >

<<What I wore (still working on getting a photographer)

Wedges by De Blossom Collection

Bartender Niki (check out her Twitter) was wearing a super hot pink bandage dress, and guided me to http://www.greatglam.com/. They have some awesome club wear at great prices--definitely check it out, and let me know what you get! 

Saturday night was a birthday blur as I headed to Wicker Park to celebrate a friend's birthday. I must have walked 3-4 miles in these wedges. My feet did not thank me, but they made my legs look awesome.
The full ensemble:

I snagged both the body-con skirt and the tube top from Rue 21. If you have a Rue near you, definitely check it out. You might think that they have nothing but neon, but they have excellent deals on cute tops and fantastic clearance racks. The shirts are not of the best quality, but I don't expect a shirt that I bought for $4 to last more than a summer. They are also currently running a "Win Free Jeans" promotion if you own a pair of Rue jeans--check out the link.

We hit up Wicker Park Fest (total hipster-fest), Standard Bar & Grill, and finally Evil Olive, which happens to be home to Porn and Chicken on Mondays. Don't Google that at work.  

All in all, it's been a good couple weekends back home. Now that I have a functioning laptop, I'll be posting #likeaboss. Omg, just click on it, it's the best.

#YOLO XOXO

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.

Closet Weeding: The Big Chore

I moving. Back to Chicago. Anyone who is a woman knows that this will take approximately 6.2 U-Hauls and a small cart and pony, but per usual man and small apartment regulations, my closet must fit in a small Ford Ranger. Oh help.
My plan of attack for this particular feat, I shall have to admit, is not very organized.
Here's what I have come up with so far:

The Pile

Like I said. Not very organized. My original game plan of pulling everything out and seeing if I wanted it was not the best idea that I've ever had.

~6 Hours Later (give or take a day)~

There are many struggles that I encountered during this stressful time, but I shall spare you the gory details. In the end, I wound up with 3 piles**:

• the "omg, I wore that?! Seriously, just Goodwill that" pile
• the "awwww, I liked that, but I'm not 17 anymore, and I've lost weight, but I can sell this" pile
• the "hell no, I'm not getting rid of that" pile

All of this turned out quite well. Goodwill has been appeased with the yearly (let's be real, bi-annual) donation of goods, and I have a handy plastic tote full of clothes that I might get about $2 for on consignment (hey, I'm a poor fashionista, every bit counts towards new shoes). Of course, I may go the eBay route, also known as "the world's biggest yard sale" route. But all that, dear readers, is irrelevant in light of the fact that I have now purged my closet of unwanted clothes and....I can fill it with wanted ones.

**To be quite honest, I would have made a 4th pile, the "I really don't wear this except for in situations when I have to be professional and really boring looking" pile, but that would have just caused more of the aforementioned struggles. 

~7 Hours Later (give or take a day)~

I was good! I only bought two bodycon skirts and a couple tube top devices. I used to be afraid of such devices; the horror of thinking that I had purchased an adorable skirt only to see some girl wearing it as a top later at a party was almost too much to bear. Thankfully, I have since learned to distinguish between "skirt" and "tube top." 

My goal for this shopping outing was to replace the 20-30 some odd pieces of clothing that I had discarded with about 4-5 pieces of clothing that I would actually wear. Replacing all 20-30 pieces would have been a dream come true, but highly impractical, and very expensive. Success! The skirts have that amazing ability to be either longish or shortish and with the right tops they can be worn clubbing or just out(ish); the tops can be worn under sweaters or by themselves on a sunny day. Or a 100 degree day, as Chicago is currently experiencing. It's better to have a few mix and match pieces that will wear for awhile than 30 of those things that you bought because they were "in style" for about, oh, a day. 

My goal for this summer is to create the "classic wardrobe." (And there really is a WikiHow for everything: http://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Classic-Wardrobe) Not only will I be attempting to create the classic wardrobe, I will try and do it in the most inexpensive way possible. This may not go well, but I'm not about to get myself down. Keep in mind that women's fashions change approximately every three weeks (give or take a year), so the classic wardrobe might need a few tweaks. I will, of course, keep you updated. Stay tuned...

#YOLO XOXO

Meet Rachel

Hey peeps. What's happenin'? I would be the boots part of the equation. I love shoes. I love clothes. One of the items on my bucket list is to walk on the beach in a maxi dress like a Victoria's Secret model. Another item on the list is to own a pair of "pony shoes" (thank you, Nasty Gal).

I plan to blog about all things fashionable, including the wedges I plan to wear grocery shopping, the LBD that I'll wear out on Friday night, and how I get my hair to look super sexy. I don't own a single cardigan.
A few things that you should know about me:
I believe that sexy is 1 part clothes and 2 parts attitude, with a dash of a "devil-may-care" attitude.
I'm the girl at the bar who looks at other girls--for their clothes.
I firmly believe that every girl needs an LBD, a good pair of fuck-me pumps, and a decent strapless bra. 
I love New Girl. Zooey Deschanel is my hero.
I own a blue wig and a pair of Tron wedges.

I'm excited about this blog like you don't even know.

#YOLO--so let's be crazy.

I'm all up in the social medias--follow me @boots4210 on Instagram and Pinterest for pictures of what I'm wearing, what other people are wearing, and the odd photo of a kitten. Follow me @RJermann on  Twitter  for the daily rundown of my life, which is clearly awesome.