You are shaped by your environment---by choice?!

I was talking with my old roommate recently (who lives in another state) and she told me she got a new job, but that there is a dress code and thus she had to spend hundreds of dollars on a new work-appropriate wardrobe. My coworker, who has a second job said a similar thing when she first got it, saying that you can't just dress casually (as we do in the office), but that if you want to look professional and mature (as we do in our age, apparently) we have to dress the role.  If anything, we all know that first impression is everything, and even if we would rather not, we judge people by how they look.

It's a topic I've had in the back of my mind for a while now, but I do wonder: how does your job/environment affect how you dress?  I posted an outfit post from last Friday wherein I wore a black cardigan--well the truth is I wanted to wear a black blazer, but I changed my mind last minute because I don't want to out-dress my boss.  The last thing I want to do is dress more professional than my boss (the client's would wonder), and in fact one of the first career advice given is copy your environment, follow your boss, because being copied is usually flattering.  Strangely, I have always felt the opposite.

I feel that copying in fashion is like copying in art, you do it for practice, you do it so that you can implement them to your own style and transform whatever it is you copied to look like "you". Blatant copying of an outfit, a style, etc. such as in buying the exact same piece from the exact same chain (store/brand) is just wrong (in my opinion).  It's one thing to buy the same piece and style it differently, it's another to buy the same piece because you like the way it was styled and want to copy it. Of course, this is just my narrow-minded opinion, and in the end I do think that doing it while searching for your own style is fine (as long as effort to find that style is recognizable).

....Back on topic, I of course don't copy my boss' style, but it's important to recognize that she only wears suits when she goes to court, and normally she wears trends and boots and blouses and jewelry.  So I don't get to wear my blazers in the office, I rarely wear heels (I'm already taller than her so what's the point?), and I don't even wear make up most of the time and I don't feel bad because it doesn't seem like she does either.  In another words, I feel like I can be lazy to a certain extent. As long as I avoid t-shirts and jeans she does not seem dissatisfied with my dressing.

On the other hand, I feel that because of where I work, I would not wear a beach/summer outfit to work (i.e. shorts, a tank top, a mini skirt without leggings), because if I were a client I would wonder about a place where the employee dresses like she's going straight to the beach afterward.  I feel the need to dress a certain way, but there is a glass ceiling that I just described, but actually only recently have become conscious of, and yet there is also a minimum requirement that has never been explicitly stated in the office.  So what am I supposed to wear?

On another note, I noticed that while the receptionist indulged in the secretary look all winter she has begun to wear floral skirts and no stockings as of late, and I wonder if she tired of her wardrobe or if she was given an "ok" to dress unprofessionally (the other receptionist, male by the way, was fired for not looking professional).

While looking for pictures to insert into this post, I found AcademiChic run by three women with PHDs "on a crusade against the ill-fitting polyester suit of academic yore". How very interesting!

How are you shaped by your environment? I mentioned in previous posts that since moving to California (from Finland) I have worn less collar shirts/vests/dress pants/heels & more jeans/skirts/tanks/sandals. Yet I know many people who come from Europe and refuse to wear flip flops, or distressed jeans, and essentially refuse to assimilate into their environment.  Sometimes this can cost you your job, sometimes it means you are regarded as omega, so refusing to blend in with your peers comes with a cost.

A GREEN Passion for VINTAGE?

I'm not much of a vintage junkie, but I've been an avid Ebayer (on and off) for past three years because I like the price of buying preowned and because I don't see the point in paying full price for something I might only want for a season. Back in Finland I used to go to thrift stores where everyone rents their own stall and prices their own items so it was easy to find good deals. Here in Cali I find that Goodwill in certain nice neighborhoods is...alright (I liked the one in Menlo Park more than the one in Pasadena), and then there are stores like Buffalo Exchange which buy from you for a really cheap price (I've still sold there though, for the convenience) and then sell Forever 21-$5 prices. I think that if you're going to sell preowned the prices should be lower and quite honestly I don't know if those stores clean the clothes they receive but there's always a weird smell wafting out of their doors (which is why yobu has pretty much forbidden me to enter one except to donate or sell). I noticed at Buffalo Exchange they just price the items and throw them into a basket, which I'm assuming they just hang up on racks later on...?


...I lost my point, right, so I think Ebay has wider access, more members, and thus more options.  Ebay has also recently begun a Green Campaign to educate the masses on the environmental benefits of buying preowned. If you check out the Green Team website you'll find that they've gathered nice logical examples of why you should buy/sell on Ebay, which include saving more energy than participating in Earth Hour btw.  As Janie Van Roe pointed out in her post, this could open the doors to another group of people (namely people who want to be part of the trendy green movement but do not necessarily want to buy the overpriced eco-friendly fashion pieces) to become vintage-buyers as well. She raises the question of whether this new advertising tactic will affect consumer consciousness...?

Another blogger, Sapphire Whisperer is a fashion stylist and vintage lover, who believes that buying preowned only interests a certain group of people and the rest of us can only "dapple" in it. She states in her post that while she hearts the campaign, she finds it unlikely that anyone will become a vintage shopper for the sake of being green. Now I think that she has a point, that perhaps loving vintage is like loving antiques, where some of us enjoy revisiting classic styles and others see dead people sitting on antique chairs (from the movie "I Hate Valentine's Day").  Yobu is one of those people who (annoyingly enough) asks me funny questions like what if the clothes belong to dead people? or sick people? or the diseased? or dirty people? and if I want to buy him something thrifty from Ebay it has to be new with tag or he will gag. I find this terribly amusing, especially when you can obviously just wash/steam the piece yourself if you think others haven't done a good-enough job. However, given that I live with such a paranoid vintage-hater I can understand that the green movement is not going to attract hoards of people into the vintage scene.

However, this is what I also think; that "green people" (people who really want to make a difference and aren't just passively following a trend) already buy preowned and vintage, because they are "that kind of people".  Those trend followers might buy a used cappuccino maker or a used car, but they likely not adorn themselves with vintage.  It's sort of like I've managed to convince yobu that if I see an amazing vintage blazer he can totally wear it as long as he gets it dry cleaned first (he agreed that as long as it doesn't directly touch his skin it's not "gross" XD).  Since ebay sells a lot other than clothing (i.e. jewelry, books) their mass campaign still makes sense. To get ordinary fashion buyers to purchase preowned would (I think) require a different tactic of advertising, where consumers would have to be informed of how these vintage pieces are cleaned (no bed bugs!) and they should probably feature some white-jacket scientists proving that vintage pieces are not "dirtier" than new pieces. For my opinion is that without removing the stigma of ew! someone used that already? now it has their germs! vintage shopping is not going to soar merely on the basis of saving money or being environmentally conscious.

What do you think? Which group do you belong to? Are you a What do you think? Which group do you belong to? Are you a vintage shopper?

Why do you do it, Woman?!

In response to this prompt on what it means to be a girl (in terms of physical maintenance) and whether your beauty routines have to do with your own philosophy or impressing someone else (i.e. a man).


My morning routine is very simple. I wake up forty minutes before it's time to go, brush my teeth, wash my face, apply my routine cosmetics (can be found on the "about me" page), sometimes straighten my hair, dress, and then drag yobu out of bed so he can drive me. I don't do make up or complicated hairstyles in the morning and at the moment I'm thinking of ways to reduce the amount of time I stand around thinking what am I going to wear?. I just would rather sleep.

I do pluck my eyebrows as regularly as I can remember to, I do try to do my nails on a weekly basis because they break otherwise (I have soft nails), I do my toe nails because I don't like my toes and it helps that they're painted, I shave when I shower, and I use various products for my hair as my hair can be quite problematic (maybe a post on this in the future). I haven't gotten a facial in a while, but I plan on it as soon as I come to more money, so it's not so much that I don't want to as that I can't afford to at the moment.  I'm not interested in manicures or pedicures as much, because I am well aware of the damage I do my nails on a daily basis so unless I suddenly become as rich as Richy Rich it's not likely that I can sustain a manicure.  Therefore any facials, massages, acupuncture...these are all luxuries I want for me and I prefer them over expensive hair cuts (my last hair cut was $4 and I trimmed it myself just the other day) and other beauty treatments.  I think when I'm older and wealthier I can revisit those categories and decide if I want to try them.

As for what I do for yobu...well, the line for what I do for me (and my self-esteem) and what I do to please him can get a little blurry. I think shaving regularly is something I do for him, because when I lived alone I only shaved when my legs would show.  Since I've been with him I've worked harder on improving my skin, and I say that I buy products so that he can use them as well (he's an actor/model so he worries about breakouts too), but really I enjoy the results of using Clarisonic brush on my face, various scrubs, and the zit-zapper thing we got not-so-recently.  Makeup is something I don't think I wear for him so much as I wear for the people around me, either because they all wear make up (and I know they will!) or because of random girls who wear make up (like heavy make up in a club), in an effort to measure up.  Dressing up is something I definitely started doing more because of yobu, I think whenever I had a crush on a guy who I would see I would dress up more for him to notice, so living with a crush means having to dress up more often. It makes me feel more confident, putting effort into what I wear that is, but something like dressing cute instead of "professional" or cool is definitely his influence.  Maybe because my ego is not that big to begin with (code for self-esteem issues) I have a more difficult time figuring out what's for me and what's for others because a large percentage of me feeling good is based on feedback from others (terrible, I know) so if you're happy with me, I'm happy with me.

Surprisingly enough this only applies to my outlook, not so much my character, so I can take you not liking my personality or me for me, but if you hate my hairstyle then I'm going to start questioning it as well.

What about you? What do you do that only girls do and why do you do it?

Edit:  I read that Jessica Simpson has a new reality TV show called The Price of Beauty and I will be following it to comment on it from now on. :D

Do we want "Real Women" on the Runway?

In response to criticism of this article. To summarize, the article quotes designers like Michael Korrs who state that models will remain thin but clothes are being designed for "real women" in double digit sizes. The criticism is on how women do not want to see "normal" sized women on the runway, and that designers are only pretending to be sympathetic.

What do you think? Do we want larger sized models on the runway?

If we go by a national average, I don't want to see "real women" on the runway. The "real" size of women in American is something like 10 or 12 (I think in Drop Dead Diva they said it was 14?!) and no, I don't want to see them on TV or anywhere that's not for plus-size fashion. And why should I? Clothes obviously look different on them than on me (I'm a size 4 or 6 depending on my brand or mood), and the argument is that clothes also look different on a size 0 than on someone my size.

The issue is therefore not one of practicality, but a psychological one: I see a thin, beautiful model wearing something trendy and hot and I think I want to look like that!. Whether it fits me well or not is entirely besides the point, because many women choose to diet in order to look as good as a model.  So the criticism is correct, it's not about the designers choosing anorexic models (didn't Lagerfeld decide on 18 BMI min for all models?), it's about our psychological makeover and how good we think they look.

And think about! If we had size 4 models we would need size 6 models! Then we would need size 8 models, etc. We would need apple-shaped models and pear-shaped models and flat models and curvy models, etc.! We would need models of every ethnicity and of varying heights! We cannot please everyone.

So while I do think that I could live with size 2-4 models as long as they are well-proportioned (kind of like how Victoria's Secret models tend to have normal sized ribcage widths and hips) and are not any extreme, but I can understand the designer's point that models are just moving hangers. I think this is appropriate when designers take their view seriously, for example, have you seen ugly models on runways? I have. I have seen the ugliest make up on them and the reasoning was that they don't want models to look like real people or that they don't want people to miss the clothing and focus on the model's beauty. This makes sense. I think if all designers incorporated this and focused less on the beauty of a model and more on the "hanger" aspect then all is good.

What do you think?