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I’m developing sort of a thing for blazers and jackets. It’s weird, because I’ve never been that into them before.

I own, like any sensible person who works in the semi-corporate world and has to go on interviews, two suits that include jackets. One’s tweed with a pencil skirt and mandarin collared jacket; the other is basic black with a gored skirt and velvet details. They don’t, in all honesty, see a lot of use. I wear the tweed pencil skirt a lot in the winter months, but my office is on the extremely casual end of business casual – I wear jeans a couple of times a week and once spent an entire week wearing flip-flops while recovering from nasty sunburn gained on a trip to Portugal. No one cared. We are not a formal office – just ask the consultant across the room in the board shorts.

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You know, I’m 5’8″ tall. Okay, fine, it’s really 5’7″, but the point is I’m taller by either one or two inches than the average American woman, and yet I cannot for the life of me find a pair of jeans that are not too long. Why is this? Is there a vast conspiracy to make me wear heels with my denim, because in all honesty: No. No, that is not going to happen. I won’t even wear heels with a dress. I may wear heels when I go to opera in April, but I’ll be sitting down the entire damn time. I wear heels for interviews, which are blissfully few and far between.

I will not wear heels with bootcut jeans at work on a Monday, dammit, and you can’t make me. I’ll wear my cowboy boots instead.

Sure would be awfully nice if I could wear flats, though. Do I need to buy short length to do that?

I’ve done a lot of shopping at Ann Taylor Loft this year – sweaters, jewelry, shoes, dresses – but I’m fairly sure that this is it for the year. Appropriately, it’s a party dress that would be great for ringing in 2010 except for the facts that a) it’s not arriving until January 12th and b) I’m spending NYE on the couch.

In fact, I am not entirely sure when the next occasion calling for formalwear will even be, but let’s disregard those little details:

This is it for 2009, people. No more shopping until 2010.

I can always wear it to the opera in April, I suppose.

Lindsay at Jezebel posted a video yesterday of one of the Gap’s holiday ads in a post entitled: New Gap Commercial With Little Girls Is, Yeah, A Little Gross. I’m…not seeing it, honestly.  Neither are most of the commenters.

The sticking point is apparently at :08, where one of the girls does a hip-pop. Now, I can’t dance. I really can’t dance. I can’t dance so much that I took weight training in college instead of a class in modern dance (which was considerably closer to my dorm, I might add), and even I know that hip popping is pretty much a standard in jazz and modern dance, not to mention modern cheerleading. The move itself isn’t sexual. It’s certainly not inherently sexual when performed by little girls in sweaters, tights, and boots.

But about 500 commenters agree with me there, and it’s not the thing that’s bugging me now. What’s bugging me are the comments like this one:

“it’s sick, quite frankly, that little girls would care so much about their clothing– how materialistic.”

This isn’t the only comment of this kind on the post – there are several in the vein of “they’re too young to care about their shoes!” – but this was definitely the most to the point.

Part of my reaction to it is increduality – I was pretty tomboyish after I got over my initial frilly dress phase around age seven, and I spent elementary school dying for a pair of Guess jeans. I got to go to the Gap for my back-to-school clothes for the first time when I was 12 and was so thrilled. I wanted my tennis shoes and sturdy sandals that I ran around to be cute.

And this is from someone who didn’t pay attention to fashion and what really looked nice until sometime in college, or possibly grad school.

There’s nothing wrong with being interested in clothes at the age of 8. There’s also nothing wrong with not being interested in them at that age (or any other). Kids are just as individual as adults, people. Really.

When I love a pair of shoes, I love a pair of shoes. I wear them constantly. I make them work with any outfit. I wear them until they can’t take anymore, and then I mourn.

My favorite pair of shoes for the past two years have been a pair of magenta patent AK Anne Klein flats that I bought at Piperlime for $80. This was pretty expensive for me at the time – I was just getting into fashion and style stuff – but it paid off in this case. I wore them at least once a week, sometimes twice, in summer and winter, and for the past six months I’ve been wearing them despite the fact that I’ve actually worn a hole in one of the heels. But at some point you have to let go, and so for several months I’ve been looking for a replacement. Criteria: Flat, shiny, in a fun color that I can wear with a lot of things, and fairly inexpensive. I’m poor, people. I’ve worked only four days a week most of the year and was on furlough for August. Shoes over $100 weren’t happening.

It took forever to find anything; AK Anne Klein has an almost identical shoe this year, but it’s in yellow, which isn’t a favorite color of mine. There was a dearth of deep pinks and greens. A lot of purple, which I love, but nothing quite right – either was too lavender (I own some lavender peep toes already) or not patent, or absolutely perfect and $180 or something. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to need to tape over the hole or something.

Okay, not really. But still, it was dire.

Then someone in the comments of this post recommended Marais USA, and I went to check them out. They don’t have much in the way of selection – they’re a small, NYC-based firm that’s only been around for a few years – but what they do have is really cute, and I immediately began lusting after all three of their flats, especially in the Suit color. When the Mulberry Mary Jane went on sale at Urban Outfitters, I immediately bought them.

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There are a lot of things that annoy me: train drivers who take corners about fifteen miles per hour faster than they should, neighbors who spend an hour yakking outside my apartment door, commuters who won’t move out of the way when people are getting off the subway. But one of the few things that annoys me to the point of putting me in a bad mood almost immediately are…tights that don’t quite fit.

I know, it seems like a little thing, but for me there’s nothing more uncomfortable than the Slowly Creeping Downward Feeling of tights that won’t go all the way up. I actually think it goes back to a solitary incident in junior high school choir when a pair of pantyhose slipped down to the point where someone pointed it out and said they were trying to find a replacement.

I, of course, was completely humiliated and immediately ran for the bathroom to try to yank them back up again. But I digress.

This happened this morning with a brand new pair of dark brown tights. At first, I thought it would be bearable, but slowly – as I stood in the overcrowded NJ lightrail, and then the overcrowded PATH train, and then the overcrowded number 4 subway – I began to feel the inevitable pull of gravity and the first thing I did when I got to work was run for the bathroom to strip them off.

The second thing I did was logon to We Love Colors and order four pair of thigh highs. (I got black, brown, charcoal, and rubine, which is kind of a dark purple color.)

I’ve never actually worn thigh highs before; they aren’t readily available at, like, Target, which is where I generally buy most of my socks and tights (although the creeping pair this morning was $10 and from Sock Dreams, so they don’t even have the excuse of being cheap), but I have been interested in them for a while for just this reason.  I held off because I was using the stomach-minimizing power of full tights, but if they aren’t staying up, it’s not like they’re working for that, are they?

So stockings it is. Fingers crossed that they don’t end up being a separate but equal pain in my ass.

I had epic plans for Halloween this year (by which I mean that I had plans at all for Halloween), but the need to actual buy plane tickets to go home for Christmas has stymied them. Damn you, adulthood! Damn you!

Let’s all pause for a moment to mourn the Vaguely Gothic Fairy costume that I was going to march down Sixth Avenue in. On the plus side, the parade’s at 8:30 pm on the last day of October, and I probably would have frozen my ass off.

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Dear Gap,

The shirt I bought from you on Friday looks like a 1994-era plaid shirt was attacked by a 1970-era tuxedo shirt, and somehow I love it. In the future, however, would it be possible to cut your clothes for women who actually have breasts? Showing my bra off to everyone on 3rd Avenue at 12:30pm wasn’t really on my agenda today.

No love,

Amanda

I thought about naming this post Make It Work, but decided to opt for the less cliched Tim Gunn catchphrase.

Sooo.  Project Runway Season 5 premiered last night, and I sat down to watch it despite the incredible amount of underwhelment I felt throughout season 4.  There were too many veterans in season 4, and those who weren’t veterans (*cough*Christian*cough*) took cocky precociousness and adorableness to annoying levels I was previously unaware actually were possible.  Also, none of them could live up to the awesomeness that was Santino Rice from season 2.  (I actually wasn’t overly impressed with season 3 either, although I still say Alison was screwed over)

This episode was notable for the guest appearance of the fabulous Austin Scarlett (yes, even gayer than his name):

Austin was apparently the winner of this challenge in season 1 (I was a latecomer to Project Runway and saw all of season 1 and most of season 2 in reruns) but I remember him best for saving Jay’s ass by modeling for him in one of the challenges.  And for being flaming enough to set fire to Yosemite National Park all by himself.

I could recap the entire episode, but others have done it earlier and better.  Suffice it to say that I agreed with the judges’ verdicts – Jerry and Stella deserved to be in the bottom two, and I was glad when it was Jerry to go – beyond the fact that he’s too experienced for the show, his design was a mess, like something from a horror flick, and he was delusional enough to think it was awesome.  Stella at least knew her trash bag dress was shit.

Likewise, Kelli deserved to win – the hand dyed vacuum bag skirt was incredible, although I was less fond of the coffee filter top.  Daniel’s blue solo cup dress similarly rocked – it was even more amazing when you realized how he had to do it – and I actually would have worn Kordo’s tablecloth dress.

All in all, an okay start to the season.  I’m not sure who my favorites will be yet – it’s early yet -but I can tell that it won’t be Blayne.  The tanorexic Seattle designer/barista is beating even Christian for annoying, and that takes some doing.  I spent most of last season wanting to bash the fashion elf over his overly hairsprayed head.

I got a wild hair this morning to clear out my closet (well okay, its been something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, as I’m moving in August) and now most of my wardrobe is in white trash bags, including the following:

• a black cocktail dress I bought for a wedding two years ago and never wore again
• t-shirts I’ve had since college and haven’t worn since about then
• my first pair of Doc Marten boots, bought in London when I was 19
• five pairs of shorts that I was saving until I lost weight again
• a really cute pair of black pointy-toed flats that have no sole left and are so stretched out that they slap against my heels when I walk
• almost my entire collection of purses, with the exception of a slate blue sequined bag shaped like a leaf that I bought in Chinatown, a red patent clutch I got last year from Ann Taylor Loft, a black suede purse embroidered with flowers, and small messenger with a bird printed on it

My actual wardrobe is now limited to two pairs of trousers (one black, one ivory), two pairs of jeans, two dresses (one black, one purple), a bunch of skirts, a few suits, a few jersey tops, a handful of sweaters, and some t-shirts.

Oh, and about a dozen pair of shoes.

At least it’ll be easy to pack in August?