A Week of Outfits
We got ripped off.
The universe promises Midwesterners a real autumn to make up for how crappy it is to live in this political hellscape.
"Hey, we didn't expand Medicaid, but at least we have pretty foliage!" we sneer at Californians.
"OK so our last governor tied a lady up and took naked photos…
Being a more conscientious, ethical and thoughtful consumer is on my mind quite a bit. I am always working to be more aware of the environmental impact of the packaging I purchase and I am also trying to better evaluate and control the types of ingredients I consume or use topically. In addition I just…
I wouldn't say this was the most exciting Sephora PLAY! Box of all time, but it was a pretty solid delivery, with some good basic products. The theme for this month was "Next Gen Beauty" (I don't get it, necessarily, because some of these are pretty old school products, but as I have said before,…
I am always on the hunt for a holy-grail status sunscreen. Even though my personal natural preference is for pale, smooth skin rather than a bronzy tan, my skin absorbs sun rays (and consequently sun damage) with an unholy glee. I can just go *near* a window and I feel my skin begin to tingle.
The…
My aspiring minimalist wardrobe has been getting what feels like a near-total makeover this summer, with many more things finding their way out than finding their way in.
As I make a concerted effort to buy and keep only those pieces that
A) Look good on me
B) Make me happy
C) Conform to my own personal style
I…
It's time to shop my wardrobe! This has been the summer of the great closet cleanout, and my loss is your gain! Check out the items I have for sale on Facebook Marketplace and let me know if you're interested in anything. Will ship for additional charge once I work out the shipping costs. Click…
NUDESTIX have been showing up in my peripheral vision for a year or so now, one of those brands/products that I kept thinking I should try, but didn't in any way need to try. NUDESTIX seems to be in that current club of makeup brands that promise simplicity, "natural beauty" and one-product wonders (except buy more products, K?). Like Glossier and Milk, their PR images feature glowing women of all skin tones who don't even look like they're wearing makeup, guys! Indeed, Glossier wants you spend quite a bit of money to end up showing all your natural "imperfections", the implication being that you'd better be a bouncy, upper middle class 20-something who can afford to show their natural skin texture and pigmentation, or else just... stay home or something? I don't know.
This months' Sephora PLAY! box, was it a deal or a dud? Read on for my (mostly) well organized thoughts on the matter.
The Sephora PLAY! subscription is one of the best values in the current, crowded beauty box market. $10 gets you five good sized montly samples, along with a bonus sample (usually perfume or a smaller packet sample) as well as a card that gets you an extra 50 Beauty Insider points if you make an in-store purchase that month. For me, a major benefit to Sephora's subscription is that their boxes will only contain brands that Sephora actually carries. Other similarly priced boxes (looking at you Birchbox and Ipsy) would send some of the very offest of off brands, things I was afraid to put on my face because I had no brand trust or even recognition. I don't think anything I get in a Sephora box will harm me or be full of Chinese factory toxins. Probably.
I have been subscribed to the PLAY! box for a year now, and it's been mostly hits and a few total misses, but at least no harmful products or brands that I've never heard of before. Let's see what this month brought us.
I've been having a strange fashion summer, which I will write more about in a future post. (I have Deep Thoughts on the topic, trust.) Part of this strange fashion summer has been a resurgence in my fascination with a few British lifestyle bloggers, namely The Anna Edit (she does the best capsule wardrobes) and Lily Pebbles (she's in the middle of a captivating house renovation.) Why I care about the lives of some girls almost 20 years my junior living across the ocean, I can't really explain properly, but I do really enjoy their content and like following them. Earlier this summer Lily posted this daily carry Instagram, and I absolutely fell in love with her handbag.
I
have had to do quite a bit of unintended shopping in the last few months. Due to a size change, I've had to clear out a huge amount of clothing that just no longer worked for me, and I also had to replace a lot of key and basic pieces. I have always been a more "buy what you like, especially if it's on sale" type of shopper, and over the years I have amassed an eclectic wardrobe that I really enjoy. OK— to be fair there were way too many black dresses, but other than that I had outfits for pretty much any occasion and a solid foundation of basics. Cue my confusion and irritation when those basic pieces I relied on no longer fit correctly, and couldn't be belted, tucked or otherwise willed into shape. Nothing for it, I needed to shop.
However, I was having a concurrent personal style shift, where the clothing I was used to wearing (lots of black and flowy things, goth accents, skater dresses and quirky pieces) no longer suited the more classic and minimalist aesthetic I was craving. I was looking for a more minimalist and (gasp) grown up style.
I knew I needed to invest in new things, but I didn't want to waste money on garments that I couldn't build a decent capsule wardrobe from - I didn't want one-off fashion pieces, I wanted the leggings, t-shirts, jeans, basic skirts, classic white button downs and black dress pants that anyone needs to have a workable modern wardrobe. Very happily around that time I ran into the wardrobing app/website Finery.