I know this is not technically a dress, but while digging through the back corners of my closet looking for long forgotten dresses, I came across this top. What it was doing on a hanger instead of folded in a dresser drawer I'm not entirely sure, but that will be remedied from here on out. I got this shirt back in high school at a rummage sale. The rest of the outfit has been worn previously this year.

I don't generally wear long skirts these days and I think it's a bit disorienting for everyone I know, myself included, when I do put one on (my dad said "So what's this?" when he saw me). Even though this is not a particularly glamorous dress (it's a polyester tricot), I nevertheless felt incredibly statuesque and regal whilst out running errands in it. I can only attribute this to the length. My old band mate J. gave me this dress back in high school. I can't imagine her ever wearing it, as she was about 5'2 and had a sort Betty Page thing going on. In my teenage years, I used to wear this with Converse Allstars.

Well, it's now the last month of my year long experiment. Recently in conversation with R. I complained that I haven't really had the opportunity to wear any of my cocktail and formal wear, so we hit upon the idea of making December dress month. Back in college I used to get dressed up in ballgowns just to do the grocery shopping, a habit I have sadly fallen out of. So, to kick off the month, I have here a dress that is neither formal nor cocktail, but one that I love nonetheless. I bought it last year at a thrift store and only this week got around to sewing the necessary buttons back on (yes, I can be incredibly lazy about doing things like hemming skirts and sewing on buttons). The tights are Look from London tights that I bought off the Free People website. I love almost anything with a peacock feather on it, so naturally I had to have these. It's a bit of a shame that the skirt hem interferes with the top of the design.

Sometimes in my mess of a bedroom, I'll find two garments laying on top of each other that I would never have thought to combine. That's how I came up with this outfit. The blouse is from Topshop and needs some bra strap holders sewn in as the front and the back are both cut very low and it has a tendency to slip off my shoulders. Because of this, I haven't worn this top as much as I would've like to. The dress is actually my 8th grade graduation dress bought for me by my mom at some mall department store (the label is Rampage). This dress has gotten a lot of wear over the years. In 10th grade I mistakenly used it as the basis of a 1940's look I was trying for a big holiday party. I had even interviewed my great aunt on hair and makeup of the day with no luck.

(Me: What sort of makeup did you guys wear in the 40's?

Aunt: I don't think you need to be wearing much makeup at your age)

I wish I had pictures available of that night, because my look is so not 40's it's laughable. The socks are from Hansel from Basel. I'm not entirely sure they work here, but it was a bit too cold to go without them, and I also just wasn't feeling the whole bare knee thing today. The necklace is Automatic Sweetheart (who by the way will be out selling her wares along with many other fine artisans at the Unique Los Angeles Holiday show this weekend).

Does anyone remember losing this blazer at the Jabberjaw in the Spring of 1997? If so, let me know and I will happily return it to you. Around that time, I was in a band that played there quite frequently and one night after a show we found this in the video game room. Since it fit me so well and since no one was around to claim it, I put it on and wore it home with the blessings of the Jabberjaw "staff". The truth is that I'm not all that crazy about this blazer. I think the lapels are waaaay too big for me and the colour is a bit too teenaged goth. The problem is that it fits so perfectly that every time I talk about getting rid of it someone talks me out of it. Today, for example, I horrified my mother by telling her I was going to donate it.

Here I am forcibly removing my cat from the picture. If she wants to start her own blog, that's fine with me, but she'll have to take her own pictures. This dress was given to my mom by one of her fashion history students (she usually made them write a paper on an item of vintage clothing, and I guess the student didn't want to keep this particular piece). She passed it along to me this year when she was scaling down her collection. I posted a better picture of the outfit on the Wardrobe Remix Flickr pool which you can check out here.

I always gravitate towards pants in the Wintertime, which is a bit of a shame because I own so many lovely dresses and warm tights. This dress I bought at Jet Rag (though not at their $1 parking lot sale). At the moment all the buttons are being held on by safety pins, so it looks like a bit of mending will be on the agenda for this weekend. I realized after putting together this outfit, that a belted dress might not be the most practical look for Thanksgiving dinner, but I fared alright.

I was so excited when I reached into the pockets of this jacket and found a money clip I had presumed stolen over ten years ago and a tube of lipstick gone MIA. This means that the last time I wore this coat was Halloween 1998 when I dressed as a sort of mod cat girl. The coat is from a Pomona thrift store and cost about $16 - a small fortune for me back in high school.

The contents of the pockets