More velvet, more bag handle necklaces

 I am taking very deep breaths and trying not to look at the tucked in collar.

Sunglasses, eBay (similar here)

Dress, Topshop

Shirt, Urban Outfitters 

Belt, Topshop

Necklaces - oh, they're both old bag handles!

Shoes, Office

Today’s* outfit: lace, velvet, and a bit of hardware for good measure. I’m just desperate to say something about juxtaposing the gentle prettiness of the lace with angsty, stompy shoes and grungy velvet and industrial chains, but my friends would come at me like a sea of knives if I did. I mean, I’m fully aware I’ve said it anyway, but I’ve framed it with a smidgeon of self awareness so that if when they mock me, I can be all, “Ugh, you’re so predictable and unoriginal,” and make them hate me just a little bit more. Ah, friendship.

I’ve worn this outfit so often of late to very nice days with very nice people that it’s earned itself a place in my comfort stable, a conglomeration of outfits, books, films, songs etc. which can be trotted out (Eh? Eh? Trotted out? Stable? HORSE METAPHOR) whenever I’m feeling lazy or uninspired or a tad mopey. Fellow residents (horses? I am struggling to maintain the metaphor) in the comfort stable include Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes,  a navy polka dot skirt which is surprisingly yet to feature on this blog, and 10 Things I Hate About You. In the murky depths lurk tentatively emo musical remnants from secondary school but those were bleak times for us all (and by us all I mean me) and I don’t think any of us need revisit the curtain haircut or the awful, awful poetry or the (many) times I loudly corrected my teachers’ spelling mistakes.

*This is a MASSIVE LIE. These photos are from about two weeks ago, from a glorious day in the park featuring pedalos and brilliant people. But more importantly, pedalos.

"Like a burn. Like when you go outside and your feet freeze and you come back in and then they thaw out? It's like that. It's almost exactly like that."

T-shirt & skirt, eBay

Denim jacket, H&M

Belt, Etsy

Shoes, Topshop

1. I am apparently incapable of posing with a normal face expression. So: abject misery or creepy side smile, take your pick.

2. Good god (Lemon), the foldy over side of my jacket is infuriating. I am also incapable of wearing clothes correctly.
3. I often do this thing with my foot which I think looks like a jazzy little foot tap but actually looks like muscle seizure.

The urge to go all out Joan Holloway when wearing this skirt was almost overmastering; it was only a combination of an old Hadley Freeman article and the realisation that my tendency to spill food all over everywhere that I exist would only be emphasised by the contrast with my ladylike outfit that forced me to refrain. Wowza, let’s all take a minute to regroup after the hurtling-through-the-snowy-maze-in-The-Shining-pursued-by-an-axe-wielding-Jack-Nicholson experience that was that previous sentence. Concision and clarity – neither are skills that I possess. Ok, everyone sufficiently regrouped? Coolio.

As I was saying, I resisted the call of Mad Men and instead whacked on a Felt t-shirt and my old faithful gold chain. Kind of like Joan’s rebellious teenage daughter who inherited none of her mother’s glorious figure or hair, only this pencil skirt, and expressed her bitterness at being so genetically shortchanged through denim, man shoes and a few decades of time travel. And the tribulations of Joan Jr. were not to end with the inescapable shadow of the MILF! The denim that seemed to her to represent her liberation was instead so restrictive around the arm/shoulder region that poor Joanie couldn’t reach the ceiling rail on the Metro for balance, and so had to squat precariously and ‘surf’ the whole train journey! And now I need to calm down and stop writing what is essentially a very bad fanfic. You are right, I should probably not wear this skirt again for a while.

A poor excuse for a blog post

This is a bit of a crappy post, I’m afraid, but I wanted to explain my absence from this blog because I’m fully aware that millions across the world are crouched before their laptop in a darkened room, tears spilling onto the keyboard, maniacally hitting ‘refresh’ on Emily Wears Things only to writhe in keening agony when yet again, they are greeted only with I’M TALKING BOUT CHI-TOWN. I for one am not comfortable with inflicting that kind of pain on the populace of the world. Seriously, though, I am terribly sorry for being an awful blogger of late, and very much appreciate you delicious little readers (I did an actual squeak of joy when I passed 100 followers – thank you ever so much!) It’s proving difficult to take photos back at home, being unable to stroll across the hall and bully Lucy into taking some snaps as I do at uni; I’m pretty much just relying on my ma, who inexplicably prioritises going to work over photographing me. Also my dog ate it, my printer broke and I thought I’d attached it to the email but it actually hadn’t attached*.

Over this week I fully intend to monopolise Wendy and get me some photos, so normal blogging should resume very shortly. Apologies and thankyous again! As a small conciliatory token, here is a picture of Ryan Gosling carrying his dog:

Image from Google. Also, because I am a comedy wizard, I saved this picture under the filename 'Ryan Dogling'. Kneel before me.

*I actually did think I'd attached an essay last term but didn't and it was the worst knowing that not only would my tutor think I was a liar, but that I was a uncreative liar at that. 

I'M TALKING BOUT CHI-TOWN

Firstly, my newest Glamour post is up! It'd mean an awful lot if you'd have a quick read here. 

Dress, Attica Vintage (if you're ever in Newcastle, go there!)

Boots, Urban Outfitters

Necklace, an old bag handle I wrenched off and fashioned into a necklace

What is particularly fun about the above pictures is how ludicrously out of proportion my head is to my torso. This is a result of:

a.       This dress not actually originating as a dress, but as a fairly long tunic/top with slits in the side that I clumsily stitched together. Now it most definitely qualifies as a dress, even if it does only cover 86% of my rear, and I will hear of NOTHING TO THE CONTRARY.

b.      My freakishly large head.

Despite the 98% probability of inadvertent arse flashing when wearing it, I love this dress. It’s a sort of velour-y, velvet-y material, as is a rapidly increasing proportion of my wardrobe; considering the nausea which results from my touching anything on the velvet spectrum, I’m starting to suspect I have masochistic tendencies. Either that, or aesthetics are way above physical comfort on my list of priorities. I realise neither of those options reflects well on me but at least now I can justify my velvet expenditure because really, I’ve been paying not just for clothes, but for greater understanding of my tortured soul. Yeah man, this shit just got deep.

Scientifically verifiable and completely accurate clothes based psychoanalysis aside, my second university term is over and I’m at home!  And within twenty four hours of being back in the Toon, I walked past a man so incapacitated at ten pm that he’d gone for a quick nap on the quayside.  Newcastle, I really bloody missed you. Below are four of the songs played on the long journey up North - and yes, the choice of Homecoming was deliberate. I am just that cheesy.

Penguins are emotionally damaging

Bright Eyes t-shirt

Skirt, Urban Outfitters

Jacket, Topshop

Belt, charity shop

Necklace, my Gran's

Shoes, Office

Before I begin rambling, I must apologise for 1. The ridiculous state of my hair and 2. The solo picture. In all other pictures, I looked like I’d just watched the scene in March of the Penguins where the dad penguin drops the egg on the ice and then looks desperately at it as all the others hatch into adorable bundles of fluff and his stays resolutely cold and dead and heartbreaking. Seriously, unless you are severely masochistic or entirely devoid of a soul, do not watch March of the Penguins. I still have not recovered.

Moving on, above is the first of the promised maxi skirt deluge on my ol’ blog. This un was a sale find (as is everything I’ve ever bought from Urban Outfitters ever), and is made of the loveliest heavy, drape-y material which swishes around your ankles and makes it nigh on impossible not to flounce. It’s becoming increasingly apparent to me that my clothes purchases are heavily influenced by how well on a scale of 1-10 they would lend themselves to dancing in in my bedroom, or for the more restrictive items how much they make me feel like I’m in a Victorian novel/ Downton Abbey. As of yet, the only item I can think of which doesn’t fit either of those two categories are my ludicrously uncomfortable leather trousers, but in those I like to pretend I’m 85 years old and sticking my (presumably by then) wrinkled, leather clad ass in the face of societal expectations.

Also, I would get friendly right now with my Bright Eyes tshirt if I were you, because I wear it a hell of a lot. I don’t care how pretentious they make me seem – I love me a good band tshirt. Plus they seem to look pretty good with a little insouciant crumpling, which is an enormous benefit given my massive aversion to ironing.

To wrap up, below is a gratuitous photo of Fudge, because this week’s essay reduced me to such a state of emotional instability that I spent more time than I care to admit looking at photos of my cats and pretending to scoff when my mam held the phone up to them but actually loving it more than life.

The (relatively) long awaited leather pants

Massive sozzes for how ludicrously tired I look. I wasn't tired, just inexplicably very eyebaggy.


Cat t-shirt, eBay (where else?)

Trousers, Topshop

Velvet shirt, Urban Outfitters

Flatforms, Office

Necklace, my Gran's
Rings, Etsy

If there’s one thing I could never be described as (there are many things I could never be described as, but for rhetoric’s sake let’s not nitpick), it’s sexy. I can’t even type the word without squirming. And, having the remnants of a lisp and the face of a six year old, saying it is a whole other level of creepy. Yet shy, nerdy, prudish me has always desperately craved a pair of (p)leather trousers, and so stumbling across the above pair in the Topshop sale led inevitably to 1. Crashing to the ground in the changing rooms whilst attempting to wrench them over my ass and 2. After locating a larger size, skippin’ right on down to the till.

Shy, nerdy, prudish me could not be entirely silenced by a pleathery bargain, however, and so I did the only natural thing and popped them on with the least sexy item fathomable – a kitten tshirt, complete with balls of yarn and an inexplicable rubber duck. And so the balance was restored. Like a saucy nana, I was, and if that description doesn’t see me inundated with gentlemen callers then I simply don’t know what more to do.

Other things I did recently: visited a meadow to see horses twice in one day (I LOVE HORSES), went to a club with a ridiculously inconsistent design scheme, and tried and failed to steal Owen’s Adipose (the little rubbery fella atop his head, to clarify). Yeehaa. 

Horse loving me, horse hating James, Lucy and Ibaad having japes with horses, Owen with an Adipose.

P.S. Also, I forgot to say - thank you ever so much for reading, for your lovely comments and for following. I'm currently at 70 followers which is blowing my mind! I've only been blogging a short time but I'm having all kinds of fun doing so, and your all round loveliness is restoring my faith in the internet after seeing far too many horrendous YouTube comments. You are all excellent specimens (except my brother, whose mocking I've thankfully become immune to). So, yes, thank you!

Berry, black and being late for lectures

(I'm so sorry for my brief blogging hiatus. I've been sinking in an Old English quagmire and have been all over the shop. Also, none of the things promised in the last post feature in this post but they are coming! Leather trousers are happening! Worry not!)

Shirt, Internacionale

Trousers, Topshop

Leather jacket, Topshop

Belt, Primark

Necklace, H&M

Shoes, Topshop

I realise we’re technically in S/S territory now and I should be all about pastels, but it’s ludicrously cold and I don’t own any pastels and damn it I just want to wear berry. I’m a little tardy to the party when it comes to berry tones, though I’ve been amassing a large collection of berry lipsticks for a few months now (I can’t stop. Someone stop me); I found these trousers for a mere tenner in the Topshop sale, however, and when it comes to being on trend versus saving £20/£30, I’d far rather have the cash (to fund my berry lipstick collection). And being completely unable to do subtlety, I whacked them on with this Internacionale shirt and strode around like a little Geordie cranberry. I probably should have anticipated I would be late for my first lecture and picked a slightly less conspicuous outfit in which to burst into the lecture theatre, all sweaty and panicked, but such is life.