Endnotes:
As I mentioned last Saturday, one of my favorite Summer activities is going to garage sales on weekend mornings. Fortunately, my fiance T. share this same passion and that’s how I know we’re a match made in heaven. We have the same stamina and persistence when it comes to digging through other people’s trash in order to find what we’ll deem treasures.
What are some of your favorite summer time activities and what do you look forward to come weekend? S.
Endnotes:
You may remember this skirt as the dress I wore not too long ago. I still love it as a dress, but a recent picture of mamichan’s showed me how versatile this item can really be. She wore a shirred top as a skirt, drawing inspiration from Japanese fashion magazines she’s been reading. I found this to be a great idea for adding extra mileage to an existing wardrobe item without making any permanent alterations to it.
All I did is tuck the thin straps in and transformed the shirred bust area into a wide elastic waist band:
While Mamichan did this with a shirred top, I used a dress. The difference lies in the skirt length you will get when wearing one or the other. I have a shirred top I’m itching to try this with next and I think it’s the perfect item for a travel or capsule wardrobe. Especially a cami or dress in a less-memorable neutral could function one day as a top and the next as a skirt. Brilliant. Thanks, Mamichan, for the idea!
What are other wardrobe item conversion tricks have you picked up? Do you know of any other that allow you to wear one item in a considerably different way without making actual permanent alterations to it? Do share! S.
20 May 2009, originally uploaded by academichic.
Sources:
- Blue polo – Old Navy
- Orange-red cardi – Zara, remixed endlessly
- Fuschia cord skirt – Gap, remixed
- Blue sandals – Birkenstock
- Fuschia and black cord bag – Old Navy
- Bike – “Nerp”
Endnotes:
Check this out! I am such a nerd and coffee fiend. I decided I wouldn’t spend money on decking out my bike until I spend the summer using it enough to justify the upgrades (like fenders, a chain guard, etc), but I just couldn’t help myself with this one and I got a “coffee cup holder” to attach to my handle bars. Now I can still get my coffee to go and enjoy it on my bike. T. made fun and said that I was “yuppie-fying” my bike, but I’ve come to terms with that and have no qualms with it while I’m sipping my delicious coffee on the go.
Blue Birkies, originally uploaded by academichic.
As for today’s flats – these little blue Birkies were a gift from a friend in Germany last summer. I would have never picked these out for myself, yet found myself loving them! If you’ve ever owned a pair of Birkenstocks, you know how comfortable and foot-friendly they are. Traditional Birkies were always rather plain, but nowadays the company makes such cool designs and has such fun colors, that comfortable is no longer synonymous with boring.
On a somewhat related note, we’ve received several reader comments and emails from those of you in the Sciences, noting that while you may be in academia, our outfits do not always translate well to a lab setting. We would like to experiment (get it, experiment?) with this challenge next week and create a sampling of outfits that are both stylish and lab-friendly. So to prepare for that, we need your help! Since different labs have varying dress codes, we would like you to tell us what your dress restrictions are. We’re looking forward to your input! S.
20 May 2009, originally uploaded by academichic.
Post Script: After T. took my picture this morning, he insisted that I wear my helmet since I was riding to a farther away coffee shop than my usual neighborhood one and this ride would involve some more high-traffic roads. So I did, for his sake. A. and I have had several bike helmet conversations lately since we both have tenuous relationships with our hair and I’ve been wondering how I feel about the whole helmet thing. But I think I will continue to wear mine as I did today, since a little hair damage is probably better than head damage. And really, I’m at the coffee shop now and it can’t look that bad because no one’s pointed and laughed yet. (Do all of you who bike commute wear helmets?)
