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Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Homemade Fashion

Replying to Cat's post got me thinking about another blog that I follow that's sort of fashion-related, which may only be interesting to me, except whatever, I'll share it with you guys anyway.

Cation Designs is a sewing blog by a lady in California who is super geeky and super good at sewing, as far as I'm concerned. She simultaneously makes me want to get better at it, and throw in the towel while I still have a chance. I originally saw her Superman dress, and have been following her blog ever since. She seems like a super cool person, posts sweet pictures of costumes and things, has an adorable cat, and occasionally writes serious posts like this interview with her mom.

And now I'll get back to work.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Uncrafty Solutions

I've spent the past few weeks thinking on and off about fashion - sometimes because of this blog, sometimes because of other reasons like seeing something pretty in a store window - and I keep coming back to this image.

I don't really have anything to say about it that hasn't already been said, and likely in a better way than I could put it, but I've been thinking about how hard it is to be an ethical consumer of fashion when on a pretty strict budget. And when craft-ally challenged, like me. (That one week I tried to learn how to knit, I hurt my hands more than I thought possible). The saying I remember hearing in engineering a good many times - that, of the three options of "cheap," "good," and "fast," you get to pick two - seems applicable here, though maybe with some changes.

When it comes to buying clothes, I mostly try to get things second-hand, but I admittedly have a weakness for online shopping and for H&M. Plus, places like American Apparel may manufacture clothes in the U.S., but their advertising leaves such a gross taste in my mouth that I don't really want to have anything to do with them. In short, it feels like there aren't many good options out there.

What do you folks think about fashion and ethics? What kinds of choices are important to you?

Monday, May 20, 2013

The only thing I do fashionably is arrive late

I am, like, terrible at fashion. I can tell what's fashionable on other people, but God help me when it comes to dressing myself. I could write this post about all my insecurities when it comes to clothes and how much I'd prefer every single workplace to have its own uniform (also maybe my personal experiences with uniforms and individuality), but instead I'll tell you about the one and only fashion blog that I read.

À l’allure garçonnière is written by a person from Quebec City, and instead of being solely "look at this cute outfit I wore today," the writer actually delves into issues such as how fashion shapes culture and vice versa. The blog is updated infrequently at the moment, but I feel like I learn something valuable from each post.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

May Topic!

Hi everybody!

We didn't do too well with the coworkers topic (not to mention posting the new topic on time, oops), but it's onward and upward. So!

The April poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:
  • 0 votes: counting, cacti, body mods, personal finance, religion, something you love, something you hate, food, character
  • 1 vote: fashion

So the topic for this month is fashion, in a landslide!

Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.

Everyone: There is a poll for the June topic in the sidebar, and you can vote until the last day of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month.

Counting, cacti, and personal finance were kicked off of the poll this month. If you really want to see what we have to say about them, you'll have to suggest those topics again.

Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll in June. As far as I'm concerned, any topic is fair game, so suggest away!