Puppy Love

I never know what I should wear when I go visit my grandparents. The visit entails three hours in a car roundtrip, and minimal physical activity, and eating. How does one dress for such an event? I usually wear one of the same two dresses--tried and true for every family event ever, they must think I only own those two dresses and that's it--but last weekend I decided to switch it up and put on some real people clothing. Here's some photos my mom took of my outfit when the two of us went on a walk down to the beach with my grandpa and my grandparents' dog. 

[Photos by my mom, except the one of Daisy, which I took.]

Tank top: Forever 21

Skirt: thrifted

Jacket: Hamlet's Vintage

Boots: hand-me-downs from my cousin

Yes, that is a leash in my hand. I had to keep my eye on the pupster.

Also there's two pins on my chest from Amoeba Music in L.A.

Hey everybody!

Hogwarts pride.

Patch: Harry Potter World in Florida

NASA pride.

Patch: Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in D.C.

Okay I know it's really cheesy but my mom got me these keys and ya know what? I think they're really great because no one remembers often enough how important hope, courage, strength, and dreams are. 

My grandparents' adorable puppy, Daisy. She's such a spaznugget.

If you were wondering at all, yes, I will write about Fashion Week eventually. ...Someday....

Bon weekend, y'all

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Grandma Twippy

That title is a combination of grandma, Twiggy, and hippie. 

Not sure what else I can say about it. 

The photos do a pretty decent of job of explaining that. 

(I wore this outfit to go to the Katya Leonovich show.)

[Photos by my mom.]

Jacket: We Be Bop (via my mom's closet)

Bandeau: Maidenform

Pants: Cut Loose

Shoes: Trotters

Bag: my grandma's 

I know, I gotta work on my posture. 

Me and that bag are going places. Mark my words, it's comin' with me

Midstep

My first attempt at Twiggy makeup.

Listen to Dear Nora on Spotify, they rock and will color your weekend pale grayish colors in the nicest way possible. 

I went to MoMA PS1 today with Lola to go to this really cool art book fair. I got a freakin' awesome postcard that says "Your body is a battleground" and "Support Legal Abortion/Birth Control/and Women's Rights." 

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Something to Hide

My mom is a reoccurring theme on my blog. She always provides me with some of the most interesting and bizarre things I put on here (see my trip diary) (originally wrote dairy). A while back, she mentioned something about masks. How they were supposedly a trend. I was all like, "Uhm I think you're wrong but okay," and then I put a Mardi Gras mask on the copper bust of Beethoven located atop our piano. 

I recently discovered that she was actually, miraculously, correct. Maison Martin Margiela Couture has this thing--I'm tempted to tag it as a fetish--with full-head masks. I don't even know if I should classify them as masks. I have no idea what to call them. But whatever they are, they're awesome, and I desperately wish there wasn't a no-wearing-things-that-obstruct-your-face rule in school because then I would wear these on days when I'm feeling like "nope I'm not actually here right now" and I could just hang out inside my bejeweled ski mask minus the eye holes. 

Also, there was apparently some sort of high fashion mask trend surging in 2009, so I dug up a few photos from those days (it's been four years since '09 wait what?? I'm having a bit of a time trip because I started looking through my mom's old yearbooks from her job and the sassy 90s-ness of those kids invoked a weird sense of nostalgia for something I never experienced). 

[Photos via Style.com.]

Maison Martin Margiela Fall 2012 Couture

Maison Martin Margiela Spring 2013 Couture

Maison Martin Margiela Fall 2013 Couture

Alexandre Herchocovitch Fall/Winter 2009

Richard Nicoll Fall/Winter 2009

Leonardo DiCaprio 

trying to eat pizza

nice try

because now you just look stupid

[Photo by me.]

Yes.

Blindfolds are cool and all, but utterly impractical. So are welding masks. Actually, those are straight up scary and shouldn't be worn at all unless you are welding something.

As part of my femme fatale look I want to wear veils. But I have to find/make them first.

New York Fashion Week is beginning. Feel it in the streets, feel it in the air, the fashion horde is gonna getchyou.

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My Mom Loves Technology

My mom loves to use her phone (not an iPhone) and her iPad to take pictures, no matter where we are, no matter the occasion. It's freaking hilarious. My sister hates it but it's just too funny for me to be annoyed by it. But really, thank god she documents these things, because how else would we have a bunch of ridiculous pictures taken in airports and in front of famous churches? Think of this as installment number one of my France trip diary, while we wait for me to get my act together and get my cameras developed. (Most of these are just of me because my family is picky and probably won't want me to post any pictures of them here, even though some of them ARE SO FUNNY. (My mom likes to take selfies (or as she calls them, 'face-ies') on long train rides and sometimes I join her.))

[All photos by my mom. Good job.]

My new favorite t-shirt: "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."

Getting an unidentified meal at midnight in Reykjavik, Iceland (unidentified merely because what meal does one eat at midnight, especially when it feels like 4 pm because it's so light out).

Exhausted and frustrated at the train station in St. Cloud because our train decided to not go to our stop and we didn't have enough sense to realize the trains that were going to our stop were just on a different track so we sat there for an hour, just waiting. 

Me, my sister, and her friend Charlie posing up a frickin' storm in front of the famous church in Chartres. 

Shirt: made by me

Shorts: thrifted in LA

Scarf: ~childhood~

Shoes: Keds (via Savers)

Me on my birthday, about to stab anyone that tries to take one of my snails. 

Shirt: my mom's in the 70s

Overalls: thrifted in LA

Trying to blow out a candle that was simply resistant to my lung capacity. 

Already sour 16.

Also the drink is not blue, the cup is, that's just water.

Sipping some delicious café crème near Notre Dame (yeah okay try and charge 5,80 euros for a cup of coffee somewhere else see what happens). 

Shirt: gift from my aunt

Shorts: thrifted in LA

Watch: birthday present from my grandparents

Sunglasses: France

J-chillin' on the side of the Seine, having a real-life blast, livin' on the edge. 

Shoes: Trotters (via Savers)

I have a habit of wearing the same outfit a million times, especially when I travel. Overalls just seemed like the right choice every time. Also, now you can see how dorky I really am because I wear my running shoes in public. Hey, if I'm going to be a kickboxing ballerina, I need to be in tip-top shape. 

(At the airport on our way back home, hence the obviously genuine sadness.)

Props to my mom for rocking the iPad and cellphone. That takes courage.

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On Est Toujours Fatigué

C'est vrai. Je crois que je vais tomber sur la terre dans quelques jours. Dès que j'ai écrit sur la blog la dernière fois, nous avons marché, peut-être, 70 kilometres. Et nous avons voyagé par train ou par bus de Paris, à Avignon, à Les-Baux-de-Provence, à Saint-Rémy-de Provence (le lieu où Vincent van Gogh a peint la plus part ses tableaux plus célèbres), et maintenant, nous nous sommes arrêtées dans une gare à Marseille, attendant notre train à Aix-en-Provence. Nous resterons là pour un jour, et puis nous irons à Cannes, et puis Nice, et nous dînerons à Ventimiglia, en Italie, jeudi soir, et enfin, nous retournerons à Paris. Lundi, on part pour les Etats-Unis, malheureusement. 

It's true. I think I'll fall flat on the ground in a few days time. Since I last wrote on this blog, we've walked approximately 70 kilometers. And we've traveled by train or by bus from Paris, to Avignon, to Les-Baux-de-Provence, to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (the place where Vincent van Gogh painted most of his most famous works), and right now, we're chillin' at a train station in Marseille, waiting for our train to take us to Aix-en-Provence. We'll be staying there for one day, and then we're going to Cannes, then Nice, and then we'll have dinner in Ventimiglia in Italy Thursday night, and finally, we'll return to Paris. We leave for the US on Monday, sadly.

Je suis passée mon anniversaire à Paris. J'ai fait une promenade à vélo le matin, et l'après-midi nous sommes partis pour le cité (mais d'abord l'ami de ma soeur m'a achetée des pantalons à la style d'une pirate à la marché). Nous avons marché des Invalides au Quartier Latin, et selon ma requête, nous sommes allés au Shakespeare & Co., une librairie anglaise située au début du quartier, et juste en face de la Seine. Elle a une affiliation avec City Lights Books, la librairie en Californie qui a imprimé les livres et poèmes des écrivains du Beat Generation (mes écrivains favoris, comme Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, et cetera.). Après que j'ai trouvé les livres que j'ai voulu acheter--un livre qui s'agit de la vie et l'oeuvre d'Egon Schiele, et un petit livre des écritures et poèmes écrit par Kerouac--j'ai demandé à une employée de me dire qu'est-ce que c'est l'affiliation entre Shakespeare & Co. et City Lights, et elle m'a dit que Lawrence Ferlinghetti, la propriétaire du City Lights, aimait Shakespeare & Co. et la fréquentait souvent. Elle m'a dit de demander à un autre employé pour plus d'information. Je l'ai cherché, et il m'a dit d'un hôtel qui est pas loin de la librairie où les écrivains Beat sont restés dans les années 50s et 60s. (J'ai visité cet hôtel lendemain, et je suis retournée à Shakespeare et j'ai dit à cet employé qu'est-ce que j'ai vu, et il m'a dit qu'il y a plusieurs choses que je n'ai pas vu, comme la Dream Machine, et autres choses.) Puis, nous avons marché au Marais, où on a trouvé des "thrift shops" et j'ai acheté une longue robe bordeaux en velours pour seulement dix euros. C'est très jolie. Après, nous sommes allés au Montmartre pour dîner près de Sacre Coeur et manger des crêpes. J'ai mangé des escargots et une crêpe avec Nutella et chantilly. Après ce jour fatiguant, nous sommes retournés chez nous, et ma mère m'a donnée des autres cadeaux, une édition de Le Petit Prince (mais en anglais) inclus. Je suis en train de le lire.

I spent my birthday in Paris. I took a bike ride in the morning, and in the afternoon we left for the city (but first my sister's friend bought me a pair of pirate pants at the market). We walked from Invalides to the Latin Quarter, and at my request, we went to Shakespeare & Co., an English bookstore situated at the start of the neighborhood, and right across the street from the Seine. It has an affiliation with City Lights Books, the bookstore in California that published the books and poems of the writers of the Beat Generation (my favorite authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etcetera). After I found the books I wanted to buy--a book about the life and works of Egon Schiele, and a little book of writings and poems by Kerouac--I asked an employee to tell me about the affiliation between Shakespeare & Co. and City Lights, and she told me that Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of City Lights, loved Shakespeare & Co. and still continues to frequent it often. She told me to ask a different employee for more information on the subject. I found him and he told me about a hotel that's not far from the bookstore where the Beat writers had stayed in the 50s and 60s. (I visited the hotel the day after next, and then I went back to Shakespeare and told the guy what I'd seen, and he told me that there were a lot of things I hadn't been shown, like the Dream Machine and some other things.) Then we walked to the Marais, where we found some thrift shops and I bought a long bordeaux velvet gown for only ten euros. It's bangin'. After that, we went to Montmartre for dinner near Sacre Coeur and ate crêpes. I ate snails and a Nutella and whipped cream crêpe. After our ridiculously tiring day, we went home, and my mom gave me more gifts, including an English version of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). I'm in the middle of reading it right now.

On a marché beaucoup (trop, peut-être!), déjeuné avec nos amis de famille, et visité des cathédrales, des palais, et des châteaux. New York me manque un peu, mais je serai très triste de sortir ce pays dans moins qu'une semaine. 

We've walked a lot (too much, maybe), had lunch with some family friends, and visited cathedrals, palaces, and castles. I miss New York a little bit, but I'll be super sad when I have to leave this wonderful place in less than a week.

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L'Année Dernière à Marienbad

Mon cousin Elie m'a recommandé quelques films que je dois regarder, quand je suis restée chez lui le mois dernier, et, savant que j'aime toutes les choses française (et que une partie de mes devoirs de l'été pour mon classe de français AP est de regarder et écrire des résumés pour des films français), il a inclus "L'Année Dernière à Marienbad" dans cette liste. Aujourd'hui c'était un jour paresseux, donc nous sommes restées dans notre quartier, faisant des petites choses amusantes. Ce soir, j'ai décidé de regarder ce film, et c'était magnifique. Je ne vais pas vous donner un résumé maintenant, mais pendant le film j'ai aperçu que les costumes de la femme qui avait une rôle principale (elle n'avait pas un nom) soient très jolies et uniques. Alors, j'ai pris des screenshots pour vous montrer, et pour vous donner, peut-être, un peu d'inspiration. 

My cousin Elie recommended some movies that I should watch when I stayed at his house a few weeks ago, and, knowing that I love all things French (and that part of my AP French summer homework is to watch and write reviews for some French films), included "L'Année Dernière à Marienbad" ("Last Year at Marienbad") in that list. Today was a lazy day, so we stayed in the neighborhood, doing assorted activities. Tonight, I decided to watch the movie, and it was incredible. I won't give you a whole description of it now, but while watching the film I realized that the costumes of the woman that played the main female role (she didn't have a name) were gorgeous and extremely unique. So, I took some screenshots to show you that perhaps will give you a lilabet of inspiration. 

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Très '60s, n'est-ce pas? 

Very '60s, right?

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Bienvenue à Paris

Je suis arrivée à Paris il y a vers trois jours, mais beaucoup de choses se sont passées déjà. Nous avons voyagé en avion à Reykjavìk, la capitale d'Iseland, où nous nous sommes arrêtées pour une heure et mangé le dîner. Nous avons acheté du chocolat islandais. Cette une langue très bizarre; elle résonne comme l'espagnol mais avec beaucoup de K's. À Reykjavìk, le soleil ne s'est pas couché malgré qu'il était minuit! Je ne sais pas comment personne peut dormir en Iseland. Puis, on a voyagé en avion encore et nous sommes arrivées à Paris a 6h15 ici, mais c'était 1h15 aux États-Unis. C'était parfait parce que nous n'avions pas fatiguées. Mais après, nous avons dû prendre le train à notre maison, et ce voyage a pris trois heures extras. Je me suis couchée immédiatement et l'ami de ma soeur qui restera avec nous cette semaine était arrivé chez nous quand je me suis réveillée. Nous avons promené autour de la ville, dîné au restaurant, et enfin nous pourrions dormir. 

I arrived in Paris about three days ago, but so much has already happened. We flew into Reykjavìk, the capital of Iceland, where we had a layover for an hour and had dinner. We also bought Icelandic chocolate. It's a really bizarre language; it sounds like Spanish, but with a lot more K's. In Reykjavìk, the sun still hadn't set even though it was midnight! I don't know how anyone can ever sleep in Iceland. Then, we got on another plane and arrived in Paris at 6:15 am Parisian time, but 1:15 am New York time. It was perfect because we weren't tired, which we would've had we taken a red-eye flight. But then, we had to take the train to the house we're staying at, and this leg of the trip took three extra hours. I went to sleep as soon as we got there, and my sister's friend who's staying with us this week had arrived at our house by the time I woke up. We walked around the town, got dinner, and finally we could sleep.

Hier, nous sommes allés au marché en plein air et le supermarché et nous avons achetés des fruits et légumes frais, et aussi du fromage, des céréales, de la yaourt, et cetera. Nous avons assis au café, où j'ai bu un café au lait et partagé un pain chocolat amandes avec ma soeur. Bien sûr, tous était délicieux. Je ne bois pas du café normalement, mais j'ai décidé hier matin que je le boirai, parce que c'est trop délicieux ici de laisser tomber. Plus tard, nous sommes allés à Paris par le RER, et j'ai visité l'American University of Paris. C'est magnifique. Puis, nous avons marché au Quartier Latin pour le dîner, et vers minuit nous sommes retournés chez nous. Vous penseriez que nous voudrions dormir, mais nous ne nous sommes pas couchés avant 2h00. Il y avait un grand orage qui nous a gardé éveillés. De plus, il y a plein de moustiques. Tout le monde a douzaines de morsures. Nous n'avons pas pu dormir, alors nous ne nous sommes pas réveillés jusqu'à 1h00 de l'après-midi. Nous ferons du vélo et d'aviron pour profiter de nos environs. 

Yesterday, we went to the open air market and the supermarket and we bought fresh fruits and veggies, and also cheese, cereal, yogurt, etcetera. We sat down at a café, where I got a café au lait and shared a chocolate almond pastry with my sister. Naturally everything was effing delicious. I don't usually drink coffee, but I decided yesterday morning that I'll drink it while I'm here, because it's way too delicious here to pass up. Later, we took the RER into Paris, and I visited the American University of Paris. It's awesome. Then, we walked to the Latin Quarter for dinner, and around midnight we returned home. You'd think that we'd want to go right to sleep, but we didn't until 2 am. Because we're stupid. There was then a huge storm that kept us all up. On top of that, there are a ridiculous amount of mosquitos here. All of us have dozens of bites in the weirdest places. It's insufferable. None of us could sleep, so we ended up not waking up until 1 pm. To make up for our off schedule, we're going to go bike riding and rowing.

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J'irai en France

Eighty-five percent of my dreams are about to come true because I am set to hop on an airplane to my favorite country in the world tomorrow. The city of Paris awaits me, with its historic greenery and looming architecture and endless inspiration and beguiling language and everything I ever need. I've been practicing my French for the past three nights, starting at 10 pm and staying up until 2 am conjugating verbs, reviewing grammatical structures, working on speaking quickly by singing along to French pop songs from the '60s (I have played that song maybe 80 times since this morning), and just trying to prep my brain for the culture I'm about to be submerged in for a few weeks. 

My passion for everything French is no secret, but for some reason I feel like this trip is going to be especially important. I feel like I'll be able to communicate more, and more easily, and that it will be amazing to get away from America for a while and experience something new. I used to relish my time at home and spent a great deal of it sitting in my room doing whatever the hell it was that I did. But now my apartment entrenches me in a sort of stale apathy that I can't seem to do much with. It makes me anxious and tired and restless simultaneously. I need a change of scenery. France is exactly the place to go for that. 

I'm also going to be turning 16 while I'm there. After a consecutive sequence of abject birthdays, I can just tell that this one's going to be good. I want to go to Shakespeare & Co. in the Quartier Latin and buy French books, and eat delicious food, and wander around Paris. It all seems so unreal, but at the same time I can't wait. The feeling is inexplicable, which is why I'm doing such a bad job of explaining it. 

We also might be traveling to the south a little bit, which of course I am hella pumped for. I want to buy some orange lipstick somewhere, and get a refill of my perfume in Les Baux, and eat fresh fruit from the market in Aix-en-Provence, and see the Palais des Papes in Avignon, and glide along the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. And maybe stop in Italy for lunch. Who knows. 

Here's some photos I gathered off the internet of places I might be going. 

[Photos via Google.com.]

This is where we go running. We run that whole frickin' thing. It's like, 7 kilos. Sometimes we bike it.

The Promenade des Anglais, right on the coast of the Mediterranean

The market in Aix-en-Provence

The Pont d'Avignon

Montmartre, home to the Sacre Coeur and an ungodly amount of Parisian beauty

One of my favorite bridges on the Seine, the Pont des Arts. I'm bringing a lock to put on it this time.

Shakespeare & Co., the store in which I plan to work when I move to France.

The village of Les Baux

I'm not bringing my digital camera with me this time because it's so heavy and I'm worried I'll break it and/or my back, but I just came bought some disposable cameras to use instead because they're very light. Basically what I'm saying here is that there won't be much live-action reporting from France, but who knows if that even matters? I'll probably write about the trip sporadically on here.

Have a blast back in the States. I can't decide if I'll miss them.

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Get(ty) At Me

Things that are freaking wild: my fambly took a trip to the Getty Center yesterday on the same exact day of the year as we did the first time, June 25th. That wasn't even planned at all. No one had any idea, and probably would never have known, had I not diligently and over-obsessively recorded every moment of my life when I first started this blog. Things that are also, once again, wild, a lot of the photos I took yesterday are nearly identical to ones I took the first time we went. I guess my I-should-turn-this-into-a-postcard instinct hasn't evolved one bit in the last two years. 

After being stuck in approximately an hour and a half of Sunset-Boulevard-traffic, we finally made it in one piece to the Getty Center, but instead of having a leisurely two to three hours to spend there, we had only one. We basically just walked around and I took photographs with my camera while my mom took photos on her iPad (it's the cutest thing in the world to watch her do this) and then I ran into the museum for a quick ten-minute jog around the galleries. I made a pit stop at the gift shop and bought four bangin' postcards. Diary entry terminates here. 

Also, I was wearing clothes, so I forced my sister to take photos of me again. She was less compliant this time, but with brute force, anything is possible! (I AM TOTALLY KIDDING)

[Photos of everything but me by me; photos of me by Rachel.]

Paradoxical architecture is pretty damn awesome. It's not that paradoxical at all I just thought that combo of words looked nice.

Peep the original twin right here. The quality of this photo is way better than the other one, but they're the same exact thing. I must evaluate my originality. 

Dress: Lilka

Sunglasses: France-land

Unamused. I feel like there's always one of those in every outfit post. Also if you look really closely at my shoulder you can get a glimpse of how badly sunburned I got. 

Shoes: thrifted

Lil' flowers that looked like bananas! 

A pair of bee friends j-chillin' on some fleurs. 

This one is almost the same exact photograph, the original just employed crappy iPhoto effects. 

There you have it. A time warp. 

Until next time (isn't that what they say at the end of Blue's Clues?).

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