Two months down, ten more to go....

A whole month without a mishap. Short month, but nevertheless I am claiming it as a success. It has been cold which is apparent from my shirt usage: the sweaters have been worn 3-4 times while the red silk top has been worn only twice. My Amphetamine Bob shirt has also only been worn twice but it's really sheer and not very warm. White button down is not a favorite and has only been worn twice as well.

I am starting to stare down some less than appealing combinations. Red pants with red shirts? Teal pants with red shirts? eeeee! I will need to start wearing some skirts soon.  Also pending are some all black outfits...a relic from the punky 70-80's where ADB was totally acceptable is my preference for black clothing. I have a hard time with colors except for grey. Is that even a color?

Another unhappy discovery: my black Gap ankle pants have "shrunk" to almost unwearable size. I may have one pair of pants to replace them with...a pair of brown shiny Elie Tahari wool trousers. Shiny from dry cleaning...that's why I tend not to wear them. But I may have to bite the bullet on that one. The only other option is my tan suede shorts. Those leather shorts nearly caused a riot on Facebook so I was keeping them in the back of the closet. Hmm. Riots. Leather shorts...at work. Mwa ha ha. I may be a bit old for that. I do try to avoid looking like mutton dressed as lamb.

Time for a whole new wardrole

As I sat listening to my colleagues today during lunch, I noticed that these pants have accumulated, over the years, and entire lapful of little grease stains. These are the kind of faded grease stains that are difficult to notice on old, heavily washed pants that are faded and starting to just so slightly felt up. Apparently I drop a lot of food on my lap and the stains don't completely wash out. Now I am covered in them. So if the apocalypse comes, I'll be able to cut these pants up into little squares and live off them as food until rescue comes or the Earth evolves through another geologic age.

I am still adhering to the novel pants/shirt combinations as I sit here in these filthy green skinny cargo trousers and black silk shirt. With an elegant blue "Abbott" polyester fleece jacket thrown over the top for warmth. I will upload the excel database at the end of the month. Its getting to be time to add some new shirts because 1. it's supposed to eventually start to warm up and 2. I'm facing down some unappealing combinations unless I refresh the shirt inventory.

Or I could buy an entire new wardrobe and put all these crappy clothes through the shredder. Or a woodchipper. I like the woodchipper idea.

Oscars 2013: Best and worst dressed IMHO.

1. Halle Berry is a beautiful woman. That dress, designed apparently by Tron himself, made her look like she had a pot belly. I doubt she does. And hasn't she worn that very same dress before? Stacy Kebler wore a similar dress but didn't have the belly. You could do that too, Halle!

2. Reese Witherspoon: girl, fire your stylist RIGHT NOW. That shapeless blue tube made you look positively like a 25 lb sack of Idaho's finest russet potatoes. It made you look even more shapeless that you are. There were plenty of big ladies and ladies with less to play up that looked a thousand times better than you in that hideous blue bag (Queen Latifah? Adele?). Really. Recent baby? A few extra pounds? Whatever! You are paid to be an icon of our fevered dreams: live up to it. Her 13 year old daughter picked it? It shows! The little black insets trying to give you some shape? Desperation!

3. Anne Hathaway looked sweet in that pink backless dress. Very pretty and the color was good on her. I liked it darts and all.

4. Adele pulled off what Reese Witherspoon cant: looking fabulous while non-classically shaped. Her glamorous eyes and big poofy hair was stupendous.

5. Jennifer Lawrence's dress looks like something people used to use to hide that extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom. She tripped on it; could be adorable but could also mean that these children that pass for today's adults have little to no experience in the finer points of being grown-ups. Compare and contrast to Meryl Streep's response to stepping on her dress.

6. Jessica Chastain: showed up in her own skin pulled loose. She needs color. Awful.

7. Charlize Theron was fantastic. Not a misstep here! The aggressive hair, the perfect shape-enhancing peplum with sequins on it, the cut of the skirt with the perfect glamorous little tail: WIN. Her sumptuous bare skin was on display except for some diamonds wrapped around her wrist. Her make-up was right for the outfit and enhanced her look without being glommed on. A+.

8. Jennifer Garner was sweet but boring. Nice necklace.

9. Helen Hunt wore a blue fitted strapless dress that shows that it can be done nicely. Are you paying attention, Reese? And apparently, Helen's dress came from H and M! The color was great on her. Yeah it had some wrinkles but who cares? She looked great and showed us little people that we can look glamorous without mortgaging the house. Yay Helen!

10. Quvanzhane Wallis put Reese to shame in her little blue outfit and puppy-dog purse. She looked totally sweet, like the little princess inheritor to all this nonsense. Pay attention to Charlize, little Q and you will do alright. I loved how excited she was during the ceremony as well. I hope she has a long and happy career, if that is what she wants.

Rules are meant to be broken. OK maybe not.

I am breaking the cardinal rule of old ladies wearing vintage: Do not wear "vintage" you could have actually owned and worn when it was originally issued. Today, I have draped my corpse in my Zoran sweater dress. Zoran is a designer famous for a few things: never advertising (I think he's gone now but how could you tell? He doesn't advertise), super minimalist design, and for being fined by the FTC in 1998 for putting inaccurate content labels on his clothing. This is a minimalist black knit turtleneck dress that is comfy and all, and is the softest non-itchy cashmere ever. However, the label says "100% silk" which it most certainly is not. Win! Classic Zoran. The problem is it is a circa 1990 dress, something I certainly could have owned au courant if I had the money back in my graduate school days. It is knee length and sort of out of style right now, so I am wearing a pair of fashion-forward boots in an attempt to drag this outfit into the new century. And a grey and black scarf left behind by my daughter (I cut a tag out of the scarf this morning that said "Claires"...more fashion shame right there).

http://pinsndls.com/2012/09/12/designer-highlight-zoran/

Anyway, the dress today is not recorded on the database because I get a free pass for wearing a dress. I have a presentation today but its a short one so while I have to look nice I don't have to look nice all day. I do have to look nice all day tomorrow so I'll likely trot out a Theory suit. Same old same old but I'm doing that square peg/round hole thing with that suit on. I look totally normal in that suit. I think. That's what I tell myself.

Amphetamine Bob

I love my shirt today. It is by "Equipment Femme" that I have seen at Neiman Marcus but I got this shirt at Marshall's. I call it my Amphetamine Bob shirt because when I laid eyes on it I thought of this:

That's Bob himself channeling the 4 year old me. Petty angry small and confused. Of course he was helped along by substances that I as a four year old only dreamed of. Rock on asshole grandpa! How I love you, you difficult old schmuck.

Department of Corrections

It turns out that my red silk shirt is not Charles David but rather, Charles Nolan. He is a designer that died of head and neck cancer in 2011. So I guess the red silk shirt is a collector's item? Anyway he seemed like a bit of alright, being an arden left-leaning Democrat.

Just another lousy day in paradise.

Sunny, 70 degrees outside finally. Tootling along at my desk in my hated floppy blue shirt and beloved worn out brown corduroy pants, dreaming about my Valentine's Day dinner awaiting me at home when about mid-afternoon an email arrives in my in-box: "Big PooBah coming next week...present project update...you got 15 minutes, six slides to cover all of it...send your slide set for review no later than tomorrow afternoon"

Yassah bossman. You aint that big, you just tall that's all.

Here is what I had on when these above events transpired:

Thanks to DaisyJ for capturing this inauspicious moment in time. Look, I'm smiling! That's because I'm a happy worker bee. Buzz. Buzz.

I love my red corduroy pants

How I love my soft stretchy red cotton corduroy pants. They are a little short, but I have decided that it's stylish. Are they "hipster"? I'm not sure. And yes I have them on with striped socks and blue soled shoes. You got a problem with that? Anyway.

So far so good for the month of February. I have resorted to printing out the database and referring to it before selecting articles of clothing in the morning.

I can't wait for it to warm up. I would like to wear something different. I think I will burn all my grey wool sweaters on New Years Day 2014.

But I wont burn these sweet red corduroy pants. Because I love them.

Disguising the boringness

So here is my attempt to fool people into thinking I'm not wearing the same grey turtleneck that is in heavy rotation. I have my ancient black wool sweater over the top and a red scarf. Not tricking anyone! "There's that damned grey sweater", I heard whispered in the halls. "When is she going to have it cleaned? OMG!"

Anyway six days into February and so far so good. The black sweater in this picture was knitted for me, commissioned by my roommate in Boston. I think she saw how scrawny, poor and cold I was and took pity on me. Bless her kind heart. Note this was in 1984. Next year this sweater will be 30. Jayzus. I shouldn't have calculated that. That's not the worst of it! I have a pair of shoes I had made for me in 1980! Maybe I'll wear those to work tomorrow. With the sweater. And the cotton shirt my sister gave me for my 16th birthday. In 1977.