more pictures from indonesia to sort through.  but in the meantime, this is what i wear when i’m lazy– mens’ tshirts (or in this case, little boys’) and jeans.

- i broke my only headband, and since i’m picky about headbands, i have started to use this grey, uh, shoestring as a headband.  tied headbands hardly ever stay on, but, since it’s a shoestring it stays tied all day.

- i love this shirt.  it’s so comfy.  i bought it used.  i bet it belonged to a chubby pizza-loving little boy.

- it is popsicle weather.  i bribe myself with popsicles to finish sections of code, or clean my room, or take out my garbage.  my favorite popsicles are shirokuma– milk based with red bean, pineapple, and orange bits.

- donuts!  from a bakery in semarang.  i have far too many food photos, and so from now on i’ll put up a matching food picture with clothing pictures because, why not.

- happy tanabata!

I love little touches of red.  Lips, shoes, mini strawberries.

The best breakfast I’ve had in a while: buckwheat pancakes, last strawberries of the season, unsweetened hand-whipped whipped cream, banana-honey milkshake.

To set the mood properly: The Breeders- Off You

Over the weekend, I went to the Miu Miu store in Aoyama.  I dunno why, maybe to torture myself because I want to own everything in the 2010 spring collection but couldn’t possibly afford it but may as well look and drool, yeah?  I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said about it before, it’s girly and a tiny bit ridiculous but in a really sophisticated way with wonderful prints like kitten, puppy, sparrow, and naked ladies.  It is what I would wear every day if I were rich.  The girls who worked there were painfully cute and sweet and the clothes were SO BEAUTIFUL in person and I couldn’t help myself, I asked to try on a pink sparrow print dress.  My facial expression in the photo is a little creepy maybe but I didn’t have the luxury of taking many snaps, and God, it’s so MySpace to be holding a camera in a picture, but there was no way around that.  This is my first time being one of those people that takes pictures of themselves in the dressing room, but having a picture of myself in a Miu Miu dress is the closest I will ever come to owning a Miu Miu dress, so.  Instead I got myself a cute pink kitty cat collar which I can see myself wearing with everything- I am loving the idea of wearing it with plain, cheap clothes, and have them suddenly looking well put together.  Oh on my way home a lady was walking her pet rabbit– a perfect ending to that outing.

fake rayban glasses: koenji
pink kitty collar: miu miu
sweater: american apparel (on super sale)
denim shorts: levis (also on super sale)
grey tights (the ones i wear with everything yeah)
silver flats: dillards
tea strainer: franc franc (please tell me i’m not the only one who uses a tea strainer as an accessory)

The Sartorialist was in Japan last week, for the first time he said, and I’ve been enjoying his Tokyo street snaps.  I’ve been following his blog for 4 years or so, so a hurt foot and knee wasn’t going to stop me from limping down to meet him at United Arrows.

It was so great to meet him.  He was so personable and and handsome and dashing, while I acted the total dork– making that picture such an accurate reflection of our meeting.  Haha.  He made fun of me a lot, after he heard that I was a computer scientist.  I talked to him a while about my computer aided clothing design project, and he told me that he studied pattern making, and that it’s really difficult, and he thinks my project is really interesting and wished me good luck!  He thinks that secretly though, my real dream is to take over the world, and wished me well with that too.

I haven’t mentioned many details about my project here yet; I have an essay that I’ve been writing that ties in a bit about why I care about fashion, about my project, and about girls in engineering, and a few other things.  And when I get done with writing it, you will see, that he’s not too far off; I don’t necessarily want to take over the world, but I want to turn it upside down, and this project is how.

While my friend Cynthia was here, we went to a kimono and woodblock print museum.  The exhibit at the time was about the clothing from villages in Aomori, the countryside of Japan.  These villages are simple, and poor, and modest, yet the clothing from these villages is so beautiful.

The clothing from Aomori is called Boro.  Because cloth is expensive, pieces of clothing are passed down from generation to generation, and patched wherever and whenever there are holes.  After several generations, the kimono only has bits of its original cloth, instead a beautiful patchwork with pieces of each of the generations before.  Other distinctive clothing items from the villages included fish boots, grass rain coats, and intricately woven aprons.

The clothing from the exhibit was borrowed to film a village scene from Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” (a really beautiful film by the way).

I was somehow really moved by the exhibit, by the effort these people took to make beautiful clothes to wear while working in the fields; it was reinforcement that fashion isn’t a luxury, fashion is about dressing yourself in things that mean something to you.

My brother’s Christmas wish list was was short– a shirt with the phrase “One does not simply rock into Mordor”.  Being a fan of both rock and Mordor, I wanted to make a design with genuine elements of each.  I whipped something up in Photoshop loosely modeled on a vintage ACDC shirt and was so amused by it that when it came time to print the designs, I made a few extra.  Happily, my brother likes it and even told me that some friends and classmates said they want one too– but entry into the Mordor rock club can’t just be bought!!

There were many failures along the way to creating an actual shirt.  Trial and error taught me these things about printing for an iron-on:

- There are iron-on sheets specifically for dark shirts- using the ones for light shirts will barely show up on a dark shirt.

- The instruction manual for the iron-on sheets suggest not having detailed edges to make cutting out the design easier, but pshh, that’s the kind of rule I don’t follow.  To add a margin of error for cutting though, I added a thick black outline to the design.

- Designs show up better on solid grey than heather grey.  I used American Apparel’s Asphalt color.

black jacket: thrift store in shinjuku
denim skirt: thrift store in shinjuku
tights: jcrew
ring: vivienne westwood

No I most certainly do not own Gimli and Eowyn action figures why do you ask?