Pulitzer Prize

Dress two from my most recent best shopping day ever: Pulitzer Prize.

I mean, obviously it's a prize.

Embarrassed Zebra

I posted earlier—much earlier—about the importance of finding the right shoes. Much as I hate to admit it (because my tootsies much prefer ratty sneakers), adorable, albeit uncomfortable, shoes can make all the difference to an ensemble. (In other words: if you are wearing the perfect outfit, you've got on the right shoes. I usually prove this logic in converse, and sometimes in Converses.)

But another item of clothing can also play a crucial role in the way an outfit comes—or doesn't come—together.

Shell Game

I just read an article in The New Yorker about a fancy restaurant where dessert is somehow intertwined with a three-card monte. I'm still not sure exactly how it works — the server flips over a card that has your dessert ingredient of choice? — and I am in no danger of ever finding out, given the frequency (hint: not high) with which I take advantage of New York's fine restaurants.

Veracious

I recently started watching "How I Met Your Mother" on Netflix Instant, making up for the last seven years I spent ignoring it. (Eventually, I'll get around to "Friday Night Lights." Don't rush me.)

I loved the way the show played with time, moving forwards and backwards and kaleidoscoping narratives (think Memento or Pulp Fiction) in a way that is my second-favorite storytelling trick. (First favorite: body swap.) Also, Jason Segel, Alyson Hannigan and Neil Patrick Harris are pretty reliably hilarious, even before HIMYM started.

Lunch

I think this is the last dress in my collection that I got from my grandmother.

If I come up with any others, you'll be the first to know. I do remember one piece with a greenish-gray, with line drawings of sailing scenes on it, but it was a) at least two sizes too small (and I don't go for "motivational" clothing) and b) peppered with holes that looked to be about the diameter of a well-fed moth larva, though it was definitely polyester, and I'm not sure how filling that is for the destructive little guys.

Pod Person

When I was an assistant counselor at summer camp, in the days before anyone but geeks had the Internet, I had a quirk that I didn't find all that quirky, but that quirked other people's quirkers.

Crazy Daisy

 Sometimes you just have to go with a print that looks like a child drew it.

Fun, right?

Filthy Martini

When I bought Filthy Martini, it was a huge shapeless dress with long sleeves and cuffs. Now it looks like this:

It's a pretty good argument for getting things tailored when you need to. Filthy Martini cost $12 in (probably?) 2002, it probably cost about $30 to get it tailored, and I've worn it about a billion times since then (one hundred million times a year), so the amortization on that works out to $0.000000042 per wear. Definitely worth it.

Summer Leaves

Whenever I visit Washington, DC, I make it a priority to visit Polly Sue's in Takoma Park. (Luckily for me, it's just a few blocks from my aunt's house, so it doesn't require overmuch planning and can be Priority #3 or 4, slotted in between brunches.) I've gotten a few amazing pieces there—Summer Leaves is the first one I'm posting about, but trust me, when I get to Coquelicot, Charlie Chevron Brown Chevron Garden Chevron Party and LSDelicious, you'll be on the first Bolt Bus down there, assuming of course that you live in a city with Bolt Bus service to DC.

What Big Teeth

I cut a wide swath through vintage shops; if I have doubts, I tend to buy the item anyway, unless it's ridiculously expensive. No regrets! Sometimes I just know that the piece will be perfect with some alterations—and I am always right. Unless I am planning to do my own alterations, in which case the garment languishes in my "sewing box" indefinitely.

Bananas

Bananas are the perfect snack fruit; they lack the disadvantages of other fruits, like pre-fruital fruit washing (apples, berries), post-fruital hand washing (oranges) or the need for knives (mangos, kiwis) or non-disposable plastic clamshells (the sadly lackluster fruit salad available at your better bodegas). The only problem with bananas is eating them in public.

Red Fish Blue Fish

I have a confession to make: not all of my dresses are vintage. Once in a great while, I'll come across something so adorable, so timeless, that I know it would fit right in my closet. Sometimes I get close enough and I already feel like I own it; paying for it and taking it home is a mere formality. Red Fish Blue Fish... was not one of these.