How beautifully blue the sky. The glass is rising very high...

Suppose we take off our shoes and stockings and paddle?

Do you ever have those times where you put on what you think is a perfectly reasonable outfit, do your face, add a jaunty hair bow, and then look in the mirror and realise you look like an Edwardian lady getting ready to go for a modest dip whilst holidaymaking by the seaside?

Bloomers on show and everything!

I think the bow was a trifle too much.  One of these days I'm going to set myself a challenge and actually dress like an actual grown up for a whole week!

Also, SHOCK HORROR, no second-hand cast-offs in this outfit.  All items were bought from actual high sreet shops!

Dress:  Dorothy Perkins

Leggings:  New Look (I hacked them - they were ankle length but I prefer to have the minimum possible amount of legging in any outfit.)

Sandals:  Monsoon

Hair bow:  Peacocks

I have worn my stripy dress three times during my short ownership of it; to work, to a party and to a school concert.  I won't usually buy something if I don't think it's versatile - can't afford to have separate wardrobes for separate occasions!  Also it used to have a belt but the pixies stole it and buried it somewhere.

Also, continuing the theme of dressing like a child (24!  I'm 20-flipping-4!), here's a boring outfit that I forgot in the last toast post:

School trip to the allotments in the rain.

(I don't know why it looks like I'm wearing white woolly tights...!)

Arabian Nights?

Following on from the immense success of the 'accidental hooker' outfit last week, yesterday was another one of those times when you throw on clothes, look in the mirror and think "No, of course not, dummy', and then realise you're already late and there's no time to change.

You would think that somebody with as many pairs of red shoes as me would be able to find some in a shade that didn't clash with her top, wouldn't you?

Like my top?  I got it for my 18th birthday back in 2004 and wore it to my birthday party, along with my jingly-jangly charm bracelet belt.  And I bought the cardi in 2007 to tone down a halterneck dress, and my mum brought me back that ribbon necklace from some random country like Latvia several years ago, and my gold bangles came from Oldham market when my friend Rosie wanted to be a Bollywood princess for a party in 2003.  I normally think I'm pretty good at chucking clothes away (A-hem, I do of course mean that I very responsibly donate them to the needy / sell them for maximum profit on ebay), but I was all about the oldies last night!  I actually don't think I've worn my 18th b'day top and belt since I was 18.  It was kind of nice to 'rediscover' them.  (I like to think they were astounded by how much more effortlessly glamorous and sophisticated I am these days ;op)

Pretty sequins!

Here are Theda, Pola (don't you just love those clunky silent-screen-star names?) and Gloria doing Jazz Age Arabian Nights in style, so I can pretend I did it on purpose:

Fur Coat And No Knickers, or, The Perils of Being Overdressed

I didn't mean to go out looking like a cheap hooker, it just sort of happened.

Gosh, I need a haircut.

I wanted to wear the pretty little dress because I'd wanted to wear it over jeans on Jeans for Genes day but had been thwarted by lack of clean jeans, plus I always forget that it's rather scandalously short because the thought process in New Look's changing rooms when I bought it went something along the lines of "Oh, this pretty little dress is a bit scandalously short, I could never wear thi- HOLD ON THIS IS A SIZE 10 AND IT ZIPS UP IF I BREATHE IN BUY IT BUY IT NOW!!!"  So anyway, there I was in my bum-skimming dress and black tights for modesty, thinking that some sensible boots would tone it all down a notch, but my sensible boots are brown not black, and then the dress has little red bows on it and oh suddenly I was wearing shiny plastic shoes with bows on.  And then because I had red feet I needed red lipstick to make it balance.  And THEN I got ready to leave and I didn't put my red jacket on because it's really too shabby to go on much longer, and my red coat wouldn't work because it's way longer than the dress and would just accentuate the floozyishness, so I flung on my fur jacket even though it was still broad daylight and not at all cold enough for a fur coat to be necessary, and THEN I realised I looked like a 1920s tart but it was already too late to change, purse, keys, phone, lipstick, go go go, and that is how I became very overdressed for watching Ruddigore in a church hall amongst staid middle-aged Gilbert and Sullivan fans on a Tuesday night in Monkseaton.

And when I was click-clacking my way to the metro, of course that was the moment when I ran into one of the girls from the year 6 class I was in last year.  "Eee, Missus Heeee-maaaah!  Hiyaaa!"  Cringe.

 P.S. For those of you who are uneducated (Simon), 'Fur Coat and No Knickers' refers to the title of a famous(ish) play and is not a comment on me being a hussy, which I'm not, despite what some people (Simon) would have you believe. 

(Whether I remembered to put knickers on in the bleary haze of 6.30 a.m. that morning is anyone's guess.)