Tag: fall

November 12, 2017 – Dementor Style (OOTD #156)

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Alternative title: fashion for mourning Notre Dame’s playoff hopes and dreams.

You know how I wrote a blog yesterday about enjoying switching up my style from day to day, going from goth teenager to preppy Cher Horowitz wannabe – yeah, I went back to the goth teenager phase.

I’ve always wanted to look like an impending vaporous phantom of dark soul-sucking depression, and on Sunday, I did!

For real though, that Saturday game against Miami was an unfortunate display. I made it to the third quarter before I gave up and curled into a ball sobbing – I didn’t even do any  homework that night, just fell asleep feeling sorry I ever hoped we could win another National Championship.

Granted, I often neglect to do my homework, regardless of Notre Dame’s winning-losing history. Like right now, when I’m watching YouTube videos and writing a blog instead of writing my history paper or memorizing the work of Arius or Athanasius.

It’s a hard life, getting distracted so easily and then leaving all of your work to the last second, but I make do. It’s nearly Thanksgiving break, meaning if I can manage to wing it for another week, I can reward myself by eating copious amounts of turkey and mashed potatoes.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Shawl: Unknown (thrifted)

Turtleneck: The LOFT (thrifted)

November 9, 2017 – Cher Horowitz Wannabe (OOTD #155)

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I actually haven’t seen Clueless since I was 11, so I can’t exactly discuss that movie in this blog, but I felt like this outfit was definitely a Cher Horowitz aesthetic anyway…so I hope you enjoy the title, at the very least.

I love to be unexpected with my fashion choices, and that includes going with vastly different styles on different days. So, if you have a look at November 8’s blog, you’ll notice that I dressed in a completely different manner than I did on November 9 – notably, yesterday, I looked like a emo teenager, and today, I look like a preppy 90s it girl.

This is actually one of my favorite outfits I’ve done for a while – I dunno, I’m just a sucker for long coats and short skirts. Plus, the color palette is just nice and pastel…it makes me look much more put-together and chipper than I actually am, which is great when you’re  a tired college student who wants to look friendly and approachable so people will talk to her.

Actually, this “coat” isn’t really a coat at all – it’s a wrap dress that I left unbuttoned. So basically, you should put me on the unconventional materials challenge of Project Runway right now; I’m too creative and innovative for this world.

The one bad thing about my short grey hair is that it doesn’t really work so well anymore with my preppier outfits, like this one. It looks spectacular with anything hipster-like, but it just looks a little off with things like mauve tweed skirts. My grey hair is like a constant, conspicuous mark of my self-proclaimed alternativeness – unlike my long blonde hair, which pretty much went with everything. I do rather miss it, but sadly, it was just too hard to maintain and it was really looking awful there at the end. Maybe I’ll go back to it one day.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Dress/coat: NastyGal

Top: Free People

Skirt: Forever21

November 8, 2017 – Edgy Teen Aesthetic (OOTD #154)

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Get you a photographer you points out that one of your socks isn’t pulled up all the way before she starts taking photos.

Seriously, I owe so much to the spectacular people who have agreed to take my photos after lunch every day. I don’t know if they really do it because they want to…but they never complain and don’t look too judgmental when I inevitably ask “Hey, so uh…could you do my pictures today?” so for that, I’m eternally grateful.

You know what else I’m eternally grateful for? Finally being over with my edgy teen years.

What…you mean to say that my outfit still looks I’m a 16 year-old with a My Chemical Romance obsession?

Though my days of exclusively listening to the Emo Trinity and obsessively waiting for new tweets from Gerard Way are over, I’ve kept some of the stylistic influences from the era. That includes my grey hair, which is totally not at all hearkening back to 2006 Gerard Way. 

That also includes a taste for black clothes and anything that looks vaguely punk! While I can hardly claim to be a true punk – have you seen the effort that icons like Vivienne Westwood put into their looks? – I like to wear things that have a punk influence.

After all, I am only 19, meaning that I only have one year left during which I can blame my pessimism on teen angst – might as well dress like it.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: Forever21 (thrift)

Skirt: Target

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Desk Tour

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I’m sitting in my room watching the ND game right now, and let me just say – it’s not off to a good start.

It’s presently 2 minutes until half, and Miami is winning, 20-0. I’m hoping, of course, that things turn around, but right now, it’s not looking so hot.

So, since I’m so sad watching the events of this game unfold, I figured it would be good time to do a blog. And since I was sitting here at my desk alone, I thought – why not offer a little peak of my desk space?

Now, truth be told, I don’t spend a ton of time working at my desk. If you’ve seen my Saturday Musings posts, which often feature photos of my planner, laptop – you know, work supplies – you’ll notice that I like to go all around campus to do my homework. The library, the student lounges, outside – I’ll go anywhere.

And anywhere does include simply my room, sometimes. Today, which was chilly, cloudy, and dark, seemed like the perfect day to simply rest at home.

The top shelf of my desk has my cactus (which I haven’t killed yet! Go me), my books, and a portrait of myself that I did last year in high school. The second shelf has some keepsakes – my teddy bear BoBear, a painting I bought when I went to New York, my camera (where pretty much all of my L’ensemble du Jour photos are taken), and some pumpkins I keep for decoration.

The actual surface of my desk has variable objects strewn across it, depending on the day and what I’ve been up to. Since I was taking photos of my desk space and trying to show off to you guys how nice and neat and “organized I am,” I cleaned off the dirty socks and candy wrappers until I was left with only have the essentials – my laptop, the book I’m using for a paper, my planner, my makeup, and about a dozen drinking vessels (two mugs, a thermos, and a water bottle to be exact). I’ve also got a nice little pin board, but I hardly ever use it for anything relevant. Mostly it’s just ticket stubs and random pieces of paper that I thought looked pretty.

I mean, that’s pretty much all my Pinterest is though, so…

Oh, and look – it’s halftime and we’re losing by 27 now. Bama is losing, Georgia just lost…clearly the world is ending. I’d better go back to watching the game – I don’t want to miss our epic second half comeback!

Assuming it’s coming…hopefully…

November 7, 2017 – RIP My Theology Grade (#153)

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Alright, so context: at Notre Dame, there’s this superstition that if you walk on the grass of God Quad, you’ll fail your freshman theology class.

What’s God Quad? It’s this area of grass in the middle of campus, right in front of the Golden Dome and the Basilica. It’s a bit sketchy about what the exact boundaries are, some people (but not all) posit that the rule doesn’t apply on game Saturdays, and no one really knows if the rule still applies to theology grades beyond your freshman year. Still, though the rules regarding the rule are kind of hazy, the fact still stands that there is a rule that no one – not students, not professors, not even visitors – step on the God Quad grass.

So naturally, I just had to go romping all around God Quad for this set of photos.

In my defense, I never really intended to step on the grass;  my photographer actually did it first. I felt sort of badly about what happened – so I was standing there on the sidewalk, posing stupidly as I do, and, in order to get a better shot, she stepped back onto the forbidden God Quad grass.

I believe I actually shouted a bit in shock when her foot landed upon the ground, I was that shaken that she was willing to break social convention for me. And so, I figured that if she was going to break the God Quad rule, I ought to do it with her – a sort of solidarity in rebellion, you know?

Ah yes, the rebellion of being a college kid at a prestigious Catholic university walking on the grass…put me up there with Che Guevara and George Washington. I’m headed for the history books, guys. Remember my name.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: H&M

Scarf: Coach

Pants: The LOFT

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November 6, 2017 – Hug A Tree (OOTD #152)

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Recently, I’ve taken to doing my pictures next to trees – what do you think?

I feel like it gives a little more color than what I get with my typical “doorway” photo, so I’m giving it a shot.

(Get it? Giving it a shot? Since it’s like…a photograph….and you shoot photos…)

Also, fun fact – this was not the blog I was originally going to be posting today. Rather, this should have been a post for November 4, the day of the ND v Wake Forest game. So what kind of stupid mistake did I make this time to prevent my plans from turning out as they should?

I’m not certain that it was wholly my fault, actually. Okay, so the photos were taken by my friend, so she had to Airdrop them to me – no problem, right? It shouldn’t have been. But for some reason, after the photos were delivered to my computer, they were unable to be imported into my iPhoto library. And, by the time I realized this fact, my friend had already deleted the photos from her phone, and thus, their lines of code were lost forever.

It’s too bad really, because that would’ve been a good blog. In fact, I even had a “super clever” blog title in mind – Notre Rain, in reference to how it rained the whole time during that game, and it was actually just kind of cold and miserable.

If I somehow come across the photos in some deeply hidden folder in the corner of my computer’s hard drive, maybe I’ll post them, our for now, here’s my outfit from Monday.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Turtleneck: Forever21

Dress: American Eagle

November 3, 2017 – In Which Dental Hygiene Is My Aesthetic: Bianco Smile Whitening Powder Review (and OOTD #151)

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Today’s post will be a little different than usual – in addition to my typical OOTD discussion and sarcastic humor, I’ve got a review for you too!

The lovely folks at Bianco Smile were kind enough to send me a package with their Activated Charcoal Whitening Powder to try and review, and I was just so excited about the fact that someone on the Internet noticed me, that I couldn’t say no. Admittedly, I’m no teeth expert – in fact, the last time I went to the dentist, I got rather passionately criticized for not flossing. But I suppose that’s why there’s a several billion dollar dental hygiene industry out there – because idiots like me don’t care for their teeth like they ought to, and then need to buy things to try to fix them.

The product came packaged in a cute little black box with the instructions labeled on all four sides – 1)Dip ya brush, 2) Scrub ’em, 3) (Smile). I rather a fan of the simple, all-black look; it was very fashionable, like something I wouldn’t mind having sat out on my bathroom counter.

As the instructions suggest, powder itself is actually rather simple to use – simply dip your wet brush into the powder, and then scrub your teeth just as you would with toothpaste. And indeed, the experience was rather like just brushing my teeth as I would any regular day, the primary difference being the texture of the powder (for lack of a better word – powdery), and how I looked when using the product.

To be honest, you’re probably not going to look pretty while brushing your teeth – in fact, you’ll probably look like you’ve just eaten a bunch of blueberries and now their guts have coated your teeth – but that’s alright, because you’ll look pretty afterwards.

I’ve compiled here some photos of my teeth over the last few days using the product:

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3:

The verdict: I rather liked this product! I really don’t know anything about charcoal whitening powders, so I can’t compare it to any other similar products, but for my first experience using a whitening charcoal powder, it was overall quite positive.

Perhaps I’m just seeing things, and perhaps it’s simply the result of wearing red lipstick in the final photo (which does tend to make your teeth look whiter), but I do believe my teeth looked a touch whiter after a few days of using the product. I definitely think I will continue to use it – maybe not every day, but perhaps in rotation with my regular toothpaste.

My only complaint is that it’s not exactly the cleanest product ever – there was definitely some black powder left over on the sink after I was done brushing, but it was super easy to wipe up and left no stain.

You can check out the product over on Bianco Smile’s website here, if it looks like something you might be interested in purchasing. Use code MEILIN20 for 20% off at checkout!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Vintage (thrifted)

Dress: Pitaya

November 2, 2017 – Neverending Doorways (OOTD #151)

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When’s the last time I wrote a blog where I wasn’t stood next to some Notre Dame doorway?

For real, when was it? When I was back at home over fall break, maybe, and I went to a pumpkin patch?

As much as I’ve complained about Notre Dame’s architecture, saying that, with the exception of Bond Hall, it’s all the same golden beige color – I do find it rather pretty. In fact, that’s what I usually say when I inevitably get the awkward question “why did you come here?”

I know it’s a pretty shallow reason, but the honest answer that no one wants to hear – because Columbia wouldn’t have me – isn’t a socially acceptable response to give a stranger who doesn’t understand your sense of humor. And so, lacking any other ideas and being too lazy to come up with a better fib, I usually go with “well, I uh…toured it junior year, and I really liked campus and um…yeah.”

I like Notre Dame’s architecture so much, that I’m pretty sure pretty much half of my blogs at this point have me standing in front of doors. Kudos to whomever decided that if Notre Dame needed to be made of like, exclusively yellowish beige brick in order to represent the Golden Dome or whatever, it would at least have beautiful doorways.

Welp, I don’t have a clever conclusion to end this with today – though I don’t usually, so this shouldn’t come as a surprise – so I’m just going to cop out and say I have a lot of homework to do, and sitting around trying to write good conclusions is taking away from the time I would have to do my homework.

Bye!

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Jacket: Hollister

Shirt: PacSun

Necklace: J Crew

November 1, 2017 – Birthday Blob (OOTD #150)

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That’s not a typo, friends – I really meant “blob,” rather than “blog.”

I had actually originally titled this post “birthday blog,” but that was simply too generic and boring for me, so I had to take the self-deprecating route and refer to myself as a “blob.”

I mean, I don’t think that that’s really a bad thing here – that’s simply the way the dress was designed. It’s another one of my vintage pieces, which means perfect fit is probably not going to happen, so you’ve just got to settle for whatever doesn’t drag four feet on the floor behind you. In which case, something a little bit too blob-like is perfectly acceptable.

So now you know the relevance of the word “blob” – but what about “birthday?” Could it possibly be that November 1 was my birthday, or something ridiculous like that?

Yes, on November 1, 1998, I was born into this world! I’m 19 now, which means I only have one year left that I can blame my angst upon being a teenager; after that, I just have to that I’m an unpleasant human being. How unfortunate.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Dress: Vintage (thrift)

Top: Forever21

Tights: Target

October 31, 2017 – Even More Late to the Halloween Party (OOTD #149)

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Fun fact: I had to look to a WordReference forum to find out how I should word this blog title – “even more late” or “even later.”

My findings: neither one really sounds right, and no one on WordReference knew what was proper and what wasn’t. One user suggested saying “even more behind schedule,” but then I wouldn’t have the fun continuity from the October 30 blog titled, “Late to the Halloween Party,” and the October 31 blog titled, “Even More Late (Even Later?) to the Halloween Party,” so I just went for what I felt like.

Feel free to leave me a comment telling me I’m wrong.

Seeing as I already devoted an entire blog to the topic, I’m not going to whine today about the issue of my blog delay resulting in awkward moments where I’m posting about a festive Halloween outfit days after Halloween is over.

Do note, however, that it bothers me, and I’m still trying to think of a way to post topical date-specific blogs on their respective dates without giving up the comfort of not needing to rush to take my outfit photos and write about that same outfit in a single day.

Anywho, I’ve barely left my room all day today, and it feels fantastic. The Meilin of October 31 was put-together, dressed for a festive holiday, and posing in front of the most beautiful building on campus (the Basilica); the Meilin of November 5 hasn’t looks like a slob, hasn’t gotten out of her pajamas, and has been sitting in the same place that she has been for several hours, alternating between doing her French homework and looking at WordReference forums.

It’s been a dull, unproductive day, but that’s alright. Some days are like that; they’re balanced out by days that are exciting and productive.

…which, you know, I can’t remember the last time I had, but I’m sure they’re out there. Look, I just want to feel justified for being lazy today, okay?

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life here at Notre Dame. Don’t forget to check me out on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Sweater: Target

Top: River Island

Skirt: Rue21