Tag: forever21

November 18, 2017 – Here Comes the Freezing Rain (OOTD #163)

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Why on earth can there not be a Notre Dame home game with decent weather?

Seriously – South Bend doesn’t necessarily have bad weather all the time. Maybe that’s the stereotype, and maybe I personally tend to complain about South Bend’s weather more than I ought, but in reality, it can be quite nice up here sometimes. In fact, I’m pretty sure the day just prior to November 18 was absolutely beautiful – high in the 50s or something like that – but of course, November 18 itself was horrid.

I don’t think you can fully understand how horrid it was. I mean, if you were just to walk outside for a few moments to go from one building to another or from your car to a building you would’ve been fine. It wasn’t even that cold – 40s maybe. But it was the wind, and the rain, and the 40 degree temperatures, and the fact that I forgot gloves, and the fact that I had to stand in one place not moving and totally exposed to the elements for hours that made the game day experience less than optimal.

Thankfully, I know there will be plenty more game day experiences in my future as a Notre Dame student, so I didn’t really feel badly about leaving after the halftime show, even though it was the last home game of the season. If I were a senior, maybe I would’ve stayed – no, I definitely would’ve stayed – but seeing as it was just a mediocre game, and it wasn’t even that big of a milestone experience for me, it was alright to leave.

I was a little sad that I didn’t get to wear a more exciting outfit for my final Notre Dame home game of this year – I mean, I’ve got a gorgeous blue and black plaid cape that I was really hoping I would get to wear before the season ended – but with the weather, it was just more practical to go for something that I wouldn’t freeze and die in.

I mean, I ended up kind of freezing and dying anyway, but it was all in good fun.

Afterwards, I went back to the dorm and changed into warm, dry pajamas and had a cup of cocoa, which was pretty much the best feeling ever.

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!

Coat: The North Face

Blazer: Forever21

Sweater: Forever21

November 17, 2017 – Thanksgiving Aesthetic (OOTD #162)

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Just kidding, this outfit couldn’t possibly be a Thanksgiving outfit – this dress is way too fitted for any of the hardcore eating I do on Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is such a weird holiday in terms of clothes – you want to look nice because you’re seeing all of your family, but you also want something big and comfy so no one can see your inevitable food baby.

That’s alright, though – I can still dress nicely in anticipation of Thanksgiving while still dressing in pajamas and lazing around the house on actual Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving is a truly spectacular holiday. I mean, the significance of the event is pretty nice – you know, the whole Native Americans and Pilgrims getting along for a day to feast, and to be thankful for what they have – but mainly, I just really like the eating part.

How many other holidays are so focused upon eating? I mean, Christmas and Easter and the Super Bowl tend to involve lots of cooking and feasts, but they don’t revolve around food like Thanksgiving. I mean, obviously, Thanksgiving also revolves around being thankful – which is important, don’t get me wrong – but second most important to its celebration is the food.

At my family’s Thanksgivings, we tend to have turkey and cheesy mashed potatoes and pecan pie, which are all lovely things that I don’t eat very often and that I adore to have for Thanksgiving. If I’m lucky, my mother will also do garlic green beans, some kind of rolls, and maybe an appetizer.

My point? I really like Thanksgiving. You could say I’m thankful for it.

(Just like I’m thankful for Internet platforms like WordPress where I can share my stupid word plays like that and no one cans stop me)

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: The LOFT

Jacket: Forever21

November 13, 2017 – Citrusy (OOTD #158)

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Sorry for the late blog today; I’ve been kind of distracted watching an animal documentary about robotic animals that were used to film wildlife social interactions up close.

It’s really fascinating, actually  – both for the sake of the technology that must have had to go into these robots to make them realistic enough to blend in in wildlife, and for the sake of the relationships that they’re able to film. I’d highly recommend you check it out, at least the first episode – it’s just the right amount of cute and informative to be wholesome without being sappy.

I remember as a kid, when the first Planet Earth films came out. My dad asked for the box set for Christmas, and I distinctly remember, because of how novel the concept of Internet shopping was to me back then, that my mother had to order it online for him. We sat down that Christmas night to watch the first episode – one that I got to select actually, “Caves,” – and we were all pretty impressed with what we saw. I was a kid and didn’t really care about or understand the years of filming and editing that had to have gone into the making of that series, but I remember enjoying it anyway. The music was a bit loud though.

And I still do. I haven’t gotten around to watching the sequel yet, Planet Earth 2, but I really want to. Maybe I should order the boxed DVD set on the brand new and completely novel concept of the Internet.

Admittedly, nature documentaries have little to do with today’s outfit blog, unless you’d like to think of this blog as something of a nature documentary – it is, after all, a bunch of photographs of a human going about her daily life and engaging in social interactions. Now that would be a clever transition from discussing Planet Earth to discussing fashion, wouldn’t it?

Actually, there’s not a lot to say about Monday’s outfit, other than that I thought the colors were tropical and citrusy, like that of a mango. Not that the weather in South Bend is anything tropical right now – it’s already getting down into the 30s and feelings like winter.

There is some nice color in the trees though. If you forget the cold and look at a tree while squinting your eyes, you can pretend you’re on a tropical island looking at the sunset.

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!

Coat: Vintage (thrifted)

Sweater: Forever21 (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

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)

Published on by lensembledujour9 Comments

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 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