Tag: forever21

September 6, 2017 – Topknots and Tan (OOTD #105)

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I owe this hairstyle to my dear friend, Jane.

A long, long time ago, when I was just a little 13 year-old who could use a flat iron but couldn’t French braid her hair to save her life, Jane taught me the way of the topknot.

I don’t even know exactly where Jane learned to do the hairstyle – given the time period, it was probably a copy of Seventeen borrowed from the local library, or maybe a YouTube video from macbarbie07. At any rate, she learned it – the way you twist your hair onto your head, leaving a tuft of it poofed around your crown for volume, then pin it in place with as many bobby pins as possible – and then she taught the ancient art to me.

Since then, the topknot has always been in rotation in my hairstyle catalogue. In particular, I find it useful for days when my hair is a few days old – too dirty to be left down but not dirty enough to warrant a shower. The only time it doesn’t work is when my roots have grown in several inches…but nothing really works with my hair then.

But what about the other part of this blog’s title – the “tan?” Actually, I probably wouldn’t have even called it “tan” but for the need for alliteration; personally, I consider it more of a camel.

A while back, I wrote a blog post dedicated solely to my love of camel – especially when paired with black – likening the color combination to a luxury sedan. My thoughts have not changed since then. Camel and black is still probably my favorite color palette – though I may have to rethink my use of it now that I’m here at Notre Dame, where I think just about every building is the same golden beige color.

Too much of a good thing isn’t good, right?

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

Sweater: Forever21

September 4, 2017 – All Beige Everything (OOTD #103)

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I’m not even wearing all beige in this outfit, lol.

Look, I love the buildings here at Notre Dame – they’re beautiful, architectural, and outright works of art – but my goodness, why are they all the same color?

I’m pretty sure everything here is this same golden beige tone. And it’s very pretty, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes, a girl just wants to pose next to something that looks like a unicorn vomited on it, you know? Something like what you’d find in Shoreditch or even in the Louisville Highlands – something that’s bright, vibrant, and not beige.

(Don’t think I’m ever going to stop comparing places to Shoreditch – that place was freaking amazing and unforgettable).

For real, I’m trying to think of any buildings that aren’t either golden beige, white, or brick-colored here, and I’m drawing a blank. I guess there’s the Golden Dome, which is at the very least shiny (though gold is still a neutral), but I have no idea how to get up there. Can you even get up there?

There are a lot of buildings that I don’t know how to access here, actually. I don’t even now how to get onto the roof of my own residence hall. I feel like that ought to be my goal for my four years here – figure out how on earth to navigate all of the buildings. In particular, I want to make it to the upper floors of the basilica (are there upper floors to the basilica? There have to be – look at how tall those spires are), the inside of the main building (though I’m going to have to find a way in other than the front stairs – otherwise, I won’t graduate in four years), and the fourth floor of LaFun (I know there is one because I’ve seen the staircase…but the directories all say that there are only three floors…)

Anyway, I’ve definitely still got plenty to learn. I haven’t even made it off campus into the “city” of South Bend. “City” in quotation marks because let’s be honest…South Bend isn’t a city. I used to complain about Lexington being small and boring. Lexington is New York City compared to South Bend.

But honestly, I’ll take anything that South Bend has to offer, especially if it’s not beige.

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

Bralette: Aerie

Jeans: Abercrombie

September 2, 2017 – Irish Intrigue (OOTD #102)

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Funny – these photos come from last Saturday, during my experience at my first home football game at Notre Dame, and at the time of me writing this, I’m preparing for my second home football game.

No lie – I can even hear the band practicing from outside my dorm room window right now. They’re playing the fight song, of all things.

Anyway, last Saturday was my first ND football game experience – as well as my first tailgating experience (bar that one time I went with a friend to a UK football game), my first midnight drummer’s circle experience, my first crowd pushups experience, as well as a whole slew of other Notre Dame football tradition experiences.

It was also my first time with the Shirt. What’s “the Shirt?” What makes it so special that it gets its own capital S? I’m still figuring that out myself. The Shirt, from, from what I can gather, is a tradition for the Notre Dame student section for their home football games. We all buy this same shirt that we’re supposed to wear on football days. Most – but not all – students wore it, making for a pretty cool sense of unity for us all. Even I, a freshman with pretty much no ties to Notre Dame other than I’ve been going here for a few weeks now, felt like I was a part of some huge many-faced beast. But like…a nice beast. As long as you’re a part of it.

Some of my reading said that we’re not supposed to wear the Shirt outside of football games (at least until the end of the football season), but I’ve seen plenty of kids wearing the Shirt on regular weekdays. Does that mean those kids are just idiot freshmen who don’t know what they’re doing, or was my writing wrong? I dunno. I myself am an idiot freshman.

Since this post is being written a week after the game took place, it should come as no surprise to you that ND won. In fact, there wasn’t really even much of a doubt that we would win during the game itself – I don’t think we ever lost our lead against Temple. It was actually kind of a boring game, looking at it as just a game. As an experience though, as a fan in the stands for the first time, it was a ton of fun! I am definitely looking forward to tomorrow’s game against Georgia.

Maybe not looking forward to wearing The Shirt again though – I don’t think I’ve done laundry since last week. Lol.

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!

Shirt: ND Bookstore

Skirt: Forever21

Choker: Madewell

September 1, 2017 – Is It Fall Yet? (OOTD #101)

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Shoot, it’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I haven’t posted anything here since last Sunday – in other words, it’s been four days since my last blog post. I think that’s still a little shorter of a hiatus than the one I took when I was in London…but yeah, it’s been too long.

College has been treating me well enough. That said, it hasn’t exactly been easy either – for example, I spend more time than I would like hanging out in the upper floors of the library writing papers, and less time than I would like writing blog posts. Still, I enjoy the freedom, the fewer hours spent in classes, and the exercise I get walking around campus.

It’s interesting: now that I’m living on a college campus, where there are so many people moving from place to place 24/7, I’m not sure when it’s appropriate for me to change out of my “school clothes” and into my “lazy clothes.” In high school, I wore nice clothes during the school day, and when I got home, I changed into comfy clothes (which sometimes just meant pajamas). But now, I’m pretty much always at school because my home is school. So when do I get to stop being fashionable and start looking lazy?

Speaking of fashion, this coat has quickly become one of my favorite articles in my wardrobe. Why? Because it’s one of the only coats I bothered to bring here, and Lord knows the September weather here in South Bend necessities it.

But why didn’t I bring more coats? Because in Kentucky, at this time of the year, it still feels like summer. It’s not unusual to have weather that’s still in the 80s and upper 70s – in other words, nothing that would ever require a coat. In fact, I probably don’t break out my jackets until mid to late October because I’m still able to wear shorts and t-shirts.

Not here – here, it’s been chilly and rainy in the mornings just about every day since the start of classes two weeks ago. I’m not complaining; I much prefer this to the heat we had in Kentucky (anyone who’s been following this blog since the summer can attest to that). Still, I left all of my sweaters and coats at home, and I’m really missing them right now.

In fact, I’m missing all of my clothes I left at home. I wound up having more room in my wardrobe than I thought I was going to have, so at fall break, I’m definitely going to bring some more pieces. My clothes are kind of like my children; I miss them when I’m apart from them.

Anyway, I’ve got to scoot off to Astronomy, which begins in 20 minutes, so that’s all for today! 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

Pants: The LOFT

Shirt: Forever21

August 26, 2017 – Waking Up To A Choir Of Angels (OOTD #96)

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The chaos never quiets at Notre Dame.

Saturday, which began my first weekend alone here, saw me waking up late after having been out at party (that I lasted a whopping 30 minutes at before calling it quits) the night prior. I actually awoke to the sound of the choir practicing practically outside my window on South Quad – prompting me to wonder if perhaps I hadn’t made it home Friday night, and that maybe angels were welcoming me into heaven.

Nope, I’m just at Catholic school, and the full choir practicing out on South Quad at 9 AM in the morning is a perfectly normal occurrence.

Maybe it’s not perfectly normal – actually, it was part of a celebration for Notre Dame’s 175th anniversary, which happened to fall on my freshman year. They did a 3 mile walk in the morning, followed by a mass (which was what the choir was practicing for), and then a picnic for everyone to enjoy.

Needless to say, I hit up that picnic in the afternoon – there’s no way that I, a broke college kid, am going to ever refuse free food.

It’s very pleasing to be able to finally consider myself amongst the proverbial “broke college kids.” I even made a post dedicated to that aesthetic for yesterday’s OOTD – check it out here.  “Broke high school kid” just doesn’t the same weight, doesn’t conjure up the same image. It’s like up until college, no one takes your complaints and general teenage angst about life seriously – then, in college, you finally gain the ability to be pessimistic and grumpy with the adults.

Other than the picnic, my day was pretty much empty to do whatever I wanted. I can’t imagine I’ll continue to have this much free time as the weeks go on in the semester – can I? I don’t even know. I feel like I’m doing something wrong, not having work or homework or some kind of task that needs to be done looming over my head, but I guess that’s just the way it is for this first week of school.

I even had time to go out with some girls from my dorm, pictured below:

I’m sure the stress will set in eventually and I’ll have plenty of time to wallow in my own misery then! And no one can tell me I can’t because I’m an adult now with responsibilities and problems with the best of them!

I kid, of course. I can wallow in misery without any stress to trigger the reaction!

Kidding, again.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life 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!

Top: H&M

Shorts: PacSun

Jacket: Forever21

Boots: Ralph Lauren

 

 

August 20, 2017 – The Blog Post Of Posing With My Hand On My Sunglasses (OOTD #90)

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Look, posing for photos is hard.

The best poses are dynamic, but dynamic poses draw attention, which is not always what I want, especially when I’m doing my best to fly under the radar at my new school and not make too much a fool of myself. That’s why I wound up with a ton of photos with my hand on my sunglasses today – it’s a simple pose isn’t embarrassing. I’m already a freshman, which is just about the dorkiest thing to be; I don’t also want to be a dorky freshman posing dramatically for photos in front of my class buildings.

But I can’t help it – the buildings here at Notre Dame are so pretty. I want to pose with all of them and take photos, strange though that may be. Maybe things will change once I’ve gone inside some of these buildings and begin to associate them with the stresses of school, but for now, I’m still in awe of the beauty of this place.

Today was the day my parents – all the parents, really – left. I love those guys, and I’m unspeakably appreciative of all they’ve done for me, so it was far from easy to say goodbye. I did though, and so did they, with very minimal fanfare involved. That was the best way, I think – prolonging things would have served no purpose.

On another note, with my parents went their photography skills and non-judgmental nature, so for a few hours there, I had absolutely no means of doing my pictures for my blog post. Thankfully, one of my three roommates has been cool enough to agree to do my OOTD photos for now, at least until I can hunt down someone else who’s willing to do it consistently and long-term.

Also thankfully, this awesome roommate has some pretty  sweet camera skills – and an iPhone 7 that takes those cool portraits with the blurry backgrounds. I’ve always wanted to do those things!

But for real, I can’t keep bothering my roommate to take pictures of me everyday – she’s busy and I’m sure she doesn’t want to be bothered to do work for my blog when I’m not paying her. I’m considering now buying a tripod and a remote and trying to do photos on my own? I’ve heard of some fashion bloggers who do that.

Do you have any suggestions for what I should do about taking my pictures? Are any of you fashion bloggers who take their own photos – and if so, what’s your technique? I’ll take any advice you can give me!

I’ll see you in the next one. 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!

Blouse: ASOS

Sweater: Unknown (thrifted)

Skirt: Forever21

August 19, 2017 – How To Wear A Generic T-Shirt That Your Dorm Makes You Wear (OOTD #89)

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Notre Dame, day 2.

Welcome Weekend is a strange experience – it’s almost like a summer camp. Everyone walks around in packs, led by older and wiser mentors who direct you where to go, no one really has any friends so it’s a constant stream of “Hi, my name is ___ and I’m from ____”, and, in the case of Notre Dame, you are even forced to wear matching t-shirts with your dorm name.

So my dorm got this pretty generic baby blue design with bright yellow accents – by no definition ugly, but by no definition very interesting. It reminds me of those Simply Southern shirts that all the preppy girls in my high school would wear with leggings and Hunter boots. In one sense, it’s very nice because it allows you to find people from your dorm no matter what event you’re at, but in another, well, it’s kind of hard to stand out in terms of fashion.

But I like to try, so this is my attempt at making my ND dorm room t-shirt into a more interesting outfit than just a t-shirt and shorts (which is what pretty much everyone went for). I began with the t-shirt and shorts template, but then I added my absolute favorite jacket – this tan utility coat with a ton of pockets – over top and a Notre Dame baseball on my head.

In particular, I liked the way the tan of the jacket picked up the gold in the hat – I’m going to have to remember this combo for game days when I need something school spirit-y and still fashionable to wear. One of my roommates apparently already has all of her tailgating outfits picked out, while meanwhile, I’m still struggling to figure out wha I’m going to wear tomorrow.

My parents were still around for this day, but not for much longer. I’m definitely going to miss them – and their photography skills. I really hate to bother people about taking pictures of me (it comes off as super narcissistic, right?), but I think I’m just going to have to go for it. I love this blog and I don’t want to give it up (heck, I’m writing this one at 2:30 in the morning, after I finished all my homework and the welcome activities for the day), but there’s no way for me to get decent quality OOTD photos without a photographer.

For real – why isn’t there? It’s the 21st century and we still have to rely upon other people to take photos of us like animals. I need like, a remote-controlled drone that I can set up to follow me around and snap pictures of my outfit.

If that existed it, I would give it inventor all of my money. And then demand that he or she invent a way to solve the world’s second most pressing problem – coffee grinds in the bottom of your cup and Leggos that you step on in the middle of the night.

I’ll see you in the next one. 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: Forever21

Shirt: Notre Dame

Hat: Notre Dame

Shorts: Abercrombie

August 11, 2017 – Team Edward FTW (OOTD #85)

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Finally got my scraggly bleach-damaged ends snipped off.

I love getting my hair cut – I really ought to have it done more often. It’s amazing what a difference it can make, lightening up the weight of your hair and making it look more healthy, even when it’s in as sad of a state as mine.

Today’s outfit was rather simple: just a blazer, a shirt and a pair of leggings. It’s made more interesting though by the billowy sleeves of the shirt, which pop out from under the jacket and add some extra drama. It was a lazy day for me in terms of fashion, since I had to go to work early in the morning I opted for comfort over style, but I found that I was still able to add a little detail like that to keep from being too boring.

After work, I had to rush home to entertain some friends for the evening. I arrived at 5:00 to begin cooking and told them to arrive to arrive at 5:30, banking on the fact that they’d arrive around 5:45 since they’re teenagers and we’re a perpetually late bunch (I know I am).

And thankfully, they were! I mean, normally tardiness is a little annoying, but I knew I was going to be late with cooking dinner anyway, so it was better that they were late too. Yay for poor time management skills?

We’d selected three movies for the evening – School of Rock, Twilight, and The Brave Little Toaster – and we made it through all but the last. It was particularly amusing because Zach had never seen Twilight while Amanda apparently used to watch it once a week as a kid, making for an interesting experience of Zach looking confused and Amanda spouting out random trivia about each scene.

In the end though, we all agreed – Team Edward FTW. Not that it really matters anymore, since the Twilight phenomenon is thankfully a thing of the past, but Jacob’s character is just so much less developed, especially in the first move. Edward’s hardly Mr. Personality either, but he’s a superpowered vampire with My Chemical Romance levels of self-hatred, so that earns him some points. Plus, Robert Pattinson’s cuter.

Wait…why am I even going on about Twilight in 2017?

I’ll see you in the next one! 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: Forever21

Shirt: The LOFT

August 3, 2017 – Schoolhouse Rock (OOTD #81)

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Guess what? There’s only one outfit in this blog post!

That doesn’t, however, mean that there are going to be any less photos for this one. Why?

Well, after a nice, long day hanging out with Jane involving walking around not one, but two separate malls and having Starbucks iced coffees at both of them like the basic (practically) white girl that I am, we decided to drop by my old elementary school, Liberty.

Some history about Liberty Elementary – it was constructed back in 1923 as a little one room schoolhouse, and was, if I’m not mistaken, the oldest school in the Oldham County school district until its 2015 closing. In fact, Jane’s grandmother even attended there, and of course, I did as well, from 2005-2010.

It was a nice little school, and I have a lot of fond memories from there, including winning a dance-off against a girl I didn’t like in first grade, accidentally breaking the finger of a boy I had a crush on while playing four square, and pretending to be a cat for like, a solid week in kindergarten.

So it was very nice when Jane agreed to hang out at the now abandoned Liberty Elementary that evening, even though she doesn’t really have the nostalgia for it that I do. It’s getting a little creepy and run down-looking, and the fact that it was getting dark by the time we got there didn’t help.

But you can’t really be afraid of the school that you went to as a kid, can you? Sure, the random hallways that still lit (emergency lights I guess?) and the giant X over the door of the playground entrance were kinda spooky, but I knew this place, and so the spookiness didn’t hit me that hard.

You could say that we weren’t exactly supposed to be there…especially given the signs that said “No trespassing” (in both English and Spanish, as Jane pointed out to me), but we caused no harm, and we didn’t even go in. There was no way to, actually, even if we’d really wanted to – the doors and windows were all locked.

How do I know that? I might’ve checked a few…or something. Not because I wanted to see inside, of course – just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any rain getting in, right?

Eventually, Jane got tired of me walking in circles and snapping photos of every other door and peering in every third window, so she went off to sit in the car. And since she was kind enough to entertain me for even that long, walking around some creepy old building that she probably didn’t care about, I soon followed.

I would definitely go back though! Maybe in daylight, for some clearer photos…and maybe with a crowbar…

I’m kidding, of course.

I’ll see you in the next one! 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!

 

August 2, 2017 – The Blog Post of 1000 Outfits (OOTD #80)

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I’m going to apologize for two things here: 1) not posting a blog for a few days, and 2) returning to posting blogs with an obscenely picture-heavy post with about four separate outfits in it.

The four separate outfit thing is less directly my fault though – my dad and I went canoeing for the first part of the day, so I had the outfit I wore for that, then the bathing suit I wore underneath for when we stopped and swam in the river, then the outfit I changed into afterwards since my first outfit was wet and dirty, then the dress I changed into when my friend, Jane, and I went out to dinner.

So you see, the costume changes were all necessary to the day and totally not all due to me simply being an excessive person who likes excuses to change her outfit. What, you think I’d start a fashion blog and actually enjoy putting together outfits?

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXseat9FBee/

Pshaw.

Anyway, my dad and I started out day at about 5:00 AM with a two-hour drive out to Milltown, IN in order to catch an 8:45 bus down to the Blue River for canoeing. This – canoeing on the Blue River –  is a tradition we’ve had since I was a kid, maybe third grade or so. It used to be that we’d go along with some of my friends and their dads, in sort-of a daddy-daughter thing, but over the years, people moved away, and the tradition sort of died off.

In truth, we hadn’t even done it for years ourselves. But, with me going off to college in a few weeks, we thought it would be a nice time to bring it back.

And I’m glad we did. Canoeing is a low-key kind of fun; there’s not a ton of screaming and laughing, and conversation’s quite difficult since you’re sitting one in front of another, but it’s a nice way to simply enjoy each other’s company. The part of the Blue River that we canoed (didn’t know that was a word) down was really pretty, and there were a couple of banks where we stopped to walk around the woods and wade in the river as a break from sitting.

Also, the sunglasses are back! Thank goodness. I wasn’t about to wear eye makeup while canoeing and swimming, and I also wasn’t about to be doing pictures without either eye makeup or my sunglasses.

About three and a half hours later, around 12 noon, we reached the end of our trip. From there, I took on my second costume change of the day (the first being changing from my canoeing clothes into my bathing suit while still on the river), changing one dirty, wet top for a clean, dry one.

We then stopped in Louisville in the Bardstown Rd. area (very cute and hipster, by the way – almost like a little Shoreditch) for lunch, and, though I didn’t intend to take any more pictures, I couldn’t resist when I saw this big beautiful wall with a colorful mural on it. Then, I ate a popsicle, and I thought that would make for a good shot too…you see now why this is such a picture-heavy post?

Up next, I met up with my friend, Jane, who lives in Louisville. Jane and I became friends in 6th grade, and a year later, I moved away to Lexington. Regardless, we’ve stayed friends through texting and social media (and before texting and social media were huge, emailing and IMing), and we visit each other a few times a year.

That leads to my next costume change of the day – a beautiful pale pink maxi dress Jane bought in France and gave to me since it didn’t fit her anymore. We were going out to dinner that night, and I thought, you know, why not change out of my slightly ratty canoeing/Bardstown Rd clothes and into this new dress?

Thankfully, that fourth time was also the last time I needed to change clothes for the day…unless you count the pajamas I changed into at Jane’s house. I guess that would’ve made for five? Oops.

I’ll see you in the next one! 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!

Shirt 1: Forever21

Shorts: Forever21

Coat: North Face

Shirt 2: Hollister

Dress: Unknown (gifted)