Tag: H&M

September 12, 2017 – False Step (OOTD #110)

Published on by lensembledujour5 Comments

You know, looking back at these photos, I’m not sure what I think of the shoes with the top.

Maybe it’s the pictures. I swear, in person, the yellow of the boots went much better with the yellow in the shirt. Or at least, I thought it did. Maybe I just walked around all day looking awkward and mismatched. I’m sure everyone stared and thought I was a freak – in fact, I should probably just drop out of school now, since I don’t see any way I could possibly recover from this terrible faux pas.

Luckily, most of my photos from Tuesday didn’t show my feet, so we don’t have to worry about that too much.

Anyway, things here in South Bend have slowly been beginning to feel more and more like autumn – and I’m very happy about that. I passed a batch of trees with a few orange leaves on them today, and I was so excited I had to post it to my Snapchat story. That’s real test of a millennial’s enthusiasm – did it make into onto their story?

I hope there’s somewhere on campus or nearby that I can get a pumpkin. I don’t think autumn exists without pumpkins, and I fully intend to decorate my dorm with as many of them as I can fit. I don’t even feel the need to carve them (here at Notre Dame, at least – I’ll definitely carve one when I go home to Kentucky for fall break); I just like their presence. They’re like the big round orange patron saints of the October-November season.

My birthday actually falls in the fall (ba-dum tshhh), so I have a particular affinity for the season. My favorite season, though, is definitely winter – but maybe that’s just because I’m used to mild Kentucky winters. Will I still enjoy winter after I’ve experienced my first one in South Bend, which ranks among the snowiest towns in the US?

I feel like I will, but maybe I’m being overly optimistic. I hear that in the parts of the Midwest, like Chicago, the snow never melts in the winter – it just gets dirty and turns to slush and then freezes into a grey ice that is then covered by a new layer of snow.

But personally, I feel like that’s preferable to the general lack of snow that Kentucky has. I’ve never even experienced a white Christmas before – what a depraved, unfortunate creature I must be.

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-jacket thing: Francesca’s

Top: H&M

Choker: Francesca’s

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

Published on by lensembledujourLeave a comment

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 25, 2017 – Lazy College Student Aesthetic (OOTD #95)

Published on by lensembledujour5 Comments

I’ve been in college for a whole four days and I’m already getting lazy with my clothes.

For real, today I woke up, gazed into my tiny closet, and came to the conclusion that none of the nice outfits I had come up with before I came to Notre Dame were right. I don’t know, it was Friday, I was feeling lazy, and I just wasn’t the mood to wear a skirt (and for some reason, it seemed like all the outfits I had come up with prior to starting school involved skirts).

So instead, I came up with a lazy day outfit with shorts, a baseball tee, and an Adidas windbreaker. I don’t know if it really counts as full “lazy college student style” – I think that requires sweatpants and a greasy topknot at the very least – but I definitely looked less put-together than I had for the past few days.

My hair was definitely pulling off that lazy college student aesthetic though. It’s been a while since it’s been washed, and it’s seen better days.

So far, I’ve had enough motivation to get myself out of bed at 7:30 every morning to go running, giving me about an hour to get dressed and get ready before classes begin at 9:30. It’s been pretty nice. We’ll see how much longer I manage to keep up this motivation – I know that in my senior year of high school, I slacked off on the running quite a bit by spring semester – but for now, I’m liking my routine.

At the end of the day, I headed over to the football field for a showing of Rudy. I’ve actually never seen that film before, so it was pretty cool to see it for the first time on the actual Notre Dame football field. It was particularly weird seeing all of these campus locations that I pass everyday as backgrounds and settings in the movie, though, haha.

Also, did you know that the dude who plays the titular character in Rudy also plays Sam in the LOTR films? I didn’t realize it until after the film was over, when I was looking it up on IMDb (because that’s what I do), and I saw the cast list.

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: Zumiez

Jacket: Adidas (thrifted)

Shorts: H&M

August 21, 2017 – Total Eclipse of the Heart (OOTD #91)

Published on by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Once upon a time there was light in my life…now there’s only light in the dark…

Fun fact – I actually became familiar with this song through Glee. It’s one of the only songs where I believe the Glee version is better than the original (no offense Bonnie Tyler – it’s just a little too 80s for me), and I probably know more of the lyrics than I would care to admit.

So Monday was eclipse day! Here in South Bend, I think we wound up getting about 89% totality, which, unfortunately, was a little less impressive than the 98% that I believe Lexington was supposed to get. Guess I should have stayed at home, huh?

Honestly, the eclipse as I experienced it was a little…how do I put this – lackluster? Disappointing? Sad? I’m not sure if I expected the heavens to open up and the angels to begin singing, but I did sort of expect a little darkness, maybe? I think it normally gets darker when a cloud covers the sun than when this eclipse happened though, lol.

I brought along my eclipse glasses that I purchased the glorious Home Depot before I left Lexington and sat out on the lawn with some girls from my dorm, munching on grapes, watching the people, and preparing myself for some kind of epic, earth shattering experience.

Unfortunately, it never came. At the point closest to totality, it did get a little shadowy-er over the quad, but honestly, if you had not told me that there was an eclipse going on, I might not have known.

But that’s okay! I got to hang out with some friends and chill, so that was pretty dope. For whatever reason, no one bothered to tell me that I didn’t need to be wearing my eclipse glasses in this photo though, so…maybe not that dope.

Overall, it was just a really relaxed day. Okay, perhaps I should rephrase that – it was really relaxed in comparison to the other Welcome Weekend days. I had some actual free time today to sit around and do homework, and I haven’t had any moments like that yet. Dare I say doing homework was almost nice?

Yeah…I don’t dare. Homework is never nice – it would be blasphemy to say so. 😏

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!

Vest: Altar’d State

Shirt: H&M

Shorts: PacSun

August 18, 2017- First Day at ND (OOTD #88)

Published on by lensembledujour12 Comments

Today I did what was, just a few days ago, practically unthinkable to me – moved into my college dorm room.

This was probably the bit I was most excited for in the whole beginning college ordeal. I’ve (or should I say, my parents) been buying things in preparation for this day for weeks. Granted, I’ve got some friends who have been preparing for months, and good for them, but I’m more of a “fly by the seat of your pants”  and “live in a state of denial whenever a big change is approaching” type of girl, so my excitement didn’t have that much time to fester.

But it did anyway, and every time I looked at my handprinted Indian bedding it festered (there’s your Scrabble word of the day) a little more. That’s really what got me through the ugly packing process followed by the 6 hour car drive up to South Bend on Thursday.

I’m not sure how I feel about this whole living situation at Notre Dame – I’m in a two-room quad, meaning there’s a little tiny back bedroom, where our four beds and four wardrobes sit, and then a much larger social space, with our desks and not much else. I actually don’t mind the space part, since I’ve managed to fit pretty much all the clothes I’d been wanting to bring (it’s still only about half of my full wardrobe), I’m just a little apprehensive about living with 3 other girls.

People exhaust me, and I need time by myself every day in order to restore my energy. How is that going to happen in this quad? I’m sure there will be plenty of secluded places for going off and studying in peace, but I really need a quiet, safe place where I can rest. I’m sure it’ll all turn out okay, the question is just when.

Another key issue: who’s going to take my OOTD photos now that I’m here? Fingers crossed that one of my roommates will be chill with it. Otherwise….maybe it’s time to invest in a tripod? Or make friends with an actual photographer? 😂

We’ll see. Hopefully it’s not long before I can connect with the artsy kids and we can mull over our own pretentious, artistic endeavors together.

On another note, it was perhaps a bad decision to wear a long white coat on an 80 degree day when you and your parents are hauling boxes across campus and up three flights of stairs, but I can’t help it – I just really want to look nice while I’m here. It’s not even so much the fact that it’s my first day on campus and I want to impress people; on the contrary, I feel like the first week of school is a terrible time to bust out your nicest outfits, since everyone’s distracted by the first day of school stuff. Plus, they’re probably a little nicer dressed than usual too. so it’s more difficult to stand out.

#PrayforMei – Lord knows I need it.

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: Vintage

Skirt: H&M

Bralette: Aerie

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

Published on by lensembledujour11 Comments

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!

 

July 22, 2017 – Miguel’s Pizza Should Pay Me to Wear This (OOTD #71)

Published on by lensembledujour3 Comments

So I uh…messed up.

I'm writing this blog on my phone as I sit in a car on my way up to Cincinnati, meaning I'm using data rather than WiFi. That's really not a big deal by itself, except that it means I'm limiting to posting only the pictures I have stored locally here on my phone; I can't access anything I have stored on my camera or laptop, and I can't AirDrop anything to my phone without Internet.
Unfortunately, the photos for the blog that was supposed to go up today were taken on my dad's camera, which I've left at home. If I were an intelligent human, I would have uploaded them from the SD card to my laptop and AirDropped them to my phone so I could post them from here, but um…yeah, I didn't.
Luckily, I have the photos from Saturday on my phone, so I can write that blog post now and post Friday's blog tomorrow, you'll just have to bear with me as we travel forward and then back in time for these next few days.
Anyway, this outfit is fun because I got this shirt from a tiny, dive-like pizza joint in Red River Gorge, a canyon system with some beautiful hiking trails in Kentucky. My dad and I went on Friday (more on that tomorrow), and afterwards, we got pizza from Miguel's. We both adored the dinky but charming atmosphere, so we bought shirts with the logo on it because we're hipsters like that.
Anyway, on Saturday, I was so excited about my dumb hipster pizza shirt that I decided to wear it. With the black tie-dye going on, I was definitely getting some vintage rocker vibes, so I tried to emulate that in my outfit and hair.
I say that like my hair was intentional, and that I actually spent time on it, but in actuality, I just had my hair in braids when I went hiking and I was too lazy to take them out. Or uh…wash it.
But it's okay, because I wound up with these really lovely beach waves that photographed really nicely and blew in the wind dramatically.
Lazy day hair in a nutshell, right? Or…the good lazy day hair days, at least.
Shirt: Miguel's Pizza
Shorts: H&M
Arm band: Altar'd State

July 20, 2017 – Infernal Kentucky Heat (OOTD #70)

Published on by lensembledujour9 Comments

I feel like I do a lot of complaining about the weather here.

For real, it’s quite possible that every other blog post on this silly little website has a reference to my outfit being impractical for the humidity and heat that we get in Kentucky, and yet, I have made no efforts to change my habits. From my unconventional summer solstice outfit to my shameless reliance upon layering, not for warmth, but for fashion, it’s clear that summer is simply not my season.

In fairness, I did just start this blog in the late spring, meaning all you guys have gotten to hear about are my summer outfits, and with them, my relentless complaining about summer weather. It’ll get better in the fall and winter, I swear! 😉

Still, it must come as no surprise to you that on a day like this, with a heat index at 100 degrees Fahrenheit and humidity at some ungodly high percentage, I’m wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a polyester jacket – in other words, I’m begging for death via heat stroke.

On another note, I got to do my pictures today in this lovely park not far from my house. It’s really nice because they leave part of it, some wetlands and the area around them, unmowed and wild, meaning I got to do this fun shoot in the tall grass, making me look cooler than I actually am.

(Did I just call the photos I do for this blog a “shoot?” Does that qualify as pretentious?)

Looks like that’s it for today, so 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: Adidas (thrifted)

Shirt: H&M

Jeans: Hollister

 

June 27, 2017 – Reggae and Calypso (OOTD #53)

Published on by lensembledujour9 Comments

…won’t you save me, San Francisco?

Had a great night last night with my friend Amanda at a Train concert in Cincinnati.

Admittedly, Train isn’t my favorite band on the planet. I like them well enough, and a couple of their songs – I’m thinking “50 Ways to Say Goodbye” and “Save Me San Francisco” – have been in rotation on my iTunes and Spotify playlists for years, but mostly, I wasn’t too familiar with their work. I actually had to create a playlist of their setlist the day before the concert so I could study up on their library more, since I wanted to be able to sing along at least to the courses of the songs I didn’t know.

But I love concerts, and I will happily drop all of my spending money to go see them, regardless of how much I know about the band. There’s something really spectacular about being in a room full of people connected by music, and whether I love the music or not, I love the vibe.

My first concert, Demi Lovato, was back when I was in fourth grade, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I even remember the outfit I wore to see Demi Lovato – black boots, denim skirt, green henley, denim vest, white jacket, green scarf, straw fedora-like hat. Tacky and awkward as it sounds, I remember feeling really fashionable for 2008, and I actually remember getting a lot of compliments.

Not wanting to be passed up by my fourth grade self, I had to put together an outfit worthy of a summer concert. I feel like Train has an almost country vibe to their music, and I wanted to reference that in my look. But I don’t really have any country-looking clothes, and regardless, I’m not really a country person, so I went for a boho summer festival look instead. Close enough…ish?

But for real, I do like my outfit today. I spent forever trying to find a bralette that layered nicely under the high neck of my tank top (as it turned out, a high neck bralette was perfect for the job), and I layered a sheer kimono on top for “warmth.” Or maybe just fashion. I don’t know, practicality and aesthetic run together in my head sometimes.

I topped it all off with a layered choker and a gold headband, and I felt like I was almost cool enough to stand in the parking lot of Coachella and direct traffic. Almost. Hey 

That’s it for today! 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 and shorts: H&M

Kimono: Hollister

Bralette: Aerie

Headband: Altar’d State

 

 

 

May 30, 2017 – In A Barbie World (OOTD #32)

Published on by lensembledujour11 Comments

I used to play with Barbies all the time as a kid.


In fact, I’m certain that my fascination with Barbies is how I got into fashion. I was never super interested in having my Barbies reenact scenes from my imagination, but I loved to dress them in different outfits and comb out their hair. My favorite Barbie was not the one with light up wings, or with a singing voice box, or a mermaid tail (though trust me, I owned them all), but one that was simple, with normal hair and a normal body for wearing all of my clothes.


You know, as “normal” of a body of that tiny Barbie doll could have.


I’m admittedly pretty jealous of little girls these days and the wide variety of Barbies they get to play with – even though I grew up just in the early 2000’s, The doll aisle of the toy store was still 90% the blonde, blue-eyed classic Barbie. Now, I see that the doll aisle is filled with Barbies of all shapes and sizes and ethnicities, which is a reallycooo thing to see for me.  I always wished there were more Asian-looking Barbies as a kid, and I usually ended up having to settle with some tan brunette with features that could’ve passed for Latina, Eastern European, or Middle Eastern.


Plus, Barbie has the best movies. Princess and the Pauper was my jam, but Mermaidia and Fairytopia were close seconds. I remember seeing Rapunzel as an infant and being instantly hooked on the franchise. To this day, I still think of Barbie as Rapunzel as a more definitive Rapunzel than the Rapunzel from Disney’s Tangled.


I wound up with a lot of spare time on my hands today, so I ended up doing a very elaborate hair and makeup look – bright lips, prominent highlight and contour, false eyelashes and curled hair – much like the glamorous look of a Barbie doll. Thus, I modeled my outfit after this concept, going for a lowcut pale pink top, short denim shorts, and wedges. It was pretty comfortable for a summer day like this, where a slight breeze makes it a bit too cold for short sleeves in the morning, but the heat of the afternoon makes it much too warm for pants.


Plus, I’ve got a graduation party to go to this evening, so it’s nice to show a bit of skin in the presence of people who usually saw me bundled up in leggings and coats due to the freezing cold temperatures my school’s AC brought about.
I had quite the playday with taking my pictures today. Be prepared for quite a few shots down below!
As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one!

Shirt: H&M

Shorts: Abercrombie

Choker: Charlotte Russe

And 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

dsc03269