june – Page 3 – L'ensemble du jour

June 21, 2018 – Second Chances (OOTD #308)

Published on July 5, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

This was almost the last time I wore this dress.

I’ve had it for a few years, and I was just starting to feel tired of it. You know that feeling? When it’s like you’ve worn a certain piece in all the ways it can be worn, and even if it’s not horribly out of style or ill-fitting, you’re just not interested in keeping it around any more?

Maybe you haven’t had that experience. I do have a lot an obscene amount of clothes, which means I’m privileged enough to be in a place where I am able to give away clothes simply when I don’t like them any more. I’m spoiled that way; I don’t have to keep clothes out of necessity. I have enough that I’m able to discard things without feeling any detrimental consequences — which I’m very grateful for.

Anyway, this dress is a few years old, and I’ve just never loved it. It comes from the children’s section of J. Crew (what? I’m petite and I can fit into some of the bigger kids’ clothes, and they’re so much cheaper than their adult counterparts!), so the fit is a little more “juvenile.” I thought the pattern and the style were appropriate for an adult woman like myself, though, so I went ahead and bought it.

Still, I just never really managed to get the dress to live up to my expectations of what it should be or how it should look, and even when I was getting dressed the morning of June 21, I just wasn’t feeling it. I resolved to make it the last time I wore the dress, and then I would give up and just get rid of it.

But then, when I wore this outfit, the craziest thing happened — strangers started complimenting me on my dress! This dress, which I was literally about to give away to Goodwill, was a huge hit.

Despite the nice things people said to me, I still don’t see what they saw. I don’t hate this dress at all, in fact, I think it’s perfectly fine, but I’m still not sure it’s something I want to keep in my wardrobe, especially with all of the clothes I already own that I like better. The compliments I got were nice, to the point that I’ve been deterred, at least temporarily, from giving the dress away.

I don’t know, what do you guys think? Do you like the dress? Should I keep it? Let me know in the comments below!

That’s about it for today. 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, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

Dress: J. Crew

Top: Altar’d State

June 20, 2018 – Blue and White, Sans Red (OOTD #307)

Published on July 4, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Happy Fourth of July! You’ll have to excuse my lack of an Americana themed outfit — you probably know already, but these blogs are on a delay, so the blog I’m publishing now on July 4 is actually the outfit I wore earlier in June. Rest assured, there will be some sort of patriotic festive outfit coming up, but it won’t be posted for a while still.

I can’t believe it took me an entire year to think to pair this shirt and this skirt together.

Let me go back and contextualize a little — so I bought this skirt back in London last year at a Zara shop off of Oxford Street. There was some huge sale going on so the shop was super crowded, and in order to avoid standing around in queues forever, I decided not to try it on and just buy it. Slight mistake, I guess, because it turned out that the waist was too big, and now I have to keep it held in place with a pin. Because of the less than ideal fit, I don’t wear the skirt as often as I would like, even though I’m a huge fan of the design.

The point being, I’ve had this skirt for a while and have worn it in a couple of different ways before (see example here). However, I’ve never really been satisfied with the styling — it’s such a fun skirt, and I really want to do it justice with an outfit that can properly highlight the unique layered structure. I just had not, until now, come up with a good way of wearing this skirt that was able to meet that goal.

I was so concerned with finding the best way of wearing this skirt — and by extension, so afraid of messing it up and styling it poorly — that it took me until this point to think to pair my blue and white striped shirt with this blue and white skirt. It would seem obvious, since they match so well, that they would work well together, serving to highlight the architecture of the skirt.

I guess it was just how closely they matched that was what caused me to hesitate. I was afraid they would look too “matchy-matchy,” too similar, and that they would only make me look like one big blue and white-striped blob.

But now, at least, I don’t believe that that fear was warranted. In fact, I’m quite happy with how these two pieces look together, and rather than matching too closely, I believe the matching patterns rather serves to emphasize the uniqueness of the skirt.

The moral of the story — try pairing new pieces together, even if you think they won’t work! I’ve worn a lot of stupid outfits in my time, some of which have been published on this blog (I didn’t think they were stupid at the time of wearing them, but looking back at them, I see they were kind of ugly). But I’ve also worn a lot of really cool outfits that I only managed to put together because I put things together that i didn’t think would work (see here and here).

Anyway, that was the preachy, educational segment at the end of our Saturday morning cartoon. You know, the moment at the end of a kids’ show when the main character addresses the viewer directly in order to communicate some educational lesson that should be taken from the episode, like “don’t do drugs” and “don’t talk to strangers.” Too bad I don’t have a cool catchphrase to end this with. Or better yet, merchandise I could try to convince you you need.

Top: Abercrombie

Skirt: Zara

June 19, 2018 — The Blues (OOTD #306)

Published on July 3, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Get ready, because you’re about to see about a week-worth of blue outfits.

I’m not really sure how it happened, but for some reason, I wound up wearing several predominantly blue outfits all in a row. I guess you could say I was feeling a little blue? 😉

Maybe it was a residual effect of Father’s Day — my dad’s favorite color is blue, to the point that the vast majority of his shirts are blue (though to be fair, he’s getting much better now that my mother and I have mentioned his blue fixation), so perhaps I was just following his example.

I don’t really have a proper explanation. The last time I wore this much blue was probably the 2014 March Madness when the University of Kentucky won the college basketball championship, though that was more of a royal blue shade. My point being, it’s not like blue’s my favorite color, or I have a greater number of blue clothes in my wardrobe than any other color.

Sometimes, things like that just happen in fashion — you wear several similar style shirts in a row, or you wear the same pair of shoes with every outfit (I know I definitely do this!) or you wear all one particular color. For me, what’s important is that I recognize that I’m getting stagnant and make an effort to switch things up.

Today’s outfit, though, was blue, if only because my shawl (Is that the best word for it? It’s not a jacket…it’s not a sweater…) was. Isn’t it interesting that a single colored piece of clothing in an otherwise neutral ensemble can make the entire outfit read as colored?

For real though, if someone has a proposal for what to call this blue sheer-top thing, I’m all ears. I’ve had it since my New York trip my senior year of high school, and it’s traveled with me all the way to London (in fact, it even made it to Buckingham Palace, the Pride Festival, and Platform 9 3/4), and I still don’t really know what I should refer to it as. I wasn’t even sure that I was going to buy it at first, since it’s not even my size and thus doesn’t fit the way it’s “supposed” to, at least in the designer’s mind. It was on sale though, so I went for it. Guess it was a good buy.

Shawl thing: Forever21

Skirt: The LOFT

June 17, 2018 – Dad Day 2K18 (OOTD #305)

Published on July 2, 2018July 3, 2018 by lensembledujour3 Comments

It feels weird publishing this Father’s Day blog two weeks after it’s passed, but you know, it happens.

For Dad Day this year, we went out to Louisville to hang out with my grandmother (my father’s mother), get lunch, and otherwise, just chill. It was a very typically Scanish day, involving moderately-priced sit-down food, my grandmother trying to overfeed us, and sitting around and gossiping about my various cousins whom I don’t really know.

We ended up going to Macaroni Grill, if only because the place my dad originally wanted to go was closed. I was happy enough — Macaroni Grill had a pretty bright yellow wall that worked well for taking pictures with, which the other restaurant didn’t.

Not that taking OOTD pretty photos is the most important factor in deterring where to eat for a Father’s Day lunch! I mean, it was his choice, or, I guess, second-choice. I’m just very glad that his second-choice made for a prettier background that his first would have.

Macaroni Grill was my favorite restaurant as a kid, but to be honest, it really didn’t live up to my childhood memories. For one, my favorite old dish, the Pasta Milano, is no longer there, which basically means that Macaroni Grill is dead to me now. There are just better pasta restaurants in the world, you know?

I debated whether or not I should conclude this blog with a “my dad is great!” Father’s Day kind of spiel, but it seems weird to do so since Father’s Day was so long ago. My dad is great though, so I guess the point still stands. And if you’re reading this Dad, hi! I hope you’re doing a good job of keeping my plants alive while I’m gone.

Sweater: Altar’d State

Top: Express (thrifted)

Shorts: Francesca’s

Dad: South Jersey

June 17, 2018 – Blonder Now (OOTD #304)

Published on July 1, 2018 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I did it guys! I’m blonde again!

If you’ve been following my hair color adventures, you’ll know that I very recently got a haircut. While I loved the new cut, the color needed a little work still in order to get it to the point that I wanted, so I had to go back to get it touched up.

It took a few days to get booked at the salon again, but I finally did, a little over a week after I first got it done, and let me say — I am very happy with the results!

I’ve been blonde before (see example A and example B), so I guess this isn’t the most radical change I’ve ever done, but I’m nonetheless very excited to be blonde again. It’ll take a little getting used to, especially with figuring out the best wash cycle so as not to dry it out badly, but now that I have nearly 2 years of blondness under my belt, I’m hoping it’ll turn out better this time (read: won’t wind up with my hair getting so damaged that I have to chop it all off)

If you’ve ever done a drastic hair change, you’ll know that sometimes, it can be a little off-putting to see your reflection for the first few times, especially if you’re not expecting it.

Nothing like a few fleeting moments of dissociation to go with a new hairdo, right?

You’ll notice that, once again, it is summer and I am clearly dressed for fall weather. I really tried to just let myself go with the white sundress, but I can’t help it — I love layering, and I love having my arms covered, even in warmer months. I don’t really get it, since I’m happy to leave my legs bare, but for some reason, I’m just a big fan of long sleeves.

Was a turtleneck and a jacket a little excessive? Maybe. But does layering those two pieces along with my sundress make the whole outfit a lot more interesting than if I had just done the plain white dress? You betcha.

Jacket: thrifted

Dress: American Eagle

Saturday Musings + Coffee – Nepal Day One and July 2018 Bullet Journal Spread

Published on June 30, 2018December 15, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Greetings from Nepal!

It took 27 hours of traveling including layovers, but finally, I’m here!

These photos were taken in the Chicago O’Hare terminal while I waited for my flight to Abu Dhabi — waiting which I probably shouldn’t have done.

See, I had a four hour layover in Chicago after I flew out from Lexington, and so I figured I would be able to sit there with my laptop for at least a little and do a bit of work. That’s actually where this blog was written and published.

So after two hours of sitting there in the domestic terminal, I figured I’d saunter over to the international one, which, judging by the signs I had seen, was just a short ride on the airport rails away. At this point, I had two hours before my flight departed, and I thought I had plenty of time.

Of course, things didn’t happen as planned — the rails were closed for some reason, which I didn’t realize until I had gone to two separate platforms at different locations in the airport and seen that they were closed. After asking around — with one person even telling me that the rails were open, which they clearly weren’t — I found a shuttle to take me to the international terminal.

That all took about 45 minutes, so as I rode the shuttle over to the international terminal, I was slightly worried, but not terribly so. That was, until I arrived at the international terminal and saw the queue to get through security.

I made it through, but not before worriedly calling my mother and questioning whether I’d be able to make it through in time. I’ve had experiences where it’s taken hours to get through a long security line, and I was afraid that that would happen to me again. Thankfully, by channeling my native Chinese pushing-through-lines skills, I was able to get through with about thirty minutes to spare.

I was one of the last people to board the flight, and I missed out on any chance I might’ve had otherwise to get bumped up to business or first class, but I made it, and that’s what counts.

There’s more to this travel story, but I think I’ll leave it until I post the blog from that day. Until then, here’s what Google Translate just told me is “goodbye” in Nepali: अलविदा!

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, Bloglovin, Twitter, and Tumblr! For business inquiries, shoot me an email at lensembledujour@gmail.com!

June 15, 2018 – Let’s Go Down to the Tennis Court (OOTD #303)

Published on June 29, 2018June 29, 2018 by lensembledujour2 Comments

…and talk it out like yeah?

I absolutely had to Google the lyrics to that (“Tennis Court” by Lorde, by the way) because I haven’t heard that song since like, 2014 when I was a freshman in high school. Freshman me probably would have been ashamed that I didn’t remember it, but what can I say? It’s been years since “Tennis Court” frequented pop radio, and it’s been even more years since I regularly listen to pop radio.

I had a brief Lorde phase after “Royals” came out when I would listen to the whole of Pure Heroine almost everyday while I did my Algebra II homework; it was a good studying album. I still really like a few of the songs, like “Love Club” and “Buzzcut Season,” and leave them in my Apple Music’s shuffle rotation. Melodrama was also a solid album, and also made for good studying music.

I’ve always wanted to do a proper tennis court photoshoot, but this impromptu one that mom did for me as we walked the dog through the park will have to do for now, at least until I’m back in the US. You’ll have to excuse the slightly messy hair texture — like I said, I was out walking the dog with my mom, and it was pretty warm out.

I keep a Pinterest board for Instagram ideas, where I’ve seen a lot of really cute tennis court fashion photography that really cleverly uses the vibrant colors of the court as a background. Maybe once I get back to the US, I’ll drag Amanda out and make her take pictures with me.

In more exciting news, I arrived in Nepal a few hours ago! In else exciting news, I won’t go into much detail with the Nepal adventures now because I’m sure I’ll have a full blog dedicated to that later this month. Rest assured, after 27 hours of traveling, I made it!

The jet lag is beginning to kick in though, so I think I ought to try to get some sleep. It’s about 5:30 AM here, and while I got a little sleep earlier in the night, it really wasn’t as much as I should have gotten. Whoops.

Sweater: Target

Top: Pitaya

Jeans: American Eagle 9thr

June 13, 2018 – Warm Colors on a Warm Day (OOTD #302)

Published on June 28, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujour5 Comments

Perhaps the most common criticism I hear about my fashion sense is that no matter the season, I always dress like it’s fall.

Take this outfit for example — I don’t remember exactly what the temperature was the day I wore this, but given the fact that it was mid-June in Kentucky, it’s safe to say it was hot and humid. Even if it wasn’t as hot and humid as usual, it was still hot and humid.

And yet there I was — wearing a knee-length jacket and a long-sleeve sweater. The skirt and the platform wedges give hint to the reality that it was probably 85 degrees out and sunny, but on the whole, the outfit reads more as 65 degrees and overcast.

Interestingly though, fall is not my favorite season — as mentioned many times here on this blog, that distinction goes to winter, no doubt about it. Fall is second-favorite for me, though. I like the changing leaves and the cooler temperatures, but I just like the snow and the cold even better. Plus, winter allows you to bust out the heavy coats and scarves — I love layering, which you can do in fall, but not to the same extent you can in winter.

That would make summer, with its stifling heat that prohibits anything but the most basic layering, my least favorite season. In fact, I am so deeply not a fan of summer, that I usually choose to ignore the weather, and dress however I want — and since wearing a winter coat in the summer would might give rise to enough suspicion to let a cop do a warrantless search, that usually ends up being a summer-winter hybrid. So, fall.

The thing is, though, that I’m always comfortable. I work indoors, I go to school indoors, and whenever I do something that involves being outdoors for more than a few minutes, I do dress appropriately for the weather. It’s all about dressing for the environment you’re in.

The rest is about suffering the heat without complaint too much and bringing lots of blotting papers.

Jacket: Vintage (thrifted)

Top: thrifted

Skirt: Forever21

July 11, 2018 – Outfit and Blog Do Not Relate (OOTD #301)

Published on June 27, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I’m headed out of the country in less than 24 hours!

This time tomorrow, I should be on a plane headed to Abu Dhabi, UAE, en route to my final destination Kathmandu, Nepal.

Exciting, right? Well, maybe the Kathmandu part, but not so much the traveling portion. I’ll be stuck in the Chicago O’Hare (hey, at least it’s not Midway!) for like, six hours before getting on my plane to Abu Dhabi for seventeen hours. Then I have to wait there for another three hours, and then fly to Kathmandu for four hours. I think we calculated it last night, and I have 27 total hours of transit time before I finally touch down in Nepal at 9pm local time on Friday? Yike.

I’ve been working on packing all day today, and at the very least, I have a lot of exciting Nepal-appropriate outfits to show you guys while I’m there! Hopefully, one of the other students there will be comfortable to take my photos. I don’t know any of them really, but I’m sure we’ll all have to play photographer for each other at one point or another — I just…you know, usually need someone to play photographer for me more often than most.

But that has nothing to do with the outfit I’m posting pictures of here, does it? Well…no. That’s the drawback of posting these OOTDs with a several day-delay — it protects me for days when I don’t feel like dressing up and taking pictures, but it hurts when I have something exciting in my life that I’m not able to write about for until days after it happens.

In truth, I’m not sure when my first Nepal-related blog will go live, since I don’t know how soon after I arrive I’ll be able to start taking OOTD photos, but hopefully, it shouldn’t be long. Most of the time I’m there, I’ll be doing school-related work, which might not be super exciting, but I will have a few field trips with the group, so I should definitely get some good pictures then.

Next time I write to you guys, it’ll actually probably just be me sitting in the O’Hare airport waiting to board my Abu Dhabi-bound plane. Wish me luck, and pray that I don’t get trapped in the Atlanta airport for 48 hours like the last time I flew internationally!

Dress: vintage (thrifted)

June 8, 2018 – Haircuts and Habaneros (OOTD #300)

Published on June 26, 2018September 19, 2019 by lensembledujour7 Comments

For those of you folks at home keeping score — this is Mexican restaurant #3 that’s serving as a background for OOTD photography. For the first two, check them out here and here.

You might remember that I’ve been considering changing up my hair for a while now, and I’ve finally gone off and done it! I’m back to blonde!

…ish. Actually, my hair isn’t quite finished its transition yet, but I liked this outfit so much, I wanted to photograph it anyway, even with my hair left in an incomplete state. Plus, I was outside a Mexican restaurant, and it seems like I have to take pictures every time I go to one of those anymore (hence the habaneros part of the title — okay, a bit of a stretch, I know).

Besides, it won’t be another week until I can get into the salon again, and I didn’t want to lay off from blogs for a whole week just because my hair wasn’t quite the color I wanted. I’ll just have to tolerate being a redhead for a little.

As you might have caught a few paragraphs back, I’m aiming for blonde here. I’ve been blonde before (for two years actually), which was the hair color I began this blog with, though I’ve transitioned through a couple of different hair colors over the last year, ranging from grey to brunette to purple to pink. Through all of those colors, though, I felt a longing to go back to blonde — I don’t know, I just feel like it’s the best hair color for me.

The annoying thing about blonde, though, is that my natural hair color — jet black — is about as far away from blonde as any color can be. Thus, it takes a ton of bleach and 40-vol developer to lift it to even a honey color, which, as anyone who’s dabbled in chemical coloring will tell you, is super damaging. That’s actually the original reason why I had to chop my hair off and lay off the bleach for a few months — as you can see here, after two years of bleaching it blonde, it was stringy and terrible-looking. Let’s just say it was so bad, that when I went to a cornfield at a farm with my dad, I had a hard time distinguishing between my hair and the broken, dead corn stalks.

This time, though, my plan is to have my roots blended into the lightened areas in such a way that I’m able to go longer spans of time without bleaching it, and thus avoid the terrible damage I wound up with last time.

We’ll see how it turns out though. Like I said, it’ll be another week until I can get in and have it bleached a second time, hopefully in order to lighten it up to an actual blonde. Fingers crossed it doesn’t fall off and I don’t have to shave my head! Though that probably wound’t be so bad — I’d be willing to try shaving my head at some point in my life for the hell of it.

Top: H&M

Jacket: H&M

Skirt: Zara