thrift – Page 4 – L'ensemble du jour

November 18, 2019 – Can’t Somebody Open Up A Window? (OOTD #581)

Published on January 12, 2020 by lensembledujour2 Comments

The best part of the Brookings Library was that I could open the windows.

I didn’t realize until after I’d lived in an apartment with limited natural light and un-openable windows for three months that I really value the ability to get fresh air indoors. In my entire apartment building, which I don’t believe had been updated since 1990 when it was built by the University of California, I don’t think there was one openable window.

At first, I hardly noticed — it’s not like I open every window I come across. And for weeks, it was too hot in DC to want to let any hot air in at all.

But think about it — when you do want to open a window, however rarely that may be, you really want to open it. Maybe you burned something in the kitchen and you want to let the smoke out before it sets the alarm off. Maybe your neighbor’s plumbing overflowed and you currently have sewage seeping into your living room carpet (that actually happened to me and my roommate twice). Or maybe you’re just feeling bothered and anxious and you know that some fresh air would make you feel better. Not being able to open a window in any of those situations ends up being quite a nuisance.

So I couldn’t open the windows in my apartment, and I couldn’t open the windows in any of the student lounges or study spaces (not that most of them even had windows), and there were no windows to be found in the cubicle where I worked. Thus, when I found that I could open the windows of the Brookings Library, I knew I had found my favorite study space.

I say that, but funnily enough, this is actually my last blog post from the Brookings Library — or Brookings itself. I still had about three more weeks of my internship to go, but I sort-of ran out of locations to use for backgrounds, and so I saw no need to continue taking pictures there. Besides, I started going out more and doing things outside of work and school. Who needs to open up a window to let fresh air in when you can walk out the door and into the fresh air itself?

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life this semester in Washington, DC. 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!

Jacket: Thrift (Goodwill)

Sweater: Thrift (Goodwill)

Trousers: Banana Republic Sloan

November 15, 2019 – Black Out (OOTD #580)

Published on January 11, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

A few years ago, I would have considered an all-black outfit to be so edgy.

I don’t think it was until my freshman year of high school that I started wearing all-black clothes. In middle school, that was too “alternative” for me — black was for funerals or business suits. Besides, the stores I mostly shopped at — Abercrombie and Hollister — didn’t sell black. Black wasn’t a cool color for teenage girls back in 2012; you were supposed to wear navy and grey and burgundy and maybe a little bit of off-white or army green. If you weren’t dressing like a) a rich kid at a prep school or b) a California beach bum, you were doing something wrong.

And then, when I entered high school, black suddenly became a cool color. Maybe it had to do with how those Victoria’s Secret PINK leggings had became widely accepted for wear as pants. Remember when that was a whole debate — whether leggings should be considered pants? Now, no one really thinks twice about it. My mother, who used to complain when I wore leggings as pants, now wears leggings herself when she walks the dog or goes to the grocery store.

By my freshman year of high school in 2013, every girl in school was wearing black Victoria’s Secret leggings, and once those had fully replaced blue jeans as go-to bottoms for everyday wear, it was only a matter of time before black became acceptable for tops too.

I know that sounds silly — how can a basic neutral color like black have ever been out-of-style? The thing was, it wasn’t really. I don’t think Seventeen or Teen Vogue were running articles in 2010-2013 about how black was a socially unacceptable color to wear. But it just wasn’t anywhere to be found in the shops that middle school girls like me frequented. Unless you were shopping at Hot Topic (and only emo weirdos shopped there), you wouldn’t find much black. Your Abercrombie cardigan with a big embroidered moose on your left shoulder wouldn’t come in black. Your Hollister floral skirt with an elastic waistband wouldn’t come in black. It just wasn’t a thing.

We’ve come a long way since 2013. Wearing all black is no longer an indication that you’re an edgy teenager — or at least, it doesn’t have to be. Sometimes, it’s just a stylistic choice with no particular meaning.

Top: Express

Skirt: Zara (thrifted, Poshmark)

November 9, 2019 – A Long Time Coming (OOTD #577)

Published on January 8, 2020January 9, 2020 by lensembledujour4 Comments

I mentioned in an earlier blog post that it took me a while to start having fun in DC.

And that’s true. I spent the first two months doing pretty much nothing but going to work, coming home, going to class, and then repeating the next day. Up until November, I wasn’t really doing anything to take advantage of my residence in DC.

View this post on Instagram

a first: having a woman flat-out refuse to take our photo because she didn’t understand what we were asking

A post shared by Meilin Scanish (@meilin_scanish) on Dec 5, 2019 at 4:55pm PST

But, as I also mentioned in that earlier blog post, once I did start having fun, I really went for it. Apparently, turning 21 made all the difference.

About a week after my 21st birthday, my best friend, Jane came and visited. Jane has been a good friend of mine since I was 11 years-old, and she’s the only person I still keep in contact with from my old Louisville days. She and I met through a mutual friend in choir in 6th grade, and, though we weren’t necessarily super close in 6th grade, she somehow wound up as the only person from Louisville who kept up with texting me after I moved to Lexington.

It’s kind of like my friendship with Amanda — Amanda and I were also not super close in high school when we actually saw each other every day. It was only once we went to university and moved to different cities that we became good friends. Wonder why that happens?

I’m a little surprised Jane hasn’t appeared more on this blog, given how often I go back to Louisville or up to Cincinnati. I guess it’s because I usually only see her for lunch or something short like that, so there’s never really time to take pictures worth making a blog out of. The last time I saw her in person, it was March 2019, and we just got lunch together in Cincinnati as I passed by on my way home for spring break. It was such a short trip, she didn’t even appear in any pictures. Then, I saw her in January 2019, and I was sick as a dog after having come home from Vichy, France — definitely not in any shape to take pictures for a blog.

The last time she actually appeared in pictures on my blog was the summer after I graduated high school. I visited her in Louisville for a few days just two weeks before I began at Notre Dame. We went to the mall, broke into my old elementary school, and ate doughnuts.

This time, Jane came and visited me in Washington DC over Veterans’ Day weekend. I had off from work that Monday, and so we had the whole long weekend to spend together from Friday night to Monday night.

And it was just as much fun as always! It was nice getting to be the hostess for once instead of the guest; I feel like most of the time when I see Jane, it’s me visiting her rather than the other way around because she lives in the more interesting city than I do (no offense, Lexington). Since I was spending the semester in DC, which is, for once, a cool city, I got to take her around to all of the cool places.

On Saturday, we went to the Smithsonian Botanic Gardens, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Wharf. Excluding my first week or two in DC when I went on a couple of back-to-back school trips to the monuments on the Mall, this was my first time in DC actually getting to go around and see some of the touristy sites. It’s funny how, when you live somewhere, you don’t actually get to see some of its famous sites unless you put in extra effort to go to them. The same thing happened to me in Rome over the summer.

Coat: A vintage shop in Budapest

Dress: thrifted (Buffalo Exchange)

November 3, 2019 – Firsts and Twenty-Firsts (OOTD #575)

Published on January 6, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

The weekend of my twenty-first birthday, I didn’t do much productive.

And that’s not because I spent the entire time drunk. I really didn’t. I went out the night of my actual birthday (which, miraculously, was a Friday night), and the rest of the time, I was mostly sober. I got a mimosa at Sunday brunch just because I could, and otherwise, I was completely tame.

But nonetheless, I didn’t really do anything productive — I didn’t do much homework (not that I had much during my DC semester), I didn’t work on any scholarship applications, I didn’t study for the LSAT. For once, I actually went out and had fun.

It took me until November for me to find friends to really hang out with in DC. The Notre Dame cohort was small; only about 17 people, and for a variety of unimportant reasons, it took me a while to connect with any of them. Despite spending every Thursday together in class for the entirety of September and October, and despite everyone being very friendly to me, it still took two months for me to find my crowd.

The turning point was the weekend of my 21st birthday. I invited everyone out for dinner to celebrate (not just my birthday — there were a few other people whose 21st birthdays were around the same time as mine), and something just clicked. After that, I went out to the Nats parade the following day with some people, and then I went to a café that evening to study with someone, and the following day, I went to brunch with the same group of girls.

If you’ll remember, I had the same thing happen to me in Rome over the summer. I spent several weeks being bored and lonely before I made a solid group of friends to hang out with, and it wasn’t until literally days before it was time for me to leave for good that I made friends with the people I was living with. It seems that I always manage to make friends wherever I go, it just sometimes takes a while.

Jacket: Thrift (Goodwill)

Dress: Francesca’s

October 31, 2019 – Boo (OOTD #573)

Published on January 4, 2020January 5, 2020 by lensembledujour4 Comments

I think Halloween may be my second-favorite holiday.

As a kid, that was not really the case. I never disliked Halloween — it was always up there in the top 5 list of Meilin’s favorite holidays — but I wasn’t really enamored by it. I was never a fan of sweets and candy, I was afraid of a lot of the decorations and scary movies, and I thought trying to come up with a costume was stressful.

I much preferred Christmas and Easter and my birthday (yes, I’m going to be a narcissist and call that a holiday) because I got actual presents on those holidays. Halloween, I just got a bunch of candy that I wouldn’t even eat anyway.

Then, as a teenager, when I became too old for trick-or-treating, I got bored with Halloween. Around that time, I also moved cities and schools, and so I had none of my old friends to go to costume parties or haunted houses with. I did eventually make friends by high school, but by then, I was so busy with school and work that I didn’t have time to go to people’s costume parties and haunted houses. And besides, I wasn’t really invited to them anyway. So mostly, I just sat at home and did homework while my parents handed out candy to the neighborhood kids — making Halloween a kind of lame holiday.

As I’ve grown older, though, I’m beginning to learn to appreciate Halloween. For one, the other holidays that I used to really love, like Easter or Valentine’s Day, have become less exciting as I’ve grown older and so are no longer there to compete with Halloween for the top spot.

Secondly, even though I still don’t really go out for parties or get dressed up (and that’s really not because I don’t want to, the timing just doesn’t work out during school), I like to see all the decorations. I like carving pumpkins. I like putting together Halloween-themed outfits.

And that’s what you see here. Unfortunately, I had class Halloween night, so I didn’t have anything to do or anywhere to go for Halloween itself. I didn’t even put together a costume. But my 21st birthday was the following day, so I knew I just had to be patient.

Jacket: Vintage (thrift, Foxhouse Vintage)

Top: The LOFT (thrift, Goodwill)

Skirt: Vintage (thrift, Street Scene Vintage)

October 28, 2019 – 70s Hollywood Producer (OOTD #571)

Published on January 2, 2020January 5, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Today’s outfit inspiration is 1970s Hollywood — not the glamorous red carpet stars, though, but the behind-the-scenes executive producers.

For goodness’s sake, I’m wearing an ascot. An ascot. I don’t think it gets any more 70s than that.

I’ve become a little bit enamored with the 70s lately. For a while there, I was all about 60s style — the retro patterns, suede skirts, the layered jumpers. I had what was basically a Hairspray phase, but 10 years after the Zac Efron movie (and even more years after the original Broadway musical) came out.

But then, all the 60s stuff became mainstream, and you couldn’t go to Forever21 without seeing fourteen different suede skirts and twelve different denim jumpers in their storefront. The 60s were new and cool in 2017. They had become a little old and tired again by 2019.

The 70s, on the other hand, are on their way up — at least, in my opinion. I like the 70s. They’re like the 60s, but worse — less optimism, more drugs, worse pop music (though better rock), more polyester. If I don’t look like I walked out of an early Scorsese film, what’s the point?

Jacket: Thrift (Goodwill)

Blouse: Banana Republic

Trousers: Thrift (Salvation Army)

October 21, 2019 – Cultured (OOTD #568)

Published on December 25, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Do you remember that trend back in like, 2011 where people would wear fake nerd glasses in an attempt to look “nerdy” and “smart?”

Yeah, I definitely did that.

For a long time, before I actually needed glasses, I wanted them. I thought they looked so intelligent. My friend, Emma, once gave me an old pair of her glasses in a little pink plastic Barbie case with a pink plastic handle, and I’d take them out when I was alone in my room and just stare at myself in the mirror. I could barely see out of them, since they weren’t, you know, my prescription, but I was pretty sure I looked great.

Flash forward 15 years, and nothing has changed. I still get dressed without seriously considering whether or not what I’m wearing actually looks good, but I feel pretty confident that it does anyway. Except, now I do need glasses.

Naturally, though, I’m not wearing them in this set of photos, which makes this transition rather awkward. Oh well. Where would we be without awkward transitions in this blog?

The point of me bringing up the story about fake glasses is because I thought this outfit/background combination was reminiscent of my fake glasses days. I may not be wearing fake glasses here, but I am in spirit. I’m also wearing a fake handlebar mustache in spirit, perfect for twirling like a silent movie villain.

Coat: Vintage (thrifted, Ecseri Bazaar in Budapest)

Sweater: Forever21

Skirt: Vintage (thrifted, Street Scene Vintage)

October 16, 2019 – Air, The Element of Freedom (OOTD #566)

Published on November 29, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to have an October where it doesn’t snow at least one day.

Living at Notre Dame has completely messed with my conceptualization of normal weather. At Notre Dame, the first snowfall is in October. That doesn’t mean it’s a significant snowfall — it might only be a flurry or two, but it’s snowfall nonetheless. October means 30 degree mornings and cloudy 40 degree afternoons. By November, you get your first significant snowfall, if you didn’t already get it in October. By December, the permacloud has rolled in and there’re at least three giant piles of grey-black snow that never fully melt until May of the next year.

Apparently, that’s not normal weather.

Being in DC reminded me of that. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I was shocked by how warm it still was in October in DC. Every morning I would walk to work and the first thing I’d say to my coworkers would be “can you believe how hot it is?” And they would say “…uh, you’ve said that like twice in the last hour. Also, this is normal weather for this time of year, you idiot.”

If I had the ability to formate my own perfect seasons, I’d definitely want to replicate a Notre Dame fall. It’s much colder in Northern Indiana in the fall than most other parts of the country, but in the fall, that’s perfect. By fall, you’re sick of the heat (or at least, if you’re me you are) and there’s nothing better than that first 30 degree October morning after a long, hot summer.

DC, on the other hand, stays much warmer for longer. I don’t think it really started cooling off until late October, compared to late September for Notre Dame. It made me miss Notre Dame weather — something I never thought I’d have to admit.

Jacket: Forever21

Sweater: Thrifted (Goodwill)

Skirt: Forever21 (actually, it’s a dress layered underneath the sweater)

October 14, 2019 – Pumpkin Spice (OOTD #565)

Published on November 27, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

I know spooky season is long over, but I still have spooky season outfits to post about.

That’s the eternal drawback of my strategy of posting OOTD blogs well after the day they were worn. It gives me space to reflect on the outfit — and by extension, the day — and deliver a more thought-out blog post, but it means that holiday-themed outfits, like this one, will always be posted late.

Better late to the Halloween party than never though, right? It would be such a shame if the world never got to see me pair a navy shirt with a plaid jacket and orange pants in the name of spooky season.

On my Instagram page, I can always play around with the post dates — I don’t feel like I have to go in chronologal order. If it’s October and I want to post pictures that create an autumnal theme, I can select any photos from my library that fit that theme and only post them. It doesn’t matter when they were taken — yesterday or two years ago, they’re all fair game.

On my blog, though, I do my best to keep the chronology consistent and clear. It makes it easier for me writing, and I think it makes it easier on the readers as well. Not that anyone here really is all that interested in my overall character arc or whatever, but I like to think that if you compared one of my posts from today to one of my posts from high school, you could at least tell a slight difference in my writing and sense of style.

Maybe not in my face though. I’m pretty sure that hasn’t changed since I was 12.

Jacket: Vintage (Foxhouse Vintage)

Shirt: Banana Republic

Trousers: The LOFT

October 11, 2019 – Celebrate Good Times (OOTD #564)

Published on November 26, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Completing a six hour-long midterm exam counts as a “good time,” right?

It took me a while this semester before I starting having much of a good time. That’s not to say I wasn’t still enjoying myself and beginning to get acquainted with people and getting a lot educationally out of my internship — I was — but there weren’t a lot of moments I could really categorize as “fun” either. Everything I did was either work or school. I like my work and I (mostly) like my school, so no complaints there, but for a semester spent away form campus in a brand new city, I felt like I was still missing something.

I think this is the case of any short term program where you move to a new place and have to meet a whole new group of people, but it takes a long time to establish a friend group. This semester especially, I feel like it took longer than usual to figure out what I was supposed to do on weekends other than sit in my apartment and study. I got lucky my freshman year at Notre Dame in that I made friends so quickly, and I had very little of that awkward “getting to know people” phase before I had at least focused in on the people who were most worth getting to know.

It reminds me a lot of my time in Rome. In Rome, I didn’t really make my group of ND friends until about the midway point of my time there (and in the case of my friends from the Lay Centre, until literally a week before I left). It just takes so long sometimes to get settled and get acquainted with people sometimes that by the time you’re both settled and acquainted, your time’s up.

My point in discussing all of this is simply because these photos were taken on my first weekend outing I think in almost the whole semester, a celebratory dinner after the six hour midterm was over. This was the day after I took that midterm — so that just goes to show how long it took before I started doing fun stuff. I think before, I had been out with my roommates one night and then to a little alumni get-together and a movie afterwards, but otherwise, I kept mostly to myself. That was my own choice, of course. There was a group chat where people would propose plans or invite people to do things there in the beginning, so there were opportunities for me to have been more involved in a social life earlier on, but it slowly fizzled out as people established their friend groups.

But even if it took me a long time, I eventually got around to doing fun stuff. Hopefully, you’ll get to see pictures of some of that stuff in the upcoming weeks’ blogs. Stay tuned.