usa – Page 6 – L'ensemble du jour

August 25, 2019 – Rainbow Road (OOTD #554)

Published on October 23, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

You know, if you squinted, this could almost pass for a part of Notting Hill in London.

Look, I’ll be up front about it: Washington DC is not my favorite city in the world. It’s not even my favorite city in the US. As much as I’m grateful to be here for the semester as a part of an internship program with Notre Dame and as much as I’m excited to be away from South Bend for a few months, my enthusiasm is more to do with what goes on in DC, rather than DC 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!

Dress: Thrifted (the pile of abandoned clothing in my dorm room’s laundry room)

Jacket: Forever21

August 24, 2019 – The Washington Way (OOTD #553)

Published on October 22, 2019November 18, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Finally, my actual location and the location that I’m writing about in my blogs match up again!

As I’ve mentioned before, the content I’m posting about in my blogs tends to be a bit behind (or, has been the case recently, quite behind) the date I’m actually posting it. For example, I’m writing this blog in late October, but it’s about something that happened back in late August. So in late August, I was moving in to my apartment in Washington, DC.

But wait, Washington DC isn’t in Northern Indiana! Isn’t there where I normally go to school? Why wasn’t I moving back into my dorm at Notre Dame in late August, along with all of my friends and the rest of the student body?

The answer: because I’m taking a semester away from Notre Dame to do a special program though the Political Science Department to take a full 15-credit semester course load while working an internship here part-time. Think of it like a study abroad semester — except of course, DC isn’t really abroad.

Unlike a semester abroad, however, I get to work (and in my case, get paid!) while maintaining my status as a full-time student. And at any rate, I get to go abroad in the spring semester anyway, so I really get the best of both worlds.

What I don’t get, however, is the third world: my friends back on campus at Notre Dame. I’m going to be away for a whole year, and that’s kind of saddening. Not saddening enough to prevent me from doing it (and honestly not even really saddening enough for me to give a second thought about whether I wanted to do it), but enough so to make looking at my friends’ Instagram posts of them moving back into the dorms a little bittersweet.

Turtleneck: Forever21

Trousers: Zara

August 21, 2019 – Lights, Camera (OOTD #552)

Published on October 21, 2019November 18, 2019 by lensembledujour4 Comments

I never cease to be amazed at what a good photographer with a good camera can do.

I don’t know to what extent you notice this, but the quality of my photographs varies greatly between blog posts based on who is taking the picture and on what device. Some of my best pictures are taken on my current iPhone by my father (who just has a really excellent eye for composition). Some of my worst from the early days of this blog were taken using my laptop webcam balanced on top of some textbooks and empty Cheez-It boxes.

To be quite honest, these are probably some of my best ever — and the best I’m going to have for quite some time, until I’m either rich and can afford to pay a professional photographer to follow me around or until I make a loyal photographer friend who just enjoys taking my picture every day. Until then, I’ll have to settle for my iPhone and my Apple Watch’s remote camera feature for every day pictures.

And that’s okay! Honestly, for as much fun as a full photo shoot can be, it’s also kind-of exhausting. I run out of poses and facial expressions after a while. I don’t know how professional models do it.

These were taken by my friend, Adam Brester, a professional photographer, the same man who did my senior portraits way back in the day. You can even see examples from some of that season on his website!

Adam lives in Lexington, but he’s looking at potentially moving soon, so we thought it would be nice to do another session together before I headed to Washington DC and he headed to wherever life takes him next. He was looking for a subject for some portraits that he could add to his portfolio, and I was happy to get some Instagram content in exchange.

Watching Adam work gives me an increased appreciation for photography as an art form. Of all of the mediums of the visual arts, such as painting or drawing, photography is probably the one I understand the least. Ironically, it is also probably the one that I deal with the most in my everyday life — I don’t paint every day, but I probably take at least one photo each day, whether it’s just a dumb selfie to send to my Snapchat streaks or an OOTD shot for this blog.

Even if I take pictures every day, I certainly do not do so in the capacity of a “photographer.” Maybe an “artist,” at least in the sense that I consider my outfit stylings to be artistic, and I attempt to use my backgrounds and compositions to complement the artistry of the outfit. But a photographer — one who truly understands light and color and the various settings of the camera to create a desired effect — I certainly am not.

That’s why watching someone like Adam work is so fascinating. I love watching people do things they’re good at that I am not. I love listening to film critics talk about cinematography, and I love watching musicians learn new pieces. I can’t do those either of those things with any skill, but I think it’s neat that there are people who can and who derive joy from their art. It may not be my art, but I’m glad it’s someone else’s.

Plus, it was just nice to go out into the city and goof around for the evening. I wasn’t really home in Lexington much over the summer, and the time I did have, I didn’t really spend going out and doing anything. Mostly, I was just sitting at home trying either to get some rest after having returned from traveling or to pack to get ready to go traveling again.

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 summer. 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!

Outfit 1: Tomato

Top: H&M

Skirt: Forever21

Outfit 2: Dragon lady

Top: Unknown

Skirt: The LOFT

Outfit 3: Hot dog saleswoman

Jacket: Vintage (thrifted, Foxhouse Vintage)

Sweater: Forever21

Skirt: A street vendor in Nepal

August 18, 2019 – Fair Weather Friends (OOTD #551)

Published on October 20, 2019October 20, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Ironically, this post features neither “fair weather” nor any “friends.” It does have kind-of gross, muggy late-August Kentucky weather and my family, though.

I consider myself something of an expert in overcoming jet lag — I haven’t struggled with it really since my 2018 trip to Nepal, and that was over a year ago. Perhaps it stems from being a college student and never having a regular sleep schedule to begin with and ignoring my circadian rhythms on the daily.

My trick is to try as much as possible to use my time on the plane ride to get myself into the wake-sleep schedule of whatever my destination is. If I arrive in the morning, I try to stay awake the day/night before so I can sleep on the plane. If I’m arriving in the evening, I try to nap before the plane ride so I can then stay awake for the duration of the plane. The former is typically the easier option — I’m normally stressed before plane rides, so once I’ve finally made it onto the plane, I’m able to relax and get some sleep.

After I’ve arrived at my destination, it’s then imperative to try to stay awake for the duration of the next full day. This is hard, especially when you’re home alone with nothing to do because there’s nothing to stop you from just crawling back into bed for your fourth nap of the day. The solution, then, is to go out and do something with friends.

Since I don’t have any of those (contrary to what this blog title might suggestion), I went out with my family to a local art fair — one of my favorite summer outing opportunities. I’m typically not big into summer-themed activities, but I must admit I love a good art fair.

Top: Akira (thrift, my dorm room’s laundry room)

Skirt: A Pull and Bear in Zagreb

August 17, 2019 – A New York Minute (OOTD #550)

Published on October 19, 2019November 18, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Nothing quite beats the feeling of returning back to the US after being gone for a long time.

Even if it’s just an airport — even an airport I’ve never been to before — and I have hours and hours of connections to make before I actually make it back to Kentucky, it’s nonetheless comforting being back in my own country.

My flight from Tel-Aviv left at around midnight local time and arrived at New York JFK at 6 AM in the morning. My next flight to Atlanta wasn’t until 4 PM (though it ended up getting pushed back a few hours — thankfully I was still able to make the connection from ATL to LEX), so with my time, I decided to do what I do best in airports — leave and come back.

After dropping my bags off at baggage storage, I headed to the AirTrainJFK to get into the city. JFK isn’t directly connected to the subway system (compared to say, Chicago O’Hare or London Heathrow or Copenhagen Kastrup, where you can get directly on the metro from the airport terminal), but it has its own train line that then connects to the subway in Queens.

From Queens, I then bought a MetroCard for the subway (hot take: why is it called “MetroCard” when it’s the subway system? You’d immediately give yourself away as a visitor rather than a local if you referred to the New York underground transport system as a “metro” rather than a “subway,” so why do they use the word “metro” for their cards?) and took the J Train into Manhattan.

I only had a few hours — not enough to go into the tourist areas in the center of Manhattan — so I mostly hung out around East Village.

This was my first time in this particular neighborhood, and I must say, I liked it very much. With the exception of a homeless man who swore at me for ignoring him as I walked into a Starbucks, it was a lovely part of town — quieter than the Upper East or Upper West Sides, but still very much a part of New York. And it was relatively balanced in diversity — it didn’t seem to have a particular dominant cultural or ethnic leaning. Not that a neighborhood having a strong cultural leaning is a bad thing at all — but I thought it was cool to see a neighborhood that seemed to have so many different people living together in close proximity.

My one complaint (besides the swearing homeless man — but like, that’s just New York) was that a lot of shops and restaurants were closed, even though I was there during the day. I visited on a Saturday morning, and nothing really seemed to start opening up until around 11AM, which was when I needed to start heading back to the airport. I was able to go into a few consignment shops, but on the whole, I was really only able to wander around the park and read The Times in Starbucks.

Still better than sitting in the airport, but I guess New York does after sleep sometimes after all.

Dress: A shop on either Ben Yehuda or King George Street in Jerusalem (I’ve already forgotten, oops)

Hat: Thrifted (a consignment shop in Jerusalem)

July 31, 2019 – Off to the Races (OOTD #537)

Published on October 5, 2019October 5, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

Disclaimer: This post contains products that were received complimentary from DiscountGlasses.com. All opinions are my own.

Sometimes, I happen upon clothing in the strangest places.

Case in point: I came across these racing silks (the jacket jockeys wear when racing horses) in a bargain bin of a leather goods store’s going-out-of-business sale.

Apparently, they’d been used as a part of store decorations and promotional material during spring meets (aka, around the time of the Kentucky Derby). They also had various Christmas and Halloween decorations in the pile. With the store going out of business, there was no reason for them to keep their horse season decorations, and so they threw them in the bin to get rid of.

I of course wasn’t really in the hunt for racing silks when I entered the leather goods shop — I was looking for leather goods (specifically, for a wallet to replace the one I lost whilst in Rome). I found the wallet first, and as I was waiting for my dad to finish looking around, I came across their bargain bin holiday decorations.

I couldn’t resist the jacket, even though I admit I don’t really need more jackets. It’s just such a fun yet unobtrusive was to represent my Kentucky heritage in fashion. Who needs one of those t-shirts that says “y’all” inside the silhouette of Kentucky when you can have racing silks?

Side note: these are the exact same brand and model of glasses that I lost in France after a Tinder date gone-awry! Long story short, I had just gotten this new pair of glasses from DiscountGlasses.com as a part of a sponsorship, and so I brought them with me on my trip to Vichy, France right after Christmas. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to bring them back from my trip to Vichy, France, as I somehow lost them while I was on a walk in a park with a guy named Axel whom I’d met through Tinder.

I liked them so much that I decided to order a replacement pair. They’re the Westend Argyle Park design, and you can check them out here on DiscountGlasses.com’s website. Maybe you’d also like to bring them with you on your next trip to France.

That’s about it for today. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in the next one with more updates on my life back home this summer. 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: Thrifted (a local leather goods store)

Top: H&M

Shorts: American Eagle

Glasses: DiscountGlasses.com (Westend Argyle Park)

July 24, 2019 – Summer Colors, Winter Outfit (OOTD #536)

Published on October 4, 2019October 5, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

I’ve talked about this many times before on this blog, but I tend to blatantly disregard the weather when choosing my outfits.

It’s 100 degrees and humid? Time to wear a coat. It’s the middle of winter? That’s the perfect time for shorts!

This outfit follows the pattern of the former example — it was late July, aka, the hottest time of the year in Kentucky, aka the Devil’s armpit of atmospheric conditions. Naturally, I thought a long coat and skirt was the appropriate response.

To be fair, the colors work rather well for summer, if you ask me. In aesthetic, it worked — but not so much in execution.

It’s not like I really had to go out much that day, though. After returning from Rome, I had no other plans for the summer (save another bout of traveling in August), so I had no responsibilities like work to force me to venture out of the air conditioning of my home.

But I did venture out, if only for a few hours in the evening. My mother and I had to go out and get my father a Father’s Day gift, as I had missed the actual date of the holiday while I was abroad. We went to this cute little outdoor shopping mall in town, and it turned out to be a perfect place to get pictures of my very cute but impractical outfit.

Jacket: Thrifted (Goodwill)

Top: Vintage (thrifted, Ecseri Bazaar)

Skirt: Vintage (thrifted)

Bonus points to me for an entirely thrifted outfit!

July 18, 2019 – Return to Sender (OOTD #534)

Published on October 2, 2019October 3, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Spongebob narrator voice: Two months later…

Not to be all “going abroad changed me,” but it definitely made coming home again weird. For one, everything is so far apart here, and there’s no way to get from one place to another without driving a perusal vehicle. What’s up with that?

Yada yada, save the planet, yada yada, need more public transportation options. We’ve been over this.

You’d think that after being away from home for so long, I’d want to stay home for a little while and recuperate from traveling, but I guess not. Just a few days after flying home from London, I was off again — though this time, to a much less exotic locale.

That’s right, I was heading back to South Bend, Indiana!

Why go to South Bend in the middle of summer vacation? Because my friend, Amanda, and I had gotten tickets for a preseason friendly to be played at the Notre Dame Stadium. Ironically, the team we were going to see — Liverpool FC — comes from the country I had just left. What can I say? I’m just such a big fan that I felt the need to follow them all the way back from Europe to the cornfield wasteland of the Midwest.

I’m actually not a huge football (meaning European football, this context) fan, and I don’t know much about the sport. I was mainly only going because Amanda wanted to. Had I known the date of the game would fall just days after my return to the US, I might not have so eagerly agreed to get back to South Bend.

These photos were actually taken in Louisville, the city where I met Amanda in order to make the drive up to together. I had to get my parents (thanks, Mom and Dad!) to drive me because I don’t have a car. If only there were a public transportation option, like a train, that ran from Lexington to Louisville…if only I were in Europe again where these systems and structures have been a part of society for decades and driving isn’t such a norm…

Top: (thrifted)

Jacket: Forever21

May 15, 2019 – Dilly Dilly Philly Philly (OOTD #501)

Published on August 25, 2019October 19, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

Controversial opinion, perhaps, but I love a long layover.

Many might bemoan a long wait time sitting in an airport until your next flight, but I’ve actually come to thrive on them. If it’s over 10 hours, I’ve found, I can leave the airport — especially in a city with good public transport — come back, and it’s like I had a little day-long trip before my main trip. A detour, if you will.

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it’s not a philly cheesesteak if you didn’t buy it in philly and i’ll fight you on this

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 10, 2019 at 7:18am PDT

On my way to Rome, I had a nearly 12-hour layover in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my second-favorite city in the US after New York. I left Lexington at 7:30 in the morning, arrived around 9, and I didn’t have to get my flight to Rome until 7 in the evening. I wasn’t about to wait around in the airport all day, so I grabbed my backpack, hunted down ground transport, and took the train downtown.

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what’s up, billy penn

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 11, 2019 at 6:06am PDT

As it turns out, I also happen to have an uncle who lives in Philly (and another uncle, and some cousins, and basically my entire father’s side of the family), and so my Uncle Tim agreed to meet up with me for lunch.

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how enlightening

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 13, 2019 at 10:19am PDT

Uncle Tim has actually popped up on this blog before — namely, on a day-trip to Bardstown, KY when he came to visit my family back home. He also gets a mention sometimes when I post pictures wearing work shirts with other people’s names on them, because he’s the one who gave me those shirts. He drives a hearse, has tattoos, and wears earrings. He’s a quirky dude, and he’s the best.

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name a more philadelphia sight — i’ll wait

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 14, 2019 at 7:04am PDT

So Uncle Tim and I headed to the Reading Terminal Market for lunch, where I ordered a Philly Cheesesteak (the only place to buy one) and grabbed a Wawa smoothie to drink. From there, we headed to South Street, where we walked around the vintage and antique shops.

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not every uncle comes and meets you for lunch in downtown philly during your 12 hour layover and tHEN also acts as your photographer for the day — so thanks, uncle tim. you win the cool uncle prize

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 14, 2019 at 10:23am PDT

Like my father (his brother) and me, Uncle Tim could spend an eternity in antique shops. We both had a lot of fun wandering in and out of the various oddball stores on South Street. I was proud of myself — I didn’t buy anything, even though there were definitely a few pieces of vintage clothing that caught my eye. I just didn’t have enough storage space in my bags to take them with me all the way to Rome. I’m trying to whittle down my wardrobe, bit by bit.

All in all, it was a good layover, but it was only that — a layover. I wished I could stay longer and meet up with the rest of the family, but I had another plane to catch, so after an afternoon in the city, Uncle Tim brought me back the airport and we said our goodbyes.

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bye, usa

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Jun 17, 2019 at 5:03am PDT

Next stop: Rome, Italy!

Jacket: H&M

Top: The LOFT

Leggings: The LOFT

March 25, 2019 – Twirly (OOTD #481)

Published on June 19, 2019November 18, 2019 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

There’s no shortage of stained glass at Notre Dame — but there is a shortage of stained glass that’s in a place where I can take pictures of it.

For one, a lot of it is in high places, where I can’t reach to stand to take a picture with it. For another, it’s usually inside a church or chapel — and there seems to be something weird to me about taking a picture in a place of worship, even if it’s completely empty and I’m the only one there. I have used an ND chapel for pictures once before on this blog, but to be honest, I still don’t know how I feel about it.

I don’t, however, have any issue taking photos outside of churches or other places of worship — just check out this Buddhist temple in Nepal, this mosque in Qatar, or this church in England that have all been featured on my blog. The ND basilica has shown up here once or twice as well. The architecture of these places of worship is meant to be admired — and as long as I keep my fashion photography on the outside, where no table-flipping Jesus can get mad at me for turning a church into a marketplace, I feel okay with myself.

And so that’s where these photos come from — the outside of a chapel within one of Notre Dame’s buildings. It’s not the most stunning chapel on campus, nor is it the most stunning exterior architecture or stained glass, but you have to admit that it goes nicely with my outfit.

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came to catholic school for the stained glass and it did not disappoint

A post shared by Meilin || L'ensemble du jour (@lensembledujour) on Apr 11, 2019 at 1:38pm PDT

I even figured I’d give the dress a bit of a twirl, which I almost never do because of a) how difficult it can be to get a good shot and b) how ridiculous it looks to passers-by. I’m already stood outside of a chapel in a classroom building taking pictures of my outfit — I don’t need to look any sillier.

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: Francesca’s

Bralette: Aerie