washington 2019 – Page 3 – L'ensemble du jour

October 25, 2019 – To the Library Again (OOTD #570)

Published on January 1, 2020January 5, 2020 by lensembledujour1 Comment

I never thought I’d miss Notre Dame’s library.

With its ugly brown cardboard box walls and perpetual scent of moldy paper, I thought I’d never want or need to go back. Sure, I spent most of my waking hours while on campus in the building — but time doesn’t always equal emotional affinity. In fact, I thought given all the time I forced myself to spend in there, the more prepared I would be to leave it for a whole year.

I don’t miss the building itself; I should preface what I’m about to say with that. I do not miss the cardboard box design (Touchdown Jesus literally looks like a cereal mascot on the front of a box, try and convince me I’m wrong), and I don’t miss the uncomfortable wooden chairs and 1970’s elevators.

You know what I do miss, though? The convenience.

Hesburgh Library was about a ten minute walk away from my dorm, and that ten minute walk was just close enough to make it convenient and just distant enough to give me some mental separation from home. When I went there, I could try to convince myself to be productive. I didn’t always succeed, but at least I tried.

In DC, though, I didn’t really have a good go-to library. I went to one of the DC public libraries on my first days in the city, but it was a little too far away to make it into a regular study space. I ended up spending a lot of time at Brookings’s library, but it was too close to home and much too close to work. It was in the exact same building as my cubicle, and that’s never a good thing.

What Brookings Library did have over Hesburgh, though, was windows. And you could open them to get some fresh air! I know Notre Dame is concerned about kids trying to throw themselves off the 13th floor of the library during finals week, but I sure would have appreciated the ability to get some cool night air on the evenings I got stuck there late. I would have also appreciated the ability to throw myself out a 13th floor window during finals week.

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: Target

Jacket: Ann Taylor

October 23, 2019 – La Maison-Blanche (OOTD #569)

Published on December 30, 2019January 5, 2020 by lensembledujourLeave a comment

If I were ever elected President, I’d turn the White House into a haunted house for Halloween.

I mean, they decorate it for Christmas and Easter. They’ve got the turkey pardoning at Thanksgiving and the the Easter egg hunt at Easter, so you can’t pretend that the White House doesn’t do trivial holiday festivities.

Think about it: you could have the ghosts of all of the old presidents and their wives. It’d be like those in-character history museum presentations, but cooler because they’re dressed as the undead.

What, you mean to tell me that having the zombie of Abraham Lincoln with a gunshot wound on his head reciting the Gettysburg Address would be “in poor taste?”

Unfortunately, during my class field trip of the White House, it wasn’t decorated for any occasion in particular. It was just a normal day, it seems, at the Trump Manor. Still, it was very beautiful to walk around and see some of the old furniture and decorations. I even got my picture taken with the portrait of George Washington from the 2014 George Washington meme era. It was worth the wait for that.

Jacket: White House | Black Market

Blouse: ASOS

Skirt: Zara (thrifted, Poshmark)

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 17, 2019 – The Hill Has Eyes (OOTD #567)

Published on December 23, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

After a month in DC, I began picking up on DC lingo.

It’s the little things that make you seem like a local: for example, saying “to metro” as if it’s a verb. You don’t “take the metro” (or worse, “take the subway”) to get somewhere, you just “metro.” Oh, I’m going to metro to the game. I’ll metro and meet you there.

And another thing that DC people like to say — “the Hill.” It’s not Capitol Hill. It’s not the Capitol, or the Capitol Building. It’s just the Hill.

People work “on the Hill.” People who don’t work on the Hill go to meetings “on the Hill.” No matter what you do, you, or at the very least someone in your office, probably winds up “on the Hill” once or twice a month.

The same could be said of me while I was in DC. I went there for class, I went there for work, I went there with my friends on the weekend. I kept winding up there without really making any particular effort to go there; in a list of my top 10 favorite places in DC, the Hill area probably would not place, and it’s not like my apartment or place of work was really anywhere in that part of town.

But without fail, I would find myself near the Hill every couple of weeks, whether it was for lunch with my boss or to go to the Conservatory with my friends. And it wouldn’t be a DC semester without picture or two of me with that iconic dome (no, not that iconic dome. Or that one). I mean, if your LinkedIn headshot isn’t a picture of you on the Hill, did you even intern in Washington DC for three months?

Jacket: Forever21

Shirt: Banana Republic

Trousers: Banana Republic Sloan

Scarf: The MOMA gift shop

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.

Coat: Vintage (thrifted, Ecseri Bazaar in Budapest)

Sweater: Forever21

Skirt: Vintage (thrifted, Street Scene Vintage)

October 10, 2019 – Fifty Percent (OOTD #563)

Published on November 23, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

These photos were taken immediately after I took a six hour-long midterm.

I hope it doesn’t look like I had just spent hours suffering, hunched over my laptop and wrapped in a blanket, though. I made it a point to try to look nice, despite knowing I was going to have a rough day ahead of me. I don’t know if that actually helped me to get through my six hour midterm, in the end, but it made me feel better afterwards, at least.

I don’t know if I believe completely in the concept of “dress well, test well,” but I like to do it anyway. I doubt it actually helps me to do well on exams. But it does help me to ignore my exam anxiety in the morning because it forces me to focus on putting together a nice outfit and applying my makeup instead.

It was also just…kind of cathartic to get to wear something that wasn’t “work appropriate” for the first time in what felt like ages? I’ve discussed this before, but being restricted to wearing business professional attire every single day has taken me a while to get used to. As a college student, I’m used to being allowed to wear whatever I want. Going to work in a traditional office environment takes away some of that autonomy.

So, ironically, though spending all of my day working on a case brief was hardly fun, my outfit got to be more fun than most normal days. I literally hadn’t been able to wear a mini-skirt and thigh high socks on a weekday in a month and a half — and surprisingly, that was something that mattered to me.

Sweater: Aeropostale

Skirt: American Eagle (thrifted, Goodwill)

October 8, 2019 – Khaki (OOTD #562)

Published on November 20, 2019November 24, 2019 by lensembledujour1 Comment

I’ve talked about my first job as a grocery bagger (official title: courtesy clerk) a lot on this blog, but I don’t think I’ve ever talked about my uniform.

“So then what was your uniform, Meilin?” I’m so glad you asked. Every day I went to work at this particular grocery store, I wore basically the same thing: a black t-shirt with the grocery store’s logo on it provided by the grocery store, a pair of khaki skinny jeans (wait…are they still jeans if they’re not made of denim?) and my white Converse.

I still own all three of those pieces. I actually wear the white Converse a fair amount because they’re white Converse and they never go out of style, but the t-shirt and khaki pants have been sitting in my chest of drawers for years. I just can’t bring myself to put them on again — I associate them with too many bad memories of having to go out into the dark, creepy parking lot at 11pm right before close to bring in all of the carts that customers had left in the farthest corners of the lot.

In the case of the t-shirt, who cares? It’s a t-shirt. I get those for free with every event I attend. The khakis, on the other hand, are technically still perfectly wearable.

But there’s something about wearing the same pair of gross Macy’s trousers two to three days a week for an entire summer when you’re 16 that renders them cursed. I just can’t bring myself to put them on again, even though they’d probably fit (or who knows? Maybe they wouldn’t. I did eat a lot of pasta in Italy). In fact, I bought a whole new pair of Banana Republic trousers in the same khaki color (pictured here) to replace them.

Recently, I went back to my old grocery store, and I realized that the cashiers and baggers no longer have to wear the uniforms. In fact, they can even dress up a little on special occasions, like UK football games. Honestly, given the struggles I’ve had navigating the world of professional fashion, maybe I should go back to being a grocery bagger. I may very possibly have more freedom in my choice of clothes in that position than I do now as an intern at a think tank.

Blazer: Banana Republic

Top: Zara

Trousers: Banana Republic Sloan

October 7, 2019 – Hitting the Books (OOTD #561)

Published on November 18, 2019December 30, 2019 by lensembledujour2 Comments

Here’s another blog title I can’t believe I’ve never used for any of my many, many library photo shoots.

It seems so obvious, right? Take pictures surrounded by books, come up with a book-related blog title. How many book-themed idioms are there anyway?

Apparently, not enough for my stupid idiot brain to remember them — hence, the need to “hit” the books so hard. Gotta study to make up for my general lack of brain cells.

But if this is a library photo shoot, what library is this? It’s not the familiar Club Hes or architecture library. I’m miles and miles from those. This is the library at my workplace — much smaller than any of the libraries back on campus, but honestly, maybe I like that. It’s almost never crowded, and I never have to fight someone to get a table like I do around midterms and finals at Notre Dame.

The downside, though, is there are a lot fewer places to take photos given the smaller location. I have 24 hour card access to the Brookings building (yay!) but there aren’t a lot of places that make for good photography backgrounds. There’s a nice lobby, but there’s always a security guard there, so it’s not a good place for photos. Otherwise, there’s the small library featured here and then just a bunch of offices.

What do you think — should I do a cubicle photo shoot? Pose with my landline telephone that I don’t know how to use? My broken roller chair? The leftover bag of trail mix that the last intern who had my desk left in the drawer?

Actually, maybe there’s a way I could make it work — kind of like the trendy unconventional photo shoots in laundry rooms or Hobby Lobby floral departments. Let me think on that.