Carbon Chic

Baby, It’s Cold Outside

It’s freezing, actually! I only needed to duck out for a quick trip to the park with the man-friend today (that’s Hugo, not Michael, mind you) and it started belting out rain! So we returned, but then the rain stopped immediately. This, I took as God’s suggestion that I didn’t need any exercise today. Why thank you, God. So instead I went and changed my shoes to these pretty heels and snapped some photos for your benefit.

I reused the mint jeans from a few posts ago, and you can tell I’m slowly becoming crazy about them! I would have thought that mint jeans would be dastardly hard to find anything to go with, but above I demonstrate two different outfits you can wrangle up with the same pair of mint jeans. One is lady chic and the other is man(ly) chic. My friend Ellen refers to this concept as the “assertive” look.

Here’s the rundown:

Heart Print Shirt - eBay, $8 (ASOS copycat!)

Light Denim Shirt - Mum’s, vintage (I think it’s about 20 years old—and well-loved!)

Cream Vest - Big W, $10 (kid’s department from when I was 13—the tag says “Lightening Bolt Babe”, lol)

Red Cross-Section Watch - eBay, $4.50

Gold Studded Bracelet - eBay, $2

Thin Black Belt - Jay Jays, 80c

Mint Jeans - Kmart, $15

Betts Token Red Patent Heels - The Iconic, $21

Total: $61.30!

This is a bit of a cheat considering that a good denim shirt is hard to find and God knows how much this one cost my mother, but everyone has a denim shirt passed down from Mum, surely?? If not, get on it and find one, because they’re the ultimate staple as assertive fabulousness goes.

Hope everyone had a swell weekend and all your uni results reached you without a fail grade in sight!

I’m Gonna Rain On Your Parade

And I’ll keep raining, raining, raining over you.

Today was surprisingly hot for Winter! I ditched the stockings to get some colour on my legs but the weather had a different plan in store. Rain! It was still relatively humid, but just in case, I brought my new navy blazer with me too.

This post is for my reader “Pcay07” who commented on a previous post that I should check out Coles’ Mix Apparel and report back if I find anything cool. Well I did find some cool stuff, actually! I bought a selection from them recently and chucked in as many items as I could to take advantage of the “free shipping over $50”, and my package just arrived today.

One of the items in this package was the above bow necked top. I absolutely adore it, it makes me feel like a retro flight attendant! Of course, some of the tops were ridiculously boxy for my figure and some colours were way, way off (like a RED “pumpkin” top and a TURQUOISE “indigo” top), but I’m keeping two tops (including the above one) and a plain military green dress which I’ll probably use later for a DIY project to jazz it up a bit (Gosh, I keep promising these DIYs but never deliver, I promise I will as soon as my assignments finish for the semester and I have more time!).

Anyways, rundown:

Hair Flower Pin - Big W, $1 (in a pack of 2)

Leaves Necklace - eBay, $1.60

Lightening Bolt Ring - eBay, $1.60

Bronze Watch - Mum’s; no idea (same watch as in this post)

Navy Blue Blazer - SES, $15

Bow Neck Top - Mix Apparel (Coles), $12

Dotti Belt - Dotti, $6.95

Mustard Skater Skirt - eBay, $14

Lace Sockettes - Myer, $2

Belted Boots - Temt, $10

Total: $64.15

If we wanted to include the umbrella, I believe I bought it when I was 15 from Target and it was $10 back then. Not sure where you can find an umbrella like this nowadays, but it fit the bill with the spots.

I paired this outfit with a navy blazer because believe it or not, despite the pictures on the Mix Apparel website, the top is cream with blue spots!!

SES have a huge sale on blazers at the moment, and if you pop into their store, you’ll find cream, gray, black and navy blazers in different cuts and sizes for the low low price of $15.

So a final word on Mix Apparel? The quality is pretty good for the price, and even though some of the colours are inaccurately described on the site, but Coles’ fabulous returns policy means that I won’t be afraid to dip my toe into that realm again if something strikes my fancy on the sales rack (and believe me, it will)!

Go Back To School

Today was so cold that I barely wanted to get out of bed, let alone the 32-or-something layers that I had bundled over my body and called “my pajamas”. My mother disagrees, she says it’s my Michelin Man outfit. Thanks, mum.

In the end, I ingeniously propped up my hairdryer on a stack of towels and had it on at full blast while I stripped off and changed into my outfit. Luckily, hats make you super-warm, and during my day at uni, I was as snug as a bug in a rug in my cap and fur vest. I think I did quite alright with this outfit, though forgive me, I’ve reused the concept from a few weeks ago, albeit a bit more polished up than then.

School chic is in, and I intend to have a thorough play before the trend dies off!

Here’s the rundown:

Cap - Cotton On, $2

Shirt - Big W, $3

Ribbon - Just an ordinary satin ribbon stolen from an old hat or something

Fur vest - Kmart Kids, $15

Belt - Dotti (DFO!), $3 (can’t exactly remember, but it was thereabouts)

Jeans - Target, $15

Boots - Target, $25 (I got them in the 50% mid-season clearance sale!)

Total: $63.00!

I finished off this look with my school rucksack from eBay ($15 when I bought it a year ago, about $17 now) to chuck all my stuff in, and I was stylin’.

This outfit could have also gone with one of the black jackets that I bought from Target, but it’s not quite cold enough for that yet! I was sweating enough wearing a t-shirt under this outfit and discarding the vest later on, but I love how the elements work together. I always said that I can’t pull of androgyny, but I must have been doing it wrong before, because I don’t mind this outfit!

But I’ve always been a fan of the school look; it comes with the territory of being best friends with Ellen, my sweet, all-manners-of-the-word-“kawaii” childhood friend. We even went to Supernova one year dressed at Japanese schoolgirls. Kitsch, but we had fun anyways!

The outfit below is one of my Summery approaches to something a little school-girly, and I know it’s a bit eccentric of me, but I just loved wearing this around. (Quickly, because this wasn’t the original point of the post, I’ll give the rundown: Sunglasses - eBay, $2; Necklace - Vintage, mother’s; Stripe dress - Cotton On, $5; Belt - Vintage, mother’s; Skater skirt - Ally, $10; Socks - God knows; Shoes - Homypeds, $140). It’s pretty thrifty but those orthopedics were expensive!

Anyways, I’d better leave you guys with that, and my personal recommendation to try your hand at school chic. There’s no better time than the present!

Outfit of the Week

Here’s a peek at a new frugal ensemble for you guys that I wore on the weekend during my shopping trip. I’m still somewhat ASOS addicted, sadly, but at least I’m limiting myself to buying dresses there because of the lack of pretty dresses available in Australia and my strict “no dresses under $25” policy. That being said, this outfit followed all the rules, thankfully!

This season, we’re seeing a lot of navy, burgundy and gold/mustard colours about, and while navy is a true favorite colour of mine, I wear it all the time, so I thought I’d give the mustard trend a small celebration with the following outfit. (Considering that burgundy is hard work when you have red hair!)

Here’s the rundown:

Black hairband - Diva, $1 (I have no shame, I’m such a hairband addict)

Geometric necklace - eBay, $2.70

Black patent belt - Target Kids, Free (from a dress that my mother bought for herself)

RARE Dress* - ASOS, $20

Stockings - Big W, $5 (in a 2 for $10 pack!)

Boots - Target, $25

Total: $53.70!

With this outfit, because it was quite chilly on the day, I also added a cream Vero Moda fur jacket that I picked up from eBay for $19, but it’s not necessary to make the outfit :o) However, even with that, the total ends up at $72.70 for a complete outfit, which isn’t shabby for Autumn chic!

*A note about the RARE brand, sizing seems to run pretty small. I’m generally a size 8 in Aussie dresses, and this dress is a size 10 and I feel like I’m being strangled by a boa constrictor when I put it on and I’m always afraid of tearing it when I take it off. I could have gone a size 12 in this dress, seriously!

Results of the Size Survey

Demi is officially a size 8. Officially! As you know, I’ve taken part of Target’s style survey last Saturday and these are the results: JEANS THAT FIT!

I don’t think I’ve ever had the jeans rant on my blog, but boy am I going to lay into it. I’ve been avoiding jeans for years because they simply don’t fit me. Prior to last week, I had literally 0 pairs of jeans and 1 pair of jeggings. Now I was the biggest fan of jeggings since I bought a pair of them at Supre about a year ago (size M—just that label made me psychologically gain 15kg). They were soft, they were comfortable, and they fit me like a glove. Unlike traditional jeans, which would always either not fit at the waist or not fit up my legs, these wonderful inventions did both of those because of the 5% spandex content in them.

I’ve been criticized a lot for investing in these, but they had a zip-up fly (a real one too), pockets at the front and back, and double stitching, just like ordinary jeans. The only difference was that instead of 2% elastine and 98% cotton, like regular jeans have (or thereabouts), there was 3% more stretchy material. Oh God, please forgive me for my sins..

I have a pretty severe hourglass figure (around 35”, 24”, 36”, with the addition of fuller thighs—forget hourglass, this is pretty much the perfect childbearing representation to me unfortunately) so as a result, all regular jeans would gape at the waist, but if I went a size down, they wouldn’t fit up my legs or bum. This made jeans shopping impossible and a giant pain in the (giant) rear end.

The only jeans that I have successfully been able to wear since I was 12 were mens jeans (which makes NO sense, because men don’t have any hips whatsoever), but obviously they’re not usually designed very flattering towards female figures. On a related note, I did recently alter two male jeans that I bought back in my tomboy days and they fit pretty well, but nothing beats store-made jeans that already fit in my opinion!

But after Target’s size survey, I finally found the wonder pair. This pair is taken from the list printed off from my docket, and they fit me beautifully. Target gets a big tick from me on this count! On the day I bought this pair, there was a huge sale on at Target—50% off jeans and jackets for women (I also bought a gorgeous jacket.. but more on that later, hehe). After participating in the size survey, I also got a further $10 off jeans, which means these babies I’m wearing were as cheap as chips and I didn’t need to resort to buying designer jeans, either!

While I was at Carindale, I also picked up an awesome boy’s school shirt from Big W, and I’m going to be DIYing the crap out of this one.. we’ll see what I can do with it.

Rundown:

Skinny leg jeans (size 8, tall): Target, $15 (down from $50!!)

Boy’s school shirt (size 12): Big W, $3

It was a pretty brilliant day of savings, I have to admit.

Stay savvy, shoppers!