This Second's Obsession

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Hats and I: A Partial History

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Hats. What would I do without them? Who was I before I discovered the wonder of hats?

A much less flamboyant version of myself, that’s for sure. I discovered the wonder of hats around the same time that I decided to give up blending in and release what Sadye in Dramarama calls her ‘Lurking Bigness’ (I am reading that book at the moment. It is amazeballs). Once upon a time, I would have lusted over the hat from afar. I might have, in a moment of daring silliness, tried on some of the department store formal section offerings. Occasionally, I might have bought one – only to keep it in my cupboard, only wearing woolly hats on the coldest winter days or during the most scalp-burning summer hours and feeling self-conscious all the while.

Par exemple, the one to the right. I took this photo in first or second year of uni (hence the blur), I forget which. I love this hat, but I bought it in Debenhams yonks ago and have hardly worn it. For the first several years, I was too scared to wear it outside the house. Now I have no such fear, but the problem is the print. It doesn’t go with anything! It’s acceptable with a plainish dress, but most of my summer dresses aren’t plain. Also, I can’t find it right now…

I have a couple of regular summer hats that fold up easily and are plain (boring) enough to go with anything. Here’s one, a hand-me-up from my sister. Yes, that’s the Colosseum in the background.

In my last post, I showed you one of my winter hats and the vintage black and grey hat, the latter of which hasn’t been worn out of the house due to lack of occasion. I know! I should make an occasion! Here is another hat that has yet to make its debut into society, apologies for another old blurry bathroom pic:

I just don’t wear blue that much. I have worn it a lot more recently though, so perhaps this hat will have its time soon! I bought it from Prangsta (warning: website will make you drool) – they have, or had, five years ago, a vintage section in the basement. It was £10. It still has the little pink label attached. I think this is the hat that really triggered the obsession. I just couldn’t believe that I had bought something as silly and frivolous as a hat! I loved it. And proceeded to purchase several more hats of varying practicality and wearability.

I’ve gone through phases of obsessive wear with most of my hats – I’ve got a green silk floppy one that I wore practically every day for a fairly long time, and a pale blue and a black one, both similar to the red one in the previous post, that have had a lot of wear. The dark red spiral mesh cap has been worn quite a lot as well, and I haven’t even started telling you about my beret collection – I have four. But it is far too hot to be wearing and photographing berets, so I will leave you with this picture I took of Aprella at an Emilie Autumn concert, wearing a miniature top hat. I have wanted a miniature top hat since the moment I first saw one. One day I will find the perfect one, and actually persuade myself to hand over the funds for it. Shouldn’t be too hard.

What I Wore: Mad Hatter’s Day/Red and Black Week

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Happy Mad Hatter’s Day! Despite having a photography student for a sister and studying many an article on the subject, I still suck at taking outfit photos. Proof below, but first!

This is my favourite hat. I think it’s from the 1950s. I have never worn it out. Every time I think about wearing it out, I never end up going to the event I was planning an outfit for. I really struggled to get a picture of it in action – in the end I had to pretend that I was on Myspace circa 2004 and the hat was my face.

It’s in an erm, interesting state of repair. I bought it for £10 in a local vintage/secondhand shop that has since closed down. The feathers are awesome but not in the best condition, some of the rachis have been snapped. There doesn’t seem to be any lace missing, but it’s been torn a bit. When I first got it, it smelled of gravy granules. I am not even kidding. This is not the only vintage hat I’ve had that smelled like that either, it seems to be a thing, stench de gravy granules and vintage hats. But I put my limited edition precious Jungle soap from Lush inside them for a couple of weeks, and now they smell fine.

Grown-up goth blog Sophistique Noir has been hosting a red and black theme week, and I would have, ideally, contributed more than one post, but unfortunately I don’t have many red clothes. Don’t worry, I have already looked at my life AND my choices, and decided to keep both eyes out for more red clothes in future. Seriously, what was I doing? Now if it were purple and black week…or purple and black month…However, I do have red eyeshadow, of course, and my tights box contains three different pairs of Marks and Spencer red tights. I love M&S tights. Every pair comes in at least two different sizes, depending on the style, there many be four – small, medium, large and extra large. Why don’t other shops sell tights in varied sizes? ‘One size’ is the bane of my life. People are not ‘one size’!

On the right are the crazy bright ones, which are the oldest and were purchased when opaque coloured tights had just become fashionable. I used to wear them a fair amount to the students’ union for club nights with otherwise all-black outfits, and of course on Christmas Day, with some green! Still in their packaging are a pair I got last Christmas. They have not emerged from the packet because I have too many pairs of tights ‘on the go’ already. It’s a sickness. A really pleasant sickness. The pair I am wearing in this APPALLING outfit photo (I need to learn to use a tripod, stat) are the second pair I got. They’re darker, therefore more subdued. I usually wear them with purple and black.

This is not a particularly interesting outfit to say the least. But there is red. The camera was balanced on a pile of clothes. My facial expression shows that I knew how this would turn out.

Necklace: Vecona (bought at an Emilie Autumn concert in…2008, I think)
Dress: H&M via charity shop
Tights: M&S
Shoes: Nine West (yeah, there are shoes, scroll down)

I call this dress my ‘goth nurse’ dress as it is probably the closest I will ever get to wearing an actual goth nurse dress (if you like them, more power to you, but really not my thing). It doesn’t fit. It’s perfectly comfortable, but was probably designed for a much shorter woman as the waist section is right under my boobs. Don’t care though, as it’s got pockets at the hips! Gotta love a dress with pockets. Clue #1 that I would never wear this outfit out of the house unless I joined a band or something similar:

These shoes. Nine West size eights (US 10) bought during a sale at Debenhams a couple of years ago. As I’ve mentioned before, Nine West’s eights come up big, so I can sometimes squeeze my feet into them. These are a little small but as they’re strappy it doesn’t matter. I have actually only worn these shoes outdoors once – for one of my sister’s birthday parties. They’re quite comfortable, but most of my friends are significantly shorter than me, whereas my sister is half an inch taller than me. If I wore these clubbing with my friends I couldn’t hear the conversation! Also, I never go anywhere where it would be a good idea to wear these shoes with this dress. The dress is too casual for clubs where I might wear the shoes and the shoes are totally inappropriate for mooching around shops and pubs. To do: join a band.

Clue #2: I’m only wearing one necklace and no other jewellery, and Clue #3, it’s the Vecona Sacred Heart locket, which only leaves the house for Emilie Autumn gigs. I’m afraid of the ribbon magically fraying really quickly or something equally unlikely. If I were going out in this outfit, I would carry this bag, which, of course, came from a charity shop. I do love it, and hope to get a lot more use out of it this summer.

Now on to the make-up! At least I’ve worked out how to take decent pictures of my make-up.

Eyes (based on my current favourite make-up tutorial – I’ve already done a purple version twice):
Gold eyeshadow (inner corner): Sleek Sunset gold
Bronzeish eyeshadow (inner half top lids): Sleek Sunset bronze
Red eyeshadow that applies quite pink on me, your mileage may vary (outer half top lids): Sleek Sunset brightest red, on the right of the black
Red eyeshadow smudged into light application of black eyeliner (lower lids): Sleek Sunset, the red underneath the black in the palette

Lips:
Mix of It Started With A Kiss lip tint from Lush, Rimmel Diva Red lipstick, and Lush’s Let Them Eat Cake (2009 edition) lip balm. I didn’t want to go too bright, mostly because I was about to eat some cheese and I didn’t want to be eating a load of lipstick too, but also partly because I wanted to match the level of red on my eyes.

PS. I remembered that I have a red hat too (also secondhand, retro M&S). MYSPACE TIME!

This one is also in a bit of an interesting condition: it’s angora-fluffy but some of the fluff has worn away in patches. I think it gets away with it though because it’s so RED. Thoughts?