Jackets with giant shoulder pads? Stirrup pants? Jelly shoes? Acid rinse jeans? Parachute pants? Legwarmers? OP t-shirts? Jams shorts? Velour track suits? Swatch watches? These are all iconic 80s fashion staples. I'm not going that far, though.
It's just that something about wearing a button up shirt open over a dress says 80s to me. But when I saw this cute ensemble from a woman I believe to be a popular contemporary fashion blogger and NOT a time traveler, I thought I'd give it a shot. You know, again.
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| From morepiecesofme.com |
It's actually a pretty practical combination for Coldville summers. I'm wearing a sleeveless dress that I (thankfully) don't get much use of on its own and making it workable for a pleasant weekend day (expected high 77 F).
Black sleeveless knit dress (Old Navy), $7.50/wear
Coral/black/beige button up shirt (Kohls), $3.60/wear+
Peach swag necklace (Kohls), $1.29/wear
Orange flats (Payless), $3.33/wear
Outfit total: $15.72/wear
And I did not feel all "Linda McFly wants her outfit back" so that's a win.
I won't ask you who wore orange/black/white better, me or this queen butterfly. (Or is that McButterfly?)
In other news...Tam forwarded this article by Megan McArdle on the ongoing "Europeans act bewildered by Americans using air conditioning" meme and the great energy waste debate. As Tam notes, "well argued."
Today I slept until 10 (after getting to bed around 11) and I've been exhausted all day. My allergies are in overdrive. It's always bad when taking a shower completely wipes you out. Luckily today was a day with absolutely zero demands on me, so Netflix, phone games, and mystery novels have been pretty much the entire agenda.
7 comments:
I was really taken by McArdle's observation that heating seems more natural to us simply because humans developed the ability to control fire so many millenia before we invented AC. I mean, in a sense that does make it more natural (i.e., more native to our species), but not necessarily more desirable.
And (sorry for the double post) even if we take the position of "it's possible to live without AC" (true for the most part) or "people lived before AC" (true), it's also true that people in previous (recent) centuries allowed their houses to be much colder. Well-off people Europeans to crack ice that formed on the water in their washbasins in the morning. I don't see many people allowing their rooms to get below freezing at night these days, even though it's survivable with proper blankets and a little suffering. Almost nobody chooses to allow their home to be much more uncomfortable than their means allow.
Yeah, for example, it's not that long ago that canopy beds with curtains to keep in warmth (and for privacy concerns, to be sure) were common.
When I was in my 20s I talked to a woman in her 80s who told me that the newest baby always slept with her and her husband and when she changed diapers, the wet diapers were frozen by morning. They were kept in the bedroom. So, yeah, people lived in much colder and warmer environs, but I do wonder about the impact on health.
Frozen diapers? Whoa!
Here a lot of people don't have A/C at home, but we need to be able to cool the bedroom on the hotter days, partly because we have no cross ventilation so just opening the window doesn't work, and also because it's so sunny and we do get heat waves a few times a year. Plus sometimes (like just now) our downstairs neighbor smokes outside so we have to close the window (I know, an aversion to smoke is so un-European). Some old lady was making fun of Rick when he was buying our portable unit (not just Rick, but everyone who was running out to buy A/C), and he's just like, yeah, suit yourself. It's been awesome, especially being pregnant OMG, sleeping is hard enough without sweating all night too. Why suffer more than you have to?
In NYC summer was crazy because even a lot of stores and restaurants don't have A/C, so you get all hot and sweaty walking around, taking the subway etc, and then going inside you can't even necessarily cool off. And the irony is that so much of NY has these old buildings with steaming radiators that you can't control, so it's well known that half the city controls their winter temperatures by -- yes -- opening the window! When it's snowing outside! We had window units in Brooklyn, and I'm pretty sure the summer electric bill was still less than the gas bill in the winter (and we were lucky to have an actual thermostat for our our heater there, unlike our apt in the upper west side).
Jen, I hear you on the weird overheating in the winter! We had that problem at our last apartment (converted warehouse) where even we had turned off the pumping of hot air into our own place, the heat from our neighboring units made it warm enough that we'd open the patio door to cool down. Insanity!
I do not even want to imagine the awfulness of a heat wave in SF without A/C WHILE PREGNANT. God!
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