black n white

Also fresh n pretty n game (she changed back into the workin it  heels for the photo) even after eight hours of watering the floral designers and generally helping get Art In Bloom blooming. She says she's used to long days from her work in some  aspect of real estate (that leaked through the sieve of my brain).  She's a super advertisement for that shop White House/Black Market, or is it Black House/White Market.... echhh anyway, she wears a lot of black and white because, as we can see, it really holds up. (Her suit is actually black, not peppery as it appears here as a result of my jacking the shadows function up to 110% so you could see the pleated collar detail). Can I just say, I'm deeply envious of her hair -- the cut, the color, the behavingness.  It must be wonderfully freeing to go through life not making passersby wonder why Rod Stewart just popped into their consciousness.

Minneapolis gothic with dog

Here we find a couple rendered in point n shoot realism, posed in the traditional dress -- retro casual-- and stance -- behind a dog -- of the folk of this region.  Their direct gaze speaks to a certain contentment with a stroll in the sun-dappled evening, or could be interpreted as a resigned endurance of the hordes of Edina residents descending on the neighborhood for the Institute of Arts' annual Art In Bloom exhibit, nervously cruising down Clinton Ave. with their windows up and their doors locked looking for a parking spot where the Mercedes won't attract unwanted attention.

The gentleman dogwalker insists this is his every day attire, and we applaud sartorial splendor as the norm rather than only busting it out for special occasions, like going to Aldi. The chain-shackled wallet and hands on firearms in pockets lend a delightfully menacing tone, though our mofo won't be making much of a getaway in dress shoes.

The late afternoon sun has lit the woman's titian locks on fire (in a non-emergency sort of way) and the framer of this composition could have saved a lot of retinal disharmony by not having her stand in front of a flame red car. But this affords a Who Wore Red Better moment -- duh, she did.

Finally, we come to the noble beast who symbolizes, by his rapt attention to something over there,  south Minneapolis' yearning for something over there, something better, maybe Portland.

multitasking: how to dress for it

Being walked by the dog, inning with the good air/outing with the bad, sporting pops of pink and unleashing leopard -- some people would be overwhelmed but not our master multitasker above. I was no slouch in this department either, as I was running had running shoes on, street style stalking and promoting a leathery complexion by not wearing sunscreen.

walk like an Egyptian

Her sheer linen-y Nefertiti skirt and a clear opportunity to use The Bangles' super rad hit single title -- what would you do?  You'd say to heck with the impossible noon sun and its evil sidekick shadows, out with the new-used camera photo-taking device and hope for mad photo manipulation skills.  She is beautiful, and you can practically feel the warm sun and zephyr breeze. And my pride in using the retouching feature for the very first time to smear the tree that the city of St. Paul thought would look very good growing out of the top of her head. I did this without reading the manual at all. 

spring green

So many soft spring colors, she is like the goddess of green tea. See, the bit o pink blouse? It has a delicate lace inset at the shoulder. I'm just saying. See the bit o shorts? They're sitting all retro at the waist and listening to Motown on the transistor radio. If they were on one of my age cohort, they'd be dialed into Christian rock or KDWB, depending on how many Budweisers had been consumed.

I went to National Camera where they took one look at Hello Kitty and performed the last rites. Without so much as a misty eye, I took up with a Canon PowerShot SD 800 that had just been traded in moments before. $50. On my first effort out of the gate, I mistakenly shot 4 seconds of video (sorry woman at Grand and Snelling), but I've got the basics now. Which is to say, I can turn it on and push the button. This is, at the same time, the best news and positively sickening to real photographers. I do what I can.

goodbye to all that

This is the last of the ramblings from my Feb. visit to NYC, and the requisite stalking photo -- her wrap-yourself-in-curly-lamb-even-if-you-have-a-gigantic-head coat and dramatic long skirt and his...scarf?  Looking at this now that the lilacs are out and the kids across the street are still out playing when I go to sleep makes me think, Sayonara winter, hello being able to make a fart sound with my hand in my sweaty armpit.

so you think you're crafty, do you?

 

So, last night while you were watching America's Got Hunger Idols, did you turn out something like this with your hot glue gun?  Not unless you had a chunk of jade and some rhinestones from the 1930s sitting around.  No my friends, simple as this bauble may appear, this kind of stuff is best left to a PhD in Decorative Arts, Design History and Material Culture. Or Stephanie Lake, which is also kinda catchy. stephanielakedesign.com. When her name comes up, people say Stephanie's work "combines elements of Hollywood Regency mid-century, 70s-era Fleetwood Mac, and glam rock." These are the common folk -- they steer clear of highbrow references to GlueZall 'n shit. As you can see, I'm all over Stephanie and her understated jewels like a bad rash, and I'm hoping, by posting lots of great big bulbous Jefferson Airplane-style hallucinogenic-with-peyote-overtone photos, you'll catch Stephanie fever too and tear on down to RiverCentre in St. Paul today, Saturday or Sunday because Stephanie will be there with her goods. News flash! Stephanie is still a rock star, she is still a Stylemaker, she will not be at the Craft Council show at RiverCentre. Stephanie received special recognition from the Council as a Stylemaker. Which as I understand it, is someone who makes style.  Keep scrolling if you want your eyeballs to pop out of their sockets and dangle on your cheeks from a slimy thread of viscera...

 

The one above has a jumbo pearl and gem star and a vintage bee, but you can also use it to dust off hard candy that's been sitting there for who knows how long before you eat it.

 

That's a coupla druzys, right?  Gosh you're an embarrassment -- a druse, or druzy, pronounced shine-y thing, is a coating of fine crystals on a rock fracture surface, vein or within a geode. These are earrings. Or numchucks.

 

Got Raffia, Silk Tassels, Vintage Russian Emblem, Gilded Links and Cabochons? Goodness, I always detested that advertising slogan because of the poor grammar, and am filled with self-loathing for promulgating it. But I likee this purse. Wish it was big enough to hold my eye bag ointment. Action item Steph? You're welcome.

here is a post without a photo

Not very interesting, is it? How about if I tart it up with some swinging fonts or colors? Or sizes?
Still nuthin. I'm with you, retinal slaves, but here's the thing -- when Hello Kitty konked out on me (again), my resourceful victim volunteered to have her boyfriend, who she keeps handy for his cellphone with camera feature, take the photo and email it to me. Well it never got here. Huh. I see the inherent problems in being a street style blogger without a camera and am taking steps to fix the problem (hear that Kitty?), but just this once,  Aquamarine-haired girl and Misty boy, if you're reading this cuz I gave you one of my valuable cards, please resend that photo to sarahbarker58@gmail.com. Not FBIcomplaintsdept@gmail.com as sometimes happens. Easy mistake.

walk on the sunny side

The rays of the sun in my very good drawing, butta, corn on the cob that magically doesn't get stuck in your teeth, lemons -- looking at them and huffing them, a sleeveless shift dress with darts i had in eighth grade. Of all the good glad yellow things i can think of, this sweater and its BFF, the gorgeous scarf, are about the happiest. Two yellow things that you can't really see but that give me a warm my-swimsuit-is-sticking-to-the-cement-and-getting-pilly feeling is the scalloped cupcake-y stitch/texture of her sweater, and that, while my yellow dress had darts but no boobs, i was rocking 1" heels. But they were black.

things that go pedonk in the light

What the holy cowbells? You know how you're focused on one thing and then when you later look at the photo and are sorta delighted mortified to find you've actually captured something really out there else altogether?  I'll give an example: Tourists in Rocky Mountain National Park take a wacky family photo on the trail and, enjoying the photo later, detect a mountain lion crouched in the boulders above little Suzy.

Yeah well, those are not boulders. They're shoes.  Shoes, you awful pervert! Really cantilevered, curvy, engineered, gravity-defying, brick house shoes.

start seeing art

Isn't she beautiful?  This is Jane from (!) DesMoines, IA in NYC doing an internship/slaveship of some kind.  I've been at the Institute of Art looking at the Hiroshige prints, so like when some impressionable people hear their neighbor's dog telling them to steal a car and drive to Clear Lake, I am influenced to see patterns in fashion. Yes, that's the way it is without Prozac, my friends.

Mmmm, that's diff'rent

 

And in my book, diff'rent is effin' good. I was actually conducting business in another distant part of Coffman Hall at the U when I saw these yak-inspired shoes go by. Well.  When you combine my mad tracking skillz with a lifelong obsession with thatched animals -- yaks, Highland cows, donkeys, Westies, sheepdogs, my soon-to-be husband in the 70s -- you get exactly the sort of incident her parents warned her about when she packed her bags for the US of A.  Mom, dad, it's true, people are sick here but in a mostly harmless way. Nothing a little sake mace can't cure. 

First of all, you won't find any of her wardrobe wonders at the MOA -- all bought in Japan. So until some wiz kid comes up with a way to permanently adhere a yak toupee to some swell suede wedges with hand-stitched soles, there's going to be a trade imbalance. That's yak-ro economics -- super esoteric. Don't even try. Higher up the wardrobe chain of love, please note the PhD-level briefcase holding a thesis on why smaller is better. Prerequisite? Go to Japan and bring your American Express. Vest upon vest, you can't have two many.  Molecular models of awesome hang from her earlobes.

back to the future

Have you ever seen so many picturesque uses for animal hide, up to and including leather leggings? I captured the anti-vegan on the Upper West Side in an ensemble I like to call The Winter of Love. See, this is a double entendre, one entendre referencing the winter of 1967-68 that followed the Summer of Love and included all of the drugs but little of the nudity and thus is very poorly remembered if at all, and the second entendre is that it was winter and I do love this I Got You Babe look. Hooookay.

Moving on. 

I did not goof up. I intended to chop off her head. It's called creative license, sheesh.

this time, it's clinical

Apologies to my two Common Good Books friends above and to your trashed retinas. As usual, I've got a lot of explaining to do. 

Stopped by Garrison Keillor's hobby hut on Snelling Ave. on the stealth opening day, not because I read (so many of the books did not have pictures), but on the chance of finding the proprietor in the house.  Instead I found two blazin' style-ists and, at the same time, helped the staff identify an overlooked security issue (mullet-wearers stumbling in and getting up in patrons' business in a way that's not even fit to spread around the interwebs).

Unfortunately, what I thought was a one-time Kitty hissy fit (see below) was in fact user error artistic differences. This occasioned a talk between the Kitty and I in which I pressed every button many many times, tossed salt over my shoulder and called in a young priest and an old priest. Kitty turned her lens 360 degrees and asked to be called Regan, but I think the problem is exorcised.

Course, there are no do-overs in the book store style biz, so I might have to fill in the details verbally. Which is very satisfying indeed. In the uppermost blur, it's pretty easy to see her eyeliner but something you may have missed is the atomic boots she scored for approx. $3 at Goodwill!

The impression above these words but below little red riding boots is one of Amelia Earhart and Scout who went to Memphis and all they got was this delectable scarf. Oh dang, there I go with the highbrow art references again -- below is a room done in the subtle Memphis style. Something's wrong here, it's all clear and visible...

 Back to Amelia/Scout, she rocked this vintage Gibson girl 'do with the granny-gifted Memphis-inspired scarf and an aviator-ish leather jacket and tomboy southern half and mega-janitor carabiner... boy, you shoulda seen it. If you really want to hurl, scroll quickly between my blurry shots and this mad sharp one of the room, blurry, clear, blurry, clear, bluuuu. Fun huh?

Hello Kitty messes with us

I could cry*. I get a shot of half a man, an artist who dyes his pants himself with fabric dye from Wet Paint, including these wide wale Levis in a delightful chartreuse, and the Hello Kitty auto focus camera is out of focus! This is one of those old school cameras that is not a cell phone -- it does not have to tell me where the nearest Starbucks is, or play video games or make calls or record video. No. All in the world Hello Kitty has to do is take a picture of what's in front of it. I suspect someone with really terrible vision can take off their glasses and enjoy these pants, and the accompanying wingtip shoes, like no one else. But psyche, Kitty, we can still dig the chartreuse color!

We had a great conversation, this guy who is doing his part to make the world more colorful and I (who am doing my part to make the world less productive), about the creative catch-22: artists rarely have the ability or desire to promote and manage their art as a business, so they make no money. If they are that rare person who can manage themselves as a brand, they have no time to make art. Bottom line -- being creative is a bitch. That is clear. The photo is not. But I'm posting it anyway. in honor of guys who dye their own pants (he has cerise, purple, lime green among others at home).
*Alternately, I could stop talking and/or get glasses.

co-operative

You know how I'm everlasting whining about shallow bloggers focusing their lenses solely on young, beautiful women wearing six kinds of fun tiered maximum dresses, possibly from Paris, and white leather jackets, possibly from LA, that do not look like Guido's girlfriend's and caps with feathers in em? And the haircut I was hoping to achieve but missed by a mullet? Yeah, me neither. I nearly dropped my vegan cheese-like product in my haste to take this snap.

peplumed!

We're back to our roots -- sidewalks! With gum! Street style sounds a bit... commercial, n'est ce pas?  To help capture the mood here, I still had the smell of airplane deodorant on my person and a pair of pulverized complimentary Delta cookies in my backpack, along with all my worldly belongings which I had been carrying since dark-thirty. I'd been boggled and buffeted and imposed myself on like a million a people, and I could not believe how much sense, how very practical and wise, a shopping cart was sounding. As a personal acquisition. As urban transportation. I had quit Lincoln Center and headed north, perhaps muttering, which is to say, I fit in perfectly on the upper west side. I went past this woman, seven trudges, ten, until her peplumed jacket, like a modern day coat dress, her well played jeggings, her dudely stocking cap and fab spectator boots mixing leather and canvas sent the shopping cart juddering from my narrow mental window, and I went back. She was indeed in conversation with someone but I did not let that stop me from communicating my perverse needs. Via miming! Here's how I mimed I am a street style blogger from Minnesota and I'd like to take your picture and disseminate it to an eager public over the WorldWide Web, OK?: I moved my lips and pointed to my camera (this very clearly said Minnesota), then fossicked in the backpack, retrieving errant smalls instead of the business card I was looking for. She stopped talking, stunned, maybe horrified. I mouthed the words, Act natural, clicked the button, pressed a card in her other hand and gave a thumbs up, as if to say, Thanks for that cover shot for Italian Vogue. Call me.

a Marilyn moment

 

The source of this updraft was one of those carpet dryers instead of a subway grate, but I'm not a stickler for historical accuracy. She busted out this Modcloth 50s-esque sundress to celebrate radiation piercing the ozone that we enjoyed in early March. The age of dinosaur-like weather here, and the fact that she was working at a theatre (which shall remain unnamed because I forgot), account for this Marilyn moment taking place at the U rather than Daytona Beach. I like when people play along with their clothes.