florals, sandals, possum stew

New for spring! Flowers! And exposed elbows! And toes that do not look like pupae ...

 

These sandals, in their intricacy, remind me of those crazy twig fences that look like they were made by someone who fancies possum stew.  Did I mention I'm gathering the makings for such a stew fence even now?

Grand Old lines

Doesn't it look like the yellow paint from the road stripe colored her sandals? And the other line leads your eyeballs right to the asymmetric hem (the mullet of hemlines, thus, rockin), and from thence, zigzag back and forth like pinballs and shoot straight north, make a left at the crook in her elbow, talk to the hand briefly, which happily is not flipping you off, and squirt out the top of the orange straw as a little pinkberry flavored person.  What an effin great composition.  Photography is easy with the right drugs  subject.

in which i do a million things and all she does is stacks of foxy

Stripes! And they're going more than one direction! In the same article of clothing! My mind is blown! And then she had to go and be ironic with the fedora/sundress dichotomy. Like an automatron (just hatched that word, auto + matron = zombie-like pursuit of something while laboring under the added aesthetic weight of eye bags),  I could not stop myself from taking this photo. Also I couldn't stop myself from cutting off the tippy top of the hat. And I had to deal with a heckler, as my neighbor, a known cellist, happened by. It was a busy moment indeed.

tiny tim gets some bad-ass boots

With this waif, we finally transition from Retrorama to Nowrama.  Which is not a Hindu goddess. I just about never tire of that granite wall at the History Center (aka Centre) as a backdrop, do you? Nooooooooooope. She did not think a leg-full of layers was retro in any way. She wasn't even trying. So don't think that she was trying to achieve some kind of Ice Age retro thing and missed by an animal pelt, because she wasn't. I know that and she knows that and now you know that, so, good, we all know that. She didn't even want her picture taken but, between the high socks and the low bangs, I thought she nailed waif better than anyone I'd ever seen. (insert Cockney accent) Please sir, may I have some more? (remove Cockney accent, flush) I should have put a toothpick in this photo for scale because, man, she would have towered over that toothpick. By like 3".

oh beehive

All hail the queen of Retrorama! Her Hive-ness achieved that crown by watching a YouTube how-to and backcombing with a 3/8" drill and a sanding attachment. She is never getting that bad boy out, but that's ok because now she's got a built-in bike helmet that protects the part of the brain that enjoys beef jerky.  And Yahtzee.

But I was not just whistling between that big space in my teeth when I alluded to royalty.  I can spit through that space too.  I've been seeing royalty lately, the Queen Mum everywhere on her Gangstas With Gloves tour -- raving at the Hexagon, 3 a.m. creme donuts at the Holiday on Nicollet, running around Lake of the Isles in some mad tight lycra. She's a beast. But when she's on the clock, she rocks a matching coat/cape and dress in pastel tones with matching hat/hair just like the above monarch.  Sure, the Queen Mum has a horse guard and an art collection, but our Wearer of the Cones of the Realm has...

shoes made with real diamonds and...

dangling pink balls. 
Royalty are a subtle bunch, aren't they?

jackie black

Interesting the way folks interpreted retro at this rama. By far, the most iconic item was a hat. You pop a fedora or a pillbox over anything -- skinny jeans, a Miley Cyrus strip o lycra -- and instant vintage.  Gloves were another telegraphic article, favored by the ladies.  And another surprising one, as mentioned previously, is pose.  Yes,  jackie black above is rocking the hat, gloves and a simply 47-yards-of-stunning frock (as in, I don't know how in the name of hydraulic compression one could even mash the miles of fabric in the skirt onto that little tiny waistband), but she's also doing the Tricia Nixon-I've-been-to-church-8-times-this-week stance of purity. What, do we all stand like hoes now? Let's start seeing poses.

looking fine in Farah slacks

Oh for misleading post! Let me be poifectly clear, all these posts before, after and including this one are from Retrorama.  So, sick as these two look swathed in poly, this is not their everyday attire. I hope.
Mmmm, blue, the color of Bobbie Sherman's eyes. The shift dress with collar that reaches from here to 1962 is his mom's. Yer mom wears sandals.  But our man in the Farah slacks -- he's  in insurance, that's for damn sure -- is beyond awesome. Let's think about Farah slacks. Let's think about that fabric that was once a petroleum byproduct but instead of dumping it into a nearby wetland, some smartypants (ha) said, this sludge has the smell and feel of something I'd like to swaddle my lower half in. And if it gets creased in the mucousy birth canal of the extrusion machine, it will hold that crease throughout a three-day continuous drive across the American West in a non-airconditioned Ford Pinto while containing the 60 gallons of dope-tinged sweat excreted by someone named Vic. Yeah there's going to be a rash, but can that be attributed to the slacks or the Silver Saddle in Reno?  And speaking of packages,  these slacks are formfitting. Farah slacks never wear out. Every pair ever made is still in existence, most upcycled by the roofing industry.  Did you notice that this couple's long pointy collars are actually reaching out  and touching tips?  Poly love.

the red shoes

The ballet roughly follows the Hans Christian Andersen story upon which it is based. A young woman sees a pair of red shoes in a shop window, which are offered to her by the demonic shoemaker. She puts them on and begins to dance with her boyfriend. They go to a carnival, where she seemingly forgets about the boyfriend as she dances with every man she comes across. Her boyfriend is carried away and nothing is left of him but his image on a piece of cellophane, which she tramples.
She attempts to return home to her mother, but the red shoes, controlled by the shoemaker, keep her dancing. She falls into a netherworld, where she dances with a piece of newspaper which turns briefly into her boyfriend. She is then beset by grotesque creatures, including the shoemaker, who converge upon her in a manner reminiscent of The Rite of Spring. They abruptly disappear, leaving her alone. No matter where she flees, the shoes refuse to stop dancing.
Near death from exhaustion, clothed in rags, she finds herself in front of a church where a funeral is in progress. The priest offers to help her. She motions to him to remove the shoes, and as he does so, she dies. He carries her into the church, and the shoemaker retrieves the shoes, to be offered to his next victim.
So that's The Red Shoes in a nutshell.  Another hard-hitting documentary about the need for arch support. The above red shoes were made by the demonic shoemaker's lazy brother who stitched on the alluring ruffle but forgot to infuse them with Dance Frenzy.  The woman on the left may only get toe cramps. Did they call each other up and coordinate or what?