positivelyBLEAK Grinning back into the abyss.

What I Wore…Channeling the ‘70s

I am shit at taking photos of myself. Luckily, I have pho­tog­ra­pher friends, kind enough to come help me out in a pinch. Like Pope Tom, my per­sonal favorite Pope, as well as the only man I know who comes with his own waiver, who stopped by this windy weekend for Chimay and pic­ture time!

The afore­men­tioned rusty meathooks…

Meet my alleyway; it’s behind my apart­ment building and acts as a back-​up escape route, should the front door be blocked by zom­bies. While you might see old brick, big rusted hooks driven into the wall, and an aban­doned motor­cycle left out there to col­lect dust, I see it as my own per­sonal little strip of sky.

I’m a tall broad, as I’ve men­tioned before, so my unending love for maxi dresses gets a pass. I’m itchy to break them out, but it’s still too cold and it’s hard not to look like a hippie when I’m wearing one. Killing two birds with one stone: throw an over­sized leather jacket overtop. I like this one, it’s cut broad and boxy in the shoul­ders like a men’s jacket, but it’s nipped in at the waist and con­structed from light­weight washed leather to make it more femme. (The color helps it stand out in the sea of black leather jackets, too.)

Vroom vroom sputter…

There’s that aban­doned Suzuki Savage; I may not own my own ride, but motor­cy­cles have always fas­ci­nated me — my father rode a lot when he was younger and is looking into get­ting back into it — and I have an M-​class license. Every time I pass this thing, a part of me wants to take it and clean it up, get it moving again; but alas, it doesn’t belong to me.

The wind did most of my hair­styling for me; I threw some tex­tur­izer in while I was blow-​drying and let the gales do their work. (Satan’s balls, am I ever in need of a trim, though! Talk about not taking my own advice…) Crazy-​go-​nuts wind­blown hair is one of my favorite looks, because it takes zero work and you don’t have to worry about messing it up. Pair it with min­imal makeup — a light base, some silver high­lights around the eyes, a light berry lip stain, and presto — easy day­time makeup.

Look, my alleyway even leads to the com­munal dump­ster! Let’s see if there are any bodies inside:

Hmmm…

This is what I found for you instead.

Throwing a jacket on over a dress is obvi­ously nothing new, but coor­di­nating colors (the stone-​colored jacket matches the bamboo print on the dress — too matchy-​matchy or just OCD enough?) or just bal­ancing a fem­i­nine dress with a more butch jacket can really bust you out of a jeans-​and-​tees jam. I actu­ally picked this up from old photos of my mom in her hippie days: wearing mul­ti­col­ored broom­stick skirts with my dad’s motor­cycle jacket and waist-​length hair? Swap out the tie-​dye for darker shades, and she could’ve fit right in at an early Sabbath show…and that’s what I’m going for here!

Bamboo/​cotton blend (so soft!!) maxi dress from Lucky, washed leather jacket from Martin + Osa, arrow­head neck­lace from Forever 21. One bil­lion thanks to Pope Tom for being so patient while I dicked around like an idiot in front of the camera!