I dug through my closet and got rid of enough stuff at Buffalo Exchange to make the UNIF Hellraisers my fall/winter shoe. They arrived today and they’re amazing — super comfortable, well made, and ridiculously good looking. I’m stoked on them and they’re going to be a perfect alternative for when I don’t want to wear boots this season.
Girlprops sunglasses, H&M Divided leather jacket, Hippie Speedball tee, Miss Sixty jeans, UNIF shoes, Forever 21 and vintage bracelets, Heritage 1981 scarf.
I’m wearing them with my own Hippie Speedball “Ripper Kitty” t-shirt. (I’m obsessed with my t-shirts, OK? They fit so good.) I like the juxtaposition of the shoes with the ridiculous cat graphic on the tee.
Getting these shirts out has been a major, major labor of love, but I can’t tell you guys how stoked I am on them. As you might already know, I illustrated all the graphics myself and picked out what I think are the best cut, softest, coziest shirts to print on. So these shirts are really a representation of Cartoon Heart style at its finest — especially because I did everything I could to keep them affordable. Topping out at $30, they’re not super cheap, but they also cost less then any other screened t-shirt of this quality that you’ll find online, I promise.
And also, because I’m so excited about this, you can use the coupon code CARTOON on my Etsy for 10% off anything in the shop through Sunday night! I’ll post how I’m wearing my shirts soon.
I’ve been seeing photos of studded collars all over Tumblr lately, and yesterday I decided to recreate the look with an old H&M work shirt I clearly haven’t gotten much use out of lately.
My interpretation is a little imperfect but I like how it turned out. I also cut the shirt’s sleeves shorter and rolled them up a bit.
Love Culture cardigan, Miss Sixty jeans, Cheap Monday bracelet, Funtasma saddle shoes.
Pretty basic, but keeping everything kind of preppy works well to offset the studs.
I’m a sucker for a funny print, so I love this dress covered in little cats wearing bowties. (Incidentally this is one of two dresses I own that has cats in bowties printed on it.)
H&M Divided dress and leather, Target tights, F21 wedges and scarf.
Over at Get Off My Internets there’s a conversation going on about the prevalence of the “fashion blogger topknot.” The consensus over there is that everyone hates it and that it should only be worn to the gym and while kicking around the house. But I gotta say…I’m lazy, so when the topknot started showing up on the runways I was stoked. I think it’s cute and easy and a decent alternative to a ponytail, plus when you take it out after a few hours your hair is all bouncy and curly, which is an added bonus. Still, I can understand why some people hate it.
What do you guys think of topknots? Pretty cute or strictly for when no one’s looking?
1.) I already have a pair of half-tint sunglasses but the perfect roundness of this 80s Purple pair is so good.
2.) I’ll be in San Francisco in late November so I’m going to need a heavier coat. Ideally I want something in an unusual color, so I’m really feeling the retro shape and slightly offbeat pink of this ASOS A-line coat.
3.) I’ve been spending a lot of time writing and recording music at home on GarageBand lately, and I really want a Stylophone — a pocket synthesizer invented in 1967 that’s operated with a stylus and has been used by artists like Kraftwerk and David Bowie. It’s cheap (about $20) and compact, perfect for hyper-amateur musicians on the go like me.
4.) If Chanel is any indicator (which it always is), pale blue will be a popular nail color for the fall/winter season. I like OPI’s “What’s With The Cattitude?”
6.) I’m completely obsessed with the UNIF Hellraiser loafer. It’s a little out of my price range but I’m considering saving my pennies because it’s basically perfect.
9.) I’m doing a lot of traveling this fall and I want to start documenting my trips in different ways. I’m interested in getting an easy-to-use film camera like this Holga 120. I’m so used to the instant gratification of digital photography that I think taking film photos might lead to some good, or at least funny, shots.
If I could be said to have a signature piece in my wardrobe, it would definitely be my cropped motorcycle jacket, an item I reach for so often that I simply refer to it as “my leather.”
A quick perusal of my tagged photos on Facebook turns up more pictures of me in my leather than not. Clearly, I love this thing.
Full disclosure: my leather is not actually leather. It’s a leatherette motorcycle jacket from H&M Divided — not very punk rock, but I don’t care. I got it on sale for $19.99 about four years ago. It was the only one on the rack, it was my size, and it is perfect in every way. (I like to think it was fate.) I’ve come close to losing it a few times and every time I do I have heart palpitations. Without my leather I’d be lost.
A standby leather motorcycle jacket is nothing original, especially if you hang around with people who have punk in their past, but what I appreciate about people and their leathers is how they get personalized over the years with studs and paint and patches and pins. Personally, mine is dripping with flair, and it makes me laugh because most of the buttons and shit on my leather are pretty silly. From afar it might look like anyone’s pinned-up leather jacket, but when you get close up it’s totally completely me.
A guide to my leather in ten easy steps:
1. Cunt Sparrer badge. Nothing wrong with a little self-promotion. I guess it’s kind of lame to wear your own band’s pin but I’m proud of my band and I’ma sport it.
2. Cramps pin. One of my favorite bands of all time and like the only pin on my leather that would actually be at home on anyone else’s.
3. Vintage Slayer “War Eagle” tack pin. My friend Katy stole this from a metalhead ex-boyfriend she had long ago and gave it to me as a gift (attached to a sick ’80s dress) a couple of years ago. It’s heavy duty and badass and people try to steal it from me all the time. Back off and get your own, dudes.
4. “Too Much Politics”button. I got this at Paxton Gate in San Francisco (a seriously fucking rad shop) when I was up there with the band earlier this year. I love the little dude in his coffin because this is basically how I feel whenever people start going off on political tirades.
5. “Fuck Harry Nemer Week” political badge. I found this at the Cypress College swapmeet along with a handful of other weird treasures. Who is Harry Nemer and why was there a whole week dedicated to telling him to fuck off? I Googled him, but nothing comes up. This is such a weird little piece of history that I will never understand, but it’s an awesome fabric-covered pin and people always want to talk about it. I wish I knew what it was all about.
6. All Of Me lenticular pin. OK THIS IS ONE OF THE GREATEST THINGS I OWN. I got it at the same swapmeet table where I found the “Fuck Harry Nemer Week” pin and when I saw it I pretty much lost my fucking shit. All Of Me starring Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin is one of my favorite movies and when I found this pin I had just watched it a couple of days before. When it’s turned one way it shows Steve Martin’s face and it says “Why Not Take…” and when you turn it the other way it’s Lily Tomlin and it says “All Of Me.” SO CUTE. It always confuses people. A few months ago when I was on tour with the band my drummer Jen turned to me and said “Dude, that pin is weird. Sometimes that chick looks like Steve Martin.”
7. JonBenet Baphomet pin. People always think I am creepy because of this pin but I don’t care. It marries two of my weirder obsessions — the occult and freaky child pageants. It was made by Less Than Zero, a really sick Etsy shop based out of Sacto.
8. FabuLisa pin. This is my friend Lisa Nguyen, a seriously incredible and vibrant woman who passed away far too soon last winter. She had the greatest style of anyone I’ve ever met in my life and I love having this little piece of her with me every day.
9. Black Fag pin.Black Fag is an “Absolutely Fabulous” Black Flag tribute band that Cunt Sparrer plays with a lot. They are fucking amazing and hilarious and I am desperately in love with all of them.
10. Red sunglasses. A band of cute boys gave us these at Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas. What else do you need?
Forever 21 hat, skirt, and wedges; Käärme t-shirt; Love Culture cardigan.
Can I lay some praise on my girl for a second? I’ve known Hallie online for an embarrassingly long time. She sent me a couple of her Käärme t-shirts a while back and I’ve been living in them. The graphics are like nothing else out there right now, they’re soft and cut well, and above all I’m stoked to see someone whose blog I and aesthetic I truly love doing something really awesome. The Kaarme shop is up online and I’m kind of in love with everything. (How sick is this studded bag?)
I got roped into attending something called the hitRECord Fall Formal tonight in downtown L.A. I don’t know anything about it except that it seems kinda hipstery, my childhood TV crush, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, is somehow involved, and that it is a somewhat fancy affair.
I haven’t really dressed up for anything since I lost my job. I’ve barely worn heels since I lost my job, honestly. I’m feeling a little off my dress-up game. But after much hemming and hawing I think I figured out what I’ll wear tonight:
I hope this will do me all right. It would be kind of embarrassing if I showed up and everyone else was done up to the nines…but these days I think I only really go up to six or seven.
When I was a kid my sister and I were in possession of a hardback book with a powder-pink cover which taught me several very important things about being a woman — the importance of perseverance in the face of adversity, the proper use of the word “moi,” and that it’s completely acceptable to wear cocktail rings on top of your elbow-length lavender satin gloves.
Yeah. Everything I know about being a lady I learned from Miss Piggy.
Photos of the book from Rad Library. Nostalgia flooding back…and I’m still all about aping Piggy’s Chinese Banquet “recipe.”
Really though. Miss Piggy is a total badass. She was a feminist icon and a fashion icon long before you would ever have expected the twain to meet. She was Samantha Jones long before Kim Cattrall stepped into those Choos and started “oooh, honey”ing all over New York City. She was sexy, take-charge, and in control from the get-go, in a time when that kind of behavior was still taboo for women. And the fact that Piggy did all this while being a puppet with a man’s hand up her ass is…well, it’s a pretty sweet metaphor, if nothing else.
Porcine perfection. I want to know who designs her costumes. The “Pigs In Space” getup has always been a favorite of mine and totally puts any astronaut gear Barbie has ever worn to shame.
Can we talk about Miss Piggy for President on the cover of Life back in 1980? Or Miss Piggy writing about women in the workforce for The Saturday Evening Post in 1981? Or what about Miss Piggy getting all fucking nu-Jayne Mansfield on the cover of TV Guide, also in ’81? Piggy was a media juggernaut before media juggernauts even existed. She could probably teach the Kardashians a thing or two about self-promotion.
Just. Stop. This is perfection.
Miss Piggy was brought onto “The Muppet Show” in the mid-’70s as a minor character, but quickly proved to be a huge hit with viewers. In the late ’70s and early ’80s there was full-on Miss Piggy mania as her popularity eclipsed the other Muppets’ (even Kermit, the amphibian object of her affections — bittersweet, Piggy, non?). Miss Piggy’s Guide To Life hit the New York Times bestseller list in 1981, an honor no other Muppet book had achieved. Frank Oz, Piggy’s longtime voice and operator, has said that she is one of the few Muppets in the cast who has a fully realized, three-dimensional character. She even has a heartwrenching backstory — with a father who died young and a disinterested mother, Piggy had to enter beauty contests to survive. In an interview with the New York Times in 1976, Oz said that Piggy “has a lot of vulnerability which she has to hide.” Rings kinda true, doesn’t it?
There’s just something about that pig, man. In a way, I really think Miss Piggy’s psyche (and yes, I am talking about the psychological makeup of a Muppet, thank you very much) is relevant to a lot of young women today, and to the way we struggle with feminism and acceptance in a man’s world. Miss Piggy is headstrong and independent, she’ll do anything to get what she wants, and she’s not afraid to speak her mind, but she also wants to look sexy and be desired, and as the lone woman in a “boy’s club,” she harbors a strong internal need for attention that seems almost contradictory to her trademark confidence. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?
Miss Piggy has fallen out of the public eye since the ’90s but I will always have a soft spot in my heart for her, so I’m pretty excited for the new Muppet movie coming out in November (and maybe also a little excited because my movie boyfriend, Jason Segel, is involved). As if that wasn’t enough to get me all hyped up, yesterday I learned that OPI has teamed up with Disney with a new line of Muppet-themed nail polishes for holiday 2011, so I can celebrate my Miss Piggy love in Muppet-approved fashion.
Just stop! They’re all perfect! But the pink, magenta, and red glitter shades are all specifically Miss Piggy-themed (“Excuse Moi!,” “Divine Swine,” and “Gettin Miss Piggy With It,” respectively) and they are also — naturally — my favorites.
The days, nights, outfits and obsessions of an underemployed punk rock writer, fashion junkie, feminist, organist in Cunt Sparrer, overthinker and enthusiastic daydreamer. I'm poor, weird, and nerdy, and CARTOON HEART is the open book of my life.
Girlprops sunglasses, H&M Divided leather jacket, Hippie Speedball tee, Miss Sixty jeans, UNIF shoes, Forever 21 and vintage bracelets, Heritage 1981 scarf.
