Welcome to the Link-up: Eccentric Glamour

Hi! Welcome to my link-up: Eccentric Glamour, designed to showcase forgotten, yet fabulous articles in your closet. The idea is to create an outfit once a month around some piece languishing in the back of your closet, helping us to better know what’s in our closets, force creativity, and appreciate what we have (you knew there’d be moral somewhere around here). All bloggers will be able to submit their post links via the inlinkz widget below beginning the 1st and ending the 3rd of every month.  You can find more information below (or feel free to ask).

For my contribution, I wanted to show you this fabulous (and very Downton, I hope) coat I bought on a whim. To go with it, I’ve made up an eccentric backstory to match the outfit. It’s 1933. I, Mrs. Rosemary Fitz-Simmons, wife of the late grain tycoon, Mr. Cornelius Edward Fitz-Simmons, married up to gain a large fortune for myself. However, upon Mr. Fitz-Simmons’ unexpected, unwarranted, and mostly untimely death, I discovered the ledgers in disarray, and our fortune lost. Anxious to secure another wealthy millionaire before anyone discovers my secret, I have chosen to attend the opera, though still under the guise of mourning and wealth. In reality, I’ve dressed to kill under my coat and am scoping out any marriageable bachelors still circulating in the middle of the Depression. Cross your fingers I find luck!

Outfit: Jacket: Vintage (eBay) | Hat: Vintage | Jewelry: Macy’s (and some old costume jewelry from my Mimi) | Hat: Vintage | Lipstick: Chanel | Dress: Ted Baker | Gloves: Target | Fur: found at an estate sale- also shown here in another life | Hose: Primark | Ostrich Feather: Thrifted | Opera Glasses: found in Covent Garden market

Please add your link below so we can better meet and appreciate our fellow fashion bloggers. Here are the rules:

1. If you’d like to regularly contribute, please take a moment to follow my blog (links can be found on the sidebar).
2. Please confine posts to those which showcase some spectacular article of clothing. It doesn’t have to be crazy, but just a bit in line with our theme of “Eccentric Glamour” (although choosing one half or the other of that mantra will also suffice). However, if you choose to post, please provide a link back to the Eccentric Glamour link-up somewhere in your post.
3. Try to check out a few other bloggers posts to build inspiration and community!

Thanks everyone, and I look forward to a bright 2015 linking with you!

Eye Spy in the Dark

I am now officially home from England, but I probably have another week or two of posts (depending on my procrastination) to put up before the landscape changes back to Georgia. I’ll get to the bittersweet bits later.

In the meantime, I thought I’d share my experience riding the Eye at night and eating at the OXO Tower. I’ve ridden the eye twice during the day (though once was arguably near dusk), and both times the view has been fantastic. However, what happens at night that you don’t get during the day is better signaling. During the day, all the buildings are equally lit, making the important ones vaguer and less distinguishable at first glance. At night, all the lights go out, except the important ones. Okay, that may be an exaggeration, but it is easier to identify the more relevant places, as generally they are the ones whose lights stay on. Even still, there are a lot of lights. Come on, this is London we’re talking about.

 Next, I walked down the Bankside (past an adorable Christmas market installed for the season) to eat at the fabulous OXO Tower. A quick fun fact that I ran across the other day– the OXO Tower was originally a power station (to rival Battersea) but was purchased in the 1920s by Liebeg Extract of Meat Company, producer of the OXO Cube. At the time, there was a ban on skyline advertising, so in converting the old power station, windows in the shape of “OXO” were added to establish a sort of advertising dominance across the central London skyline. Though the company has passed, the windows have become so iconic that they survived a 1970s plan to demolish the building.

Today, there is a brasserie and restaurant (recommended in 1,000 Places to See Before You Die) sponsored by Harvey Nichols. We ate in the brasserie (it was about 10 pounds cheaper per person), and I was very delighted. You can see my meals below. I especially like the cider soaked pear.

Outfit Details: Shirt: Gap | Choker: H&M | Jacket: Tally Weijl | Trousers: Isabel Marant | Shoes: Pour La Victoire | Purse: Kate Spade

Eccentric Glamour: a Photo Shoot and an Announcement

A few weeks ago, my roommates from Oxford and I planned a roomie reunion. What started as a plan involving tapas, Sangria, and some kind of cake (preferably bigger than the tapas) slowly evolved into a Girl’s Night Out photo shoot (as suggested by Elizabeth (ahem, Evey) of Evey Photography, who recently won Silver for Solo Journalist Multimedia Story or Essay at the Worldwide College Photographer of the Year Awards). Everyone was psyched, but as the date loomed nearer, it occurred to us that we didn’t know what to expect from this photo shoot. All of us had been envisioning a Mary Kate and Ashley makeover scene (which inevitably happened in every direct-to-home-video as they emerged out of the revolving door of a schwanky shop in whatever city the plot thinly hinged around this time), but clearly, that was unrealistic. Fearing a flop, Elizabeth specifically asked me if I’d bring some of my hat collection, and while packing the day of, I went a bit overboard with all the stuff I brought, which resulted in the ensembles below.

Dress: Adrianna Papell

Shoes: Pour La Victoire

After seeing the pictures (of clothes primarily from my closet), it got me thinking. How many of us have odd, crazy, and/or eccentric pieces we’d love to wear but let collect dust in want of an occasion? As a fashion blogger, I seem to constantly accumulate clothes but often get nervous of repeating… It’s for this reason, I’m happy to announce that beginning January 1st, 2015 (just in time for your New Years Resolution), I will be able to offer a solution: the Eccentric Glamour Link-up.

How Will It Work?

The first three days of every month, I will host a link-up on my blog. The only requirement to join will be that your post showcase a forgotten or obscure item in your closet that, for some unfortunate reason of another, has fallen out of the circulation its magnificence deserves. Then, mention the link-up in your post and add a hyperlink to my page, allowing us all to appreciate the handsome gems we ladies dig up!

Let me know if you have any questions or opinions, I’m super excited about it, so also feel free to RSVP below. I’ll advertise continually as time grows nearer, but in the meantime, only 18 more days, and I hope to see you there!

Shoes: La Perla

Green Dress: Haute Hippie | Green Shoes: Mui Mui | Black (Dress worn as) Top: Kiki de Montparnasse

Roommate Love Forever!

All items without descriptions are vintage (with the exception of Erin’s tutu and cheetah dress, which were hers. If you’re super interested, let me know, and I’ll find out for you. Hope you enjoyed our looks as much as we did making them (though it’s extremely doubtful). Again, all photo credit goes to Evey Wilson.