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amphtaminedreams · 2 years

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Well it’s Far too Late to Call This “Winter Fits”: Lookbook No.19

Hellooo to anyone reading!

Happy end of seasonal depression hours! Supposedly! It’s only now that we’ve entered August that I’m finally no longer freezing my tits off but alas! It’s summer now, right?! Well into it! I’m trying for 5 minutes not to think about the role that climate change plays in the heat we’re experiencing right now to avoid the ever proliferating sense of impending doom and I’m about to (probably very poorly) help myself do that by throwing it back to winter, the end of which was supposed to be my personal deadline for this post. At this point, this is less a winter outfit diary and more Outfits of the Year Part 1. But let’s not call it that officially; it feels a little too close to the format of my fashion week recap posts and I don’t want to end up giving off the impression that I too am out here showcasing head to toe Balenciaga or something. Unfortunately, *manifesting* that I have the kind of money to afford that only goes so far. Oh, to be a nepotism baby and be free of the shackles of a life spent in retail until I get myself tens of thousands of grand in debt funding a degree which *may* then grant me access to a job where I can finally afford a can of chickpeas because the year is 2030 and they’ve now gone up to £5 per pea. No one has truly stared into the soul of the cost of living crisis like a retail worker who’s taken a 49p label off a shelf edge during an SEL audit to replace it with a 94p one. Let me say, they weren’t even good chickpeas. Took an hour to soften, FFS. Oh, the trials and tribulations of vegetarian cooking.

Back to the point before this turns into a chickpea brand tier ranking though-this year I have been making an EFFORT with my day to day outfits. I unintentionally played myself when I turned up with a full face of makeup and a cute outfit to my first seminar of the year because since then I’ve felt this self-imposed pressure to keep it up. This is even though actual term time finished back in March; it’s wild given I still associate breaking up for “summer” with sweaty classrooms and walking home in my secondary school blazer with a big time SULA giving off big Rihanna “shine bright like my forehead” meme energy. Don’t get me wrong I’ve loved the content of my course but a 5 month break is like…ahhh, chef’s kiss. Uni is so INTENSE. You can dedicate 90% of your free time to studying and still be ridiculously behind, and I genuinely wonder on the daily whether I have genuinely lost a significant number of brain cells over the last few years because to be real, I properly coasted through that year of history undergraduate and A-levels were probably the last time before this year I totally threw myself into something. Yeah, first year ended in weeks of all nighters but ya know, probs wouldn’t have found myself in that situation if I’d paid attention to the course or done any of the reading for the entirety of the rest of the year.

-23/01/22-

(blazer from Primark*, beret from Topshop*, argyle mesh socks from ASOS, turtleneck from charity shop, shirt from charity shop, boots from ASOS)

It is really daunting doing a degree you genuinely enjoy because when you flop, the imposter syndrome is veryyyy real. I have to keep reminding myself that I don’t lack understanding or ideas, I’m just not used to writing in a formal, unbiased style which psychology as a discipline is utterly obsessed with given the whole inferiority complex surrounding its status as a “proper science”. PLEASEEE, not a statistics module making up a solid 50% of my course for the entire 3 years. STATISTICS. In the wise words of Katya Zamolodchikova:

I almost did a maths degree because as a subject it was pleasantly straightforward to me until I remembered oh my god, do you really want to spend 4 years learning about distributions and probability and yet…here I am, doing exactly that. Here’s to me spending a significant proportion of my summer doing an SPSS basics course in the face of the realisation that I cannot, in fact, get through this degree just trying random buttons. Maybe, possibly, my decision to see the tutorial workbook as optional in spite of all evidence saying otherwise was a mistake, tehe. I have many regrets xoxo

-14/01/22-

(blazer dress from Topshop, boots from Koi Vegan Footwear, body chain from _chain_mail on Depop)

So why is it that I’m out here posting this months after teaching finished? Well I have work work (the do it til you die literally just to survive type, love that for us) and until a few days ago had a piece of coursework due, originally with a MARCH deadline, that I requested enough extensions for that they ended up just deferring it to the end of the academic year. And then I missed that too-yesterday morning I finished up the coursework, and it took me half an hour to write what it had taken me 3 days to write in the 72 hours preceding that deadline. Stress really hinders your ability to string a sentence together so take that as my way of justifying my messy posts. Case in point: back to this post’s purpose. I wore some cracking stuff this year. Despite this self-imposed pressure, putting together an outfit and allowing myself a couple of hours to do my makeup to go onto campus has been so therapeutic for me, like genuinely one of the small pleasures in life. People look at me like I’m insane when I tell them I’m voluntarily getting up at 7 for a 9:30am so I have time to get ready, and yeah, I naturally only tend to sleep for a couple of hours anyway but I would likely still get an early start regardless as it truly is such a confidence boost and motivation to properly throw yourself into the experience when you make an effort and feel good about yourself, even if that is a bit superficial of me to say. Romanticise the fuck out of your life and all that, do what you need to do to motivate yourself! So based on that, I’ve been able to put together a little outfit diary of some of the the outfits I’ve been really feelin myself in over the past few months. As is tradition, there is of course the few outfits I planned in my head which never materialised because I am theoretically a lot more social than the reality which is to say that I cancel plans like nobody’s business. My social battery drains like my iPhone post introduction to a Primark portable charger . I think I convinced myself during the pandemic that I was much more of an ambivert than I actually am, lol.

Also, I know. Given I was blasting the heating in Valencia in April, that I would really be wearing any top with that much exposed flesh at any point before this July heatwave is sounding a lot like fiction. But that’s because once I knew the outfits these started as were never leaving my room, I spiced them up a little bit, okay!!! We’re in the realm of experimentation now anyway. It’s a sentiment that I’ve seen a lot of people echo lately but I’ve become so hyper aware lately of what is “on trend” and how quickly that passes because of this whole phenomena of micro trends which definitely isn’t caused by but has also def been exacerbated by TikTok and the need to brand fucking everythingggg as some kind of aesthetic. So, whilst it had the unintended consequence of me becoming some what of a clothes hoarder, I’ve definitely been trying to plan outfits over the last year that make use of clothes that I bought when they were in every high street store and trying to incorporate them into outfits differently.

Look 1

Making this Vanessa Mooney mini playsuit appropriate for colder weather was a little tricky and obviously I went too extra with it to actually wear it out but it has defo forced me to be more creative and made me think more creatively. Yes, that’s me framing outfit planning as some kind of brain workout, I said what I said. But it’s the closest thing I do to using actual brain cells lately so allow it. I have to really big up Steal the Spotlight for inspiring me to do this because she really makes the only YouTube fashion videos I still watch and I am constantly wowed by how creative her outfits are. I truly miss the days when I’d get excited to watch unsponsored lookbooks and fashion content wasn’t primarily accessible via the medium of a less than 30 second clip where a teenager talks about how ugly something everyone was wearing a couple of weeks ago now is. I feel like I am super out of the loop not having TikTok because people really do reference them like they’re common knowledge and I do want it SO BAD but I am determined to wear what the fuck I want and feel like I am serving without knowing that its apparently been done to death or is a “trend” we should forget from a few years ago. Steal the spotlight and Vogue Runway with a little fast fashion browse for styling ideas are really all the fashion content I’m consuming these days but you know what? Playing a little game of Cher’s closet from clueless in my head is a fun one.

-06/01/22-

(t-shirt from Topshop, jeans from YesStyle*, faux leather blazer from Nasty Gal*, corduroy jacket from freyax19 on Depop, beanie from Primark*, with Doc Marten Jadon platforms)

I’m not going to make up some story about where I planned on wearing this outfit but it took me a long ass time to work out how TF I could wear a turtleneck under this playsuit. In steps the Minga Venus top which I once made the mistake of wearing to a concert. It was November but concert venues seem to truly have their own microclimate and I was boiling hot. That taught me two things-one, that humans packed into a venue like excitable sardines in a tin definitely smell exactly like what a can of sardines if you left them in the sun for long enough would smell like, and two, that velvet turtlenecks do a marvellous job at conserving body heat. I loveee any piece of clothing that strays from your typical print, especially anything that incorporates art. I recently found another Alphonse Mucha print mesh piece from UO on Depop and my hand has never hit that add to basket button so hard. This one is in COLOUR!! But anyway, a white silk bodysuit with a velvet Venus print top felt like a very decadent combo so I took it all the way with the celestial print Koi boots that are still probs my fave piece of footwear of all time. The whole outfit suddenly became very 70s bohemian mystic and did I fulfil my brief of tilting the aesthetic balance more towards Mick than Bianca Jagger with the fur trim House of Sunny coat? Perhaps not. I wanted some darker, grungier details but somewhere between low-rent glam rock and Studio 64 inspired seems to be where the needle landed and you know what, I’ll take it. A rock and roll take on fairy core I hope (that’s a thing now too apparently, to what exactly it applies idk but if we’re talking TikTok aesthetics, it’s better than “clean girl”).

-02/01/22-

(argyle top from Urban Outfitters*, denim flares from sallllll on Depop, trench coat from charity shop, leather blazer as before, heels shown from Koi Vegan Footwear, with Docs as before)

Ngl, I’m still kinda on the fence about the vinyl jacket. It precluded the UO green fur trim jacket and it was from Depop, back when I was scouting it under the illusion the multiple fur trimmed jackets I already had were not enough. To give myself some credit here, I was deep into my end of year deadline crisis, or what I thought was my final deadline-related crisis, and given these jackets were all at home, I’d kinda forgotten they all existed in my temporary insanity. The issue with Depop is that you can’t see the quality, and when it turns up and it isn’t what you hoped, there’s not much you can do about it. The vinyl isn’t the best quality and though it’s probably fair for the £30 the seller charged me, I found it still retailing for £60 on H&M. Moral of the story is that if you’re looking for something quality, as I was with one of those decadent vintage looking fur trim coats, maybe go directly to one of the vintage Depop stores or go somewhere you can see the piece in person. When I put it with the Vanessa Mooney playsuit and the Venus print top it worked out okay but I rarely know what to wear it with on a day to day basis.

-01/01/21-

(dress from Topshop*, leather blazer as before, beanie as before, turtleneck as before)

-01/02/22-

(two piece from miajohnson26 on Depop, boots as before)

-20/01/22-

(blazer from Nasty Gal*, shirt from charity shop, coat from Collusion, argyle mesh socks as before, choker from Regal Rose, with Docs as before)

Look 2

I wish I could say I held out longer on buying this Ragged Priest cardi than I did. My friend messaged me they had a sale and I can’t lie..I ended up browsing. She is truly the main culprit in 75% of my shopping addiction relapses. Never use a new ragged priest drop to test your willpower-you will come away feeling like a giant, broke idiot. I know, I know, you can get granny cardigans second hand anywhere. Believe me, I scoured Depop. But it’s true what they say we always want what we can’t have. I thought I was getting what I couldn’t have, ya know, getting my cake and eating it, but joke was on me because turns out the thing that I actually wanted and can’t have is a decent balance in my savings account after also deciding to buy the jeans I told my friend I also liked and definitely WOULDN’T be buying. Such is life. Anyways, this is an outfit I DID genuinely plan to wear out during one of the by all other accounts “spring” months which are actually, in my mind, winter months. Idc, April is still winter to me.

The jeans are from Depop, previously Weekday, and I fucking loveee them. Plus, the seller was such a sweetheart they included the dark wash pair they were also selling in for me. Absolute babe behaviour. They’re absolutely hated by my parents and my sister, confusing to put on when drunk, and get me scowled at by old people. But hey, they’re cheaper than the similar pair I almost also brought from the ragged priest, so I count that as a personal win.

In terms of accessorising, I didn’t know whether to lean fully into the grungy element of things or to channel that 2013 Joanna Kutcha vibe. I think that’s the last time I had my finger on the pulse of anything culturally relevant and it’s clearly stuck. Technically though, I guess I did both by including the Fila Disruptors though I will always see them as the kind of shoes boys in my year at secondary school would call “gothy” on the same grounds they applied that label to wearing dark red lipstick. The shock. The horror. Basically, they make me feel like I can stomp on shit n that’s all in the nature of the rebellious spirit that drove a 90s girl band, right? Pls, I wish I could sing or play some kind of instrument so I could take part in a revival of that era because god knows we need it more than fucking ever.

-23/02/22-

(flares from Collusion, bucket hat from babbiebp on Depop, coat from charity shop with patches from PatchShopLtd, fairycakes & pastelriotshop on Etsy, red leather blazer from beawilson on Depop, Fila top from phoebemckk, and shirt worn underneath from Zara*, with Docs as before)

-06/03/22-

(coat from Urban Outfitters, top from Ebay, bodysuit from Gilly Hicks*, skirt from immysurridge on Depop, hairband from zenacowen, with Docs as before)

Look 3

For this look, we have another fur trim green coat. And yes, it’s under the leather blazer that I wear to death. I would call it my grinch era since I can’t seem to resist anything green and fluffy RN but I don’t think it’s so much an era as a frightening kindredness of spirit with that guy that runs kind of in reverse where Christmas is one of the few days of the year I’m actually in a BETTER mood. Now I can’t lie, these were a couple of my fast fashion purchases of the year-the coat was retailing for about £90 in UO when I first saw it and this, my friends, is where browsing is dangerous bc when I saw it reduced down to £40 like…my heart jumped out of my chest. I sound like a broke record at this point but completely ethical purchasing or just even LIVING in this world is a fucking task and a half. I consider myself someone who tries my best (god do I miss Milkybar and god does it hurt walking past a white chocolate and salted caramel Extreme cone on Clubcard offer, god damn you Nestle you morally corrupt evil incarnate company) but you don’t work in a shitty job just to wallow in self-loathing every time you buy yourself a new coat. I’ve never regretted spending money on outerwear and me and this baby were a love at first sight kinda pairing. The slip was a Topshop piece I got through ASOS (can we please talk about how much of an UPGRADE Topshop has been on the receiving end of since it went online? I hadn’t seen anything I liked in there for years beforehand, everything was bland af, I can only imagine cutting the costs of renting out premises has allowed them to become a little more experimental again) and the others are old pieces I know have been included in a few past look books. I’ve also worn the celestial print mesh top (originally UO), boots (Koi Vegan Footwear) and the velvet baker boy (from the Oxford St. Topshop, one of the few irl stores I still used to find gems in right up until the end, RIP my friend) to absolute death but I will never fall out of love with anything remotely 70s Bohemian luxe.

-31/01/22-

(dress from Urban Outfitters, beanie from ASOS, coat as before, top worn underneath from Urban Outfitters*, with Docs as before)

-15/03/22-

(coat as before, sweater vest from Daisy Street, cargo trousers from debbiec101 on Depop, bag from Urban Outfitters, with Fila Disruptor Ii Platform Wedge trainers in white*)

-27/03/22-

(coat from Topshop, shirt underneath as before, sweater vest from YesStyle*, bag as before, trousers from rachelgriffihs12 on Depop, sunglasses from Ebay, Docs as before)

Look 4

Honest answer? Of the following 3, is this jumper more Jennie from Gossip Girl, Effy Stonem in season 3 of skins, or Eugenia Cooney? I don’t know how I feel about any of these things. I cringe a little at the possibility any of those 3 may be perceived as my intention. But I think I watched the entirety of Gossip Girl too recently (don’t bother) to completely erase it from my brain and if my reaction to seeing Ollie Barbieri on the tube the other day is anything to go by, clearly the Skins influence remains strong despite the shivers of embarrassment my 2013 Tumblr presence still sends down my spine. It was definitely NOT supposed to be a “fuck u mum n dad U DON’T UNDERSTAND ME!!!” moment. I’m not familiar with my k-pop references before but I’ve definitely subconsciously picked up on that punky, early 2000s Avril lavigne but make it spicy vibe and that, my friends, was the intention. Trust me, they’ll refer to this period of fashion as early 2020s does y2k MySpace girl and early 2020s does y2k bimbo like they do “y2k does 70s boho” in a few years time. And then give it a few more years and it’ll be “early 2020s does y2k does 70s boho and has a baby with 2020s does y2k bimbo too”. The more I make these predictions the more I am coming to the conclusion that the best way to sum up fast fashion trends atm is that they mutate and breed like viruses.

-09/02/22-

(dress from Motel Rocks*, top from kk0103 on Depop)

Anyways, the jumper is a lil Ebay number and true to trend mutating form, I brought the old y2k Avril style boyfriend jeans in too, which I had long lusted after since the whole Cargo trousers thang begun; pockets, flexibility and comfort are rarities when it comes to women’s clothing so these were a worthy investment. Following true early 2000s chick flick logic, you can’t go Goth and skater, right? Wrong. Is it just me or were they one and the same at secondary school? There was always a sickly looking quiet boy who you would’ve forgot was even in your year if it were not for the daily sighting of him sloping away from his group of Pierce the Vail groupie girlfriends with his skateboard at the end of the school day. Again, the filas are out n as if I didn’t need to draw from any other style, I bought a bucket hat in. IDK, I feel like they’re cuter than they are a street style staple when they’re fluffy lol. Fluffy makes anything cute (okay Rubeus Hagrid, I hear u say).

-10/02/22-

(leather blazer as before, argyle mesh socks as before, Doc Martens as before, bag from Primark*, corset from madeyoulooks on Depop, white shirt underneath as before, plaid skirt from YesStyle*)

-13/03/22-

(slip dress from kaoanaoleinik on Depop, corset from hanpiercey, white shirt and turtleneck as before, boots as before, with Crikey BB Poppy Lissiman bag )

-27/01/22-

(dress from glorres on Depop [altered], leather blazer as before, beret from ASOS, Docs as before, sherpa coat from Topshop*)

Look 5

I go through stages of being obsessed with this Fila top and the varsity thing when you toughen it up a little with the rest of your pieces. I don’t know if a trench coat fits the brief but I thought it worked as a whole with the platform FILAs to give a boarding school but like…make it a bit teenage angst kinda vibe. Kinda like Poppy Moore’s (if you weren’t obsessed with Wild Child in your adolescent years, what were you doing with your life?) L.A girl take on her boarding school’s uniform but less a necessary evil because I was sent there for a giant rager in a Malibu beach house and more because I like…set fire to the staff room at my private school or something. Anyways, a tennis skirt will never not be a staple for me. Their reach extends far beyond the gilded American Apparel obsession era. So j just went full school girl with it. If St.Trinidad’s didn’t further add to the overwhelming body of evidence that a collegiate influenced look didn’t slap with consistency I don’t know what will do it for you.

-14/02/22-

(coat from Out of the Ordinary Clothing, leather blazer as before, velvet bakerboy from Topshop*, flares from seren_richards on Depop, bodysuit from sashabill, Docs as before)

-16/02/22-

(mesh flares from Urban Outfitters, pleather waistcoat from ASOS, top underneath from Urban Outfitters, red leather blazer as before, Afghan coat from louisemarcella on Depop, beret from Ebay, Docs as before)

-18/01/22-

(beret from New Girl Order, skirt from Urban Outfitters, leather blazer as before, shirt from Ebay, Docs as before)

-20/02/22-

(beret as before, sweater vest from Juicy Couture, plaid skirt as before, shirt as before, coat as before, with Fila Disruptor Ii Platform Wedge trainers in black*)

So! That’s it for now! I doubt I will be doing a summer outfits post; we’re already well into the summer now and if British weather follows it’s usual pattern, I’m sure we’ll be back to the usual August school holiday showers soon enough. I do have a plan to make a sort-of outfit post from the holiday my sister and I went on to Disneyworld. Because yes, I literally took a ridiculous amount of photos, want to give my unsolicited opinion on every bit of food I ate (because being obsessive about food is one of my few remaining personalities traits at this point) and justify to myself why spending all that fuckin money was worth it, tehe! I’m already deluding myself into thinking I am capable of saving the 3 grand it’d take to go again this summer because I know it may be the capitalist Mecca of America but given all the childhood nostalgia it brings me I’m willing to overlook it. I would also love to do a proper lookbook again soon kinda along the lines of the Euphoria/Sitting Front Row at..etc. but I am stumped for ideas and I only treat myself to new clothes a few times a year now so I lack the materials. Creativity will strike at some point, I hope!

Anyways, thank you as always for reading if you did so! I’ll get back into it with another fashion week recap soon and am currently deciding whether to do a Haute Couture Week post after my F/W22 posts or just kinda do a brief interlude with it, mostly on the basis it could probably fit in one more compact post. I also do wanna get that Disney content in there bc…like I said, we’re all allowed just a *little* dip in the ocean of extreme capitalism now and again right? I got my karmic punishment when I paid $8 for a “Cheshire Cat” twist on my last day in Magic Kingdom and found that it tasted like an underwhelming version of the Costa Coffee one. I dropped this thing on the floor and ate it anyway because I will be DAMNED if I let that thing go to waste after realising only half way through the holiday that I could actually just fill up my water bottle at the water fountain near our hotel room and store it in the fridge to chill it overnight rather than spending $5 on ridiculously fucking tiny bottle of Dasani water every morning. If my delusional hope of a trip there next summer (doubtful based on my awful money management skills) comes to fruition I will most definitely be going with a much thriftier mindset and the staunch resolution NOT to feel morally obligated to tip. That moment when the girl at one of the EPCOT kiosks turned the card machine around after handing me a single bottle of overpriced water, which they took their sweet time retrieving anyway because there was a small bee in front of the fridge, should’ve been a turning point; you live in ALLIGATOR country, ffs. And I just paid you an extra $2 because I couldn’t look you in the eyes if I didn’t. I have cleaned up a person’s literal shit from the shopfloor at work and been threatened ad naseuam by every local crackhouse resident when I politely ask them not to steal 8 bottles of wine for the third time that day and yet half our customers don’t even say thank you when I step out the way to let them pass whilst trying to carry a 3 pack of 5 litre bottles of water one handed. So on that happy note, wishing ya all the best and again, thank you so much for reading if you got to this point! I’ll be back soon!

Lauren x

*old pieces (last stocked over a year ago) marked by asterisk