The Little Top of Ambiguous Colors and Fibers has arrived. The spirit of Marie Kondo has left the building.

A package arrived! The Little Top of Ambiguous Colors and Fibers is here! In the size I ordered!

Here are the details. I'm afraid that my phone snaps are not going to clear up the question of colors, but I'll try to explain.

The fabric is a thin 100% cotton knit, about the weight of the Vintage Tees, so I'll probably wear the thing over a silk cami. Well, it's snowing after all.

The sequin work is nicely done.

 

The colorway was described as "pewter mint burgundy." The dark sequins are the burgundy. Easy.

The mint appears as sequins, as does a kind of pearly white. There are also pink sequins.

OK, that leaves pewter. The pewter is the background (fabric) color and to my eye,

 although not to my computer, it reads as a very pale lavender. 

This is a good thing.

Here are views of the jacket, through an iPhone darkly,
slipped over the shirt, and here's the bottom of the skirt.

I have to ask you to trust me on the color of the skirt and jacket, but they really are tones of pale sage green. I now feel sorry for catalog photographers trying to replicate color. In future, I'll try not to complain about misleading color values. The clips on the front of the jacket are some kind of oxidized-looking metal filigree, whatever, they won't be touching skin.

I won't wear any jewelry, as the little stacks of sequins protrude and would catch on chains or necklaces, and the knit is too thin to support pins or broaches. I'll just let the sequins do their job.

The stacks of sequins reminded me of Intergalactic Cauliflower. In a good way, of course.

                              

It turns out my top is the poor relation of this top, which costs about 10 times as much, mine having been grabbed on a 25% promo while the other is sitting around awaiting markdown activity. There's also a pencil skirt, and I think I'd love both pieces with, say, a blush pink leather jacket. Definitely not with the sweatshirt (those little stacks get around!)

The "deluxe" top is made of silk organza and fully lined.  So is the pencil skirt. Obviously the skirt's going to sell slowly, it looks to me like the little stacks of sequins with bead on top could cause indentations resembling weird cellulite if one sat down while wearing the skirt.

And then - I've been saving this for last - while I was hunting for the satin tank that disappeared, I turned up a pair of shoes that I had grabbed at an Anthro sale a few years ago, and tucked away, and kind of lost track of and forgot about. This is the kind of delightful surprise that Marie Kondo will never experience.

Look - shiny lavender! Shiny green! Shiny gold!

In honor of the shoes, I painted my toenails Alchimie.

Of course the original satin tank is still nowhere to be found. 

I wish it well on its journeys.

Oh, right, the Little Top of Ambiguous Colors and Fibers runs true to size.
And the armholes are ok.

UPDATE: 

OK, so I was going to end the post right there, but then I went to sort out a clutch because my trusty black satchel is obviously not going to cut it. Same anti-Kondo experience:

LOOK WHAT I FOUND!

(it was wrapped up in its sleeper bag,

and I guess ... well, I guess I just

forgot about it. Take that, Ms Kondo!)

ANOTHER UPDATE

as we were leaving it was cold and wet and slippery 
so I didn't wear the cute shoes.
Damn.

just because you can make something out of sequins doesn't mean you should...

It was one of those mornings when she looked like slutty woodland creatures had dressed her... . I like this opening line even better than "It was a dark and stormy night."

I love South Beach, but if I wake early I make coffee in my room, I've even posted pics of my trusty coffee pot, and I go out and read the paper on the terrace. There's a side of life in a boutique hotel, even in a big commercial hotel or in a world-reknowned luxury hotel, that I don't want to know about, and it's at its tackiest as the sun is coming up. Better far to stare numbly at the ocean.
I went downstairs in the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo, around 6:30 one morning. We'd arrived the night before, had a great dinner (yes, there), and collapsed. The morning sun in the bathroom made me want to go look at boats. Yachts, to be precise, and I pulled on jeans, tee, rubber-soled shoes, bucket hat (quieter than a hairdryer), left Himself snoring, made note of room number, and found my way to the lobby.
There were coffee and croissants on offer, and I tucked in, while I watched a parade of very dressed-up ladies exchange cheek kisses at the Concierge desk and hurry away. By very dressed up, I mean 5-inch heels, sequins from head to toe or at least from chest to crotch, festooned in glittery jewelry. They spoke French or English to the Concierge and his minions, various languages that begin with R to one another. Only hair and makeup showed what I thought was an effortless natural look. I assumed they were off to get an early start on jewelry shopping, exploring, clothes shopping, gambling, shoe shopping, as, limo by limo, they waved extravagant goodbyes and left. Now feeling like a poor relation, I went back upstairs to dress properly for lobby/grounds/dock exploration. Himself was awake by this time and  asked what the lobby was like in daylight. "It's very dressy here, even more so than in Paris," I told him, and I described a couple of the outfits.

Yes, of course. Were I not so easily abashed, I too would have seen that the girls looked like a bad morning in South Beach: like they'd passed out poolside the night before, been wet down by pool help in the morning, and had gotten dressed to go home in whatever the escorts from the latest event had left behind. In fact, they were the escorts from the night before.
There's not much to do in Monaco if you haven't arrived by water and don't gamble (and aren't working off your sequins), except dine out, and as we spruced up for dinner that night I asked Himself a dangerous question: "How do I look?"

This time, of course, he'd had his answer ready since early that morning: "Your amateur status is unquestionable."

Madison Avenue, early morning inspirations

I thought you might enjoy a little spring window-shopping. Here are some lace tops at DKNY

and some cute shoes at Cole-Haan

a carré tied into a halter at Hermès - here's how to do this. Fold the scarf along the diagonal into one large triangle. The long side (the hypotenuse for you mathematicians) goes at your waist and is knotted behind you. Then you take a short end in each hand, bring them up behind your neck and tie there. This look is sleek and sophisticated in the little Hermès how-to booklet, requires a lot of adjusting in real life. Petite ladies may have better luck folding the hypotenuse up a "waistband" or two before tying the waist. I myself was cheered to see that it can be puffy and blousy on a store window mannequin as well as on me, especially since Hermès goes to so much trouble with its windows. Oh, and I loved the plastic bangles.


Here's some "beachwear" from Hermès. Love the scarf, love the bag, love the bangles, dubious about that necklace. I am also v. pleased that the window mannequins come in more than one shade of plastic.



and just when you thought it was safe to go into the water again, here's an expensive version of the look that will never die from Brunello Cuccinelli. A very expensive version

This morning's stroll also brings a reminder that people are still finding imaginative things to do with sequins. This is a shot of a dress in the window of J.Mendl (yes, that's really their name, it's not a deranged wordplay on MD and JC. They're exclusive furriers from Paris, and also do a line of TDF dresses). The top of the picture was all glare-y, so I cropped it, because I still thought the dress is lovely, even without its nice upper half.




and by contrast, here's a screen shot of something that fluttered into my inbox few days ago. I think it speaks for itself, although I have to say -- no, I don't.




Well, yes, I do. I think this outfit looks like someone forgot to pack the top that really goes with the skirt.

E-lit gives rise to fashion trends. Or not. Fred at large in airport.

This started innocently enough when I bought a paperback at a bookstore at Heathrow Airport. Unlike U.S. airport bookstores, those at Heathrow have given up the pretense that your flight will be so fast and efficient that you won't have time to read. They know better. They have 3 for the price of  2 specials, buy one get one 50% off specials, and general clearance specials. They know you'll need distraction. They also have in paperback Special Airport Editions of UK bestsellers that are not even available in the US yet, and can't even be sneakily ordered from amazon.ca or amazon.co.uk for US delivery. The Special Airport Editions are quite large and heavy, even with the paper cover, and it was one of these that I dropped on the snoring head of Himself when I returned to the seat in the "Lounge Area" (ho, ho, you try and lounge there; you'll be in the bookstore or worse, in the Boots sniffing Germolene and torturing the pharmacist with persistent inquiries about whatever happened to real APCs).

So upon our return last fall and after some lengthy and neurotic reflection we decided to get an e-reader, thinking that the World of the Joy of Reading would be inexpensively and conveniently open to us, and for less carrying weight than an Airport Special Edition. Open to one of us at a time, since we only got one e-reader. And since we are already accumulating electronics that outdate faster than single-purpose cooking appliances, we got a very simple one. The world has more than enough ways of getting in touch with us already. If I wanted my books to interrupt themselves with messages from distraught e-merchants, I am sure I could arrange to have my literature printed on the backs of semaphore flags.

You can search for e-lit to purchase by price range, $.00 to $3.99 for example, and it is amazing what is available to a person with an open mind. I have still not discovered how to dispose of something once purchased; I think it's like all those incriminating fragments of first drafts of documents and embarrassing emails that forensic techies find -- in there somewhere are the remains of all the books I decided not to finish now that I am too old to be required to do book reports. So I guess that that wonderful freedom and lightness of spirit I gained when I decided  that I may not have a Permanent Record after all, may be about to vanish.

Here are some of the books I have found that are available through Amazon.com:

Full disclosure: I haven't bought any of them, in E-form or any other, for me or for Himself. But, I am thinking that one or more of these will be good choices for airport or plane reading because:

                   *  anyone glancing over one's shoulder at the e-reader will be discouraged from starting a conversation;

                   *  there is always the possibility of learning something useful or developing a profitable hobby;

                   *  and you never know when or where you will detect the potential of a soon-to-be-discovered fashion trend.