Five and Diamond: Blackened Outer Layers

Heathen Traces Leather Hoody

I usually try to limit my browsing of Five and Diamond. I ran across this store while reading Fashion For Nerds, and I immediately knew that it would haunt my dreams. Such lovely clothing, so very, very hardcore--and yet, there are pieces that I would feel comfortable wearing in amongst some things I could never muster up the nerve to... The black-and-yellow striped bloomers come to mind. Up here, it's all fleece jacket and jeans.

And today I'm browsing their jackets. So I fall in love with things like this Jan Hilmer Lily Hooded Jacket. Despite the price-tag--always steeper than I can justify--I love to know that these beautiful things exist.

Especially when they are as RADICALLY AWESOME as this Victorian jacket. Seriously. I had a dream the other night about the new Sherlock Holmes movie--it's starring Robert Downie Jr. and Jude Law. I've occasionally encountered steampunk alternate universes of my beloved crime-solving hero, and this reminds me of those, powerfully.

Happy birthday to me!

My man got me (in addition to a more serious present) a totally rockin' (nu)Spock action figure, who is watching me as I type, little phaser in hand.

I am twenty-five. Hot damn, we better figure out cryostasis soon if I'm going to see the 23rd century!

Pixie Market: Beautiful Black and White Leather

While I usually end up browsing the clothes at Pixie Market, I was looking at their accessories and noticed some pieces in leather that I'm kind of infatuated with, including this bow--very Bladerunner/40's chic.You could also go steampunk or Victorian with it, or even, dare I say it, anime/cosplay.

On the theme of bibs, there's also this draped, perforated thing, that can be worn in multiple ways--the model is shown on the website wearing it as a necklace/bib of sorts, and also as a free-floating hood. Coming from such a rainy climate, I'm always a little surprised when I see hoods that aren't meant to be watertight, but I'm kind of charmed.

Four hundred bucks of charmed? No.

This necklace, meanwhile, largely consists of plastic applied over leather. I love the antique lace styling with the modern materials and silhouette.

 

And then there's this little mini-harness-type leather necklace thing. Leather and metal: it gets me every time.

Comic Interlude

You should really check out this comic.

Edibly Etsy: AdVintagous

Today I'm liking adVintagous, which, yes, is missing an "e" for proper spelling/pronunciation, but I will not dwell on that. Instead, I will dwell on the pretty-pretties that are for sale. I mean, just check out that awesome bathing suit. Pink! Blue! Stretchy! Shiny! I would wear that on Rigel.

And this little cocktail dress, with its ruffles-from-hell sleeves. I know I bring up Bladerunner a lot, but that is because it is a foundational genre classic, and also because elements of its aesthetic are big this year.

My favorite is this shiny, shiny blue dress, though, with its rhinestone accent. If I could believe that I would ever wear it, I would have snapped this up. Disco-style. It reminds me very much of a short story I once read. I could find it, but then I'd have to go sort through my book collection... Anyway, famous author, people design their offspring, there's a body-designing contest. This is what I would wear to that party.

LuLu's: In Mod We Trust

I like LuLu's. At least, from what I can see; I've never ordered from them. They seem to keep awfully cute pieces. Like this gorgeous miniskirt. I have passed beyond the veil of being able to wear miniskirts without tights/thigh-high stockings/thigh-high socks (damn you, cellulite!), but if I still had enough of a social life to go out dancing, I would go dancing in something like this.

And this delightful coat. I've always believed that there is no such thing as too many coats. Probably an artifact of living in what might be called Rain World, but every time I find a cute coat at my favorite thrift stores, I leave with it. Despite the fact that I generally don't do stark white, I like the combination of white coat/black buttons. ModCloth had something very similar a while back, but with different detailing.

And, finally, if you missed them in gold, the notorious unicorn heels are back in pewter. So... pretty...

Topshop: Christopher Kane

You may have heard about Christopher Kane for Topshop. I will freely admit that I have no real sense of who he is, but dang, these are some awesome clothes.

I originally saw this collection when the ladies at Kingdom of Style linked to it. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if you like science fiction and spaceships, etc., you should check out that blog. Lots of shiny and black and metal and eccentric beauty.

I particularly like how heavily embellished many of the pieces are--mirrored rhinestones and grommets play prominent roles. There's a lot of classically sci-fi looking stuff, in filmy black and silver, but there are also colored pieces of varying saturation.

Nothing is cheap--the least expensive thing is a scarf, at sixty bucks or thereabouts--so don't go looking unless you're sure you can either just look, or afford the shinies.

Back to School

Well, my new school year begins. This will probably result in a precipitous decline in posting, for which I apologize. I don't make money off this blog, and I do make money for being a graduate teaching assistant, so my priorities are pretty obviously with the thing that keeps a roof over my head.

If you're considering going to graduate school, here's my advice: don't. Not unless you a) love what you are doing so much you can't imagine doing anything else, b) can afford to go tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt without even necessarily getting a degree out of it, and c) have a really clear idea of what you will do the second you leave grad school. Grad school, in my opinion, sucks at being exploratory. You want to explore your options, do job shadowing. Volunteer. During the school year, there are weeks when I'm at school by eight in the morning and come eleven o'clock at night I'm still working--and I haven't taken a break longer than half an hour, for lunch, which I got from a vending machine because it's the only thing close enough to my department building that I can be back in time for the next meeting.

I am not kidding. Grad school is a lot of work. It is not much fun. If I could go back in time and tell myself anything, it would have been, "Maybe you should take a year off and work for a while first."

Anyway: shiny pretty raygun, for when that last staff meeting has gone on just a little too long. And yes, I think rayguns are awesome fashion accessories.

Blue Boy Blaster Mark II, from Builder's Studio

Cute.

Lampwork beads of our favorite space-faring heroes.

Well done, Strawberry Beadworks. Well done.

Pixie Market: Pretty Colors

I like Pixie Market. I generally can't afford their things, but they make me happy. Case in point: this darling, darling dress with trailing red hearts. It reminds me of Delirium from the Sandman comics. Effervescent, a little weird, kind of Lolita-esque. I'm sure the heart-shaped sunglasses are on purpose.

I also like this coral-red dress with ruffle and zipper detailing. Ruffles are big for fall, as you will hear eighty million times on endless repeat if you consume any fashion media, as are zippers and other hardware details.

But what I really like about this dress is the way the ruffles and the zipper draw your eye and keep it moving. It's like those hubcaps that make cars look like they're doing sixty when they're standing still.

And this rainbow sequined jumpsuit was just too awesome not to share. (Speaking of Delirium.) Does it not look like something a deranged queer superhero would wear while swooping to the rescue? And if you go in and look at the close-ups, I actually think the close-ups are prettier than this wide shot.

dsquared2: Cuteness

I like to think that the future will be Canadian. Especially if it means pretty shoes like this.

Guest blog at Inside Out Style!

Imogen, over at the always-interesting Inside Out Style, asked me to write a guest post on the way that being a scientist affects my approach to fashion and style. I am stoked!

Happy Robot is happy!

The Past and Future Classics, Part 3: Armor

  

Armor in science fiction. You can't get away from it. It's everywhere--and with good reason; presumably, in the future we'll either be exploring space, in which case we'll need protection from aliens and meteorites, or we'll be fighting each other on the burned-out shell of Earth, in which case we'll need protection from each other. Either way, working on some badass armor seems like a good idea. We have Tony Stark, of Iron Man fame; we have the ubiquitous, can't-toss-a-rock-without-hitting-one Star Wars Stormtroopers; we have the entire mecha genre; we have post-apocalyptic Mad Max; we have Robocop; we have my personal favorite, the totally hot new Star Trek; in short, we have so much armor we're swimming in it.

And, after all that is said and done, we have a plethora of choices for incorporating armored elements into our daily wear. Let's begin at the beginning, with what actual medieval armor looked like.

 

Medieval leather brigandine armor

Brigandine armor was a fairly popular type. You have a system of layers: something soft underneath to prevent chafing, some chainmail for pointy weapons (it doesn't do you a damn bit of good against crushing blows, just gives you a pretty pattern of bruises), and then some really damn heavy duty leather with metal scaling. We're all familiar with helms and suchlike--I mean, did you see Gladiator? I am forced to assume that you did, because it seems like the entire Western world had no choice--so I'm not going to go over those. Especially because those are a bitch to wear. But leather and metal will form the backbone of a whole class of fashion accessories. It saddens me that I didn't have space in this post to go into chainmail jewelry, but I promise I will at some point in the future.

Steampunk metal bra

First, because we can't get away from our history, the ubiquitous metal bra. Bikini armor, as silly as it is, appears everywhere on the covers of sci-fi and fantasy books. I liked this piece because of its distinctly steampunk elements. The ladies at Kingdom of Style did a post on this Etsy seller recently, but I would like to note that I had this guy bookmarked for ages before that, specifically for this post.

Steampunk leather harness

I am in love with this harness. It's beautiful. We've ventured into the realm of the wearable. And at the same time, it projects strength, and it's covered in restrictive doodads. I think one of the sexiest things about armor is the relationship between protection and restriction.

Although we tend to associate protection with restriction, in terms of combat, it's necessary to balance those things very finely, because you can end up with something that protects you completely but has zero mobility--think a tank that's run out of gas--or something that barely gives you any protection, like leather gauntlets, but allows you a vast freedom of movement. It all depends on the type of combat you plan to engage in. There is no perfect armor. (Yet. DARPA apparently has a super-cool pet project involving shear-resistant materials--substances that harden only upon impact.)

Lily soft pleated black leather wraparound vest 

Meanwhile, I am completely in love with this. It has an organic, free-form shape, but at the same time, there's a soft and subtle menace. I would wear this. All the time.

The Wing leather harness

I'm very fond of this harness, by Zana of Garbage Dress. The "wings" at the shoulder are sleek and minimalist, making this something you could wear on a regular basis. It's leather, which both goes with everything and is hot this season (is it ever not?). Harnesses, in point of fact, have been everywhere I've looked lately, and I like them as a way to bring some badassery to an otherwise ordinary day.

 

Icarus shoulder brooch

And, finally, the most delicate of these epaulet pieces of all. A brooch, designed for shoulder wear, made of layered leather. It's even affordable, unlike many of my other favorite pieces (and armor in general). So ladylike, or birdlike, feathered and draping, but with a hard edge. Mmmmm, want.

Armor: not just for Xena anymore.

Target: Anna Sheffield Jewelry

Today I saw Anna Sheffield's jewelry for Target, via a review on Jewelrywhore. I immediately knew I had to come up with some pretext for doing a post about it.

How did I know this, you ask? Simple: I saw this.

It is clearly a necklace made for Harry Potter fans. Goblet of fire? Hellooooo? (I did read some bad things about the silver stamp being on the wrong side of the cup. Although it may not be applicable in this situation, allow me to suggest that, if you like jewelry, you invest in a pair of fine needle-nosed pliers and a little bag of jump rings. That has saved more pieces of jewelry than I like to consider. You should have pliers anyway, but not all needle-nosed pliers are created equal--not all of them are small and fine enough. And many metals will show marks, so if you're whaling on the actual visible metal, you may want to wrap the plier-arms in fabric.)

Luckily, there were other cute options to justify it. This lovely ringed-planet necklace, for example. That's science-fictiony.

And, just because, a pair of wacky cuckoo-clock earrings.

Paraphernalia

If you've been around the Internet for a while, you've probably run across Paraphernalia. However, in case you haven't, I'd like to enlighten you. They do really lovely and charming pieces in plastic, like that red heart up top--fairly anatomically correct--and also this inner ear. That's a cochlea, the curled bit, and three tube things are the semicircular vestibulocochlear canals.

Cochlea are freaking awesome: they are Fourier waveform analyzers. If you unrolled it and laid it out flat, you'd get this big, multi-layered membrane. Sound waves shake the membrane like somebody grabbing the edge of a sheet and flapping it, and depending on the wavelength of the vibration (so whether it's a high-pitched sound or a low-pitched sound) the shaking continues up to a certain point on the sheet and then stops. Where it shakes determines what pitch you hear, thanks to your auditory neurons, which are sitting there, monitoring the sheet for wibbling. And since any complex waveform can be separated out into simpler components--the Fourier part--your cochlear neurons do that, to keep things simple, and then ship it out to your brain, which puts the pieces back together.

The semicircular canals have their own totally freaking cool trick up their sleeve, too. These are the tubes that tell your head where it is in space, which is why they each project in a different direction, perpendicular to the other two. (You can be perpendicular to two surfaces--as long as you're in a three-dimensional coordinate plane and the other two are perpendicular to each other.) But how do they know where you are? How can they tell whether you're right side up? The answer is (partly) otoliths. "Oto-" means ear, and "-liths" mean stones: literally, ear stones. The cells monitoring your balance have little tiny rocks (well, self-formed mineral clusters) in them, and when you turn upside down, all the rocks fall to the new bottom, and each cell goes "oh holy crap we're upside down now," and tells your brain. There's actually a condition involving these that showed up on House, M.D. a while back--Taub's buddy.

So. There's your science lesson for today. I will NOT be posting a link to or picture of their brain necklace, as it is LUDICROUSLY poorly done. It lacks all of the requisite landmarks. What, you think people who poke around in brains just go, "Oh, look, there's a squishy bit, let's cut"? No! There are landmarks that are common from brain to brain--places where the innies and the outies are always the same--and that is how we know whether to cut there or five millimeters behind there.

But they do other pretty things, too.

Ms Vosa

 

Migration

 

Astronomica

J. Crew: Gold

Dusted metallic skirt

Traditionally, metallics are used in science fiction to convey just how shiny and new the future really is. I love metallics. I wish I wore them more often. There are some common problems with them--scratchy fabric, faster than normal wear--but still, so lovely. And what I see most in sci-fi is silver tone. Everything from a light platinum to a dark graphite shows up everywhere, but gold, I don't see as much.

Which is a shame, especially considering how well it goes with black. I love to see black and gold together outside of Lycra. Not that I have anything against Lycra, but... camel toe? wedgie? And, if it's possible, just a little too much bad 80s sci-fi?

I like this locket. Yes, part of that is the name--the Constellation locket--but I also like the effect of the scattered variously sized rhinestones. I have a problem with paying as much for costume jewelry as retailers like J. Crew typically demand, knowing that I can get pretty little baubles of roughly comparable quality for ten bucks at my local grocery-and-more store. Still, on sale, this doesn't set my teeth quite as much on edge.

And a pretty pair of golden shoes. Again, I dislike paying retail--I'm extra-grumpy about it today because I'm so close to starting my fall schedule and getting paid wages that would be living wages if it weren't for the tuition I also pay--but so pretty.

DIY Daze: Iron-On Lettering

I love Firefly. A lot. I haven't actually watched Serenity yet--I have it, but I'm waiting until I'm in the right mood--but I love Firefly, and I like to express myself with shirts. The exact shirt I wanted didn't exist, plus would have been expensive if it had. So I made it myself. Please pardon the porntastic pose; I was taking pictures in less-than-perfect light (this is with autocorrect) and without the stretching it was impossible to read.

Iron-on letters are awesome. I have a couple of other t-shirts with sci-fi slogans that I've made, and iron-on letters are a million times faster and easier than embroidery. Hoo boy, I love embroidery, but it is a monumental pain in the ass to do something with a lot of straight lines.

If you want the shirt that you make to be relatively durable--that is, to hold up through a year or more of regular wearings and washings--you need to pick the right letters; I suggest sticking with letters that are fairly flat and, generally, not flocked. I don't know what it is about flocking, but the flocked letters I've bought tend to peel faster. (One kind peeled after less than a single wear, let alone wash. That would be the Soft Flock Collegiate letters and numbers set, manufactured by Prym.) This kind, which is also flocked, has held up to several washes so far, but I haven't gotten the kind of mileage out of it that I have out of my flat, glittery letters. Still, I'd recommend it: "Generation T fuzzy iron-on letters," from Dritz.

If you want to iron letters onto the back of a shirt, and you've already ironed letters on to the front, keep in mind that the heat may melt the adhesive of the letters on the front. Let the front cool completely, and then slide the shirt over the ironing board. If you can't do that, put a phone book in the shirt. You'll iron some words from the phone book onto the inside of your shirt, but they'll probably wash out. (Obviously that works better with dark or thick shirts.)

For the same reasons, I suggest only washing iron-on shirts in cool water. I run all my laundry on cold-cold, and it does wonders for the lifetime of my clothes. Plus, lower heating bill, not that I can really tell since I'm terrible about cranking the heat up whenever I'm cold, which is almost all the time. I find that most of my shirts work fine on tumble-dry low; the low part is crucial, though. You never want the heat to hit melting threshold.

Still, I have shirts that I thought would die within months that are still going strong. Yay, letters! I'll post about my other shirts in the future--for now, let's all take a minute to think lovingly about the little spaceship that could.

Band Jackets

Today I kept running into band jackets. I have to admit, I like them; first, because they're military-inspired, which is always and forever very sci-fi, and second, because they remind me of the High School That Never Was--you know, that imaginary high school where the cheerleaders walk around in uniform all the time, the geeks are all desperately attractive but wear glasses, and somehow everyone can afford to shop at places other than Walmart. Equally fictional, if less science-y. (At left: Castle Peak Jacket.)

I'd rather go to thrift stores than shop at Walmart. That's all I'm saying. I did my fair share of shopping at the mega-corp in my tender years, because when I say I came from a small town I mean the nearest mall was an hour and a half away, but still. Goodwill, Value Village--these places have always been my friends. Heck, just today I picked up the most impossibly adorable naval-themed shirt for four bucks at the Goodwill that's half an hour's walk from my place. (I discovered upon getting it home that I'm supposed to hand-wash and pat dry, but I can usually get away with running clothes like that through the washer on cold-cold and then leaving them on the couch until they're just damp before transferring them to my desk chair to complete the process.)

(I really should just cough up for a sweater drying rack. But I know if I wait six weeks, the places around here will have their post-September-move-in college-student-stuff sale.)

But band jackets. Balmain was doing them in spring, and then MJ died and everyone went all misty-eyed and nostalgic and suddenly everybody and their uncle was doing band jackets. I'll be upfront: I have very little knowledge of Michael Jackson's work. I'm sure I would recognize many of his songs if they were played for me, but the only one I can sing along to with any confidence is "Thriller."(Navy jacket: Jamison.)

But there is something sweet about band jackets--the suggestion of the eternal optimism of youth, the air of playing in one's father's clothes. I always loved playing dress-up as a kid, and I was lucky in that my mom provided my sister and me with a number of wonderful poofy princess dresses that were far too large for us. I think those memories have carried over into adulthood. (Gold braid jacket from Fred Flare.)

The one thing I still regret about seventh and eighth grade is being too chicken to wear my freaking awesome bell-sleeved Persian-inspired shirts. That trend was made for me. Anybody remember that, about ten, twelve years ago? Oh, it was gorgeous.

So what I'm saying is, wear whatever makes you smile, and to hell with your fear about what people will think of you. Most people will be happy that you're wearing something fun; some of them might even tell you so. And when in doubt, yell something about pirates.

Edibly Etsy: Octopus Me

Today I'm revisiting a shop I peruse longingly on a regular basis: Octopus Me. The majority of the listed pieces are cast from real octopus tentacles. I am a bit of a biology nerd, plus tentacles seem to feature prominently in some steampunk fiction I've encountered; also, I always like to put the science into science fiction.

I also enjoy making other people profoundly uncomfortable. It's a bad habit, I know. I got into it young, unfortunately, and it's like cigarettes--once you get addicted to the heady feeling of upsetting your elders and betters, nothing else will quite do. They don't make a patch for it.

At any rate, the first piece is the gorgeous fourteen-karat gold tentacle necklace. This one is pricey, at three hundred and fifty bucks; prices in the shop range from $65 right on up. There are necklaces, rings, cuff links--even an ill-advised nose ring.

 

Rings such as this one. I find it a little bit repulsive, honestly, but at the same time I'm attracted to it. 

And, finally, a pair of tentacle earrings. You can get them in threes and fours, as well, if your ears don't have just the two holes.