splatter

Today I’m guest posting over at Floral Prints and Common Sense, teaching y’all how to make and style blood-spattered shoes. Head over and check it out (and I highly recommend following Floral Prints and Common Sense while you’re at it!)

meth and moonshine

I nurse a great fondness for psychobilly and gothabilly. Combining spooky Americana with retro silhouettes and histrionic brights is how I feel most myself. (Y’all knew that already, though. Skulls and shirtwaists forever!)

Today I’m taking a cue from o’death, my favorite psychobilly band. Quoth Pitchfork:

It’s like rural Appalachia, were hillbillies to exchange moonshine for meth.

This is what I would wear if I ever (knock on wood) saw them in concert.

A couple of months ago I waxed lyrical about how much I love artifice and hyperdeliberation. And I still do – I probably always will – but lately I like my constructs slightly unhinged. There’s a richness in the product of just playing and seeing what happens. Maybe it comes from school being over and me spending more time at my parents’ house in supremely rural Nowhere. I love the idea of my overdressed self against the background of dusty trees and sky too blue for words.

To put it less pretentiously: I enjoy feeling like the wild, witchy mountain girl I sometimes forget I am. Someone who dyes her hair pink and worships trees and apologizes for neither. Rooted simultaneously in the material and the spiritual. Theatrical but grounded. That’s the essence of my kind of gothabilly.

Too cool for shoes.

I’ve had this dress since I was fifteen. It’s the shorter, pinker counterpart of my beloved fairy dress. Until today, I’d worn it only once: to Winter Ball my junior year of high school. It was long overdue for a comeback.

Dress, Prayer Beads, & Skull Necklace: Gifted Pink Necklace: Old Gold Floral Vest: Downtown Threads Hat & Tan Vest: Battery Street Jeans

look who thinks she’s so sophisticated

First of all: I don’t think I can, in good conscience, keep saying I have short hair.

It touches the back of my neck now, which is a hella strange feeling. It hasn’t, until now, been longer than my chin since last February.

I kind of like it, but I also liked the buoyancy of the shorter version. It was always out of my face, and it had so much bounce and personality that I hardly had to brush it. More than that, I liked the touch of ’20s androgyny it gave me. It seems I’ve transitioned out of that ’20s androgyny and into ’50s hyperfemininity. Nothing wrong with either – I just have to figure out which one I prefer. Anyone have suggestions?

That aside, I fulfilled one of my wishes this Christmas: BRIGHT RED PANTS.

I went full-on rockabilly today. I’m tending that way more and more.

She’s so sophisticated that she forgot to remove the broom from this shot.

Here’s how old this sweater is: the tag says “made in the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong”.

I like maintaining simplicity in the bulk of my outfit and getting fancy in the trimmings. Cool scarf, cool jewelry, cool boots. Solid colors in the middle.

I have been wearing these boots EVERYWHERE.

Sweater & Rings: Battery Street Jeans Pants: Gift Coat, Scarf, & Boots: Handed down