Josie's Closet: Pink Sparkly Bib Necklace

One of the things I'm great at is being a total goober at work just as someone comes around the corner to witness it. For example, the CEO tends to come down to get his paper whenever I am doing something completely awkward, like climbing over a cart to load up some boxes or crawling under the desk to plug something in. This Christmas, I was opening a present from my boss when the Director of Communications was coming around the corner, and I'd just seen enough to exclaim "ooh, sparkly!" out loud as she arrived. (NB: yes, I am a giant toolbox.) It was sparkly!
The picture doesn't really do justice to the pretty pale pink of the stones, but I love this for its shape. It sits just right and looks great either on a high necked top or a low cut one, so it doesn't limit what you can wear with it. The color is a little challenging to pair properly, but it's a good challenge to have because I sometimes shy away from pairing light pink with strong colors like the dark iron color you see in the metal here, and the payoff is so great when you can get it to work. It's a great addition to my jewelry box and I can't wait to wear the hell out of it!

Josie's Closet: Melissa Skeleton Shoes

I'm completely addicted to melissa shoes - this is my fourth pair of them and I just. cannot. stop. On the upside, they're made from recycled plastics, the byproducts of which are 100% cleaned, disposed of and used in-house, so I guess if I have to have a habit, it should be connected to a good...cause?

Shut up, it's what's letting me sleep at night.

Anyway, I got these fantastic shoes from Ideeli. They're a collaboration between melissa and Alexandre Herchcovitch, but I bought them because the rib-cage-esque toe box reminded me of Alexander McQueen's skeletal motifs and particularly the luggage collection he did with Samsonite. Yeah, that's where my brain went.
I love the sculptural molding that the plastic allows. I am particularly enamoured of the way the curve of my instep looks in shoes (this explains the number of d'orsay pumps I own), and I love the way this curves right with me on the outside.
They are long, but it's nice to have them in the plastic since I usually brutalize the tips of pointy shoes. I also hope this clears up some important questions for the people who always - always, always, always, WITHOUT CEASING - ask me if my pointy shoes hurt my feet because "your toes have to go up in there." For the eighty billionth time, the toes do not go all the way up. That is not how anatomy works.

Josie's Closet: Teal Carlos Santana Sandals

I have a couple pair of Carlos Santana shoes...

...yes, that Carlos Santana. No, I don't get it either. [NB: Yes, I am aware there is better Santana out there, but those clips are notably lacking in foxy, foxy Rob Thomas.] Anyway, as I was saying, I have a couple pairs of his shoes and I don't know what madness translates smokin' guitar into some of the best womens shoes on the market, but whatever it is, I like it. I recently picked up these sandals and as usual, they are a marvel of beauty and comfort.
Let's get real about my feet here for a minute - they are somewhat problematic. My pinkie toes roll in, my toenails have weird shapes and perhaps most importantly, they're size tens, which apparently means "nun shoes" to the fashion industry. These shoes make my feet look great, and that's the best part of all.

The Gift of Sisterhood and Sometimes Jewelry

My sister and I have fashion sensibilities that meander along separately and bump up against each other more or less at random. When we were in Italy, she admitted to swiping numerous items from my closet in high school, which just goes to show that the Sisters Stealing Each Others' Clothing trope even works when the bulk of your wardrobe is hockey related and/or colored jeans. (Note to fashion: the latter is why this whole 90s Fashion Revival is a terrible, terrible idea.) Sarah has always been much better at following trends and particularly at the successful application of belts (???) than I have, and I seem to be better at finding and applying classic pieces and dressing them up with non-belt accessories. In that light, it's interesting that this necklace, which I wear all the time, was a gift from my sister.
It's exactly the kind of piece I like - nice color, interesting detail, symmetry (ooooh I love symmetry), just big enough for a statement without being too aggressive. Sarah gave this to me for Christmas about eight years ago and I still wear it on a routine basis - if you follow the Makeup Is Easy posts, you've probably seen it a couple of times already.

Sarah worked with me over winter break, and the commute gave us a good amount of time to catch up. We talked a lot about our family, and how lots of our respective friends have commented on how much members of our family love one another. I sometimes get frustrated with my relationship with my siblings because we don't talk as often as I would like and neither of them ever answers their damn phones (to be fair, I don't always either), but whenever we're together I so enjoy my time with them, and it's like we do talk every day. I'm amazed all the time at what interesting, vibrant humans they are.

In a way, my occasional dissatisfaction with our levels of casual communication comes from a soft, quiet knowledge of how present they are in my life; so many of my stories center around them, and all of those stories - even the ones where one or the other plays the role of Bane of My Existence - resolve into a great enriching influence in my life, without which I would not be the person I am today or will be in the future. The above picture is just a necklace, but that my sister gave it to me years ago, at a much younger emotional age, and with a persistently divergent fashion sense from me, speaks to a larger phenomenon that exists between the two of us.