Fashionista

landscape with dogs departing
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Last week, I went slightly berserk and ordered a bunch of stuff from Sock Dreams. I love Sock Dreams, by the way, and if you too feel like dumping money on sockage, this is your place. What I wanted was thigh highs - I've always been fond of thigh highs and lately (for reasons that are none of your business, hee hee) my fondness has increased. They're sexy and practical - what could be better? Well, warmth, is what I was thinking, so off I went to Sock Dreams in search of woolly thigh highs. It's not easy to combine sexiness and warmth, but during months with an R in them, this combination becomes kind of a small (very small, like I just thought of it) obsession of mine. Sort of like the quest for the Grail, only slightly less Catholic and not involving swords. I know there are people who find footy pajamas and layers of contrasting plaid flannel sexy (we're not even going to go into the wide and wonderful variety of weird shit that people find sexy here - that would be far, far beyond the scope of this blog) but, thank the gods, I'm not dating one of them.

Anyway, I got my thigh highs a couple days ago and I love them. Yes, I know they were fashionable about 8 or 10 years ago. Look, I'm a little slow on the uptake when it comes to music and fashion - and anyway, I'm not behind, I'm just a bit ahead of their second coming. Yesterday, I wore the gray ones and they were awesome if a bit on the tight side at the top and with a tendency to roll down. Today, I'm wearing the heathery green/brown/black ones which look fantastic. Except for one small issue: they do not want, actually, to be thigh highs. What they want, I think, is to be ankle socks and kind of large crumply ankle socks at that. This is easy to ignore while I'm sitting down but when I'm walking around it becomes lamentably apparent. Naturally, I'm wearing a slightly above knee length skirt today, so the relentless downward slide of my stockings is not just a source of sorrow to me but a source of, doubtless, joyful mirth to many others. Keep in mind that I have the kind of ultraviolet white Irish skin beloved of tattoo artists that has an alarming tendency to actually glow in the dark in February and which is providing a fairly stark contrast to the stockings so it's not like this is subtle or anything.

This morning, as I trudged doggedly uphill, my stockings sliding ever downwards, I decided to pretend that instead of a 40 something Asheville "professional" woman, I was instead a 14 year old Harujuku fashion victim. This was helpful for the thirty seconds or so it took for me to reflect that perhaps, at my advanced age, this was just a wee bit pathetic.

So I think I need a garter belt. The only problem with this is that the only garter belt I own is a little red lace number that I bought at Sears some years, like 14, actually, back. Yeah, Sears, I swear. It's a Craftsman, dude, it has a lifetime warranty. The thing is, the effect of a red lace garter belt combined with heathery wool stockings is, um, almost certainly not going to be what I was originally going for here. In fact, I think it's going to be about as opposite as you can get. Oh well. At least my ankles are warm.