Too hot for pants and Couturgatory giveaway winner

Seriously. 30 pairs of jeans and trousers with cool detailing might as well be clown shoes for all the good they do me. What to wear when it's 90F/32C inside the house?

Tank top hoodie: Skinny Minnie (defunct online store)

Skirt: LUX (thrifted)

Platform sandals: Born (gift from Cathy)

Necklace: (thrifted)

I've had this shirt for several years but I realized I've only ever worn it in Brazil and Taiwan, so it's making its U.S. debut on this blog.

Before, I would have heaped scorn on a hood attached to a tank top, but in this heat I now see the genius: it acts like a stillsuit from Dune and protects me a little from intense heat and water loss.

I was afraid to wear jewelry that was too big, lest I attract the wrath of Apollo.

The fabric is a little sheer, but I'm way beyond caring. I talk a good game about trying to be tasteful, but crank the heat near 100F and all bets are off. I wore a shirt that was a glorified handkerchief once, when it was 110 in Paris, until some dude followed me through three floors of a book shop.

And now to the giveaway! The winner, via random number generator, is :

Beth, of The Melodic Stylings of Bethie the Boo! Thank you all for entering, and of course, for reading. I'll be in touch shortly to get mailing address info, provided the heat doesn't leave me lying supine on the floor like a sack of laundry. :D

Always remember to tuck in your shirts

The temperature has dropped 30F in 3 days. It's okay; this is weather I know how to dress for. (:

Lace-trimmed camisole: Express

Ruffle tee: TRF t-shirt collection (thrifted)

Blue grey lace vest: Odille (eBay)

Brass snaps corduroys: WOW jeans (thrifted)

Boots: Two Lips (thrifted)

Suede hair clip: Taiwan

Sundial necklace: gift from high school

Tiny gears necklace: gift from Cathy

Or at least, know how to stay warm in. Knowing how to dress for this weather probably includes not looking like I'm going to burst forth from my vest like a cooking sausage. More on that in a bit.

I have missed you so much, everyday Steampunk style!

I wore the same triple layered lace combo here, when my friend Mo called my outfit "vintage Bohemian fairy." Strange thing is, I didn't look too chunky for the vest then:

I have been exercising a lot, and I gain weight and some girth when I work out, but I think there are other forces at work here. The vest pulls in at the waist, then loosens as it hangs into its pointy bits at the bottom.

I made the mistake of trying to show the layers of my shirts below the vest. In the outfit above, the shirts are tucked in, and the A-line skirt follows the lines of the vest flaps as they point out from the natural waist, making a smooth transition.

Here, the horizontal lines of the shirts cut off the diagonal lines of the vest flaps coming out from the waist. Then the shirts end right where my hips and thighs begin, the widest part of the lower body. The bump under the shirts from my waistband doesn't help.

This was one of those outfits I really liked when I put it on, then made this face in dismay when I looked at the photos D:

Oh well, live and learn. That's one of the neat things about blogging, getting a more objective look at outfits.

However, please don't let my questionable ability to dress myself deter you from entering my Couturgatory Anniversary giveaway! Follow the link if you would like a chance to win a Cara New York fascinator. :D

Couturgatory turns one! Anniversary giveaway

Yay! May 2nd, 2013 was my first post here. It was selfies with a bad camera phone taken in a wavy chunk of mirror.

Fittingly, it was during a heat wave in San Francisco, where the high was an unbelievable 91 degrees F/33 C and here I am, in the middle of another West Coast heat wave. I don't know why the people around me are complaining; I moved from 55-and-overcast All-day-every-day-all-year Town and I am fine. :D

Even with the chaos and sparse posting this year, I have done a total of 148 posts in a year, or roughly 1 every 2.5 days. That's a lot of blabbing! And I have you, dear readers, to thank for slogging through it.

In this year, I got a wonderful blogger introduction by one of the first bloggers I read, Ally of Shybiker, who I'm now honored to call my friend. I won a Bloggy, and had the honor of being linked to by Already Pretty, the style blog that introduced me to personal style blogs and started me on this road.

And of course, I've gotten to know awesome people around the world. The personal style blog community (both bloggers and readers) I stumbled into is supportive, intelligent, perceptive, and so very creative. I think my perspective on style blogging, and blogging in general, has widened. So has my wardrobe. Tee hee.

Yes yes, enough with the self-congratulatory (couturgalatory?) back patting, on to The Giveaway!

I am giving away one Cara New York fascinator, seen here:

Now, I know what you're thinking. 'Aya, you crazy wench, you love that ridiculous thing. Should you really be giving away your hat?'

And the answer is, I'm not giving away my hat. I am in fact giving away an identical hat I randomly found on eBay for not very much that I cackled over and squirreled away last year for this very occasion. That is right: if you win, not only do you get this sweet hat, but you and I will be Fascinator Twins.

Here's how you can enter: just leave your e-mail address (mebbe in a format like mail [at] domain [dot] com because bots) in the comments or contact me at notactuallyaya at gmail dot com. Giveaway open to all countries, and I'll be accepting entries for a week! (and obnoxiously posting links back to my own giveaway in all of my posts between now and then)

It's been a long and crazy week, but maybe I can post a photo of myself soon wearing both of them like Princess Leia.

I heart you all. I cannot imagine the last year without you, I really can't. 2013 was the most stressful year of my life, and all of my experiences blogging helped me make it through. Thank you.