The Pretty Campers Club

My daddy would have been proud. Everyone else was just stunned.

When I crawled out of the tent, my friends stopped and cocked their heads, like they had just discovered a new creature on the shores of Lake Powell in Utah. One with polkadot markings.

Or perhaps my fluffy parasol clashed with the sand, lake muck and last night's campfire smoke.
Finally, someone spoke: "You look like love child of 'The Mickey Mouse Club' and 'I Love Lucy.'"
It was true. And totally my intention.

I was wearing a red-and-white polka-dot vintage-style bathing suit from West Side Sinners in Denver (http://www.westsidesinners.com/) and an oversized white hat, in addition to the umbrella, which matched my skirt.

Sounds high maintenance. But it was quite the opposite. I had the lightest bag in the group, and I was also the only face to not get sun-fried, thanks to my double decker umbrella-hat fortress.

You see, fashion involves much more than simply putting on clothes. It spans the entire process of visual self-expression, including what you choose to use, how you use it and why. And person's fashion consciousness is amplified when condensed into a tiny duffel bag.

I have packing down to a precise equation: multi-purpose. Everything must hinge around one color and style scheme, maximizing style options and minimizing space.

For my dad, the bottom line is lightweight. He and his buddies have a club, the Rocky Mountain Titanium and High Tech Devices Backpacking Club. Because my dad worked in IT for 30 years, he insists I use the acronym RMTAHTDBC.

The RMTAHTDBC prides itself in low-weight, but not minimalist, packing. Points are awarded for the coolest devices that are invented in the garage, always involving duct tape. For example, piece of foam that quadruples as a chair, pillow, table and hat would be considered top-of-the-line couture.

Your overall pack weight earns the most points. Any pack weighing more than 35 pounds is an embarrassment. My brother's once came in at 20 pounds. Granted, he slept under the stars -- and later the hail -- without a tent, but that just elevated his style status.

Unlike my hail-beaten brother, my secondary objective for outdoor packing is to shield myself (and expensive hair dye) from said outdoors. A massive sunhat is a must, such as the wide-brim Jeanne Simmons hats for $29 at Paper Doll, 1141 Pearl St. in Boulder. My fave is the 7-inch-wide black-and-white striped wire brim hat, which comes with a matching handbag.

Some hats even boast 50 SPF and can fold into a tiny wad. Check out http://www.hatstack.com/ for more of the glory.

For a slightly smaller but still ridiculously awesome 5-inch brim hat, check out the Raffia Exotic Hat by Tropical Items Madagascar (http://www.tropicalitems.com/), a Boulder-based retailer of handmade, fair-trade crafts made in Madagascar.

A portion of all sales goes to the nonprofit Hope for Madagascar, which aims to improve the lives of the Malagasy people and their country. Find the raffia hat at Boulder and Beyond Art, 1211B Pearl St., for $39.99. It comes in 12 colors, including dusty pink.

Which just so happens to match my Lake Powell parasol and skirt.

I think I need to start my own club: The Rocky Mountain Pink Parasol and Pretty Campers Club.

Read more at www.dailycamera.com.

Fashion karma: Why I hate the bus and the bus hates me

10/07/2010

Sometimes, I ride the bus. Although this helps secure me a seat in EcoHeaven, I loathe the bus. It's boring and smelly and cold, and it takes twice as long as driving. I can't read or text because I have severe (like SEVERE in all caps with extra exclamation marks!!) vertigo. I never used to have vertigo. It's a new feature on Aimee 3.1.

Yesterday, I had a brilliant idea on how to pass the 16 hours it takes to go the 14 miles from Boulder to Longmont. As a new mommy, I never have time to paint my nails. (It's OK to already start shaking your head at me as you anticipate where this one is going.)

I figured I could paint my nails while waiting at the bus stop, because I am a complete wreckmaniac about bus schedules and I am always 25 minutes early because I'm so stressed out and terrified of missing the bus, and the whole time I'm at the bus stop I pace around nervously checking the time and looking around for the bus like if I relax or blink I will somehow miss the 40-foot-long, screaming vehicle moving at 2 miles per hour as it churns past me.

I hate the bus.

So I thought, in the peak of my ultimate brilliancy, I thought I could paint my nails while waiting at the bus stop, and then I would have one full hour of staring out the window counting cows for the polish to dry.

How could I go wrong?

Oh, let me tell you.

Turns out yesterday I was so early to the bus stop that I ended up being almost late for the bus earlier than the one I originally planned on taking. I know that doesn't make sense, but get over it. As I walked up, there was already a line forming where the bus driver would soon open the doors, the gateway to nausea and an inexplicable popcorn odor.

I hopped to the back of the line, totally stressed out because I always am when I get near buses with their "schedules." That's when I realized I only had one or two minutes to paint my nails so they could dry on the drive.

I crouched down near by bag and opened up my new bottle of shiny gold polish. When the lid came off, it hit me: the odor. Holy McMoly, I hadn't thought about the offensive smell of nail polish in the enclosed space. But I had already launched this mission, so I was committed.

I stayed crouched down by my bag decided to quickly paint my nails in the secretive wall of my long hair, and then I would slip the polish back into my bag and walk onto the bus and no one would ever know it was me who was responsible for the stink. Perfect plan! And I'd have awesome nails.

One fingernail, two, I got my left hand done. And then the doors cracked open and the line began wiggling forward. Ah! I scooted forward in crouching tiger position, trying to inconspicuously screw the lid back onto the bottle when:

Noooooo!

I dropped the entire bottle, and in slow motion, a ribbon of bright gold hell spewed out the top and landed with a violent crash onto my

FAVORITE

WHITE

VINTAGE

BEAUTIFUL

ONE-OF-A-KIND

FANCY

BLOUSE.

By now the line was rushing forward, and I had dropped the polish. It had also painted the sidewalk, and the shuffling shoes skidded through it, leaving the striped proof of my error in rays surrounding me. Everyone knew it was me, and as I stood there with my jaw dropped, just staring numbly at the horrible splatter of gold nail polish that had violated my blouse, every passersby getting on the bus scowled at me. (Rightfully so.) Scowl. I scowled at myself. The stench was immeasurable.

Finally, I reached into my bag to get my Eco-Pass -- oops, I smeared three fingers' worth of polish across my white (yes, white, of course it had to be white) bag. I tried to rub it off with my other hand, but then ended up with the pads of my other hand covered in gold lacquer, and the small dots of gold on my bag smudged into what looked like, let's just say, something less than gorgeous that happens when you feed a baby too many yams.

I showed the driver my Eco-Pass and took a seat behind him, afraid to touch anything for fear of soiling the seats and then getting stuck with a $9 million bill to reupholster the whole RTD line. I locked my eyes out the window, knowing if I looked at anything in the bus I would immediately be stricken with the urge to vomit like a pregnant woman on a Tilt-A-Whirl after eating eight funnel cakes, when -- ohhhh. No. Nooo. NO.

The scent of the polish had crawled up my arm and tickled its way into my nose, pulling the nausea plug and sending me head-between-legs sick to my stomach. But I couldn't complain.
This was my fault. I couldn't escape it either; half of my blouse was soaked, my bag was smeared and both of my hands were covered. I even had some near my right eyebrow.

So there I sat for an hour, huffing nail polish; actively striving not to vomit and thereby further offend my fellow passengers; and basking in the karma of yet another fashion disaster.

The bus hates me.

Photo by Flickr user Ollie Crafoord.

Reba: Home weird home

Reba is weird. I love her.

Reba's apartment is a museum of the world's most amusing flea market items. It's a gallery of conversation pieces. It is, in and of itself, a work of art.

Public speaker Patricia Fripp once said style is being yourself, but on purpose. My childhood friend Reba's home is like diving inside her beautifully mad brain and backstroking across her dreams. It's the most alive building I've ever walked through, a character. And a dangerous inspiration.

Reba's living room boasts not one, but two, sets of mannequin legs. One rests upside down between the green nightstand, barely wide enough to support her television, and Charlie McCarthy, the ventriloquist doll, who I simultaneously want to hug and set on fire.

Full-scale skeletons dance on Reba's walls year-round, along with a sad clown portrait made out of yarn, various robots, a picture of a dog in a tuxedo and an oversized landscape of a German castle. She uses old doors for picture frames and a newspaper rack for dishes.

On some street in Oregon that I forget but it was cool. Being stalked by a cardboard wolf.

 

She adorned her kitchen table -- and four mismatched chairs -- with decoupaged coffee bags, and she let her 6-year-old son, River, decorate the bottom of the table. He chose hundreds of googley eyeballs. When new people visit, Reba excitedly ushers them under the table to lie and gaze at her son's creation.

Spend 10 minutes in this apartment and you'll feel like you've known Reba for 20 years. It's the opposite of a beige Pottery Barn showroom house that could be anyone's. Reba's house couldn't
be anyone else's. That's what makes it so glorious.

I visited her in Oregon last week, and returned home to an office that had relocated from a 120-year-old station on the Pearl Street Mall to a modern business park in east Boulder. At the new desk, first I noticed the cleanliness (more than a century of newsprint, yellowed papers and journalist tears really crusts up a place). Then, I jumped out of my chair. This order was uncomfortable. My desk needed flair. And a little crust. Just enough for character.

My first reaction was to hit up one of the Pearl Street shops that I've grown addicted to over the past 10 years (gross, I'm old) at the Daily Camera. Urban Outfitters. Goldmine Vintage. But that was no longer my 'hood. I wept three tears.

I needed to trailblaze east Boulder, like Christopher Columbus blazed the Atlantic, or like Russell Brand explored every woman east of Wales.

My sense of adventure and lack of finances led me to the Salvation Army on 33rd Street. After I ran across a cookbook so ancient that it was growing a new variation of mushrooms, I knew I was home.

My house, albeit lacking eyeballs on the underside of the table, has its own energy. Obnoxiously bright walls, furniture from the 1950s and '60s and even pictures of a glittery unicorn and a hologram wolf (both gifts) (amazing). I'll never claim my house is immaculate, and I'll never pretend I'm rich. But I am proud of my odd little nest that reads about me like my own palm.

At the Salvation Army, I found records for 49 cents each. Frames for $1.30. Books for 49 cents. I almost bought three dozen Chinese literature books (for the colorful pictures of birds and mustached men), but instead, I opted for two Whitman classical books, printed in 1955. Ever blasphemous, I ripped out my favorite sketches from "Five Little Peppers" -- of a girl crying, burglars breaking into a house and a gaggle of kids writing a letter -- and I framed them.

Nearby on my desk, I hung three record covers that make me laugh, including "Sing Along with the Honkey-Tonks," and I bought an old milk pitcher to hold my pens. I found a wooden jewelry box to organize my office supplies (paper clips, sticky notes and lipsticks). I used the records to divide up my desk. The grand revamp: $8.45.

As I complete my first article in the Camera's new quarters, I feel a little greedy, like I get the best of both worlds: a modern office without asbestos flaking into my tea, and a little old-fashioned weirdness, to remind me of where we came from.

I even decorated the underside of my desk, in honor of River. Feel free to peek under there. The carpet's clean of journalist sludge.



At least for now.

Attention: You can stop searching for beauty now

Photo by Iman Woods Creative

My relentless pursuit of beauty has kept me from showering for an embarrassing number of days now.

This isn't some statement of societal rebellion or a social experiment. I haven't had a moment to spare because I've been trying to write myself a love letter.

Not easy.

Turns out, my subconscious is addicted to lying to itself, insistent upon pretending that I am weak, broken, ugly and somehow not enough. And as it turns out, those aren't the ingredients for a very good love letter.

Women are weird. We desire at our deepest core to be considered beautiful. Yet we refuse to admit that we already are. We (choose to) identify with our pains and insecurities, while waiting for someone else to tell us that one thing that we need to hear in order to finally acknowledge our worth. We play the (silently resentful) martyr to look strong, we slice up our faces to look pretty, we compete with people who are nothing like us to look accomplished. We chisel away at who we are in an ironic attempt to feel whole.

What if -- and this is a bizarre shot in the dark here, so bear with me -- what if we told ourselves whatever it is that we are trying so desperately to wring out of the world? What if we wrote a love letter to ourselves, saying exactly what we need to hear?

Gasp. That would make too much sense.

An Erie woman is leading an effort to try to encourage other women to do just this. The Inner Beauty Project started after 30-year-old Iman Woods wrote a letter to herself to help cope with post-partum depression. The experience was so empowering that she launched a Web site (theinnerbeautyproject.com) and created a contest to try to encourage other women to write their own letters.

I met Woods, who is a photographer, when I was the editor of Women's Magazine. She introduced herself as a "girl in search of true beauty." Which is, incidentally, also my bio. Then, we both found out we were pregnant in the same week. And we both ended up with premature babies and post-partum depression.

If you meet certain people for a reason, God wasn't being very subtle with this one.

Now, Woods has launched a project based on the belief that "true beauty shines brightest in darkness," and my personal search for beauty has been focused down to one single point on the World Wide Web. I find myself reading and re-reading the letters that local women have written to themselves, as if they were written to me.

You have wrinkles now, your hair is getting gray, and your teeth are not as white as they used to be. Yet, you are more beautiful now than ever before. Did you hear me?
You are more beautiful now, than ever before.
Your beauty lies within your capacity for love, the courage, integrity and determination you show -- not the length of your eyelashes, or the size of your thighs. 


I find myself floored by the stories of strength, and then shocked that these amazing women would still have feelings of insecurity and inadequacy, even though I do it, too.

You need to stop beating yourself up over this. You couldn't have stopped it because you didn't know it was happening. She couldn't tell you, she was too small, just 12-weeks-old and he did his best to hide it. What you need to remember are the promises you made to Jasmine that day in the hospital, the day she died.
I find myself saddened by letter after letter from women saying they had never thought to do this for themselves, and that after so many years of fighting their own various battles, they could finally hear words that brought them some kind of peace.

All of our lives, women are sent one basic message: Self-criticism is the way to self-improvement. Deep down, we all know this isn't true, but the lesson runs deep and the pattern is difficult to break.

It can be broken, one woman at a time, one voice at a time. Each of us needs to stand up for the one person who we are most under obligation to protect. That person is ourselves. By learning to embrace who we are, recognize what we have accomplished, and know we can carve out our own futures, we can escape the viciousness of self-criticism and self-loathing.

Iman's Inner Beauty Project is celebration of not just what we can be, but who we already are.
And finally, even though my "love letter" might always be a work in progress, I have begun to hear my inner voice soothing my anxieties. It keeps telling me that I am strong, healed, beautiful and more than enough. And the craziest thing is: It's totally telling the truth. I might even start believing it, one of these days.

My voice also keeps telling me something else: That my hunt for beauty is over.

I guess I should add that to my love letter, and bcc Iman Woods.

My mom: Welcome (back) to the '60s

My actual mom and my actual dad at age 15. Their marriage was arranged at birth, which you can see here by their pure misery did not go over well. You can see my mom's knees in this photo, so you can tell she was a total rebellious man-eater.

My mom got sent to the principal's office in middle school because her green shift dress was too short.

So naturally, she wore it again -- on the day of class pictures for the yearbook. The teachers told her she couldn't wear that short dress in the class picture. So naturally, she sat in
the front row.

This photo of my mother is one of my favorite objects on this planet. Before printing the yearbook, some brilliant yearbook editor took a marker and colored my mother's gorgeous legs black, down to mid-calf, where any good girl's hemline should have landed.

My mother insists that she was a good girl -- a total June Cleaver. But her edited yearbook legacy also proves that my mother was a fearless fashionista. A bit of a Bettie Page. And that delights me.

Not only did my mom own -- and wear -- a mini the size of a wrist cuff, but the date of the yearbook indicates she wore it before it was mainstream. Therefore, until anyone can prove me otherwise, I am starting the rumor that my mom singlehandedly started the mini-skirt trend of the mid-to-late-'60s.

Or maybe she was 40-plus years ahead of the curve, a mere teenager setting the stage for the up-and-coming style for fall 2009. Because the '60s are It right now.

Thank AMC's show, "Mad Men, " or give Michelle Obama and her ubiquitous sheath dresses a nod. But you can find pencil skirts, brooches, pearls, chiffon, vintage scarves and wristlette gloves on the runways, red carpets and increasingly more clothing racks.

Photo from http://www.newlywedinneworleans.com/2011/06/mad-men.html.

My mom's favorite '60s style was Cher, circa 1966, with long hair and long bangs. In fact, in eighth grade, Mom got sent home on picture day because her bangs were in her eyes and she refused to push them to the side. I see a trend.

As for '60s clothing?

My mother is innocent: "Call your grandma. I borrowed that infamous shift dress from her."

Tip: Check out the official "Mad Men" fashion flipbook here: http://www.amctv.com/shows/mad-men/season-4-fashion-gallery

'50s style goes to my head

My grandma washes her hair once a week. I now understand why.

I am recovering from a bouffant.

My mother-in-law turned 50 on Saturday. In celebration, we held her a ’50s-theme party, complete with an inflatable juke box, retro record decorations and sloppy joes from Barbecue Bob’s (yeah, I wasn’t quite sure how that fit in either, but no one complained – except me when I sloppy joed on my white apron. Yes, apron. Read on).

In typical overboard Heckel manner, my mom and I decided to get our hair professionally “did” at a Loveland salon, Serenity Hair Designs.

Four hours later, we fox-trotted out with flippy ends and roots ratted toward the heavens. My bouffant incorporated a thick headband. My mom’s: a droopy white bow. She rocked the bobby socks and canvas shoes, a swing skirt, pearls and a pink polka-dot scarf.

I accented my white eye shadow with a pleated, June Cleaver button-up dress and square-toed buckle shoes. I added a white apron for the funny factor (I don’t know how to serve cookies even if they come straight from the Safeway bakery).

I thought my costume was totally the cat’s pajamas.

Until several days later – still scraping the hairspray out of my locks – I stumbled upon www.fiftiesweb.com and learned my look was entirely ’60s. The fifties were soft, feminine and curly. No blow dryers and tangle towers.

Golly, if I’d known that then, maybe I could comb through my hair today.

I blame the inspiration for pouf-head on my gramma, who to this day sleeps in a satin cap as to not disturb her stiff hair-cocoon. She gets her tresses washed and formed at the parlor every Saturday. (By Friday afternoons, she’s usually reaching for a fork or candle snuffer to itch her scalp without disturbing the ‘fro.)

And after hours of cooking under the astronaut-helmet hair-dryer, I don’t blame her for trimming her beauty routine to a weekly affair.

Of course, unlike mine did, my gramma’s ‘do looks timelessly stunning. I can’t imagine her with any other style. It’d throw my world off axis, like when your teacher gets a bad haircut or when my dad shaved off his beard after 21 years.

Some styles should never change. And could it be that everything comes back in style if you just wait long enough?

Tell that to the poor kid at McDonald’s who was too confused to give me my soda on Saturday.
My husband was supposed to pick me and my mom up from the hair place, but he couldn’t find it. I sucked down a Diet Coke in about 8 seconds and therefore needed another one, so we told him to meet us under the nearby big yellow arch.

By how he scowled at me, I’d say the cash-register kid didn’t appreciate my ensemble. I wanted to grab him by the ears and ask him if his mama didn’t teach him no manners. That lil’ whippersnapper looked about 10 years old, anyway. Don’t know what they’re doing hiring toddlers. And the only straws left were too short for my cup. I almost asked for my 79 cents back.

Oh, heavens. My gramma’s hair has gone to my head.

Photo by Iman Woods.

Thrift store heaven

Me, a child raised only on thrifted clothes.

I remember the first time I shopped in a mall. The store that took my new-clothes virginity was Mervyns.
I will never forget the confusion I felt when I saw my first rack of never-worn clothes. Why were there so many of the same shirt? And what kind of weirdo would buy something knowing that 20 other people would be wearing the exact same thing?

Ah yes. I was a bit of a fashion Encino Girl.

You see, I was raised in a consignment store, the Sweetheart Shop, at the foothills where Loveland met Estes Park. For 11 years, I helped my mom sort, price and organize the clothes people dropped off -- which also meant I had dibs on everything, and no need to visit the mall.

In sixth grade, I made a goal: not to wear the same outfit twice. Sound uppity? Not if you're sneaking clothes in your backpack, wearing them one day and returning them to the rack the next day. Indeed, I was the best-dressed, cheapest-dressed pre-teen at Walt Clark Middle School.

Andy's Girl boots

Years after the Sweetheart Shop closed -- and changed into a hookah bar -- I still haven't changed. In fact, today I made a goal: to put together the cheapest outfit possible. Bright blue jersey dress from a church garage sale: free. Vintage red thick belt with a butterfly clasp: 50 cents from Savers. Red chandelier earrings from a thrift store: $1. Even my red boots were the floor-sample boots that I bought after Boulder designer Andy's Girl closed down, for approximately 5,000 percent off.

My thrifty nature is part of the reason October is one of my favorite months. Sure, there's the pumpkin lattes, the world's biggest dress-up party (aka Halloween) and the chilly, sharp air -- the smell of change.

But October is also Thrift Store Heaven, when all thrift/consignment stores roll out their besties in hopes of reeling in shoppers in need of a wicked costume. For folks who dress up on a daily basis (ahem, ahem), this also translates into the closest equivalent to Vintage Fashion Month.

Which is how I ended up in a basement in Louisville, surrounded by leopard-print dresses, teal cowboy boots, short shirts and long (red) jackets sexy enough for Cake to write a song about.

I'd heard rumblings about the store, Found Underground, but had put off visiting it because, well, honestly, I had no reason to swing by downtown Louisville.

Now I have a reason.

Photo by Jonathan Castner.

It's called floor-length black velour opera coat, $23.

And that's just the beginning. As a self-proclaimed (but difficult to dispute) used-clothing expert, I say Found Underground is one of Boulder County's greatest. Nancy Cooley, of Louisville, says she opened the shop three years ago because she loves funky clothes. As proof: She worked at the Ritz clothing and costume store in Boulder for 12 years, where, in her words, "I raised my kids. Yes, I raised my kids in a store."
(My eyebrows perk up.)

Daily Camera photo

Found Underground, at 901 Main St., is entirely recycled, from the racks to hangers. It carries all kinds of goodies, from Betsey Johnson to labelless retro to belly-dancer costumes to prom dresses, which Cooley sells on a sliding scale for lower-income high-schoolers.

The store carries quality consignment clothes at thrift-store prices. And after four to six weeks, everything that hasn't yet sold moves into a half-off room, which rivals even Salvation Army prices, but with the style and brands of Boulder's upscale consignment stores, such as Rags.

I'm talking $12 for a black formal gown from Macy's, with tags; $28 for a red vintage skirt and suit jacket; $12 for never-worn brown and pink round-toe Steve Madden heels -- the same heels I brought at the Steve Madden store for, um, add a zero.

It was the teal Justin mid-calf boots that got me. I have the twin pair of these boots, but in bright purple. I bought mine in worse condition at Urban Outfitters, as part of the Urban Renewal line, for $80. At Found Underground, the nearly immaculate teal sisters are $20.

They're not my size, but I almost bought them anyway. There are some deals that surpass reason.

Read more at Dailycamera.com.