Don't by a fashion sloth: Gluttony is so 2006

Blame it on the economy, or whatever your opposing political party is, or on the weather. But fashion around here has a whole new meaning.

The magazines and catwalks are still so old fashioned; they haven't even yet released designs for the season of Recession 2007-11. I laugh at the "Lust/Must" pages, featuring billion-dollar couture items and their "inexpensive" inspirations -- for only $559 per glove!

Right. Sure, let me just count that out in coins from under my car seat. And then run that "must-have" shopping list past the "Occupy" crowd.

Sure, a few Boulderites have squeaked by in lucky oblivion, but for the former CEOs now scraping by on $10 an hour (or journalists who have been broke since the advent of the Gutenberg Press), true style is about creativity, prioritizing, recycling and a darn good deal.

Style is about being smart. It is no more sexy to be gluttonous with your credit card than it is with your lunch menu. Sure, a grease-soaked bag of French fries is novel on occasion, but balance it out with some leafy-green discretion, or you're honestly kind of gross. Same goes with your labels. Head-to-toe inflated price tags lacks individuality -- and discretion.

My BFF Brittany and I have a bit of a competition going on (although she doesn't exactly know -- yet) for who can best rock Recession style. One point for cuteness. One point for craftiness/DIY. Two points for creativity. And one point per every $10 saved, per item.

Take a flower-accented belt that Brittany saw in the store for $40. She bought a fake flower, glued it to a clip and affixed it to a belt she already owned, totaling $5. That's like 293.5 points, if my math-for-liberal-arts-majors training is correct.

I can't DIM-A (do it myself -- anything ). But unfortunately for Brittany, I've got a new secret that is about to take her down: Hip Consignment, 1468 Pearl St. in Boulder.

Vanquish any idea you have of consignment shopping. Because if I didn't tell you (well, that and the store's name), you wouldn't know. You'd just think you were in a beautiful boutique hallucinating over finding designer dresses around $40, accessories from $5 and, um, excuse me while I weep in delight, but is that a brand new Diane Von Furstenberg line?

The 8-month-old store was designed to break the stigma of consignment shopping, while hooking ladies up with fancy-pants clothing for Marshall's sales rack prices.

I'm going to need a new fashion point system. Either that, or more fingers and toes to count on.

Tip: Like Hip Consignment on Facebook (Facebook.com/hipconsignmentboulder) and get in on regular specials, including the Mad Dash Lunchtime Specials from noon-1 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Select merchandise goes on sale for just this one hour, like 30 percent off boots for winter.

Coming up at Hip Consignment: The Holiday Dress Extravaganza, Nov. 26-27. The plan: Accumulate 100 fantastic
holiday dresses to put on sale the weekend of Black Friday.

Read more at Dailycamera.com. 
Check out my BFF Brittany's blog at loislanelifestyle.blogspot.com. 

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.

Brittany: The flow of fashion

Photo by Flickr user CastawayVintage.

My BFF Brittany was browsing through the racks at the Goodwill near her house when she came across the perfect red-and-black plaid jacket.

Granted, it was the middle of summer, and she wouldn`t be able to wear it until fall, but it was only a couple of bucks, super cute and it fit her perfectly. She eyed it in the dressing room mirror and stuck her hands in the pockets. The pockets weren`t empty.

She pulled out lipstick -- and did a double take. It was her exact shade, the tip even bearing her signature lip shape. (Lipsticks are like fingerprints for our mouths.) Could it be destiny?

Then she remembered she had a winter coat similar to this at home. Actually, no, identical. This was her coat. How did it get here? She didn`t remember selling it. She still liked it.

Obviously, right?

Now what? In an unsure daze, she decided not to buy the coat -- her own coat, again -- and instead called her dad to tell him the confusing coincidence.

He agreed it was pretty funny, and then casually mentioned, "Speaking of thrift stores, I went ahead and brought all of the clothes that you don`t want anymore to the Good Will."

"What clothes?"

"The ones in trash bags in the back of the spare closet."

Oh, those clothes. The seasonal winter clothes that Brittany had cleared out of her closet to make space for the summer stuff. The bags that contained her red and black plaid jacket.

They tried to buy her winter wardrobe back -- classifying the cost as a donation to the nonprofit -- but they never did track down the plaid coat again.

Which was just as well. Because by the time this fall rolls around, plaid will probably be out of style.

Read more at www.dailycamera.com.