Stitch Fix #3 - Back on Track

I am happy to report that September's Stitch Fix was a vast improvement over August. Still not a 5/5, but I think they took the feedback from last time and tried to work with it. A new stylist again - Katie. She seemed to mostly get it. Before we dive in, of course, we need the explanation:

If you are not familiar with Stitch Fix, here’s the deal: Stitch Fix is an online personal styling service. You can subscribe for regular Fixes or just schedule them as you like. You fill out an extensive online profile of your tastes, sizes, and budget preferences and for a $20 fee, one of their stylist puts together a box of 5 clothing and accessory items to ship right to your door! You have 3 days to try things on, solicit opinions, balance your budget, whatever — you send back anything that doesn’t work for you in a prepaid envelope, and keep whatever you love! Your $20 styling fee is applied to anything you decide to keep, and if you buy the whole box of items you get 25% off the entire box! Prices vary but they say the average cost per item is $55 – 65. If you haven’t ever tried it and are interested, please consider using my referral link. If you use my link to schedule a Fix, I get a $25 credit towards my next purchase! (Note that I do not receive any compensation for reviewing this service; I just enjoy doing it).

On to the clothes!

We'll begin with two at once: DV8 Cheyne Western Booties and Le Lis Eldon Dress. I love the dress. The pictures don't quite do it justice (again, a reminder that my nine year old daughter is my photographer...we're still working on how to hold the phone straight up and down when taking pictures) and I should have posed with my hands on my hips so you could really see how cute it is, but I promise you, it is. It has elastic at the waist so it pulls in nicely and the sleeves are super fun bells. I was a little concerned at first that it would be too short for my taste, but the length works. Verdict: kept!

Then there are the booties. I haven't yet jumped on the bootie bandwagon as I still have mixed feelings about them. I've seen some that are cute and people wearing them who can really pull them off. I've also seen the opposite. Still, I was cautiously optimistic when I saw I was getting a pair. However, the pictures I was able to find beforehand of these booties all had them in black. I think I would have been more excited about them in black. This color...it's not brown, exactly. It has more of a cinnamon thing going on, which to me makes it harder to match with stuff. I didn't take any good up close pictures of these, but they have a pointier toe than I like plus a little stitched spiral thing going on on the tops - the "western" look. It just added to kinda meh. If I want cowboy boots, then I'll just get real cowboy boots. The other thing I thought was weird was the style card for the dress had it paired with black booties. So why not just send black ones? I'm still open to booties, I think. These just aren't it. Verdict: returned.

But here's one more shot of the dress with high black boots because...yes.

Next, we have another two together: the Brixon Ivy Elmar Embroidered Cutout Blouse and Kut from the Kloth Elyse Printed Slim Straight Leg Pants. We'll start with the blouse.

I wasn't sure what to think of this when I peeked ahead to see what was coming. Some people that had received it loved it, others not so much. I was a little concerned that the sleeves might be more grandma chic like we had before. But once I put it on, I really liked it. The cut is flattering, the sleeves are fun, and the color is great. I have a lot of dark blue, black, and brown in my closet, so the purple is a welcome change. 

The husband and daughter liked it right away. My trusted fashion advisor, Katie, was not sure at first, but over the course of about five minutes, changed her mind:

"The purple shirt color is Awesome but the sleeves feel like...a lot."

[...] 

"On a second look at the purple shirt, I like it more. It is very flattering on you."

[...] 

"And the more I look at the purple the more I like it. :)"

Verdict: kept!

Then we come to the pants. The stylist suggested I pair both shirts with the pants, plus cuff the pants and wear them with booties (again - the pants are black and gray with some purple/maroon running through the plaid. If you wanted me to wear them with booties, why didn't you send black booties? I don't understand). The pants are very comfy and stretchy and overall flattering. I will confess, it took me a couple of days to make up my mind on these. I don't really know why. Katie loved them, but the husband was on the fence. The day after I got them, I showed the pictures to several friends and all deemed the pants keepers. So I tried them on a couple of more times and decided they would be a great addition to my wardrobe where the only pants I really own for fall/winter are jeans.

Verdict: kept!

This is my attempt to cuff the pants (on one side) and wear them with the booties. I don't know if I just wasn't doing it right or if the color was throwing me, but whatever the problem was, there was a problem and it all looked weird.

But they definitely are not a problem with high black boots. They also look pretty cute with Danskos. So it's all good and I can't wait to wear them with my big black sweater. And my big gray sweater. And my big, drapey maroon cardigan. So many things to pair them with!

Last in the box was the Fate Goodwin Cowl Neck Sweater (paired again with the pants because that's the what card said to do). I wanted to like this sweater. I really, really did. And there were many things I DID like about it. The picture doesn't really show it well, but this sweater has a front pocket. I love me someplace to put my hands! I like the cowl neck, I like the length, I like that the color is a good neutral that doesn't wash me out. And look how cute the sleeves are!

But.

Sadly, yes, but.

It's cut weird on the sides. It scoops way up on either side and the sleeves are the kind that don't attach under the armpits but somewhere mid-torso and this happens:

Now, I realize I could wear a tank or something under it. And I also realize I generally don't lift my arms way over my head in the course of a normal day. But I don't want to HAVE to wear something under it (it's a pretty lightweight sweater, meant for those slightly warmer cool days) and when I do lift my arms at all, I don't want to have to be thinking about it.  Plus, as Katie said, "if it were me and I knew I was returning one thing, I'd start looking at the other pieces with an eye to definitely returning at least one (fiscally, if you are not keeping five, it usually doesn't make sense to keep four)." So...verdict: returned.

I'm a little bummed that the booties and the sweater didn't work out since with just a little tweaking they would have been great, but still and all, I'm satisfied with this Fix.

Now my photographer and I just need to agree on whether or not my head should be in these pictures!

Memory of Cats

Today I am bringing you a memory about cats. Which is different than a memory of CATS...or Memory from CATS. I could write a lot about all three of these things, actually, and now that I think about it, that is a great idea for a series within this blog. Note to self: write blog posts about CATS.

Anyway...today's blog post comes courtesy of my college roommate, Lisa, who sent me a FB message that I enjoyed to no end. Another shout out to FB for helping keep people in my life who otherwise would be maybe a Christmas card kind of relationship (I can't remember if Lisa and I even send each other Christmas cards, but that doesn't matter). Lisa was actually my THIRD college roommate. We lived in the same dorm starting our freshman year, the fantastic Judson Hall at New York University. It actually used to be a monastery, complete with a bell tower.

My first roommate was Karen and we lived together all of freshman year and the first half of sophomore year. Sophomore year, we got to move into the bell tower proper - second floor from the top, which is the third set of windows from the top in the above picture. Our friends, Jamie and Aaron, lived above us and they took great pleasure in climbing down the fire escape into our room. The elevator in the dorm only went up to a certain level (7th floor, I think) and then we had to climb up the spiral stairs in the tower to our rooms. I should mention here that the bathrooms were on the 7th floor as well, so if you had to pee, you had to navigate your way down two flights of curved stairs. I don't recommend this in the middle of the night.

Karen and I were very different - she was pretty punk and listened to bands I had never heard of (nor had most people, I must add). I was still pretty preppy, NJ suburbs at that point, but somehow we got along. Unfortunately, during our sophomore year, Karen decided college wasn't really working for her. She stopped going to classes and started spending most of her time hanging out with various musicians in Washington Square Park and sometimes even bringing them back to our room. Now, I enjoyed listening to Ellis play his guitar and sing other people's songs as much as anyone, but that didn't mean I wanted to wake up at 3AM and find him standing over my bed! (as an aside, a few good blogs mention Ellis: here, here,  and here. And here is an article about what Ellis is doing almost now-ish. You can also find him on Wikipedia (although saying he was born in 1974 seems...not right) and YouTube. For those who want to know more about Ellis!) Another time she brought a "friend" by who decided it would be really fun to spray my hairspray and flick his lighter on at the same time. I'm amazed that he didn't even set off the smoke detector with that stunt...or maybe we just didn't have smoke detectors. Who can say? She also started corresponding with various prison inmates. When she wasn't doing any of these things, she was in her bed, usually in the  middle of the day.  In short, she kind of lost it so it was no surprise to anyone when she dropped out midyear. I'd kind of had it with the dorm thing at this point myself, so I moved into a little studio apartment near campus with my friend, Cindy. Little being the operative word here. That place was TINY, as NYC apartments are. Basically a room separated into two parts by a partial wall with a loft bed. I had the loft bed and Cindy had a futon on the other side. Her boyfriend spent the night a lot. It was awkward. But that's college, right?

Junior year, Lisa (who had also moved out of the dorm midyear) and I decided to find a place together, which we did way over on the west side. It was a duplex down, which is a fancy way of saying one bedroom basement apartment that we paid way too much to live in. But it was fun. One of the first things we did after getting settled was adopt a kitten. I don't know why we did this, but it involved a field trip to the animal shelter on the far, FAR north side of Manhattan (really it might not even have been Manhattan at that point, I can't remember. I just know it was far and took a long time on the subway) to pick out said kitten. He was a tiny black and white tuxedo kitten that we named Harlow, after the actress, Jean Harlow. I had, and still do have, a serious thing for old movies and movie stars. I'm pretty sure this was the poster we had of Miss Jean.

Harlow as cute, as all kittens are, but he grew into a behemoth of a cat. Lisa kept him after we graduated, so I don't know off the top of my head how big he eventually got, but I want to say it was in the neighborhood of twenty pounds. He was huge. But here he is when he was small:

That top picture also shows you something of how cool our apartment was. The bedroom was on the upper level, then you came downstairs to the kitchen and living room. The window on the stairs looked into the kitchen which had, I have to say, awesome flooring.

Anyway, back to the present day when I had the following message exchange with Lisa:

LISA: My kids found that kitty book you wrote notes about Harlow, and then we made Greek pizza, and now I'm playing fleetwood mac...Haha, thought I should say hi and see how you're doing since clearly you're working on my mind at some subconscious level!

ME: Well awesome! However...kitty book??? I have no memory of this at all.

So Lisa sent the following pictures (click to enlarge so you really get the full effect):

LISA: Does that jog your memory at all?

 ME: Terrifyingly, no!!! It's clearly my writing and definitely seems like something I would do and yet..

I've looked at these pictures many times since Lisa sent them and I still have no memory of this book. But I LOVE that she still has it and now I do too.

At the end of the year, we got another kitten - a complete troublemaker of a calico that we named Gable, to stay with the gender flipped, last name of movie star thing that we decided we were doing. Here is Miss Gable (actually pictured in our Hoboken apartment), as well as the poster we had of her namesake:

    

Last, but not least...in case I never get around to actually posting about CATS, here is the beyond words fabulous Laurie Beechman as Grizabella. Enjoy!