True F@#!ing Story

Today I'm doing something that deeply offends my Virgo sensibilities: I am posting an outfit out of chronological order; that is, I'm skipping over several days' worth of older outfits in order to bring you this one hot off the presses. And why is that, you ask? Well, it's all because of our favorite foulmouthed blogger and jewelery designer extraordinaire Wendy Brandes, who is responsible for these:

I never swear. I f@#!ing promise.

Yes, the glorious Wendy Brandes for Francis swear rings are mine at last! I coveted them for months, stalked them and obsessed over them, was haunted by them first on Kingdom of Style and then by Wendy herself, and finally broke down and bought them last week rather than waiting until after the holidays as I'd originally planned. And I have to say, I'm really fucking glad I did! Pretty much as soon as I put them on my hand and headed into my first meeting, someone promptly noticed all the flashing silver and started oohing and ahhing. Soon the whole team was admiring them. Yes, MY coworkers, noticing, and admiring, some seriously boundary-pushing jewelery. Go fucking figure!

Then after work, I stopped into my favorite stationary and card store to get a gift box, only to find out that the store no longer carries gift boxes of any kind. True fucking story! My response, of course, was this:

Where will I go now for all my gift box needs?

It was serendipity, I tell you. Serenfuckingdipity! So you see, I had to post this right away. Thanks Wendy; it was totally worth breaking my meticulous chronological ordering of the outfit posts for a timely showcase of your amazing creations. They garnered praise from my coworkers and gave me the perfect response to a frustrating situation, all within the span of a few hours.

I suppose I ought to tell you about the rest of my outfit too. Continuing in my ongoing outerwear feature, I'll start with the jacket. This one was selected because with the thick vest to keep me warm, all I really needed were the long sleeves. The cropped leather jacket was the perfect solution, plus, the detailing is cool enough to stand up to those fabulous rings.

Since I don't really like the feel of tucked in shirts, I used the fitted vest to give me waist definition and to balance out my proportions, which were a little off because of the length of the shirt. I also wore long socks over tights with this outfit, but the socks were only for warmth and were pulled all the way up rather than showing beneath the skirt -- and anyway, something about knee high socks with a pleated wool skirt just strikes me as waaay too schoolgirlish for a 40-year-old woman to be wearing. I just love all the socks-over-tights looks I've seen recently on Chelsea and Erin though, and I'm determined to put together one of my own.

These rings are already proving to be really handy at work. Shown here is

a remarkably easy way to say, "Get out of my office."

Shirt: Promod

Vest: Shawna Hoffman

Jacket: Skin Graft

Skirt: Banana Republic

Boots: Modern Vintage

Swear rings: Wendy Brandes for Francis

Shopping, South American Style: Part I

I've gotta say, I'm much more on the ball this year than I was after last year's big vacation. I never did do a post about Paris and Reykjavík, nor did I manage to post at all while I was there. But check it out, after writing several posts on the road, and then bringing you a wrap-up of the trip, here I am following up with a multi-post feature on the designers whose goods I purchased in Argentina and Uruguay, just like I promised! Geez, what's next for me, remembering to send Christmas cards?

First things first, let's talk about the BIG purchases, the stuff I really splurged on. Because let me tell you, it's not really that easy to splurge when you're in Argentina and Uruguay because everything is priced so affordably. It was for this reason that I indulged in some quality jewelery while I was there, which is something I almost never do. But Jess and I stumbled upon the most divine shop, a shop where I literally fell in love with everything they had on display, a shop called Manu Lizarralde. Jess and I walked in the door and were like a pair of crows, mesmerized by shiny objects. It didn't take long for me to hone in on this Inca Rose pendant, which I thought was the perfect thing to bring back from Argentina since it's the national stone. Paired with this 3-stranded silver beaded chain it's right up my alley: chunky and bold enough to stand up to my complicated, quirky outfits, but not so giant as to make me feel like I've got an anchor around my neck.

However, on that first visit to the shop, there was another piece that caught my eye, and which continued to haunt me for days afterwards. This massive quartz pendant isn't really something I'd normally pick out, but nevertheless I was drawn to it and HAD to have it. To be honest, I have no idea what a quartz pendant of this size would cost in the States because I'm not much of a fine jewelery shopper, but I suspect it would be several times more than what I paid for it, the quality of the stone being so good. At the very first opportunity we returned to the shop, where the wonderfully patient Alejandro let us play around and try on about a hundred different items before we made our final selections. Don't think I was purchasing only for myself, either -- some people in my family might be getting some very lovely Christmas gifts this year (shhh!). Jess scored a beautiful silver and pearl ring, which I'll let her feature in her own post.

We returned to the shop a third time. Oh yes we did. By then Jess was haunted too, by a pair of gorgeous amethyst earrings, and I had decided that I wanted to look for a ring of my own, being the ring enthusiast that I am. Alejandro was a little surprised to see us again, and in fact he seemed slightly dismayed at having just put out some new merchandise only to have us snap it up without another pair of eyes so much as glimpsing it. I found the perfect ring to balance my long fingers and big knuckles, this silver and pearl beauty (Yes, I know it looks gold in the photo; it's from the flash bouncing off my yellow dining room wall. Photographing jewelery is hard, yo!). Mark commented that it looks a little like The Man, which makes it even more perfect.

Stay tuned for more posts on our South American shopping experiences!