Cycling through Moscow

Yesterday I had to leave my bike at my boyfriend's and after my dancing classes he met me and we cycled through night Moscow's center. It was such a wonderful evening.

This is what GUM, one of the most pretentious and ancient Moscow malls, looks like at night. So beautiful!

Manicure and brooch

This brooch I bought in Gorky park. I like it so much, especially unclipping my new-found love for yellow and my ever-lasting love for birds. It looks great with dark blue and I have a lot of dark blue clothes.
On this picture you can also see the manicure I did a few days ago. It's lilac! I never thought I would like lilac nails, but here I am – they look quite interesting. Even my mother, and she usually says that all the "artificial" nail colors like blue or violet look like "deadman's nail", loved it! Unfortunately, the lacquer itself isn't of a good quality so I'm looking for similar color by different producer. Have you seen it, maybe?

Wonderful meetings and wonderful dresses

 

A package from Etsy came to me a few days ago with those wonderful fifties clothes – a dress, a blouse and a girdle that I will show you later. It is actually my first fifties dress – I have a few from seventies and from what I think is early sixties, and finally I get to wear the dress that was made in the exact same period that I adore and admire so much! I have to buy a forties dress as well but it takes time to find a right dress, you know? So we'll see how lucky I'll be!

This is how it looks on me, I think it will be better with a petticoat but these days it's just too darn hot to wear one, it's around 30°C!

I had an amazing possibility to meet Harlow from Vintage at Heart. We went to a wonderful Tiki-Bar and I had the best time ever! It is always so refreshing to talk with someone who can discuss red lipsticks and politics in the same conversation. She was wearing a beautiful dress from Bernie Dexter, you can (and believe me, you want to!) check it out at her blog. The following photos are hers, because I totally forgot to take any, maybe because our cocktails were just as tasty as they were pretty.

Summertime

Moscow is so beautiful in the summer. It's not a very friendly city in the winter when everything is snow-dirty and cold and everybody's wrapped in hundred layers of clothes, but in the summer Moscow appears in all its glory.

This photo was taken a few minutes ago (so I'm actually lifeblogging!) on Arbat, one of Moscow's pedestrian and very tourist-popular streets. Arbat is one one oldest streets in the city and it has always been a "prestigious" place to live. For example, in Soviet Russia it was the home of many high-ranking government officials.

It's a noisy crowded street with a lot of too expensive shops and different cafes (I'm sitting in one of them right now) but, while being, let's say obnoxious if you can say so about street, Arbat still has some specific charm with its ancient buildings and paving stone.

Do you like the city you live in? Do you have a favorite place there?

Theater night out

Yesterday my friend invited me to the theater. Even though I failed an exam in the morning (sic!) and was not very thrilled by the piece (too much grotesque for a tragical theme, in my opinion), I still had a wonderful evening. After the play we sat and discussed our impressions and I thought that this is probably what I love most about art, especially dramatics: it makes you think. It makes you doubt and re-evaluate your beliefs. And we also had macaronis, hey!

I had literally no time to change my clothes, and I prefer to wear something suitable in the theater. The funny thing: I realized that most of my wardrobe, if not all, would look suitable to me a few years ago.  O, tempora...

Exams exams

This is a photo of me studying history for tomorrow's oral examination. The pic was actually taken a few days ago but I'm still scared as hell and feel like I don't know any freaking thing. The good side is that even if I won't pass this exam tomorrow my exams week will still be over because the retake will only take place in October. I plan on staying up all night and studying anyway.

Wish me luck!

Shoe party

Here's to the shoes!

To be honest, I was a flat-shoes types of person all my life. And only a few months ago, maybe two, I found out that heels are actually quite nice! First I tried to wear my prom-shoes (I'll show them later) but they were just too high. Then I bought another ones that were very cheap but oh-so-comfortable (I'll show them later as well 'cause now they're at my dance partner's – I probably need to make another shoes post soon!). These cheap shoes were very nice to wear and I gradually builded up to heels. And they turned out perfect!

Flat shoes are every swing-dancing girl's curse. The thing is: I don't know how to dance lindy hop in something except for these:

I have just a billion of different pairs of these shoes (although they're all blue or white – what's wrong with me?!). And I wear dresses to all the swing parties so I end up wearing dresses with keds and feeling kind-of okay with that. Which is not exactly as feminine or vintage as I would want to.

I'm absolutely okay with having some funny quirky details in my appearance most of the time but some days I just want to be a princess. Most of girl want to. And I decided to indulge myself in this desire so I try and wear heels as often as I want to, disregarding anything that could ever stop me

So – these specific shoes on the pic. The ones on the left are vintage and I bought them in my favorite vintage shop in Moscow. They are just perfect, probably about 5 cm in height and very good for the forties girl look. So nice!

The ones on the right are from modcloth. I love the color, I would call it a muted mustard. So good for my new yellow passion! And yes, they are very comfortable as well. I am very pleased :D

Hat post!

Here's my new kinda forties hat. Yeah, I know, photo booth photos. Yeah. But anyways – a hat!
I was looking for a forties hat for a long time. Everything I saw on etsy wasn't quite what I wanted (pillow box, not black, not white, better with a veil) and all the hats in Moscow were just too expensive for something I don't plan to wear on an everyday basis.
A few weeks ago there was this thing in Moscow, called Lambada Market. It is - predictably, yeah? - a market where all the young designers and vintage shops and generally everybody willing to participate sell different things, from perfume to dresses, in one place. I went there looking for a new dress and got back with two dresses, one of them new and one that was sewn by some girl for herself but ended up on a hanger. Though both dresses have quite a vintage-y feel.
And I also bought this hat. It is new as well, not vintage, it even has a little tag saying "Made in China" but it wasn't too expensive and it was everything I wanted from a hat. So here it is!

I know that it's not a summer hat and I want to wear it in the autumn and early winter but I just couldn't wait to wear it at least once!

It can be attached with a few bobby-pin and it has a rubber band which I will probably cut off because it doesn't look great. Overall, I am very happy with this hat and I think it will look amazing with pin-curls and my black wiggle dress that was featured in the first pic in this post.

What do you think? And, by the way, do you wear hats? Show me!

Color me yellow

It seems to me that this summer's color will be yellow. I have never been its fan but recently I found myself more and more starving for bright summer colors that are not "neutral" and "universal". Ugh, universal! I have quite a few things (both wearable and not) that are beige or dark blue and I feel kind of tired of it. So this is what I ordered:

Yellow (oh yes!) skirt from modcloth

Yellow blouse - also from modcloth. These are perfect for summer and no, I'm not planning on wearing it together with the skirt.

Yes, I know, both of these skirts are not yellow nor colorful but hey, I really lack nice skirts! And the first one has a detachable bow – I adore things that are detachable!

This dress is from fifties and it still has a tag as it was never worn. I keep imagining how good will it look with my favorite lipstick (more about it later!) and with my new-to-me shoes (more about it later as well).

And another one blouse because you can never have too much of them. Such a pretty color!

Can't wait for my packages to come!

I decided that it will be fun to show you my outfit photos from my Instagram. Some of them are recent and some were taken about three or four months old so you can also see how people dress in Moscow in the winter. I really love this kind of photos 'cause I look at them I suddenly I'm overflown with memories... It was quite a good half a year, may I say.

I'm back!

I know that this blog was silent for an  unforgivable period of time and that everybody probably forgot that it existed in the first place but yeah, I'm back. And I have some news.

First of all, I don't have a camera anymore which means that there will be lots of Instagram and web-cam pics. Sorry.

To be honest, I think that I have become more comfortable and secure in my style while I was... let's say absent. I bought new (and new-to-me) dresses and one perfect hat (I will show it to you and tell about it later), I found some things that I like and some that I don't. And the most important, I feel like I finally realized how I want to look.

I have new hobbies that will probably have a big part in this blog. I'm talking about swing-dancing and cycling. As you can see in the picture above, I have a new and wonderfully pretty bicycle that I'm crazy about. And I haven't stopped dancing since the moment I first tried it in November 2012. Dancing is one of the biggest passions I have at the moment and I hope that it will always be (well, we'll see).

I hope that this blog will find its readers and I'm always happy to read any comments and thoughts that you're willing to share. Be polite! :)

Kisses, Maria