On Mullets and Typewriters

Sure Bet Sherbet Rhinestone Necklace

Tunic: Decree, JCPenney
Bra top: Boscov's
Jeans: Candie's, Kohl's
Shoes: City Streets, JCPenney
Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Strawberry Peach Rhinestone Necklace

Dress: LC Lauren Conrad, Kohl's

Bra top: Boscov's

Shoes: Guess, DSW

Bag: Apt. 9, Kohl's 

Blouse: Jessica Simpson, Boscov's

Bra top: Delia's

Jeans: Candie's, Kohl's

Shoes: Payless

Bag: Nine West, Boscov's

Raspberry Mint Rhinestone Necklace

Jacket: Bongo, Sears

Camisole: So, Kohl's

Skirt: Marshalls

Shoes: Dolce by Mojo Moxy, Shoe Dept.

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Bead stock-up spree

They're a dynamic duo if ever I saw one - united in the clumsy, cringe-worthy, and clackety (for want of a better last "c" word descriptor) nature of their awfulness.  Nevertheless, I can't take full credit for the connection between these two 1980s (dare I say) icons.  That honor goes to the author of the 1986 romance novel I'm currently reading (or, more appropriately, to her ghostwriter).  Two professional eighties women, clawing their way to the top of the corporate ladder "Working Girl" style with nothing but impossibly inefficient typewriters and smoldering studs to stop them.  (It's a romance novel, people, not a feminist manifesto.)  Here's the line about the mullet:

"She wore it [her hair] long enough in the back to be pinned up in a chignon when she wished, and short enough on the top and sides so that she could style it from fussy to practical as the occasion, and her whim, demanded."

Notice that the word "mullet" is never actually mentioned.  But the telltale business in the front, party in the back description gives this ever-suspect style away.  Given their taste for trends, these corporate cuties may have painted the town in one of the 1980s-inspired looks featured here.  It was an era, after all, that never met a rhinestone or a pairing of pastels and neons that it didn't like.  (I realize that I talk about 1980s style a lot, so much so that I might as well call this blog My Crazy Eighties Dress Up Diary, or, for something snappier, Romancing the Rhinestone.)     

I'd be remiss without addressing the whole visible bra trend that's "working it" in these outfits.  Although it caught on sometime last summer, it wasn't a look that I felt the need to pursue until now.  Not that I would ever sport the plunging tunic and bandeau combo in the first ensemble.  That sort of no-holds-barred raciness is best left to runways and rockers.  But it makes for a nice dramatic visual, as well as a fitting foil for the more demure but still edgy striped dress and bra top team in ensemble number two.  Kind of like Madonna meets Debbie Gibson.  You know.  Before Ms. Gibson  became a girl gone wild.  

Book Report: I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella

If I could live inside of a Sophie Kinsella novel, I would.  These books are as happy and glamorous and frothy as any chick lit tomes worth their glitter.  Plus, they've got heart.  Kinsella's latest, I've Got Your Number, is all about Poppy Wyatt, a heroine that rivals Rebecca Bloomwood in the kooky-sweet, Lucille Ball-esque but well-meaning hijinks department.  A fun-loving physical therapist (or, as they say on the other side of the pond, physiotherapist) engaged to a self-important, chauvinistic academic named Magnus, Poppy is catapulted into full crisis mode from page one, when we meet her scrabbling on a hotel floor in search of her heirloom emerald engagement ring.  Because this is the wacky world of Kinsella, this incident marks just the beginning of Poppy's misfortunes.  During the course of her hunt, her cell phone is stolen.  Thunderclouds loom until - miracle of miracles - a discarded phone beams up beacon-style from a garbage can.  Poppy picks it up, shakes off the spilled coffee, and embarks upon a modern fairy tale scripted largely by the plethora of text messages, voicemails, and emails to which she is now intriguingly and hilariously privy.

What begins as a purely selfish pursuit quickly mushrooms into a quest for corporate justice.  Much like the credit card-wielding character who came before her, Poppy becomes enmeshed in a kind of Working Girl caper minus the shoulder pads and blond ambition.  Which is to say that, like Melanie Griffith's Tess, Poppy is smarter than she looks, a girly girl deciphering deception after deception in the big bad world of business.  Yet Poppy's not trying to get ahead.  She just wants to get at the truth.  Of course, there's a good bit of romance too.  If the love triangle that forms between Poppy, Magnus, and what may be fiction's most appealing unknown caller is a little predictable, then it's every bit as satisfying as a more surprise-infused scenario.  Not that Number doesn't have its surprises.

And that's as good a stopping point as any.  If nothing else, you can't say I'm a spoiler.