turner, going out

[abka]

Friday I made a quick trip to see the Turner show at the National Gallery. If you're in town before early January I would recommend seeing it, it's pretty spectacular. Turner is great if you want to see an artist's work shift from clear, descriptive scenes, to an expression of atmosphere and light so thick the canvases look almost completely abstract. (For those of you who came on last week's art tour, Rothko has some Turner echoes.) I also stopped by the NGA offices to deliver thank-you cupcakes to G. and M. who ran a comps dry run for me.

Saturday afrikate and I went out in the U street corridor. It was fun, afrikate danced with a very enthusiastic older man. We found a place with good music although quickly realized we were not in the going out uniform. (It's evolved since we were in college.) By the second place our mission had become an anthropological study of the young 'uns and their fashion choices.

The rest of my weekend was spent grading papers, trying to finally shake this headcold, and hanging out with D. who's having a worse time with the same cold.

Comments

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

So...what *is* the new going-out uniform these days? I'm curious now. =)

[abka.livejournal.com]

When we were in college it was black pants or a black skirt and some kind of clingy top, often in a solid color. Trinny and Suzanna have banned black with color and it seems helped kill that trend :).

Now it seems to be dark jeans (often designer, often "skinny" jeans, or at least very tight), very pointy heels (mostly covered by the jeans which are worn long, sometimes too long in my opinion, show your cute shoes!), and some kind of sparkly, colorful top (frequently with cleavage, and often an empire cut that blouses out over the waist, you know the ones I mean?)

Now, this outfit makes a lot of sense to me, jeans are flattering and comfortable (we were wearing dresses and my legs were a little cold). A cute top is fun (I'm all for cleavage although those empire waist tops look horrid on me, make me look pregnant, but are flattering on some body types), and I'm not one to argue with cute (even if slightly uncomfortable) shoes. Big sparkly earrings and light-to-moderate makeup also seemed prevalent and that's all good. It's just that there was so little variation. Must we all dress the same?

There were a few girls in dresses but they were wearing them with leggings which I think ruined the line of their outfits (although better than the dress over jeans trend of a few years ago). We also saw a few mismatched tops and undergarments. If you're wearing a top that's low in the back with a regular bra, have your friend, roommate, someone look at your back before you leave the house please. At least make your visible bra look intentional and not like you forgot your top has an open keyhole back.

There were some girls who looked great. One in particular had this great black blouse with pin-tucked pleats (I think that's what it's called) and just a little bit of ruffling with unfinished edges. Her jeans were a tad too long, but overall cute. Another had a top with a low neckline that ended in two of those oversized buttons, and it looked great, trendy but flattering.

The men tended to fall into two to three overlapping categories: too young (most of them), taken (a fair chunk), or creepy (the rest). We felt old. We were informally scouting for afrikate, and I felt very appreciate of D. (and not just because he came to pick us up when we wanted to go home.)

[mrsjadephoenix.livejournal.com]

Ooh, it sounds like the current going-out outfit in the States is actually quite similar the one that's trendy here in the UK, although a lot of girls here also seem to wear the extra-long-but-not-quite-long-enough-to-be-a-dress tops, accompanied by no pants (argh) but instead patterned leggings/uber-colorful stockings. And also unnecessary belts, usually worn empire-waist-fashion.