Arts and Culture: FIDM

On Saturday I headed up to LA to visit the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising's 18th Annual Art of Motion Picture Design Exhibition. The exhibit features costumes from recent movies, including An Education (my favorite movie of 2009), The Duchess, The Last Station, and many more films. The best single work was from Where the Wild Things Are. FIDM had the actual characters in their enormous, colorful, hairy glory. My favorite single article of clothing was from the movie Pirate Radio. It was an INSANELY GREAT black and white asymmetric cape with a high funnel collar. I wanted to steal it.

I recommend checking out the FIDM blog. It is not updated nearly enough to satisfy my curiosity, but it does contain high-quality images of actual garments from a range of time periods.

It is also worth visiting the book store. I bought Liberace: Your Personal Fashion Consultant. Obviously a necessity.

A Plan

So I am thinking that in order to get into blogging, I should have a weekly schedule. Many of the blogs I read do this. For instance, on decor8, Tuesdays are Etsy Tuesdays. Here are the loose themes I have thought of:

Monday: History, Scholarship, Archives
Tuesday: Personal Life
Wednesday: Arts and Culture
Thursday: Updates on my Painting and Crafting
Friday: Cool Shit I Saw on the Internet

In further organization news, I finally settled on a  2010 wall calendar. I need a calendar so that I can go back in time and write down all the things I did the week before in order to make myself look busy and organized. You can check out Jessica Ginacha Swifts work here.

ScholarlyArticles on Etsy

What is my "Etsy store" and what do I make? So glad you asked. I hand-paint vintage leather accessories with a focus on shoes and bags.

All my life I have been obsessed with shoes. When I was barely a teenager I would blow all of my babysitting money on shoes. Whenever I could get a parent to drive me to the mall, I would return with boots, or flats, or (despite being super tall) heels. My mom never made me get a bank account, and if I left my money in my room my brother would steal it...really, what else could I do?

You can see my store here:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/ScholarlyArticles

One More Distraction

I have been toying with the idea of writing a blog for a while now. Two main things have stopped me. First, I do NOT need another hobby. I am supposed to be writing a dissertation. Instead, I work on my Etsy store, burn through Netflix (unless the film is about war or death, in which case I leave the red envelope sitting on my coffee table for weeks), eat out as much as possible, read (i.e. look at) countless blogs, and nap like a baby. So, I have nothing important going on, but all of these unimportant activities take up a lot of time. Secondly, I have limited computer skills. I want to make a blog that is full of awesome visuals, but I am not sure if blogger is adequately idiot-proof for me....