Thursday, December 12, 2013

What Not To Wear: Birch Tree Dress

Alright this post is about the way desire can come and go and reemerge spontaneously or triggered...
Featuring: the birch tree dress by Leifsdottir.

First featured 2011.
Me: wow what a pretty dress! Waaaa $300!! Look away Jess, look away!
(and so it went, out of my mind)
A year later, Me: Wow, there's that dress on ebay and for cheaper (150$)! But all these reviews on the anthropologie website (and based off of British Anthropologiest) say it's really short, and god knows, I'm chubby and pear shaped so = not great with minis. I guess, I should pass.

A year later again, I was rewatching TLC's What Not To Wear on Netflix and their guest wears long peasant skirts and wants to be a graceful medieval-y action heroine, so how do they interpret this desire into a cute dressy outfit? The Birch Tree Dress, which I recognized instantly.



Seeing it there triggered it back into my mind... ofcourse the guest Jil hated it. Picking apart the colours. It really does look different up close, so I was glad that they did a close up (given that I couldn't see it in store).


The more I thought about it in detail, the more it made me think of the feeling of riding a bike through the forests in Ontario... (though fashion is different for everyone!) 

Next obstacle: too short. Is it too short? Yes, it looks pretty short!  Evidence:

 

On these models it looks almost like a shirt! Then again they are probably very tall.  The dress measures 34.5 inches long on average, according the ebay measurements, and I'm 5'6. I stared at this WNTW pic for a long time, guessing how it would hit me based off Jil and Stacy London...




So what I did was get out my shortest dress, a dress I wear in the winter with leggings and bare only on hot days in the summer and as it turns out, same length. So for those on the fence, I'd say go by that rule. I wouldn't wear it with nothing on most days, and I'm betting you can't really bend over in this dress.

Then I looked on ebay without the word anthropologie and only with Birch Tree and Leifsdottir and guess what, suddenly a listing popped up, size 10, $59!!




It's been shipped and is coming soon! I'll update this post as soon as I get it.

<3JJ
















For the love of scouring the internet for Vintage Anthropologie




I've been thinking about starting an anthro blog for a long time now, mostly because over the years I have often found myself visiting other anthropologie blogs looking mostly for reviews of outfits and alternate photos. This is because I don't live in a city near an anthro ( the closest one is a substantial ferry ride away!) so I end up doing a lot of online shopping.

This blog I'm aiming to fill mostly with musings about whatever piece I'm currently interested in. Perhaps with some bits of reviews or try-ons.

I fell in love with anthro in my early twenties, when, in fact, I didn't have much cash to spend on actual items from there. I didn't have a good paying job (I was a student for a long time) nor any extra means of support. One or two things a year, $250 a year max. I did spend a lot of time looking at catalogues, deciding how to best spend the bits of cash I had.

Seven or eight years later, I find myself occasionally scouring ebay for the same items I longed to buy before (I'm sure I'm not alone) I find blogs extremely useful for this, for providing info and reviews and pics of vintage anthro items, and so this is my way of contributing too. If anyone is visiting this site, I hope it helps you too.

(Above is the Fire's Path dress)