I like clothes, all right? I’m not going to apologize for that, or turn in my feminist or intellectual credentials. In fact, I’ve been so inspired by some of the excellent style bloggers out there that I’ve decided to devote my Friday post — weekly? biweekly? monthly? haven’t decided — to style blogging, both of my own outfits and Boston/Cambridge street fashion. Pictures will go under the jump, for those who aren’t interested in such things.

Unfortunately, on Friday, making pictures go under the jump was about the most I could manage, technically. There’s a lot I need to figure out about photography and lighting, and also about blog-picture layout.

Then, this weekend, I realized: this is a blog. This is a dress rehearsal. If my pictures aren’t that good, maybe you can tell me how to make them better.

If y’all don’t like my outfits, though, you’re wack. I dress great. See you after the jump!

… is generating some very interesting discussion in the comments section. The mother of a boy with trichotillomania wrote in to ask if my answer would have been the same for a man. Obviously, my general principle — that caring for your health overrides the ritual aspects of etiquette — would be, but the tactics might be very different. The conversation also goes into some of the godawful comments that people with disabilities or unusual appearances are subjected to by strangers. As commenter Ridley put it, “[H]oly hell people just don’t know how to talk to the disabled. My limbs don’t work great, but my feelings and vanity are still functional. I wish people would just remember we’re still people and mind their manners.”

I’d recommend checking it out — and I’d love to hear your ideas.

Maybe you do, too. From my favorite beauty blog, Already Pretty:

And sometimes, when I’m curled up in bed listening to the alarm clock yammer at me about getting up, I think, “Why bother? Why not just throw on a sweater and jeans, put my hair in a ponytail, and slog into work un-showered? Who would care, or even notice a difference?” Sometimes when it’s 30 below and I’ve had a long day at work, I look at my gym bag and think, “Why bother? One less workout isn’t going to make a difference.” Sometimes I look at my unruly and deeply high-maintenance mop and think, “Why bother? I’ve got hats.”

Read the whole thing. I am starting to have a serious girl-crush on this woman. Michelle Obama, you have been warned. Your days as my fashion icon are numbered.

They’re here! And they do actually look a bit like the ones on that “Miss Conduct” doll:

Mr. Improbable and I both like them, but Milo’s not so sure. He’s such a fashion conservative.

In case you can’t tell, the frames* are black on top and green on the bottom. I wanted to blog this whole outfit, because I like it, but we didn’t get a good full shot. Do, though, check out my cool bib necklace. I picked this up for a mere $10 at Buffalo Exchange, a new used-clothing store in Davis Square (and elsewhere — they’re a chain). It looks a lot like this one. I love wearing it with this dress, because it hits right at the neckline and therefore looks like an embellishment on the dress itself. I bet making zipper jewelry would be a fun project — you get a lot of bang for some broken zippers, a piece of felt, and a hank of ribbon.

*Yes, given that Michelle Obama is my fashion muse and inspiration (some might say obsession), I did find it ironic that the make of frames I chose is called “Sarah,” thank you very much.

Over the past month or so, I’ve gotten a little obsessed with style blogs, especially those written by academics or freelancers. You know how sometimes you get interested in something, or hungry for some particular food, and it feels like a whim — “You know, I never really knew what the Holy Roman Empire actually was, let me Wikipedia that,” or “Dang, pretzels would be good right now.” And then sometimes it feels like a need, as though your body or mind are suffering some kind of deficiency that needs to be made up.

This one felt more like a need, and I was wondering what was up with that.

To an extent, it clearly had to do with the fact that I haven’t gotten out much in December and January — in December, I had to cancel almost all my social plans due to illness, and I’m still trying to figure out how social life works when you can’t drink and more or less can’t eat, either. (Any local readers know a hip Cambridge joint that specializes in steel-cut oatmeal and herbal tea? Didn’t think so.) So a bit of it was compensatory for my lack of a social life — if I couldn’t go out, I could at least get inspiration from style blogs and put some fun outfits together for when I could.

But the fact that I was focusing so much on the writers and academics, and their work wardrobes, was my real clue to what was going on.

I think this is the resolution I make every New Year — Jewish and Gregorian and school and fiscal and anything else — concentrate. Work when I am working, play when I am playing. It’s hard, isn’t it, for those of us who work on the computer? I’m not saying I even want to work more, or harder, or whatever. Just that when I’m writing, I should write (and not shop for cardigans on eBay), and when I am done working, there should be no vague guilt or occasional checking of e-mail.

Anyway, this is why, I think, I’ve been so interested in style blogs by academics and writers and other people for whom work and life and play and duty get blurry around the edges. Because one way you can define those edges is through how you dress. And when you’re a freelancer, you need all the help you can get. (Oh, all right, I am writing this in my bathrobe, okay?)

So one of my new — not resolutions, but practices — is to get dressed and get out more in order to do my work. I live in a city rich with coffee shops and libraries, and ought to take more advantage of them. I’m suspecting this will help my productivity and my mood (writers, academics, at-home parents, and other home-employed people — you know that dazed, almost jet-lagged feeling when the sun goes down and you realize you haven’t been out of the house all day? Hate that!) as well as the local economy.

Off to choose an outfit!

For the first time in over a decade, I’m going to get new glasses. I actually like the frames on my old ones, but the lenses are beaten up and I ought to at least try some different styles, as I’m hardly the same person I was 10-plus years ago. I’m taking a couple of women friends with me, because it’s impossible to be objective about these things for yourself. In that spirit, I’d like to ask your advice as well, readers. What kind of glasses should I get?

Here’s the book-cover picture of me, taken by Sarah Shatz:

And here are a few full-length photos so you can see the kinds of colors, textures, and general look that I go for:

And here, for a more objective look, you can see my face, with hair pulled back except for bangs, and no makeup. This was taken the night that Mr. Improbable and I returned from Italy to a power outage at home, so I was grubby, sleep-deprived, and jet-lagged, and my contacts had been in for 24 hours or so.

There’s kind of a long story behind the headdress.

Anyway, that’s what I look like and what I do with it most of the time. What kind of glasses do you think I should get? (They don’t have to go with the headdress.)

Response was good for my fashion blogging debut on Monday, so I think I may keep this as an occasional feature. Thanks for your kind responses, everyone!

Today I thought I’d mix up two great internet traditions and do street-fashion blogging AND dog blogging at the same time. My Monday post was about the power of dressing against the season, with glamorous blacks in summer and springy pastels in winter. Well, peep this little lady who totally gets the concept:

This is Penny. Penny is owned by a good friend of mine in New York, who got her as a rescue from a puppy mill. When she first came to my friend, Penny was sick, underweight, terrified of humans, and her back legs were so weak from living in a tiny cage with her own filth that she could barely walk. She was too afraid of life to even stand up — when you stand up is when they do the Bad Things to you. Penny is also blind, which means one of three things: 1) she was blinded by someone, 2) she went blind because she didn’t receive veterinary care when she needed it, or 3) she was born that way, and a puppy mill used her for breeding anyway, despite her genetic defect.

Well, look at her now, owning the mean streets of New York! (All right, the gentrified streets of Park Slope, but don’t mess with my narrative.) Penny’s all right. My friend says that springtime green just somehow is Penny’s color, and I can see why. Penny’s like those shoots of grass that come up through the sidewalk in April. Fragile, vulnerable, delicate, but with enough hope and strength and spirit to bust through concrete.

If Penny’s story upsets you, don’t ever buy a dog from a pet store or a “backyard breeder.” Get a reputable breeder, or better yet, get a rescue dog.

And get some clothes that make you feel as good as Penny does in this picture:

Penny says, “I don’t have to see to know I’m lookin’ fly!”

As I mentioned, I’ve been tempted to do the occasional fashion-blog of my own outfits, as the dashing ladies of academichic and Already Pretty do, so here we go!

Because the focus of this blog — um, yes, this blog does have a focus, thank you very much! — is social behavior and how we live in the world, I think I’m only going to do this when I have some larger point to make besides “Dig my cool new belt!” So here’s the story on this outfit.

Every Wednesday during term at Harvard, the Rev. Peter Gomes of Harvard’s Memorial Church holds a tea from 5 to 6 at Sparks House, and about once a semester, I am invited to pour.

I poured last Wednesday, when it had been pouring outdoors (that Ugly Wintry Mix, remember?) for most of the day. I’d also been indoors writing for most of the day, swathed in layers of leggings and socks and sweatshirts. So I was very much of a mind to dress up a bit. In my writing about style, I’ve mostly focused on clothing and grooming as a way of communicating ourselves to others. That’s certainly important, but how we dress and fix ourselves up affects our own mood, as well. My mood wasn’t exactly an ugly wintry mix, but it was … foggy, shall we say. So I needed an outfit that would get my energy up, make me feel ladylike (as an etiquette columnist should while pouring tea at a minister’s house!) and playful.

I like to dress against the colors of the season, when the season is getting on my nerves. On a steamy August day, a black shift dress matched with a black sunhat and sunglasses makes me feel more like a sexy Mediterranean and less like a schvitzy pig. On the ugly winter days, springtime colors lift the mood. Try it sometime!

I’d also gone against my usually conservative makeup style and picked up a teal eyeliner — which looks surprisingly good on us hazel-eyed gals! — so an upbeat “Aprille with his shoures soote” green was to be the theme. Here’s how it looked. (We need to get a bit better at the photography; you can’t tell so much from the picture, but my tights are a sprucy green that complements the cardigan.)

Earrings: Utso Tibetan Boutique
Necklace: eBay
Tank top: Chico’s Travelers, eBay
Cardigan: J. Crew, eBay
Skirt: Leather, designer unknown, eBay
Bracelet: Victoria Tane, purchased at local art fair
Tights: We Love Colors
Boots: Dav rain boots from Designer Shoe Warehouse

What do you think? Would coming in from a cold dark night to fireplace-lit room and seeing a woman dressed like this, offering you a good hot cup of tea, lift your spirits into something better than an ugly wintry mix?

P.S. Those of you with experience in close textual analysis might notice a theme when it comes to the source of my clothing. Here are my tips on how to successfully shop for clothes on eBay.

P.P.S. Those books I’m using as a doorstop? Stephen King’s Desperation, The Regulators, and Nightmares and Dreamscapes. I needed a doorstop for that door, because my ironing board lives behind it, and I thought, “Y’know, people who hate on Stephen King always say you could use his books for doorstops.” Turns out they’re right.

The fashion stuff I write about — it’s not only because I enjoy it. I truly do believe this stuff matters. As I wrote here a few years ago, your clothing choices communicate who you are to other people, whether you want them to or not, so you may as well take control of that message.

PeaceBang has a particularly eloquent post about the importance of image today on Beauty Tips for Ministers. She’s writing about female clergy, but what she says can apply to everyone, of any profession or gender:

Drab, aggressively sexless, sartorially clueless people in any profession make a statement by their very presence, and that statement is not a good one. Some of the non-verbal statements such appearance makes are:

1. I do not want anyone to look at me.
2. I don’t deserve attention; being noticed is something I am not prepared to accept and a responsibility I do not want.
3. I am harmless; in fact, I am passive. The world is happening around me and I hope to be invisible in it.

That’s only the first three. There’s more. Go read.

Because eBay has thousands of them.

I don’t need a Christmas sweater — and given that there are twice as many ways to spell Hanukkah than there are nights in it, trying to find a Jewish holiday sweater on eBay would be an exercise in spellchecky madness. But I do like me some print cardigans, so I was poking about the other night to see what the offerings were. (Yes, clearly my weakness for print cardigans indicates that I still haven’t gotten that Michelle Obama fashion-worship out of my system.) And I found these:

And then I did a search under “sweaters” for “ugly” and found over three thousand hits!

Had you any idea that ugly Christmas sweaters (and socks, and vests) were such big business? I didn’t. It’s the unbridled glee in the sellers’ descriptions that I find so intoxicating:

Yes! That is one ugly sweater! Hooray! (Actually, maybe I’ve been looking at too many of these things, but this one doesn’t strike me as too bad.) And check out this vest:

The description on the vest is generally outstanding, in a kind of free-verse way (punctuation and spacing original);

Life of the party,Here it is A very Unique 1 of a Kind.Hand made
My Hubby is a XL and he can close it.There is no buttons up the.
Merry Christmas
Alittle bit of everything On this Sweater,
Thanks for Looking.Please ask questions.

Isn’t that great, in a “help i am ee cummings and am being held prisoner in a quacker factory” kind of way?

But it’s the phrase “1st prize,” I think, gives it all away, as does the word “contest” in a lot of other items. Apparently it’s been way too long since I’ve either celebrated Christmas or worked in an office (my HBS job is fairly isolated), because I’ve never heard of these “ugly Christmas attire” contests. Have you been to one? More importantly, do you have PICTURES you would like to share with all your friends on this blog???

And if you have been to one, and lost? eBay is here to help you, my friends. (But I doubt you’ll find anything on there quite as amazing as these gems.)

AND, if you want to look Christmassy but good, Peacebang at Beauty Tips for Ministers shows you the way.