Being Geek Chic is a blog for stylish geeks, sophisticated nerds and people who enjoy the musings of a complete dork. Join us as we dream of driving the TARDIS, cuddle with our eBooks and test out an iPad sleeve. It's written by Elizabeth Giorgi and a team of brilliant lady nerds. Meet the team.
Editor’s Note: This is a RERUN from the Being Geek Chic archives. I’m taking a bit of a break this week, so please enjoy these classics from the BGC archives while I’m away.
Occasionally I wake up with a song stuck in my head for no reason at all. I didn’t hear it on the radio. I didn’t look it up on YouTube. I wasn’t mysteriously attending a concert in my dreams and that song was played in it. My brain just decides that this is the song of the day.
Today: She Blinded Me With Science by Thomas Dolby.
I took it as a sign that I should have worn a science themed outfit today and scrapped my intended post on neons. So, neon next week. This week… SCIENCE! And since I’m really into accessories at all possible times… SCIENCE ACCESSORIES!
Costume departments on the sets of movies and TV shows are always aiming to create a look for their characters that matches their narrative purpose. So often with female characters this translates to blatant sex appeal or totally drab, pant suits meant to strip older women of any excitement at all. But these five characters are different. These five characters embody a wide range of ages, mediums, body types and style, but each have an important lesson to impart.
Here’s five women whose style is worth taking a note from:
Amy Pond teaches us that layering works. Always.
There are many who claim Steven Moffat ruined Amy Pond’s character with misogyny and anti-feminist stories in the end, but I can’t stress enough how much I appreciated the wardrobe department during the Pond era. Sure, she may have wore short skirts and short shorts, but she always wore them with layers. Tights, leather jackets, cowboy boots. It always felt true to her and more importantly, shows the importance of giving a little sex appeal here while covering up there. The mix is what makes it manageable.
I am making a commitment. A commitment to wear color. I know. This is big. Like, really, really big. I think you’ll see that I’m not breaking out that far, but this is a start, no doubt.
Things I’m obsessed with this summer: the moon, stripes, shorts with patterns that look like vintage couch upholstery, tassel things (I’m behind on this trend, but it’s so fun) and green with orange.
Now if only the weather in Minneapolis would quit being shitty. It’s rained for literally two weeks straight. Despite this, the internet keeps me aware of the seasons by helping me purchase these items, because dammit, I want summer now:
($44.93)What are your summer essentials?
One of my life dreams is to go to Kennedy Space Center and do the Astronaut training for a day. It just seems like one of those ridiculously awesome experiences that you can’t get anywhere else. However, it’s unlikely I’ll be having an astronaut experience anytime in the very near future, so why not just pretend?
Admittedly, I have no idea if this is what an astronaut would wear when they aren’t decked out in space gear, but this is what *I* would wear on office days if I were an astronaut.
Welp, we have reached May 1 and and my endless squeeing about Gatsby and Tony Stark and Scotty will likely be rather annoying around here in the next couple weeks. But let’s be annoying together! I always know Emmas up for it, so she came up with this versatile look:
Isn’t she freaking gorgeous?
Best part? She’s adapted it for cubicle dwelling hours and bar stool dwelling hours in two distinctly fun ways.
I want to tell you a story. It’s a rather useless story, but it’s a true one and I figure one (or many?) of you might be able to identify.
So I have been on a quest to find the perfect pair of black skinny pants. I had the perfect pair, but they’ve been worn so regularly and with such love that they are now a very sad muted, washed out, run down grey-brown-blegh color. This story wouldn’t even have to be told if I would have done the wise thing and bought two pairs when I got these delightful pants from Gilt a few years back, but this is the shit that happens when you shop in sporadic sprees of internet crazy.
After weeks of flash sale sites and internet super stores failing me terribly, I thought I’d hit up some of the brick and mortar shops to find a suitable replacement. I didn’t. I thought I did. But I didn’t. And why did I fail? Because as it turns out, the vast majority of black skinny pants are actually black skinny jeans for people with really swollen ankles.
Let me point out the difference:
I define “black skinny pants” as just that. Cotton pants made of solid black fabric that are cut like skinny jeans.
I define “black skinny jeans” as jeans that have been dyed black.
This is a critical point of differentiation. The former can be passably worn to work on any day of the week. The latter are reserved for Fridays only and as a result are quickly not worth the investment.
On top of my textile issues, I have also determined that I either A) have the skinniest ankles on planet earth or B) pants are now being made for people with very swollen ankles. I get it: the ankle bone protrudes ever so slightly from the leg, but does this mean I need a 70s bell bottom opening for my joints? No, no it does not.
Then I sauntered into one of the stores that I often imagined was amazing from my small town in Minnesota, until I actually went into one and realized that it’s not nearly as patriotic as the store’s “Classic Flag Tees” would have you believe. It’s just cheap. But I gave it a shot and hoped Old Navy would be able to solve this issue for me, because they had several pairs of pants that met my needs. Hoorah. NOT. I bought the Divas in black, washed them and wore them. And then, the smell. It began wafting about me, fooling me into thinking I had burnt my Amy’s Frozen Pizza. But no, my friends. IT WAS THE PANTS.
Let it be known: Old Navy’s pants smell like burnt beans. And apparently, no amount of washing and airing and drying or vinegaring (yes, that’s a thing) can destroy this stink. And as Google often does, it reminds me that I’m not alone in my bizarre searches.
So now I’m back on the hunt. Black pants, I know you are out there. Please Google, help me find them.
