Yikes! Stripes!

I'll give you my horizontal stripes when you pry them out of my cold dead hands.

I may be "too petite" or "too curvy" for horizontal stripes by some measures, but I also have a pixie cut and elfin features, which I feel gets me a firm buy on a couple of the rules on account of my rather Gamine appearance.

From Wikipedia: The word gamine is a French word, the feminine form of gamin, originally meaning urchin, waif or playful, naughty child.

From me: in the 20th century it took on the implication of a small, slim, doe eyed, impish woman with a noticeably French (sometimes boyish) flare.  

Two of the most well known gamines are of course the Audreys.

Hepburn and Tautou, that is.

Their style is iconic, but just a tad too sweet for me, and anyway I'm talking about stripes here. When you're talking about gamine and stripes, you're talking about 50s/60s actress and tragic figure, Jean Seberg.

Jean Seberg in stripes (<-- that is a Google image search, go bask in the stripey goodness for a minute, check out all those homages, Madonna, Winona, Emma... I'll wait) is probably the single most definitive style influence of my last decade.

If I were limited to a single outfit for the rest of my life - a striped boatneck with slim but relaxed jeans would be pretty high up in the contenders.

March 2010 - I miss platinum hair just about every day, no joke

I've always had a soft spot for 60s style and cutting my hair off threw that into overdrive, so when I'm feeling like exploring the somewhat harder edges of Gamine I look to late 60s actress, Warhol muse, and also tragic figure - Edie Sedgwick.

Don't get me wrong, I dearly love me some Twiggy too, but for the goth girl in me - it'll always be Edie.

I've never gotten the hang of big earrings (I prefer bracelets), but a lifetime of cropped hair (contrasting roots and all), kohl, black leggings, and sack dresses would suit me just fine too.

On a related note: I've been going through old pics of myself this week and have noticed a distinct change in my eye makeup styling from the go-to look of my teens and twenties to now.

March 2003 - all hail the crappy webcam selfie!

I used to have a pretty adept hand at extremely heavy kohl and strong cut crease styles using little more than black liner and shadow (applied while commuting to college on a train every day, no less). When I started using the internet to research makeup I realised I had independently discovered many tricks commonly used to make small eyes look as large as humanly possible, yet I pulled it off with full, heavy black lining, which is usually said to shrink eyes.

Looking at the way I do makeup now I feel that I may have actually lost a few tricks along the way!

It's something I've been playing with lately and I've got a new concealer on the way so hopefully I'll have more to say on that (and maybe the gumption to take some closeups) later.