Happy Dollyween

Halloween is one of my most favorite times of year - on what other holiday can you abandon who you are for a day and become someone completely different? For a dreamer like me, Halloween is an answer to my prayers. I think about my costume for months, brainstorming ideas and trying to pick out in my mind different pieces of the costume I already have in my wardrobe and which pieces I have an excuse to run out and purchase. For some, Halloween is just an excuse to dress up like a dimestore hooker in a store-bought complete costume set (dignity not included). But what's the fun in wearing polyester undergarments and wobbling around in stilettos for an entire night?
Instead of the typical Halloween fare, I invite you to celebrate 'Dollyween' with me (well, not with me-with me, but as much as can be over the internet). Dollyween is incidentally the same night as Halloween, but instead of dressing up as a 'sexy bumblee' or a 'sexy librarian' or a 'sexy (enter any occupation here)', we will dress up as 'sexy' Hitchcock heroines, cult favorite characters, and various mad men and women.
For the next two weeks, I will post my favorite costume ideas for Dollyween. Please, please, please feel free to post your own costume ideas or send me photos from your favorite Halloween outfits from years past. Any 'sexy' insects need not partake.

give me a sign

Here are photos of my favorite signs from various protesters, hippies, and homeless. I think it's so refreshing to know that these types of activities still go on today, that all hope for change didn't die in the sixties. From angry marches to end Vietnam to one man's plea for the president to bring back his beloved Arrested Development, I hope you enjoy these images just as much as I do.

they'll name a city after us

Daily Inspirations: a hodgepodge of images I find exciting, enthralling, beautiful, captivating, funny, or smart. They probably won’t make sense altogether, but our most exciting thoughts never do.

Love this photo of Jean Shrimpton and Dudley Moore, shot by David Bailey for the June 1965 issue of Vogue UK

Following up the previous Audrey post, how can you not love her as the daring darling Holly Golightly?

Vanessa Paradis with a guitar, a floppy felt hat, a lace dress, white over-the-knee socks, and maddeningly gorgeous makeup and hair. In the immortal words of Rachel Zoe, "I die."

I am such a Rose, it's not even funny.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks - my what a height difference! Imagine trying to get the two of them in the same shot!

You know when you see a photograph not of you, but it perfectly describes you during a certain time in your life? Yeah, this is me in the early nineties.

Why I envious this photograph: 1) I wish I could be that bendy, 2) I can't even play the piano right-side up, let alone upside down on the top of a piano, 3) I want to learn how to make my hair do that, 4) I do not have the body to pull off that outfit, 5) those are some may-jah shoes.

Club kids and Hindu gods, what's wrong with that? But seriously... there are arms everywhere (and not just coming from Vishnu).

I will forever be obsessed with the life of Marie Antoinette. That, coupled with my debilitating desire to live inside of a Sofia Coppola film, means that this film will own my life. Forever.

Betsey. She's my best friend. I adore her in so many ways. Betsey, can we just run away together and live in Betseyville forever?

The five Ames Sisters in 1929 in order: Dorothy, Alice, Marjorie, Mary Eloise, and Barbara. Marjorie looks a lot like Mariel Hemingway to me. And I'm kinda obsessed with Barbara's expression.

I don't know, but I love it.

Louise Brooks. Need I say more?

I absolutely adore this. I wish to be a train wreck with someone one day.

I don't know why this was such a revolutionary thought to me.

My forever, undying love of all things Alice. Again, like Sofia Coppola, I dream of living inside Lewis Carroll's world. Gasp! Imagine if instead of Tim Burton, Sofia Coppola had made a version of Alice in Wonderland. It would be so dreamy and unreal.

I love the idea of going to Coney Island. I've never gone before, but I would want it to be all vintage-y and hokey like in the 1940s. Since I know that's not the case today, I won't ever go because I don't want to spoil the dream.