Bead and Butter

Top: The Library
Skirt: The Library
Cuffs/Necklace: The Library Pay a small fee, "check out" amazing pieces, bring them back in a week, start again. Fashion for forward thinkers, lovers of each others.
Shoes: Room Service Vintage, Austin
Socks: American Apparel, flea market sale

If you're not a big Plath reader, or even if you are, you likely haven't read The Lady and the Earthenware Head.  It's one of my favorite Plath poems. A lesser known piece, but I think it's one of the smartest things that ever happened.  Here's the first and last stanza:

Fired in sanguine clay, the model head
Fit nowhere: brickdust-complected, eye under a dense lid,
On the long bookshelf it stood
Stolidly propping thick volumes of prose: spite-set
Ape of her look. Best rid
Hearthstone at once of the outrageous head;
Still, she felt loath to junk it.

-

Yet, shrined on her shelf, the grisly visage endured,
Despite her wrung hands, her tears, her praying: Vanish!
Steadfast and evil-starred,
It ogled through rock-fault, wind-flaw and fisted wave—
An antique hag-head, too tough for knife to finish,
Refusing to diminish
By one jot its basilisk-look of love.

The grisly visage endured despite wrung hands, tears, praying? Steadfast and evil-starred, too tough for knife to finish, refusing to diminish?  That sounds about right.  I don't know if it's the season or the plight of my stars, but this is the time of year wherein Ys is set to repeat, tarot is oft-consulted, the dream is to burrow, and the shades are drawn. Venus in scorpio, Mercury in scorpio.  Though some might take to the bottle in retreat, I find that a stunning beaded vintage piece gets me through.  Shaye, kindred spirit, fellow lover of all things striking and strange, holder of hand as I tear up over soup bowl, and founder of The Library: Fashion Athenaeum, was kind enough to let me loose (again!) on her incredible collection, to put pieces together as I saw fit.  Not one for subtlety, socially-imposed modesty, or the color gray, this is what I came up with. In times of distress, others opt for chocolate, grand purchases, sex with strangers. Me? A heater, a friend, and racks of wearable art. That's my b(r)ead and butter.

Heartfelt thank you to the irreplaceable Shaye McKenney for lending these pieces, taking these photos, and being my friend.