To the Mother Country

There's this joke among some costumer-friends & I that England is the "mother country." We're all anglophiles in the worst way. We've read too many Bronte & Austen novels (or at least watched movie versions endlessly), we love the fantasy of having royalty (& those of us who are old enough remember watching Princess Di in her ridiculous meringue wedding dress),  we love crumbling castles & running across the moors in white nightgowns, we drink way too much tea out of prissy little china cups. This is all a big part of why we spend inordinate amounts of time & money creating crazy historical reproduction costumes.

So yeah, my first trip abroad was to the Mother Country of England. My then-boyfriend/now-husband convinced me to go, & we visited sites associated with some of my favorite English authors, from Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey to Wordsworth's Dove Cottage in the Lake District to the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth. Not only am I a nutty costumer, I'm also a frustrated academic -- soon after this seminal trip, I went to grad school to continue my pointless studies in Victorian literature. Not like you can get a job in that very easily! So I dropped out a few units shy of a second degree. Ah well. I'll settle with a cool T-shirt from my most recent (& fifth) trip to the U.K.

What I'm wearing:
Black velveteen jacket, White House Black Market
England T-shirt, bought in London
Black jeans, Levis
Black ankle boots, Aldo
Silver filigree earrings, random accessory store
Jet & gunmetal cocktail ring, random accessory store
Grey & black flower hair pins, random accessory store