Indian Summer

…and the answer is: No – I can’t live without my golden jeans anymore, I tried! I swear I tried to create an outfit without using them… but when I got this deep red and gold caftan in my hands I just had no choice!

The good news is that, for the first time ever since I started this blog, I’m NOT wearing a hat. That’s already something, isn’t it? LOL

As you can see, this outfit is embarrassingly (just kidding :P) simple. Once I put on the golden jeans, I felt like the look was almost finished, which is something very, very rare for me and my usual “more is much, much more” premise.

However, this is just the way it happened this time, and I feel fine about it. This caftan is so jewelled I felt it didn’t need anything more, so I just completed the look with a bunch of bronzed bracelets.

The big problem, however, came when it was time to pick the shoes.

What kind of shoes can you wear with an India inspired outfit?

The answer might be quite obvious, right, but it wasn’t that simple for me…

As I already told you in my last post, there are certain parts of my body I prefer not to show, and this is always a problem when summer hits the town, because I suddenly run out of presentable shoes.

I struggled with my (stupid?) moral (=aesthetic) dilemma for a while, until I convinced myself that sandals were the only possible solution. Right in that moment, I had some sort of mystical flashback: I suddenly remembered a pair of Pakistani sisters that went to school with me for a little while (for some reason, they didn’t stay there for long). I pictured them wearing their beautifully embroidered deep red (at least, those are the ones that I remember – I bet they also had them in other colours LOL) shalwar kameezes, with long scarves around their shoulders and their shiny black hair tied up in a long thick braid that fell graciously down their backs. I probably have somewhat of a creative memory, but remembering them like that just made me smile.

So I said to myself: “If people in India and Pakistan can do it, maybe I can do it too!”

  

In the end, I chose a pair of beautiful red lacquered Japanese style sandals we had at home from back in the late 90s (ah, the golden days of oriental minimalism…). A dose of metallic red nail polish did the rest.

[You can catsch a glimpse of the red sandals in this old pic from 2000. Obviously, I’m not the one wearing them – I was still a kid –, but you can see some of my genes in there LOL

BTW, were those the matching trousers to my caftan? Because they look pretty compatible…]

[This 1997 photoshoot perfectly reflects the spirit of the time]

With that and my black hippie sack on my shoulder I was ready to go.

[Yeah - I forgot to take pics with my bag, so I had to improvise LOL]

However, the gods of fashion (LOL) didn’t want to make things that easy for me.

I was just about to catch a train when I started to feel like the ground was too soft under me. I had already been through a similar situation before, so I immediately checked out the soles of my sandals, and saw that, just as I had suspected, the (expensive) rubber they were made of was slowly disintegrating with every step I made.

HOLY SH***********T!!!!!

Of course, I had no choice but running to the nearest mall in search of something to replace them, even though I was already late for my appointment.

It took me more than an hour to find a pair of sandals I could consider acceptable. I had never, ever thought it could be THAT hard, but it definitively was. I checked out around four different stores, and all they offered were either gladiator sandals (God, I hate them SO much LOL), orthopedic-looking granny style sandals or just flip-flops that were no way suitable for street wear. I was SO desperate! It all felt like a nightmare x__x

I found these when I had already started my (hopeless) second round. I had doubts about them at first (they were a bit too open for my taste, and the ankle strap didn’t convince me much), but they certainly matched my outfit better than any others (even better than the ones I was wearing, I have to admit) and there was undoubtedly NOTHING more to choose from, so I grabbed them straight away.

Now that I see it in perspective, I think I was very lucky to find them. They are cool, and they look just perfect with this outfit! And the ironic thing is that, if it hadn’t been for my incident with my other pair, I would have never, ever got my hands upon them. That kind of things returns you to the thought that everything happens for a reason.

Or maybe not?

[As you  can see, I was having a hard time dealing with the afternoon sun during this photoshoot LOL]

PS. Haven’t you noticed anything strange in this post? That’s right – I didn’t get ANY inspiration from Bill or Tom Kaulitz for this outfit! (LOL). Should I get scared already?

Caftan: unknown

Jeans: MNG

Sandals: You Too

Bracelets: unknown

Bag: Indigo