Photo by Chloe

My obsession with the ‘golden hour’ of photography is well-documented on this blog, so how could I resist this Clover Canyon dress (similar one here)? Few things make me happier than gauzy, sheer dresses with photographic prints on them. I love the gentleness of the silhouette, the modest cut but the sheer fabric, and the way this dress billows when I walk. It feels a bit like wearing a cloud. Even though it has nothing in common with a toga, the relaxed fit made me want to wear my gladiators. Yes, they’re soooooooo 2007 but who the hell cares? They don’t hurt my feet. And I like them. My new Bakelite beaded necklace from Dethrose Vintage magically goes with everything. No coordinating colors necessary, because orange is the happiest color in the universe. My earrings are little ice cream cones from TopShop. Actually, they’re vanilla frozen yogurt earrings, and they remind me of summers in Arkansas. The ochre red bracelets were a gift from Rachel Lynn Chicago, who was kind enough to send them to me. Oh, and how could I forget ShadesDaddy.com also generously replaced the Ray-Ban Wayfarers I lost. The site owner read in an old post about how I’d lost my wayfarers and offered to send me a new pair. It was such a warm gesture and I am so appreciative of the gift!

In my mind, summer and Arkansas are so intertwined that I often find myself wearing clothes and building outfits around references from the Ozarks – the hippie, free-spirited side, not the Madison County horror movie side (although my family did own a 300 acre cattle ranch in Madison County growing up, so maybe I do have a little bit of Deliverance in me). We were called carpetbaggers and Yankies, being from the East Coast and all, but there was this anachronistic energy to the way people talked, as though the Civil War had just ended. Even in Chicago, when the air smells sweet, I find myself magically transported back to memories spent lounging around in the lush Boston Mountain woods on my family’s ranch.

I first began to appreciate sunsets while driving a tractor with my dad, since I insisted on knowing how to operate heavy farm equipment (that’s one of my 5 ‘strange things about me’ items on my creative resume). Hours spent bailing and raking hay under the crystal clear Arkansan sky, also known as character building (the 2000s euphemism for child labor), taught me how to identify the types of storms by the shapes of the clouds. There times when the sunsets were so strong it was like the earth was being bathed in a heavenly pink light. Nothing ever felt that magical, and as I got older and realized from science class that it was the pollution of nearby charcoal factories and the occasional wildfire across the border in Oklahoma that generated the light refraction necessary for mindblowing sunsets, the childlike euphoria was dampened. I suppose that’s what happens when you get older, and not just when you understand sunsets.

This outfit is really all about celebrating the start of summer in Chicago. My new intern Chloe and I went street-style hunting together for the first time on Saturday, and both of us finished school this week; for her, it was the end of Freshman year of high school. As for me? Yesterday I graduated with a M.S. in Management from DePaul University. We had lots of celebrating to do! What perfect timing too, since June is the best. The warm-weather months stretch out before us like a field of limitless possibilities akin to the pancake-flat Interstate in Kansas. No matter what direction you go in, it’s all sunshine and sunflowers. Early summer feels infinite. By the time the Rockies start to appear in late August, we’re all ready to go back to school anyway.