Veronifugs

Why am I not surprised that, when the veronicas get together with target to design a range of clothing for pre teen girls, combining my hatred for celebrity labels and inappropriate faux punk girly fashion, that my worst fear of all was going to be involved. That's right. Leggings with stitching that's made to look like denim.



No, please do click on the image to enlarge it I beg of you. You need to understand where I'm coming from when I say the world as we know it is coming to an end. This is almost worse than the time when Bratz (the doll company) tried to sell push up bras for 6 year olds. Or that other time (now) when Linds Lo tried (trying) to sell leggings with knee pads, and leopard print, ankle, things...

Really people, this is a terrifying fashion world we live in. Inspired by a good friends upcoming house warming theme of 90s fashion, I started digging up a lot of repressed memories. I'm talking, early ninties starting from the Babysitters Club moment I had in grade 3, to afterschool adventures with Clarissa Darling, to marathon evenings with Kenan and Kel (and an entire SNICK evolution). Stay with me folks, there's a lot to get through. I would like to just outline two of these fashion heroes here in order to come up with a look suitable for the said party, even though there is a high chance I will not be able to make it.



BSC. We actually started a club, back in the day, and we each took on a role of the original four. I was always going to be Claudia can't-spell-for-her-life Kishi. I would pretend I liked Nancy Drew, eat lots of candy, and braid my side ponytail. I wanted to make my own jewelery and paint my dads shirts, when I was old enough. Lucky for everyone involved that by the time I was old enough, I'd moved on. Recently I came across a fascinating blog written by a girl who was clearly brain fart twin back in the day, because the entire blog is just a transcript of all the passages from the books, of what claudia wore. (aka the best instances of literature ever! what imagination, what style!) My only regret is that I never stuck around long enough to get to the Super Mysteries part of the series. They sound like fun.

Style Points to take from Claudia:
- Side Ponytail
- Overalls
- Denim Cutoffs
- Oversized Men's shirts, ideally hand painted with a pattern of some sort, and fitting with the overall theme of an outfit
- Having themes for outfits, such as: the sea, fruits, body parts.
- Fluro leggings
- Wide Belts
- The Entire American Apparel catalogue



Clarissa Explains It All.
now THAT was a show. Back when Melissa Joan Heart was still cute and a good at what she does, back when a completely platonic relationship between a girl and a boy was still plausable, back when parents are seen as the bumbling, well meaning, but ultimately foolish financial facilitators. Clarissa was way cool. She made arcade style computer games in every episode that serve no purpose. She was intelligent, had great taste in music, she wanted to be a tv journalist, and she broke the fourth wall!! Her fashion sense was off the wall as well. I'm still downloading the entire first season so I can revel in it's 90s greatness, but from memory, and what I can dredge up from youtube, I came up with the following:

Style Points to take from Clarissa
- Layers, lots of it, in block contrasting colours
- Coloured scrunchies
- Brightly coloured leggings under torn jeans
- Vests, suspenders, grandpa cardigans
- Headbands
- Polka dots, Stripes
- Billowy silhouettes
- Oversized shirts with rolled up sleeves worn as a vest over an oversized t-shirt.



Man and she had awesome diagrams and charts. This girl was way cool, how she turned into Sabrina I'll never understand.

These are my two biggest inspirations of my primary school phase. It's pretty late, so I'm going to leave it at that. But if I was to go into a whole spill on old Nick shows I'll never leave. Secret World of Alex Mack, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, All That, Adventures of Shirley Holmes, and Kenan and Kel made up most of my childhood. As dated as some of these might seem, it sure beats whatever crap the Veronicas could ever come up with, that's for sure.

speaking of which

urgh...
as Clarissa would say, they are such a burr in my butt.

(ps/ you can watch quite a few episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark on youtube now, some are still quite creepy, some with Ryan Gosling, and all with terrible special effects)