Tea and things.
First, tea at the Biltmore! I finished my out fit and was pretty happy with it, although I discovered there's a fine line between "Gibson Girl" and "School Marm". :-)
Tea was tasty and the Biltmore is way WAY pretty! I wound up switching seats to join Maureen, who was by herself and it made for a great afternoon as we were joined by the always cool chartreusekitty and Rebecca.
In a terribly embarassing moment I didn't recognize Rebecca as someone I had spent the better part of Loscon hanging out with. My mistake was compounded by the fact I actually enjoyed hanging out with her! I apologized profusely and told her to hit me if I ever did that again. ;-)
After the tea I rushed over to North Hollywood to meet cogitoergoludo at the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab open house. I was running late and didn't have time to change so I just showed up in costume. My dress turned out to be surprisingly appropriate given the theming of the shop. One of the staff even gave me a compliment.
Sadly, I didn't benefit much from the open house. BPAL sells perfumes and I am just not a perfume person. After about 10 minutes everything smelled the same and my eyes were watering. I tried dabbing some on the back of my hand to test the theory that your individual body chemistry changes the smell, but I don't think my nose is that discerning. Also, I over-dabbed the first scent: "goggles". Yeah, I liked the name. I also tried "ether" and "Macbeth and the witches", the later mostly drowned out by the "goggles".
Once my sense of smell was thoroughly overwhelmed I headed home. I decided to pick up dinner from Zankou Chicken despite still be slightly over-dressed for non-Biltmore dining establishments. I certainly got a lot of funny looks inside. Maybe they thought I was Amish. As I was leaving a guy asked me what I was dressed up for and I told him about my afternoon tea. He complimented me on my outfit. Whee!
Driving home I noticed my car still smelled strongly of "goggles". Even hanging my hand out the window didn't help. I got home and washed my hands but there is still a lingering miasma of "goggles".
All in all, still a great day.
The original concept for my outfit:
The final outfit. As a parting thought, I think that line between "Gibson Girl" and "School Marm" involves a better application of period corsetry.
