11-23-2025 MY INSPO: my guide to... whatever

 the setscentlist

a signature scent is something every magazine, girl, tiktok, talks about, almost all the time. scents in general are powerful time capsules. the smell of coffee and cigarettes reminds me of a cafe in croatia, or my mom's old friends visiting for coffee and gossip when i was a kid. my mom follows marilyn monroe's advice and sticks with chanel n°5, and she'll remind us that the elizabeth taylor white diamonds scent was what reminds her of her wedding with our dad. 

there was an aeropostale perfume in 2012 that reminded me of happy days when i was finishing up middle school, including my first serious heartbreak, or a first hidden cigarette behind our gym. i think i found it on fragrantica, but it's been discontinued since.

when we were kids, sib and i had a mary kate and ashley olsen perfume, perhaps our first ever perfume. can we consider that archival the row?

my mom used to collect perfume bottles when she was in her twenties, and i thought that was the coolest idea, and i followed suit. i still have a hard time tossing beautiful bottles, with droplets left to marinate on the bottom, reminding me of various eras of my life. 

i struggle to keep just one signature scent, but i can share some current faves.

maison margiela replica fragrances have been a big fave the last couple years. they have refillable bottles (sustainable) and often send testers and gifts with orders. 

i like using a bath and body works or sol de janeiro body spray for everyday use, and to add on after showering or while getting ready for work etc.

an old friend told me she mixes men's cologne with her regular perfume for longer lasting scent. 

boyfriend loved his gucci guilty black and is loyal to it.

sib bought ysl black opium, and i was very jealous. i might revisit that one eventually.

here's a list of other perfumes from my archives, now just pretty bottles in my collection:

ariana grande - cloud (technically sib's but used to borrow. very longlasting)

calvin klein - obsession

dolce & gabbana - light blue (had this in cro last year)

gucci - bloom

maison margiela replica - jazz club

maison margiela replica - under the lemon trees (a summertime fave)

marc jacobs - daisy

moschino cheap and chic - i love love

oscar de la renta - live in love

philosophy - amazing grace

refuge - red (back when sib used to work at the mall)

vera wang - glam princess

most of these scents are very affordable and many i bought during the time i was working minimum wage, but now that i have more big girl money, i am happy to still search for that signature scent with the bigger fish...

nailed it

as if my nailspo folder already isn't saturated with masterpieces to-be-done, here's recent nailspos i found interesting. my algorythm knows when it's nail day.

enTIEtled

more unorthodox tie looks found on substack and other social media as of late.

met gala: costume art

between the teaser trailer for the devil wears prada 2 and cleveland museum of art's new exhibit renaissance to runway, my fashion world is booming with new stuff all around. with that, one of the most important events - the met gala - finally has a theme for 2026: costume art. i did my due diligence and made a playlist to match the theme.

here's more about this exhibit, the first permanent exhibit for the costume institute at the met.

curator andrew bolton described this one as an exhibit that addresses "the centrality of the dressed body in the museum’s vast collection"

from vogue:

“what connects every curatorial department and what connects every single gallery in the museum is fashion, or the dressed body,” bolton says. “it’s the common thread throughout the whole museum, which is really what the initial idea for the exhibition was, this epiphany: i know that we’ve often been seen as the stepchild, but, in fact, the dressed body is front and center in every gallery you come across. even the nude is never naked,” he continues. “it’s always inscribed with cultural values and ideas.”

bolton figures that the hierarchy endures precisely because of clothing’s connection to the body. “fashion’s acceptance as an art form has really occurred on art’s terms,” he explains. “it’s premised on the negation, on the renunciation, of the body, and on the [fact that] aesthetics are about disembodied and disinterested contemplation.”

his bold idea for “costume art” is to insist on the significance of the body, or “the indivisible connection between our bodies and the clothes we wear.” fashion, he insists, actually “has an edge on art because it is about one’s lived, embodied experience.”

he’s organized the exhibition around a series of thematic body types loosely divided into three categories. these include bodies omnipresent in art, like the classical body and the nude body; other kinds of bodies that are more often overlooked, like aging bodies and pregnant bodies; and still more that are universal, like the anatomical body. bolton’s is a much more expansive view of the corporeal than the fashion industry itself often promotes, with its rail-thin models and narrow size ranges. “the idea was to put the body back into discussions about art and fashion, and to embrace the body, not to take it away as a way of elevating fashion to an art form,” he explains.

“costume art” is the first of bolton’s exhibitions to be subtitle-less. the simplicity of the show’s name bolsters its objective: that fashion should most certainly be considered on the same plane as art. “i thought very, very carefully about that,” bolton says. in fact, as recently as two weeks ago, the show did have a colon and a subtitle. “but then we took it out and it was like taking off a corset,” he laughs.

 

to wrap up all this being said about the met gala, i think this is a celebration of the body as art and not object. it's refreshing to see more than just ozempic skinny that is getting so normalized it's scary. i do need to note, when seeing who the primary funders are, i was once again disappointed to see that our art and fashion is controlled by big corporations that often promote unattainable life goals, pay their workers shitty pays and almost force them to work insane hours for the sake of benefits, and are people with no real substance or merit - just money. they're the reason our pays suck, everything is expensive, but hey, maybe we'll all get a chance to be ozempic-skinny because we won't be able to afford to eat?!

one top - four ways!

this sunday i purchased a wonderful vintage jean paul gaultier mesh top, and i wanted to share four ways how i might style it in the future. with the holiday season coming up, and many hangouts and parties already planned, i am so excited to flash this baby around.