The American Apparel Velvet Long Sleeve Mini Dress

I've been wanting to get this for quite a while now - when I walked into an AA store  last week, I knew exactly what I was doing.

"Do you have this in a large?"

I first tried it on in the AA store in London - in October I was still struggling with body acceptance, and when I put it on, I felt so strange - the material felt fantastic and the emerald green shimmered with luxury, but my body shape I feared so much was SO visible. My partner was in the changing room with me, and while he was enjoying the soft velvet material and stroking my arms, I wondered to myself - maybe this dress would be able to "trick" my mind into not hating my body anymore. Maybe if I could appreciate the material, I wouldn't be so fixated on the actual shape of my body. Maybe I could actually start to appreciate my shape?

This is from a photo shoot my friend did for school. 

I'm really happy I got it, it's good for learning how to appreciate your body if you have struggles with that, but in general, it's also a great garment to own if you're really bad with planning outfits - it's good for ~formal situations, and it's easy to just pull out of your closet and put on. The only complaint I have is that sometimes I get it on backwards and then I goofily struggle with twisting it around the right way - but I found that if you hold it by the shoulder seams you can see which side is the low-cut back and which one is the slightly less cut front. Also it rides up a bit, but that's something that isn't surprising at all from American Apparel, after all they are one of the sexier brands, even controversially so.

Another photo from that day.

I've also been experimenting with makeup a little more recently - here I just have a regular cat-eye (you can't see it behind my hair) and I stuck some pink rhinestone stickers under my eyes, because I got bored staring at my reflection. I'm feeling a need for change, hopefully I do something to my hair soon. I don't know, we'll see :)