Flare jeans: the elusive love of my life. As I understand it, they’re coming back into fashion, but my hometown in Spain remains three years behind the rest of the world, so it’s still incredibly hard to find good pieces. Back in the January sales, however, I was determined to find a pair I loved… and I did. It was twice my budget for jeans, but it was beautiful. It fit perfectly. It looked amazing.

So I checked a few other stores, went home, thought it over, and came back that evening for them so I wouldn’t feel bad about my purchase. In hindsight, this was some A+ decision-making on my part, method included. Go Lix.

(I could do this during sale season because, see, Esprit? Not popular in Spain. The shop? A little ways away from the main chain store cluster. I was concerned, to be sure, but I knew I could risk it. The shop itself however may be gone already, and I am very saddened by this turn of events.)

I wear these jeans on a weekly basis, and they were one of the two pairs I took to Barcelona last month. For my second day there — a long walk around the city, hitting some architectural spots, a museum of modern art and, unbeknownst to me, the Cathedral of Barcelona, as well as a weird art gallery and some bits and pieces from my leisurely photo walk back to the hotel I’ve yet to identify — I paired the flare jeans with a beautiful pair of flats from Yull, thick Pimkie socks that matched my cardigan and helped me pretend I was not breaking in a new pair of flats on a major city walk, a fuzzy cardigan I was sent last year by Blue Vanilla, bless them, and one of my many standardfare long-sleeve cotton t-shirts, this one from Sfera, which, believe it or not, has some real gems if you look hard enough.

(I wouldn’t call anything in my collection of long-sleeve t-shirts a gem; I’m talking about other pieces. But I rely on long-sleeve t-shirts to be comfortable, and I have an identical shirt to this one in a sweet dark blue-green color. Both were on sale, both are comfortable as all get-out, both I wear so often I am wearing this red one again today.)

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I’ve wanted a floppy hat since I started watching Pretty Little Liars — all the way back in 2010. Spencer wore a burgundy wool (felt?) hat in an episode and looked hot as burning, and a floppy hat in another episode (the first was a cloche, if I recall), and an obsession was born. Justifying the expense of a hat is hard for me for two reasons: a) I know myself, and I know I’ll rarely wear it no matter how much I like the look, and b) it’s kind of hard to find hats that don’t engulf my entire tiny head, face included. There’s a reason most of the hats I own are custom knits.

But just days before my birthday, there was one available in multiple sizes at Pimkie, and they sent me a voucher because I have a loyalty card, and the rest is history.

Actually, the rest is: if that hat had been in my mind for a long time, this location? Was getting there. Back in September, I visited Barcelona with my best friend, and we ended up hitting Maremagnum for a quick t-shirt shop on our last night there. Maremagnum is a mall situated on one of the long docks parallel to the port by Passeig de Colom. At night, with the streets lit up, the boats moored, the soft summer breeze and the mild resignation that my camera would never capture it well, I just wanted to breathe it all in.

Well, breathe it all in, and come back sometime in daylight to photograph someone in it.

And so it was, predictably, the first place I suggested to Megan when it was time to pick a location for our first outfit shots.

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