Officially one of my favorite trends moving into 2013 has got to be the pajama style top/pant. The key to looking chic, and not like you simply didn’t want to get out of bed in the morning is all about layering, texture, and properly accessorizing. I can’t get enough of the harem style, or the breezy silk printed PJs. Whether you fancy a vintage pair, or a lust-worthy designer style, PJ’s can certainly be dressed up for nearly any occasion. Just ask these top babes!

• whowhatwear.com

• Pinterest
• Stella McCartney S/S 12'

• manrepeller.com

In the last Mercury of 2012 (tear), I asked a bunch of the city's style insiders what their favorite moments were from the year. According to the "fashionably late" stereotype, a number of these people did not get back to me until after deadline. However! The rest of what these latecomers had to say, with insights from representatives of Portland's Pretty, Odessa, House of Coco, and Yo Vintage!. Read 'em while 2013 still has that new-year smell.

Marissa Sullivan, Portland's Pretty

I thought the No Sleep Til... Deja Vu party, which was for Solestruck flagship store's one year anniversary, was the best fashion event of the year, with Yacht playing an awe-inspiring set, Degen making their models dance in underwear, and how Esque by Leslie Pennel sent down one after the other gorgeous leather peplum looks. Or how the Chloe Spring 2013 Ready To Wear show stole my heart with its sheer pastels, metallic heels, tailored shorts, and crisp white Japanese polyester looks. Then how there was this breakout sister trio called Haim that completely won me over with their first single "Forever." Their harmonizing is spot on, but their style is what really gets me going with their whole '90s 90210 meets 2012 rocker girl aesthetic. And what about Pinterest becoming the biggest time suck for budding stylists, fashionistas, and experienced style bloggers alike?

• Tilda Lindstam (IMG)
• Chloe

Bree Goertzen, Odessa

I love all of the color that has been present in fashion this year. While I tend to have a pretty toned down fashion palette I’ve really enjoyed the way color and pattern have been catching my eye and pulling my heart strings in 2012. To this, there is no one who has worn color and pattern better this year than Solange Knowles! Her "Losing You" video is a perfect example of this, and her lovely music is pretty great too!

Coco Madrid, House of Coco

It’s been a good year filled with great fashion events, trends, and inspirations. Here are some of my favorites! 1) New Goth: Saw a surge of this aesthetic in fashion, music, and film. New goth has proved to be chic and accessible to everyone. Mixing mystery and fantasy and some well done black nails, you can take your LBD to new levels with attention to detail and texture. All black everything! Into it. 2) Bad Bitch Style: We got a taste of this from Iggy Azalea, Gita Speaxdaily, and Brooke Candy. '90s throw back/bizarro world Peg Bundy/long scary nails. (Side note: One of my new favorite local designers, Hello Eliza is a prime example of this style. Check out her "Gangland" collection for the best in Bad Bitch clothing.) 3) The rise of Plus Size Bloggers: An issue that is near and dear to me! Finally the fashion world takes notice of the many fashionable fat girls of the internet. Mega online publications like the New York Times, Huffington Post, and Refinery29 covered the elite Plus Bloggers that have inspired me for over five years. This is definitely not just a trend but a revolution in the making. Event of the year goes to the Solestruck 1st year anniversary party. I am still thinking about all the great designers, dÉcor, and music that made this night one to remember. It was a great example of how a proper fashion event should go. Can’t wait for next year’s party!

• Hello Eliza

Kayla Rekofke, Yo Vintage!

I absolutely loved Leandra Medine’s, aka the Man Repeller’s wedding. Her couture Marchesa dress (ultimate dream!), moto jacket, and a flower crown were utter perfection. Overall The Man Repeller is brilliant. I identify with her sense of style, age, and the way she doesn’t make fashion seem so “serious.” Although she’s become quite the it girl, I think her reign as top blogging babe is here to stay well into 2013. It might come off as bitchy, but every celebrity has money, time, and personal training sessions at their disposal, so it wouldn’t be that hard to look great all the time. I like the way real girls pull together outfits and street style trends. Most of my fashion inspiration comes from my closest group of girlfriends. I envy Anna Branch’s effortless layering ability, Melissa LaChance’s boho, luxe, Olsen twin-esque vibe, and Maya Dahlgreen’s Americana, rocker leather, dark, witchy looks. Favorite Collections: Alexander McQueen Spring 2013 RTW. Sarah Burton consistently gets it right, seamlessly keeping the late Alexander McQueen’s spirit alive while clearly making her own legacy. Chanel Spring 2013 RTW. Who could forget the fucking hoola-hop purse? Still obsessed, good one Uncle Karl. Book: Add More Ing~ To Your Life by Gabrielle Bernstein. Event: Coachella 2012. Decor: This year I loved thrifting for vintage teacups, dishes, and other little bits to stash jewelry, makeup, and odds and ends in my bedroom!

• Style.com
• Alexander McQueen

What do you get when you combine Portland apparel company Bridge + Burn with New York City, filmmaker Monica Reyes, and a couple attractive Swedish models staring pensively out of windows? This:

Closer to home, the company also shot a fresh new lookbook in Forest Park with photographer Cara Denison:

• Cara Denison

• Cara Denison

• Cara Denison

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• Kayla Rekofke
• My cards!

Solestruck’s latest pop-up party featured super cool line Sugarhigh + Lovestoned, flaming shots of absinthe a flowin’, as well as Psychic Siamese Terror doing tarot readings. I love a good Solestruck party, but this one was exceptional due to the incredible duo known as Psychic Siamese Terror. I was having a bit of a bad day and just wanted to pop in to say hi, but ended up staying and having my cards read by Alana, a gypsy goddess covered in crystals and the ability to make you feel like you’ve known her forever. Alright, let’s get down to biz... the card reading was amazing: first she had me meditate for a moment on what I wanted to ask my cards (but not tell her what I was asking), then I shuffled them back and forth a few times, then she laid them across the candle-covered tabletop. Next, she instructed me to pick out five cards depending on which ones felt “hot” or had energy behind them. Within minutes she was telling me exactly what I had meditated about. Alana gave me constructive and precise advice, as well as opened my mind to what I could improve upon. I was still buzzin’ upon arriving home, so naturally I googled all of the cards I’d drawn and scoured the world wide web to learn more. Long story short, go see Alana or Suzy—they are fucking awesome, and even if you don’t “believe,” these babes are sure to brighten up any shindig or girls' night. More info on booking and services here.

To say "fashion" blogs are about a dime a dozen these days would be an understatement. When this rare rose came across my screen the other day I was immediately smitten. Endless outfit inspiration, pretty shit to look at, and mantras in awesome typography = check! My Favorite Colour is Shiny is by Bianca Louisep, a fashion design student out of Austrailia. Should have guessed—Aussies ooze that effortless cool vibe like it’s their job. Here’s a peek at what she’s servin’ up:

I'd rather read Teen Vogue than American Vogue—the clothes are more fun, and there's less hand wringing about at what age you should stop wearing short skirts (how about when I'm dead?). But even if you've never cracked either, you know who Vogue editor Anna Wintour is, because she's turned the historically unsung role of fashion editor into one of the most visible perches of celebrity in the world. Erik Maza has a good piece in WWD about the obsession with Anna and the guessing games about what her next career move might be. (The latest scuttlebutt involves an ambassadorship to England or France, believe it or not.) Conveniently, her latest appearances in the gossip pages coincide with the debut of In Vogue: The Editor's Eye, an HBO documentary chronicling the magazine's 120 (!) years. It's airing tonight at 9, which makes me reconsider my decision not to pay for cable:

If you have the means and the presence of mind to book yourself on a flight to Mexico in the next five months or so, I have one request in the name of vicarious living: Pay a visit to Appearances Can Be Deceiving: The Dresses of Frida Kahlo, now on view at the Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City.

Kahlo of course is famous not only for her often-disturbing self-portraits but for her personal style, and she used clothing very expressively, both disguising her physical disabilities (she had terrible luck with buses) and announcing her cultural identity. The story goes that when she died her husband Diego Rivera guarded a closet full of her belongings, entrusting it to his friend Dolores Olmedo after he died, who then proceeded to safeguard it until she died, at the ripe age of 93, in 2002. With Olmedo the private campaign to safeguard Kahlo's personal effects, from clothing to perfume and prescriptions, against mishandling came to an end, but they ended up in the trustworthy hands of the museum and Vogue Mexico.

Due to the involvement of the latter, Appearances not only displays Kahlo's belongings as a historical archive but contextualizes her influence on fashion design with excerpts of collections from Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des GarÇon, and Givenchy. Due to the fragile nature of the materials, it's doubtful the exhibit will travel far, if at all, so stateside we'll have to content ourselves with reports and glimpses like the one documented in this interview with exhibit curator Circe Henestrosa:

All the fun Halloween parties are happening this weekend, and by the time actual Halloween comes around a week from tomorrow, your costume will already be thrashed and trashed. So now's the time for exchanging costume ideas, and we're proud to say we've always held the course when it comes to taking a hard line against costumes that are "sexy" versions of other things. "Sexy nurse," "sexy pope," "sexy turnip," etc. (Actually sexy turnip might be pretty good.) However, we've never gotten around to writing a rap about it, much less a rap featuring Tim Gunn! And in this we have, as in many other ways, failed you. However we will post one such video that somebody else made as partial restitution:

We are not over the fact that Chromatics accompanied the Chanel fashion show at Paris' Grand Palais earlier this month, because HOLY SHIT—not at all. And apparently, neither are they. They used footage from behind the scenes of the show—including half-styled models gazing ambiguously into the camera—to make the video for "Looking For Love," off the forthcoming After Dark 2 label sampler from Italians Do It Better.

Not that I'm above it, but sometimes I have to beg (okay maybe not beg, but publicly request) local theaters to show the fashion-related documentaries me and mine are dying to see. I was fully prepared to prostrate myself thusly for Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel, which chronicles the incredible career of the Harpers Bazaar editor (still the best option among the supermarket fashion rags, in my opinion). But what do you know, I didn't even have to. There's a DVD copy of it burning a hole in my work bag right now, and I already know I'm going to want to watch it more than once; the imagery alone, as evidenced in the trailer, pre-justifies it:

I die. So chaaaahming. Opens at the Fox Tower on Oct 19!

Jen LaMastra is the indisputable star (unless you care to dispute me) of Glean, a group show of art made solely with materials scavenged from the city dump, currently on view at Disjecta. She has a couturier's knack for looking at a material—be it pages of a dictionary, window blinds, or tires—and determining what would be the most painstaking possible way of using it. The result is wearable sculpture that defies predictability as often as it does the act of sitting (one of her submissions for Glean involves a bustle made, in part, of bed springs). If you don't get up to the old Paul Bunyan to often, though, there's another, downtown chance to see LaMastra's latest. "Single Use Disposables: Convenience or Conundrum" is now on view in the Galleria windows at SW 9th & Morrison, and on view through October.

I can't resist fantasizing about what LaMastra could do with traditional dressmaking materials, but she remains focused on raising awareness of the waste society generates, and this installation—fourth in a series—specifically deals in plastic bags, coffee cups, and plastic beverage bottles, materials specifically intended to be used once and thrown away. Here's a video of her fashioning coffee cops into an intricate bodice, but let it be a teaser for the finished installation and, better yet, a motive to make the trek out North to Glean, which features some of her most impressive work to date.