Claire Hanan - The Official Website for Claire - Journalist, Publisher & Mizzou Grad

Check out the back to school spread on Belles and Rebelles. These back-to-school frocks make me miss the days of DSHA, though I looked about an eighth as cool as these chicks do. It wasn't easy to style a navy, gray and burgundy wool skirt with matching polos, but some Dashers tried their damndest. Or not at all. I alternated between the poles.

I imagine current Dashers look much more fab now that textured tights and bedazzled flats are both hot and accessible. I'm a big fan of the boots and cargo jackets in the final two photos, as those staples would look superb on the job hunt battlefield.

I'm officially declaring a new life goal -- a habit I've begun to create incentives for myself to keep lurching along on this bloody job hunt. Some goals are material, like this J. Crew bag or this couch (donations also welcome), but others are not. Membership to the New York Public Libraries' Young Lions club costs $350 and, to me, is worth every penny. According to its website, membership includes:

• Join prominent young writers, artists, and intellectuals for drinks and debate at Young Lions Forums
• Invitation to the Young Lion's Fiction Award ceremony
• Private, after-hours, behind-the-scenes tours with curators of the Library's collections
• Preview screenings of films with Q&As
• Invitations to lectures and tours presented by the Library's Friends Program
• Invitations to VIP exhibition openings
• 10% discount at The Library Shop
• 40% savings on LIVE from the NYPL tickets, and waived service fees on those tickets

Rawr. I'd become a member for the discussion sessions alone. Well then, dear friends, let this be your formal reminder that my birthday is in a few short months.

The perfect pair of autumn boots are like unicorns. They're rarely seen, but always desired. Indeed there's something mystical about a boot that elongates without suffocating your calves, and can withstand a dose of the seasonal elements. So, take a look below at some of this season's offerings; you just may find your own magical glittery creature among the bunch.

I've included all heights and styles because, quite obviously, every sensible woman needs more than one. In multiple colors. Enjoy!

Ed note: I'm working on the captions so bear with me as I add the links. I live a busy life, people.

It's nearly here: Fall in New York. At least, it better be almost here because I may melt before it fully arrives. Each day when I enter the subway station practically holding my breath because the heavy heat takes it away anyway, I think to myself, Fall will be here at some point. There will be a day when you will not have to shower three times.

Anyway, besides the weather adjusting itself back to normalcy, September in New York is basically the fashion world's birthday. That's right, kiddos! It's Fashion Week and Fashion's Night Out. So in honor of the upcoming celebrations, behold the trends I'd like to see officially banished by the sartorial royalty.

1. Cut-off shirts
I understand the heat. I really do. I've survived summers in Missouri and now a summer in New York in the very same humidity, pollution and heat that you're experiencing. The difference though, is that I've managed to keep my clothes from looking like I attacked them with a scissors in a heat-induced rage. Pull it together, hipsters. It's time for you to latch on to a new, more flattering trend.

2. In the very same PBR-filled vein, high-waisted denim shorts. Don't get me started. The look so cute and sophomoric from the front (on some, but certainly not all), and then said hipster turns around and every onlooker is privy to a dose of a twenty-something bottom in diapers. Saggy, ill-fitting acid-washed diapers. 

3. Bodycon.
I admit, I've owned not one but TWO pieces that would fall into this category. Originally made popular by Herve Leger and Balmain a couple years ago, this trend has been mass-produced and massively abused. At the height of the style's popularity, it was great to feel slimmer and edgy, but I've since decided I was missing out on one very crucial activity: breathing.
 
So, below I give you images of each of these offending styles only perpetuated here as an educational tool.

I've just now finished Chris Cleave's "Little Bee", a book about a young and very emotionally-mature Nigerian refugee's life after fleeing her home country. Cleave, a journalist for the UK's Guardian, writes beautifully from Little Bee's perspective as she experiences Western culture in light of all that's been stripped from her.

Concerning Western culture, Little Bee constantly asks herself, "but how will I explain this to the girls back home?" for customs as plain (or as strange) as wood flooring. Little Bee's life becomes heartbreakingly tied to Sarah Summers, a British magazine editor, and together the two navigate through the labyrinth of grief and survival, both emotional and physical.

Cleave's social commentary is expertly woven into the narrative without entering the discrediting territory of hyperbole, or nagging. He found a way to reveal the ugliness of humanity in a way that is maddeningly relatable: everyone possesses a streak of selfishness that makes itself plain at some point the world's only linear path, aging. Even Little Bee isn't innocent of selfishness, and the only character fighting human ugliness throughout the entire novel is Batman, Sarah's 4-year-old son, who has taken the name (and cape and mask) to fight the world's "baddies." Charlie, his birth name, contrasts Little Bee's similarly fluid identity and again, Cleave gives the reader a meal of self-perception and ideology to chew on.

As is usual for me for when I like a book, the binding has now been perversely stretched and folded, and not many pages have been dog-earred. To my friends who find dog-earring defacement: congratulations on your ability to keep track of bookmarks. Now leave me to my reading.