Still Totally Obsessed with Tibi

In recent months, ever since discovering Tibi founder and creative director Amy Smilovic's Instagram stories about personal style and the brand's Style Class videos, I've become rather obsessed with shopping from Tibi. Spoiler alert for this month's shopping reflections post: I continued my recent trend of shopping heavily from them, this time from the secondhand market and their ongoing sale. It starts to feel a little unbalanced to shop so much from one brand in a fairly short time! 

Before viewing Smilovic's Instagram stories and Tibi's Style Class videos, I don't think I'd have understood the brand's point of view and design choices. Many of their styles initially look far more fashion-forward and adventurous than anything I ever wore, or would have even taken a second look at while browsing online stores. If I just looked through their catalog on my own, my eye would probably have been too distracted by the "Modern" aspects of their designs - which generally isn't a primary style adjective for me - too much to even notice the "Chill" aspect I've come to love, including the more relaxed and intentionally oversized fit of many of their items. 

With the recent release of Tibi's spring/summer collection, I think my pace of shopping from the brand should slow down a bit in the coming months. The new designs and color story are fun, but I've never been a big spring/summer clothing person. Once the weather gets hot and humid in NYC, I gravitate to dresses in summer-friendly fabrics - most, but not all, in simple colors and shapes - and have relatively little patience for making outfits out of separates. In other words, most of the new spring/summer designs don't really suit my style preferences.  (My eye's only really drawn to two pieces in the new collection, one brightly colored silk slip dress with balloon skirt that would never actually work for me because it's not regular bra-friendly and a gauzy cotton blouse with voluminous sleeves.) 

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There are still a number of other Tibi items I have my eye on, both from their seasonless "Fundamentals - WOFs" or "Without Fails" collection.  The first is their classic oversized shirt.  Though I think it might make more sense from a value for money perspective to find an oversized white cotton button down on the secondhand market instead. The second is the Brancusi jean in classic light blue denim wash (also here). I already own the Brancusi jeans in the dark blue indigo wash (also here), and after getting used to the unusual-for-me barrel leg silhouette, I've really come to love them, and I reach for them all the darn time. 

I think the light blue wash lends a substantially different feel to the jeans, so it wouldn't necessarily be duplicative of my other pair of Brancusis. Though the light blue pair would admittedly feel rather duplicative of my Toteme Twisted Seam jeans in a similar blue wash (also here). 

Oh and one other completely unrelated-to-fashion thing I can't help but mention: I recently tried a new-to-me Korean snack food, Orion's "Turtle Chips" in the Chocolate Churro flavor, on the recommendation of someone on Instagram, and I'm now completely obsessed. (I bought mine from H-Mart.) It's sweet, but not too sweet - high praise coming from a fan of East Asian bakery chains. Something about the combination of super-crispy texture (aided by the multiple layers within each chip), the light coating of chocolate, and touch of cinnamon is just a perfect combination. I ate the whole bag with remarkable speed. 

Another Gift to Myself

Ever since I knew I'd soon be taking my first-ever deposition, I couldn't help but start thinking about a gift for myself to commemorate the occasion. That was before even factoring in that this deposition would be in a billable case concerning mid-seven figures, where my opposing counsel would likely be from a top 10 biglaw firms, no less! It may have looked like a bit of a David and Goliath situation because I work somewhere so small and niche  (I'm not sure most other NYC-based litigators have even heard of us.) Quite a set of circumstances for my first bit of "stand-up" litigation experience! 

For more junior litigators in biglaw these days, it's generally not that common to get much "stand-up" experience (whether in court, arbitrations, or depositions), particularly outside of pro-bono work. Many of my closest law school friends are biglaw litigators, and from our collected experience, getting that first piece of stand-up experience outside of one's pro-bono cases by the end of one's fifth year may require a bit of luck. (Though it's also not that uncommon or rare. Once you do get your first one, two, or three instances of stand-up experience in a billable case by around your fifth year, that alone isn't enough to make you a standout associate or particularly special.) 

Things work very differently at my much smaller biglaw-adjacent workplace, so I'm lucky to get my first go now, at the start of my seventh year. It was stressful, but I really enjoyed it and I think I did a reasonably good job thinking on my feet while taking my deposition. 

Busy at Work Lately

via Serious Eats

Oh dear, pardon me for disappearing from this blog for a few weeks longer than originally expected! Quite a few things came up at the office after my deposition, and I'm only just now coming up for air for a brief moment. Things will be extremely hectic at work for the next three months at a minimum - and maybe for longer than that - so I can't make any promises about how often I'll be able to post in that time window. 

Many apologies, I wish I still had the energy to write blog posts in the late evenings after work, the way I used to earlier in my career. Alas, these days I'm only able to work on the blog over the weekend, and some weekends I'm just too tired. 

The photo above is from the recipe for Lacy Brown Butter and Ricotta Cookies at Serious Eats. Mine didn't turn out quite so lacy-looking. It's apparently a recipe where the finished product can look very different depending on the brand of ricotta used. The 35 cookies estimate when portioning the dough into roughly one tablespoon sized scoops is far off, by the way, I only got something like 19 cookies. For those with small households, I'd suggest baking only a small batch at a time and freezing the rest of the portioned out dough, as I found the texture was best the day they were baked.

I liked, but didn't enthusiastically love, this cookie recipe. It's a good addition to my limited baking repertoire and not very difficult to make. But if one doesn't do the toasted sugar or used vanilla pod upgrades, the flavor is not that nuanced. (Then I used the rest of that 16 ounce tub of ricotta to make a one-third portion of Maialino's ricotta pancakes, which was a good amount for breakfast for two.)

My recent - and first ever - deposition as the first-chair attorney took place in Miami. I was quite nervous about travel and COVID risk before my departure. It turned out fine, though I got a bit of a scratchy throat and sniffles afterwards. I took three at-home COVID tests in the following week - two of them in the days immediately after my very mild symptoms started - and all were negative.