Friday, April 29, 2011

Happy {Royal Wedding} Friday!

Congratulations William & Kate!  I wasn't awake early enough to catch the wedding live but without a doubt they made an absolutely beautiful bride & groom!  Kate looked like elegant and serene in her beautiful gown (by Alexander McQueen) & her lily of the valley bouquet of course!  Cheers to the happy couple!



Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Workwear Wednesday

I've decided that I'm going to start doing a weekly feature every Wednesday on the stylish working girls wardrobe.  This is brought on by the fact that, since I work for myself AND work from home my professional wardrobe has become almost non-existent.  It's not that I meet clients in sweat pants or anything like that, but I've realized that over the past two years my biz-casual garb has dwindled down to two button-down shirts, a tunic, & my skinny jeans.  I don't even own a single pair of slacks anymore!   And it's SOOO easy to just throw on something cozy on the days I don't have any meetings.  But here's the problem: those uber cozy clothes make me way less productive.  As an experiment to evaluate my own productivity and time management I decided that I'd dress as though I was going into an office for one week (this also meant I wasn't allowed to go around in stocking feet all day).  The results?  I was much more productive and my head stayed focused on work all day!  It's also much harder to curl up on the sofa in heels.  But I had a really hard time even finding office-worthy outfits in my closet so now I'm on the hunt for stylish workwear pieces to add to my wardrobe!  They must be casual and comfortable for working from home but professional enough for a business lunch out. Oh, & I want to be able to wear jeans any time I want!  It's going to be a balancing act I think.

Stylish, but too formal for me.
Ah!  Perfect!
I actually own a skirt very similar to this but haven't know whow to wear it!
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Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Tuesday Shoesday!

Seeing as it is raining cats and dogs out today I thought it was only fitting that I feature some cute rain boots!  I'm actually not a huge fan of the rubber rain boots trend, as I think it's gotten kinda out of control and is at the point where it's just kinda... lame.  BUT I love these super adorable Maryjane rain boots for little girls!  I would have loved splashing around in these as a kid! 

Buy 'em here.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Crossing a THIN Line: when models are too thin, even for models!

Eee Gads!  Someone get this "bride" some wedding cake, stat!

We all know that fashion models are thin.  Like really thin.  They are basically walking wire hangers.  But I've always been pleased with the bridal fashion community for generally keeping their models at least somewhat realistic.  Bridal models pretty much always at least look healthy; I mean who wants to see a bride who looks like she needs to be fed the cake through an i.v. right?   And real brides are REAL women with REAL flesh on them!  Speaking for myself, most of my design samples are a size 4 to 6, which is still plenty thin!  It just makes sense.  That's why when I saw photographs of Carol Hannah's NY Bridal Market fashion show I was, er, a bit disturbed.  I couldn't even focus on a few of her (beautiful) gowns because I was too distracted by her choice of unhealthily thin models!

For those of you who've never heard of her, Carol Hannah was a fan favorite on a season of project runway and her designs really are beautiful!  But it really makes me not like her that she would choose to use such unhealthy, low weight models.  I'm not unrealistic; I'm not saying she should necessarily use plus-sized models (although her designs are sold up to size 24 so...?), but keeping minimum of size 2 would be nice!   What's sad is that Carol was really doing herself a dis-service because the gowns in question were not shown in their best light and would have looked much better on a fleshier woman... ya know, a woman who doesn't have the measurements of a pre-pubescence girl.   I guess I shouldn't be too hard on Carol though.  Many of her models were much more healthy looking.  And you know what, they looked beautiful!  But judge for yourself....

Too thin!  The dresses are actually falling off them!