How do you start wearing prints? Reader T wonders…
I’m wondering if you can do a post on incorporating prints into one’s wardrobe. I looked at my closet the other day and realized that about 90% of the clothes I wear are solid colors. I seem to always gravitate toward very saturated bold colors, but never to prints. I guess I sometimes feel that wearing prints looks loud” or will make me stand out too much at work. I know how to use prints with accessories (shoes, scarves) but I’d like to specifically see a post on buying clothes with prints.
We’ve talked about how to mix prints, but we haven’t really talked about how to start buying prints. I think T has a fear that is shared by a lot of women — looking too loud, too out of place. So here are my suggestions for how to dip your toe into the waters of dressing with prints… (Pictured: Fabric, originally uploaded to Flickr by ChristopherTitzer.)
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We were traveling this weekend (home to Ohio to see the fam and celebrate Easter), which meant that yet again I got to deal with my horrible carry-on rolling bag. I got it a few years ago during what I thought was an amazing sale at Macy’s– if memory serves I paid less than $100 for what was originally a $430-ish bag. The logo fell off the first time I traveled with it. Since then, all of the zippers have broken at least once (some irreparably), the fabric hasn’t held up well, and it’s generally become a pain to push around. In other words: time for a new bag.
But I’m feeling a bit gunshy from my last travel experience, so I thought I’d ask — readers, what are your favorite rolling bags? My brother has the Victorinox Werks (pictured above, available at Zappos on sale for $239) and while he likes it, I’m still curious about what you ladies have to say.
In “things that work” news, I still love my LeSportsac Large Weekender bags — you can shove them into that useless front pocket on rolling bags when empty, and then use them if you need to carry back a lot of new purchases, gifts, or souvenirs. They’re particularly nice because you can lock the zippered main compartment (so it won’t burst open while the bag is being handled), but keep the key on the zipper so the TSA can hopefully get into it.
Readers, what are your favorite bags for travel? Have any other great travel tips?
Reader Y wonders about flared pants, but I think she brings up a great point about hems and women who commute in shoes other than their office heels. How can you solve the hem length dilemma — and what is the proper hem length, anyway?
I’m a 25 year old working in Boston, usually in nice business casual offices. I don’t need to wear a suit, but I do need to look good. I have a number of flared (not too heavily) in my wardrobe and I don’t know if I can wear them to the office. Do you have any tips on length? What shoes can/should I wear (especially since I put on other shoes for the commute from and two work that are often flat)? Will they drown my height? If they can’t be worn…can I get them hemmed or something? It feels like such a waste to have them sitting there.
When I first saw this I honestly thought, oh come on, of course you can wear flared pants! But then I started wondering if perhaps this is just a peculiarity to my age (35), since I grew up seeing lots of flared styles (and still think the bootcut is one of the most flattering pant shapes of all time). By contrast, skinny trousers and capris often look inappropriate to me — too 1950s, too Audrey Hepburn gamine to be taken seriously for the office. But then I thought of some of the extreme flared styles we’re seeing right now and thought, ok, fair question — I dislike those because they’re too 70s. My advice is that if anything is too reminiscent of any particular era other than “right now,” be careful about wearing it to the office. For example, the “Galaxy Groove Trousers,” pictured, seem a bit too, well, galactic and groovy for the office. (They are marked down if you’re interested, though — were $178, now $80 at French Connection.)
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Sure, we all know what basics professional women are supposed to have in their closets, but if you’re buying one for the first time or replacing one you’ve worn into the ground, it can be a pain to find exactly the right incarnation in stores. In “The Hunt,” we search the stores for a basic item that every woman should have.
We’re heading into prime sheath dress weather right now — not only is it great for layering in spring (beneath blazers or cardigans, or occasionally on top of blouses), but it’s a workhorse in sticky hot summers. I actually meant to write about black sheath dresses (especially since I’m in the market for one myself) but was so unexcited about all of the black sheath dresses, and instead found so many great colorful sheath dresses, that I thought I’d feature those instead. Readers, have you gotten any great sheath dresses recently? Have you bought any colorful sheath dresses in the past that became favorites?
(Psst: if you like the picture at left, please consider Pinning it on Pinterest! You can follow me here.)
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Sure, we all know what basics professional women are supposed to have in their closets, but if you’re buying one for the first time or replacing one you’ve worn into the ground, it can be a pain to find exactly the right incarnation in stores. In “The Hunt,” we search the stores for a basic item that every woman should have.
Pumps are all well and good, but if you’re like me — particularly while it’s still tights weather — they can be a little hard to walk in. This is why my closet has always contained a lot of Mary Jane heels, as well as other heels with straps. It can be a bit tricky to find some that don’t a) visually cut your leg at the worst possible point, and b) make you look like a little girl — so I thought I’d round up a few. Readers, how often do you wear heels with straps? Any favorite brands, or great steals recently?
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Here’s a fun question: what items do you think are wise to purchase, even if you don’t have a specific event or occasion to wear them to — and which items are best left for specific “I am going to wear this to X event” purchases? Even though we don’t belong to a gym with a pool, and we have no vacations planned, I recently bought a non-returnable swimsuit on deep discount, so it’s been on my mind.
For my own $.02: in general, I prefer to “let clothes find me.” I actually hate shopping with an agenda — if I need a new pair of jeans, or a white blouse, or a basic LBD, I have to steel myself for a long and trying shopping excursion (where, at the end, I always seem to pay through the nose for something I only vaguely like). Instead, I prefer to buy things that I actually like (perhaps helped along by the fact that they’re deeply discounted), and that I suspect I might have a use for — some day. Even now, while I hate having to “commit” to my post-baby body (which is a size or two larger than my pre-baby body), I’ve made some purchases and had to argue with myself in my head. Here’s how the conversation goes:
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