Splurge Monday’s Workwear Report: Silk Jacquard Wrap Dress
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
Is this hot pink silk jacquard dress from Scanlan Theodore too much? Or is it just right? I think this wrap shirtdress would be absolutely perfect for a day when you need to be the center of attention — like a keynote speech or a big presentation.
If you’re looking to blend in a bit, it also comes in espresso and ocean blue.
The dress is $900 at Scanlan Theodore and comes in sizes 2-12.
Sales of note for 4/17:
- Nordstrom – Beauty savings event, up to 25% off – nice price on Black Honey
- Ann Taylor – Cyber Spring! 50% off everything + free shipping
- Boden – 25% off everything (thru Sun, then 15% off)
- Brooklinen – 25% off sitewide — we have and love these sateen sheets
- Evereve – 1000+ items on sale, including lots from Alex Mill, Michael Stars, Sanctuary, Rails, Xirena, and Z-Supply
- Express – $29 dresses
- J.Crew – 30% off all dresses
- J.Crew Factory – Up to 60% off everything, and extra 50% off clearance
- Lands' End – 50% off full price styles and 60% off all clearance and sale – lots of ponte dresses come down under $25, and this packable raincoat in gingham is too cute
- Loft – Friends & Family event, 50% off entire purchase + free shipping
- Macy's – 25% off already reduced prices + 15% off beauty & fragrance
- M.M.LaFleur – Spring Sale Event – Buy More, save more! 10% off $250+, 15% off $500+, 20% off $750+, 25% off $1000+ (Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off if you find any exclusions.)
- Sephora – Spring sale! 20%, 15%, or 10% off depending on your membership tier; ends 4/20. Here's everything I recommend in the sale!
- Talbots – Spring sale! 40% off + extra 15% off all markdowns
- TOCCIN – Use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off!
- Vivrelle – Looking to own less stuff but still try trends? Use code CORPORETTE for a free month, and borrow high-end designer clothes and bags!
I hope to buy a house next year. I am saving up for carpet, paint, furniture, and decor. I grew up with very little and all my stuff now is goodwill/thrifted – no style. I would like to not only focus on price and use the move as a way to get some forever/nice stuff. Where do I start? I don’t think I can afford a decorator or designer. I get overwhelmed looking for “home style ideas” online.
What is your style? Does it have to be new? I love all my antique paintings, some were as little as $5, though I’ll admit some were upwards of a few hundred. Style and cost are not directly correlated, I’d actually argue that homes copy and pasted from mass market retailers look the worst.
Most of our art has been given to us by family and friends. Some of it isn’t “good” art in the eyes of critics, but I love it and I love the stories behind the pieces – this is the sketch my cousin did in his first week at RISD, this is the watercolor of his childhood cabin that my grandfather did in his retirement years, etc. I think it all looks great together.
For me home decor is something where good old print journalism is the way to go. I would set aside a weekend and buy a heap of interiors magazines, go through them and figure out which ones are showing an aesthetic/vibe/price point you like, and start picking up that title or titles regularly. From that you can start to see the designers and stores you like and follow them on social media for ideas and vibes rather than your starting point being the whole internet. The usual advice is to live in a house for several months at least before decorating to figure out how you function in that space, how the light moves, the feel of living there – so if you’re buying next year you have plenty of time to make decisions. Have fun with it!
My library has big coffee table style interior books that you can check out. And I can get all the interiors magazines through Libby.
But I really like the book and Substack Mad About the House. She’s English, so tends a bit twee, but her mechanics of why things work/don’t work has been helpful.
Not that poster but going to check this out! I also like the blog Laurel Bern interiors for that purpose – she explains why things like entryways are important for the flow of the home and how to balance proportions.
Don’t forget to save for landscaping stuff depending where you’re buying.
Pinterest is great for this. Create boards for a few rooms and just start saving pins you like. You’ll start to see patterns, even if you like a lot of styles one will be dominant. Think about how your mood and energy is affected by color, sunlight, clutter, flow. Where you’ll spend the most time and when.
An online designer can help from there if you still feel lost.
Years ago, I saved one inspiration photo as my ideal living room look. It isn’t wildly out of step with my lifestyle. It looks comfortably lived in and cohesive without being a matched set furniture advertisement. There are accessories, plants, pillows, and lighting that are at a level that makes sense to me (i.e., the bookshelf is full of actual books and not curated sculptures and empty space, the sofa has one square pillow and a throw blanket that still allows room for a human to sit down without rearranging anything, and the lamps don’t look like they require special electrical considerations to be functional).
I keep it on my phone so any time I am looking at furnishings, I can pull it up and see if the thing I am considering goes with the vibe. That one random photo I liked ages ago has been really helpful for guiding my interior decorating impulses towards a coherent theme.
I ended up using Havenly to help with the interior designing of my new place. I knew the general vibe I wanted, but I really struggled with how to bring it to life in a way that still felt like me. They were super collaborative (lots of back and forth on my first room to get it just right and also talking about the furniture I already had that I wanted to incorporate) and then I’m able to work on sourcing the furniture myself. But because I have a list and a general idea to work from, it feels like I can source things secondhand more cohesively than just “I need an armchair, let’s go with this one.)
Seconding Havenly! I used them almost ten years ago to design my living room and while I didn’t buy everything they recommended, I used it to help visualize what I wanted my space to look like so I could shop on my own. They also helped me with a weird little nook at the top of my stairs that is now one of my favorite places in my house.
Don’t knock yourself too much. Thrifted rooms can have so much more style than overly done rooms. They usually do!
Are you overwhelmed or do you not like this stuff? It’s really fine if you don’t like this stuff. There are designers who work for free at lots of furniture stores, including all the big ones. If you really want all new stuff you’re already spending very big bucks, but it’ll be cohesive, functional and very pretty. Will it be artistic and timeless and completely unique? No but honestly most beautiful homes are not.
If you have less money to spend and you need to do what most of us do: figure out your style and buy piece by piece. You can start with the house. Architecture is destiny to a point. Is this a townhouse with a high ceiling and loft situation? That cottage core style is probably going to be hard to pull off successfully. Im from the land of housing with 8 foot ceilings. I personally think it looks bad to put antiques from a grand estate or fancy fireplaces into it. Clean lines and dramatic art work really nicely though. So that’s a good place to start.
Also consider, if you hate internet decor searching, what spaces you like to be in in real life? For example, what restaurant spaces do you feel at home in? Do you like the marble and brass bar at a place Balthazar? Or do you like a dark moody lounge? Buttoned up white table cloth places or a casual butcher block counter?
If all else fails, watch a Nancy Myers movie. I swear half of my girlfriends pin point that as their ideal style, but at least you can gauge if it’s too casual, busy or plain for your taste.
I started in a similar place… I’m now 15 years down the road and really love the home I have. For me, Pinterest was helpful to pin down the overall look I liked. I found it helpful to give myself permission to just do a little at a time – I’ll never forget one coworker came into our (new) house and the living room was just a (too small for the space) couch with bare wood floors and he said, ‘I like the roller rink vibe you’ve got on in here.’
So start with a couch or a rug or even a lamp that you really love and be okay with building the room around it.
I strongly suggest waiting until you actually buy the home. The era and layout of the house will greatly impact what kind of interior furnishings look right. I was really into MCM furniture until I purchased a Victorian house built in 1883! It’s a fabulous location in a walkable neighborhood, but this means that I now purchased vintage wool rugs and heavy oak furniture to match the houses esthetic.
You will have so much fun with your new place! Don’t buy anything until you move in. Furnishing as you go is the best way.
Any NCAAW BB fans? Any thoughts on the transfers?
PSA – if you use thrifted dishes or your grandmothers China take a look at this page (Lead Safe Mama), she does tests on lead and more in old dishes. If you have gold accents they may contain lead. I was able to find my grandmother’s pattern really quickly. https://tamararubin.com/
I don’t eat off the metallic accents on any of the dishes I own. Maybe good to know for someone who serves finger food to kids on Grandma’s china!
Generally I’m not sure if Lead Safe Mama is considered a totally reliable source.
Does lead stay contained to the accent sections? Not an expert on that. But I do know that women who are TTC or considering TTC soon should also be mindful of this, not just women who are already serving kids food.
There’s no safe amount of lead, but also no one is exposed to 0% lead. I would filter my tap water before I’d toss special occasion dishes.
Or, since the 100+ year old heavily gold-accented Limoges plates are used only for special occasion dessert service, I can just not worry about it.
Pewter contains lead. Crystal contains lead. Solder used on plumbing pipes contains lead. The existence of lead in proximity to you is different than lead actually leaching into your food or into the air you breathe.
And keep washing your hands after handling vinyl and pleather.
Ah, wellness fearmongering at its finest…
I didn’t know that US regulatory agencies were wellness influencers years before MAHA.
But not with the garden hose, those contain lead as well.
I’m a law firm partner in my late 30s, married, no kids. Many of our associates are having kids. That’s great! And I want to offer paid leave. And now we have a system where people take 2-3 paid parental leaves, going 60-80% schedule, then leave at year 6-7 not because we are shoving them out but because they don’t want to stay in private practice. Or they take the full leave and then resign the week before returning. We are seriously considering hiring 40-50% more associates, which is an insane budget commitment. I am not anti-kid, I respect becoming a parent is life-changing. I want them to have income. I want them to come back. But I can’t figure out how other firms are surviving. We’re not amlaw100, less than 5% of our partners make over 1mm/year and no one makes over 1.5. Should we be reducing leave and adding more childcare benefits?? A better ramp off and on?
The fact that you’re even thinking to start of resuming leave says you’re the problem. Have you asked the people leaving why? My firm didn’t and the answer was really straightforward- I was tired of working for rude people and the in person requirements were nonsense. I now make more money in house, everyone is polite, andi have tons of flexibility. And I’m more productive and doing higher level legal work than at the firm.
What’s your in-office policy?
I think this is just the nature of private practice law firms to some extent. There is always going to be a lot of associate turnover. Probably less at a firm like yours compared to biglaw, but I still do not think there is a great way to prevent it. Personally, as someone with kids who works 60% in biglaw, I would not recommend reducing parental leave in the hopes of keeping more associates. I do think supporting reduced hours schedules would be helpful though.
Yeah if you reduce leave then you just won’t be able to hire any (good) associates because they will know your benefits aren’t competitive.
My office parental leave requires you to return for at least as long as you were on leave or pay the leave back. Might be an option for a policy change.
Similar here, although I think our state might have changed this for certain sizes of employers.
OP – maybe adjust the overall expectation about how long people stick around and hire with that turnover rate in mind?
the older your kids get, the harder it gets to manage – instead of having daycare from 8-6, you have the school schedule (sometimes needing both before and after care) and patchwork of summer camps to deal with.
And going to a reduced schedule does not allow anyone to say “oh ok I’ve worked my 5 hours for the day, signing off” if their project is not.
Lots of people want to go to firms for a few years, sock away training and money, and then go in-house or government. The fact that this life stage also overlaps with when many are starting families is just a fact of the timeline.
Consider helping associates with exit placement so they leave feeling supported and understood and you’re growing new clients from your departures rather than people who think ‘won’t send them any work if I can help it after they pushed me out’?
Have you tried bringing in older folks as counsel? I know several parents who left firms for govt or in house roles who would be open to going back to a law firm.
Do you have a lot of women partners with kids? Maybe they can provide some mentoring/model how they make parenting and law firm life work together. In my own experience, I left a a law firm (lower end of amlaw100) as an 8th year with an 18-month old. Going in-house just seemed like it would be a better fit as a working mom without a ton of household support, especially since I did not see a lot of partners who were also mothers modeling a path for me.
Are women partners with kids just supposed to model how this works for them or also mentor? TBH, l don’t want more tasks. Maybe ask the dads who are partners how they do it work kids and that is likely your answer as to why women quit: no au pair, no nanny, no local family, pressure to do things themselves vs paid help, no SAHW.
Most lawyers don’t really like being lawyers. Most parents do really like being parents. I think this is just a problem of one thing being better than the other.
People like to focus on parental leave, as if that’s the most important benefit you can offer parents and the policy that most impacts people’s ability to work, but the truth is that the few months you take off after having a baby is only the beginning and the challenges don’t stop. I applaud companies that offer paid parental leave (I never received it myself as the mom of two kids), but I don’t think parental leave alone is going to keep anyone working over the long term. What also matters is the number of hours you are expected to work, if you have flexibility/support to cope with sick days or medical appointments, the amount of stress you face on a daily basis, and whether the compensation is competitive compared to other opportunities.
Sizes 2-12!? I did not know any brands were so… exclusionary
Did anyone else read the WSJ weekend article on Camp Mystic and how many people who were at the location that flooded are wanting to send their girls to the other location this summer? And how to is camp is important to being in the right sorority in college and being in the right social circles as adults? My background is lower middle class and not-Texas, so I’m just used to basic affordable camps through the Y and scouts. I still feel like I’m in an an Anthro practicum even though I’m from the US. Can someone explain how this works?
Given what has come out about how exactly Camp Mystic reacted that night, it is absurd that any parent would send a child back to their adjacent sister camp run by the same family. They literally admitted on the stand that they had no evacuation plan, that they abandoned the girls to die, and that they didn’t call 911 until 3 hours after the first girls drowned.
That camp isn’t reopening. There is no way the license renewal will be granted because of all the extreme violations that have been documented, not to mention the state investigation, the pending criminal investigation, and the lawsuits. They’ll have to get in to sororities another way.
just another way to do the “right” thing – like the “right” country club, private school, etc.
I went to private school in Houston in the 90s, and there was definitely a social circle that went from Mystic/Longhorn/Heart of the Hills and then joined certain sororities at UT, and probably all stayed in touch and now send their children along the same path. Of course there are many other paths, and this was only a very small number of girls each year.
I’ll admit that I’m judging the parents hard for sending their girls back to that camp. The ability to just ignore what happened, or chalk it up to an act of God, absolutely blows my mind. I have a daughter the same age as those campers. It horrifies me.
+1. They’re ignoring all evidence and some have been downright disgusting to the victims’ families too.
It feels like we’re currently living through a sort of culture war on risk tolerance where everyone is drawing the line in a different place, and there’s never been less consensus.
That’s a great point. The pandemic really drove this home.
Yes, but also a social divide. The parents who have lost children are pretty aghast that other parents would basically say “meh, your story doesn’t bother me, I’d send my kid back in a heartbeat.” That’s a fundamentally antisocial message. One parent whose daughter died said that she has received tons of support from close family, friends, and internet strangers, but almost none from the fabled “Camp Mystic community.”
It is a social divide. It comes up in communities where children have been lost to vaccine preventable diseases and whether this is seen as acceptable or not. It’s come up when they stopped trying to prevent the spread of COVID, since at that point there was a decision to be made about whether to live normally and accept a lot of premature mortality among the highest risk, or whether to keep taking precautions.
How what works? Being rich?
Yeah as a northerner this is wild to me! And, for the record, I was in a sorority and my parents belong to a country club.
I was briefly involved in my sorority’s alumnae chapter after college to make friends in a new city. I quickly learned my northern sorority experience (at a school thats like 75% Greek) was very, very different.
No, I’m not going to explain it to you.
DBAJ
For those of you who have purchased homes in VHCOL areas without significant family help (ie, on your income and savings alone), how much of your take-home pay do you spend on housing, and are you saving in 401ks first?
401k maxed out every year. Half of take home pay on housing. Couldn’t have done it on one income alone, but ironically made more from the sale of that home than our combined total take home pay for 10 years. I think we got lucky with the real estate market, but I’m not sure I’d buy a big home again (we maxed out our budget and got the very best location we could, in a “fixer-upper” which we lived in as it was only cosmetically dated which we didn’t mind at all…everything worked and it might now be see as vintage, maybe that’s part of why it sold for so much.
I cleaned out my closet this weekend. I still have a lot of clothes that I plan to keep. My problem is getting bored and still wanting to shop. I’m trying to learn how to style what I have a little bit differently. What are your favorite resources for getting ideas for restyling WITHOUT shopping? Because I swear there’s always “something else” that I need to make things come together, and it’s ten times worse if I’m on instagram looking for ideas.
Sometimes it’s less about getting inspired and more about taking action. Do you actually plan out your outfits each week? I don’t always, I’ll just grab something or plan in my head most of the time. But when I really pull out my clothes and accessories and plan a whole week I wear more of my clothes and I look better. I have time to steam something I don’t always wear and dig out those shoes that might work and be thoughtful about jewelry. Seeing a whole week at once leads you to wear more variety too.
True. I go through stages when I’m really good at this, and other times when I’m not. I definitely look more intentional when I take the time to plan my outfits.
Accessories. I’m a big fan of just changing the look of what I wear with shoes, scarves, necklaces, earrings, hair. I also keep a folder of looks,I like on my phone – things I’ve worn and screenshots of others to browse when I need inspiration.
I had Botox on Friday and woke up to eye droop this morning. I want to cry but I can’t. The solution, according to my PCP, is to wait until it wears off in 8 to 12 weeks. I have a call with my eye doctor scheduled for later today. I called out from work today but that isn’t an 8 week solution.
Hopefully and most likely they just overdid it and it will improve soon! But I would want the PCP or eye doctor to do an ice pack test just to be sure.
Ask your eye doctor about whether wearing an eye patch is an option if you’d feel more comfortable with one.
Any little tips you use to make work outfits more sophisticated? I’m struggling to master simple makeup and feeling dumpy in everything these days. Wardrobe is mostly neutrals. Work dress code is business casual.