Wednesday’s Workwear Report: Soft Fit & Flare Shirtdress
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Our daily workwear reports suggest one piece of work-appropriate attire in a range of prices.
The print on this this shirtdress from Talbots is one of my favorites of the season. The colors are lovely, and the paisley pattern is gorgeous.
Normally, I’d swap out the tie belt for something more substantial, but this one is so nice, I think I’d keep it.
The dress is $179 at Talbots and comes in sizes 2-18.
I have a dress with a smocked waist. I’m pear shaped. When wearing the dress, the waist walks up and wants to be over my ribs. This makes for an excessive of fabric in the chest area that is really unattractive. Can I use a seam ripper to snip out parts of the smocking or otherwise relax it so it doesn’t ride up? Or maybe make the dress a skirt? I like the print and the fabric and the skirt has pockets. But it also drives me nuts. Is there a sewing or alterations fix for this?
I would select a section along each side seam (perhaps an inch stretched to start; you can go larger later if needed but it is hard to put the smocking back if you start too wide). Secure the smocking on either edge of this section (hand stitch, or even just knot the elastic if you can keep track of it), then snip the smocking within this section. You will likely need to press it flat. See if that gives you enough room to stop the creep.
Yes you can undo smocking with a seam ripper fairly really but you need to have good attention to detail to not damage the fabric.
where do you like the waist to sit best, setting aside the puffing-out side effect? It might be possible to remove some of the fabric above the smocking (below chest) if you actually like it at your waist otherwise.
Also pear-shaped, also had the same problem with a smocked waist riding up. I snipped threads here and there (I think judiciously on every other row) to loosen it up. The threads were dark and the fabric was a dark pattern, so it didn’t show.
Sounds like it’s just too small.
A smocked or elasticized dress waist is always going to migrate to the narrowest point of your torso. If that’s your ribcage, that’s where the smocking will sit. I’d shorten the part of the dress above the smocking.
Would that look like a maternity dress?
I’m picturing a baby doll dress resulting from this approach. If OP doesn’t want that look, loosening up the smocking would be the way to go.
Does anyone have a great vegan baking book? Like Snacking Cakes but vegan, or a go to egg replacement so I can adapt recipes I always like. Beyond SK Olive Oil cake, I always feel like I’m making it up on the fly, and the results are never as good.
I have found flax seed substitutes nicely for egg in baked goods.
Cookie and Kate has instructions for making “flax eggs.”
The Korean Vegan blog has a lot of baking recipes.
SK’s “these happen to be vegan” cake recipes are really good and foolproof! There’s a confetti cake one and a chocolate one that are always crowd pleasers.
I haven’t found a super great vegan baking book but will 1000% vouch for the Smitten Kitchen accidentally vegan confetti cupcakes. I make it all the time (usually as a cake, not cupcakes) and it’s so good and gets rave reviews! And assume you mean the SK olive oil chocolate cake but if you mean a different one, I def recommend that recipe, too. Deb never misses! I have a bunch of recipes saved from “Nora Cooks” too but haven’t tried those yet. If you find one, please come back and share!
Deb is so good. Made the olive oil chocolate cake with raspberries for my son’s birthday. But most kids find it way too rich? Will try the accidentally vegan confetti.
Anything by Isa Chandra Moskowitz is solid. Specific to baking there is Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, Vegan Cookies, and Vegan Pie in the Sky. The general cookbooks also have some baking recipes. Veganomicon is an absolutely solid compendium that covers pretty much everything. There are a number of baking recipes on her website for Post Punk Kitchen, theppk.com
Not a cookbook, but the couple times I have done vegan baking I used Noracooks.
I like School Night Vegan and his cookbook “Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan.” His real name is Richard Makin (and I think he’s UK based!)
I’m a long time vegan, seconding the recommendation for school night vegan, Richard is one of the best recipe creators in my opinion. His olive oil cookies in that book are great.
That said I’d strongly suggest getting some soy lecithin for baking, it binds oil and water and has upped my game from competent home cook to better than a bakery. Flax, banana, chia etc just don’t work nearly as well. I get my soy lecithin at a local bulk shop it’s very cheap but I realize it’s less available some places.
The recipes on King Arthur’s website can be filtered for vegan recipes. In some cases you have to scroll down to the recipes Tips section where they explain the substitutions necessary to adapt the recipe, but they give very clear instructions.
Favorite ‘girl dinner’?
The Malt O’ Meal generic Lucky Charms in the big plastic bag. Am I an adult woman in my 40s who gets way too much joy out of kids’ cereal? You bet ha. Especially when you see that the nutrition facts are the same as some of the Special K varieties…
a little not fancy plate of: sliced cheese or cheese spread on triscuits, green olives or pickles, pistachios, m&ms. maybe add a sausage stick cut into pieces
alternative: a frozen tombstone pepperoni pizza. it has to be tombstone.
mine as well: cheese, crackers, pepperoncini from the jar, pickles. Handful of nuts, handful of peanutbutter pretzels.
If I’m really Girl-Dinner-Cooking: jamaican beef patty from Costco that is a 2-min microwave :D
A plate of pickles, hearts of palm, cheese, boiled egg, olives, potato chips.
a lean cuisine pizza and popcorn. #balanced
Stouffers french bread pizza.
Apple, peanut butter, some toast.
Cheese, dried apricots, crackers, fig jam, and Trader Joe’s rosemary marcona olives or sweet and spicy pecans, with a Trader Joe’s Something Spritzy or lemon elderflower soda.
Alternatively, cold leftover pizza eaten straight from the Tupperware while standing at the kitchen counter.
For the current season? watermelon and a microwaved corn on the cob. Throw in some berries if I’ve got ’em, and then something like a slice of ham or some cheese to get protein/fat, and that’s a complete meal.
Girl dinner is always most appealing to me in the summer, I like to curl up with some soup and bread in the colder months.
caprese salad!! Extra points for burrata.
Has the burrata PR team been working overtime this summer? I had never heard of burrato before this year, and now it’s everywhere in my social media feed. Kudos to them, I guess!
It’s been common where I live for 10+ years, but I think Costco is selling it now so maybe it’s more broadly accessible?
Granola, berries, and milk
Cheese & crackers, baby cukes, cherry tomatoes
PB&J
Microwave baked potato with a fried egg and sprinkle of cheddar
Grits and toast. I’m southern.
love how this is the same group that just last week was saying no one eats dinners under 500 calories including their petite 80-yr-old mother.
The calories add up faster than you think.
Not from watermelon, corn on the cob, and a slice of cheese.
You know that this depends on serving sizes. “Some cheese” isn’t specific. Phrased differently, what would you assume from “fruit salad and a cheese plate” plus corn on the cob?
It could be that it’s under 500 calories, but back in my calorie counting days, I wouldn’t bet on it.
Believe me, my girl dinner portion sizes clock in at well over 500 calories. Realistically, I’m at 800 for a dinner.
Cheese has an insane number of calories. Doesn’t stop me from eating it, though
You know it’s not literally the exact same people commenting, right? This is a blog where any one can comment anonymously, not a defined group of people with voting rights. And that different people have different perspectives and do different things? And you know that girl dinner is a once in while thing, not a regularly cooked meal. I swear you people try to misunderstand to stir up drama.
Yeah, but you have to eat like 800 calories of girl dinner to even feel full!
I still remember (years ago) when a commenter was saying she knew she had to go on weight loss medication because “she would need 5 egg whites and 3 turkey sausage links or I’d be starving after.” Um, 5 egg whites and 3 turkey sausage links is about 200 calories, so her example of a huge fatty fat meal was actually a starvation ration.
Chocolate chips in peanut butter, scooped from the jar
Egg in a hole.
This is a delicacy. I sometimes make this on a Saturday morning after a rough week.
Did anyone see the “I’m Begging You, Never Write with AI” op-ed in the NYT? I liked and agreed with it. We’re having so much trouble at my work with people substituting AI for normal brain function – it’s caused a few issues with clients (which is the ultimate bad situation in our industry) and a lot of internal strife.
Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/opinion/artificial-intelligence-ai-writing.html?unlocked_article_code=1.21A.8Sib.-4LnH5MdjL7s&smid=url-share
I agree with it and I’m glad that people are talking about how it will affect us long term.
One of my other problems with writing via LLM is that it is done by averages: it predicts the next word based on an enormous amount of training data. Anything worth writing should be filled with sharp, insightful, and unique points; those are exactly the kinds of things sanded off by the LLM’s programming towards averages.
As an attorney, I’ve received more new pro se/self-representation lawsuits this summer where the complaint was drafted by AI. It’s insanity and it’s clogging the legal system.
I have also noticed an uptick in pro se’s using AI. It’s going to be a problem.
I don’t disagree and I try to be cautious in how I use it particularly for writing. The fluff I see in other people’s AI-generated content that sounds nice but has no logical structure or concise storytelling drives me nuts. I say all that as a disclaimer before I assert a bit of an academic reaction to the specific argument of the article.
The crux of this article is that it is important to do the work of thinking through the pieces for the sake of that in itself. Many of us were taught multiplication, long division, how to extract square roots by hand, or methods of numerical analysis or manual problem solving algorithms. After the initial instruction, no one seemed to have any problem with us using calculators, graphing calculators, and then computers to solve those same problems. And that has come with some detriment. As one example, when I was in business school, I had a classroom full of classmates where about 90% of them couldn’t recognize a real-world manufacturing problem as being a set of linear equations – and thus relatively easy to solve. I suspect that’s fairly representative, or even more generous, than the general population’s comfort with translating mathematical concepts to real life. Surely, we’d all be sharper if we still did all the mechanical work mentally – better at doing the work itself and identifying the patterns that help us know what work should be done. But civilization has happily accepted some tradeoffs in the past for expediency vs. mental fitness. So, who are we to say where the line falls here? And isn’t it hubris to think that we have that wisdom now, when we can see in plenty of past examples around computational skill sets that we have not slowed the use of new tech that has interfered with mental acuity?
(Of course, plenty of other reasons to not like AI – not limited to mental declines – especially concerns about unnecessary computing power usage. But since that’s not what the author focused on, I’m not factoring that in to my reaction here).
I think many corporations agree with your argument and are happy to stop thinking of writing as a real skill. But trust and reputation matter. It’s a risk to use AI to write everything, especially things that are not just marketing copy. I read an article the other day that said 70% of clients of professional services firms would not trust a report if they knew it was written by AI. You will lose business if people lose trust in you. People who are paying a lot of money for services do not want to buy crap.
Calculators do not hallucinate. AI does all the time. AI is also biased.
Calculators do what they are told, but interesting things happen sometimes. For instance, order of operations can cause issues when the user’s assumptions don’t align with the calculator’s programming.
Calculators and math equations in general also work towards a set solution – 2+2 = 4. In writing, there are a lot of ways to make a point. Sometimes you need to write an email that skews apologetic without actually apologizing. Sometimes you need one that skews forceful without being overbearing. That’s where AI can get the tone so wrong, even if it technically follows instructions to make points A, B, and C. More research is coming out showing that people find receiving AI-drafted emails extremely off-putting. It’s a sign of disrespect, really – if you owe me a professional apology, for example, but you clearly didn’t think a personal message was worth your time, I will absolutely not find it sincere.
I think that your point really illustrates that more people should be manually doing math and science, not that we should make room for AI writing. I would argue that if more people were regularly exercising their math brain muscles, we would see far more social progress instead of the societal regression we’re seeing today.
This.
Even relying on writing over memory has costs; there’s always more research coming out on benefits of meaningful memorization work at young ages.
As for math, way too much research relies on questionable math (medicine), and models were treated like black boxes to manipulate long before now (epidemiology, economics). It’s continuing a negative trend.
There’s also plenty of research available on why it’s bad to rely on Google maps to get everywhere – your brain needs practice at route-finding on its own.
As a social scientist, I am horrified at the plug-and-chug training students in many disciplines get in quantitative analysis. There are PhDs out there doing quantitative work who cannot explain the concept of statistical significance. AI makes plug-and-chug even more accessible and hence even more dangerous.
And sometimes when plug-and-chug doesn’t go well, students are sent to the guy who can make sure that the numbers that get spit out allow them to graduate. The status quo needs help!
I think the difference is that using calculators and computers to do math faster than we can, frees us up to then do other work that builds onto the calculator result, or connects and expands it in a different direction. It allows people who aren’t as strong e.g. at arithmetic, to get help and then shine in whatever they excel at. AI can also enable that, e.g. make coding an app accessible to people who have creative ideas but aren’t experienced programmers. But if you just use the tool and don’t add anything on top of it, you will just get generic results.
No human has the computing power to do econometric modeling by hand. It’s still important to understand what is going on under the hood.
One problem I have with machine learning and AI is that no one, not even the person who trained the model, understands how it arrives at its conclusions. It’s just a mysterious black box.
But that’s what makes it such an appealing accountability sink.
I don’t think that it takes an unattainable amount of wisdom or is hubristic to realize that written communication is a foundational skill and identify ways that gen AI is negatively impacting the development and maintenance of that skill. Same with reading comprehension.
Thanks for sharing a gift link. I actually appreciate it now when emails sent from corporate leadership are not perfectly polished, because it shows the person took the time to write the email and didn’t use AI. It gives me a feeling of relief. I want true thought from people, not just a bunch of empty jargon. I work for a well-known company, and we appeared in a news article accusing us of publishing AI-written content that was riddled with hallucinations. The internal reaction was to fact-check and review everything more thoroughly. No one dared to say, “Don’t use AI to write.”
It’s been a while since i have greed so whole-heartedly w NYT opinion piece! Thank you for sharing, I plan to share with my friends and colleagues coz I AM SICK OF THE LAZY DRIVEL (being posted unnecessarily on socials even).
i see it all the time on socials and it’s because every company CEO thinks social media is complete garbage now so why not. they’re not wrong.
I normally agonize over buying clothes until the sale ends and then I’m unwilling to pay full price…but today I bought all the clothing to the point that my credit card emailed me a fraud alert.
What did you get??
LilySilk is having a huge sale. I’ve lusted after their stuff but never bought any of it. Tops for work (fills an emerging wardrobe hole but I don’t need them), PJs, and pants I don’t need in a color I couldn’t resist.
Haha, nothing shames me faster than a fraud alert—“surely you didn’t do this, RIGHT??!”
it always cracks me up what our card flags. Like, dropping $6K in a day on plane tickets and hotels? Doesn’t bat an eye.
Orders $40 of painting supplies from Home Depot? WHOA THERE we’d better text you to make sure it’s you.
I once got a handwritten thank you note from a clerk in a shoe store.
Legit lol-ed at this.
Any recommendations for a sweater or poncho-like wrap that I can use in my over air-conditioned office? My office is business wear; I usually wear blue or black slacks and a blouse. I’m thinking a camel or cream color is most versatile.
I like a large, solid pashmina in the color family that complements my typical clothing (so for me, a rich, cool-toned color, like a deep raspberry). I limit its use for at my desk rather than wearing it in the halls, but it would not look out of place if I wore it as a shawl over my outfit to a meeting.
For those of you who work in a client-facing role, what behavior do you think crosses the line into a hostile work environment? My boss knows the client can be difficult. But I’m not sure whether this is a suck it up situation or it’s time to press the issue.
Are you asking what would make me, as a supervisor/client facing role, speak to the client about treatment/potentially terminate a relationship, or are you asking what constitutes a hostile work environment? I ask because the second question is a legal term of art, and the first speaks more to company culture (and could warrant discussions long before something is legally actionable).
The former. What type of behavior do you consider bad enough that the supervisor on your own team needs to speak to the client or consider terminating the relationship? I assume that boundary is somewhat informed by the legal definition of hostile environment.
are you talking about the legal definition of hostile work environment, or just someone who is rude, pushy, jerk behavior?
I can’t speak to every line, but if they physically touch you it’s time to escalate your concern.
Paging current and former NYC ‘Rettes: Please rec your vendor of the real black and white cookies who will ship. I have a relative in Florida (shocking, but true!) who’s craving these. Thanks!
I’d use Goldbelly
i’ve always thought bodega black & whites are the best
The best black & white cookies come from William Greenberg Desserts. I’m partial to the big ones, but they also sell the mini size.
Has anyone ordered from Sophie Grace? I searched and see that Kat featured a skirt earlier this year, but didn’t see any comments about quality or fit. I am intrigued by their vests that feature a zipper to avoid gaping. Thanks.
No, but no I think I might need one of their vests.
Cross-posted question: Does anyone have experience with the Skylight calendars? I’m particularly interested in their meal planning app that comes with the subscription. We are a household of three, with our son in elementary school; we have a lot of overlapping activities and events.
Every year the winner of the masters golf tournament hosts a dinner the next year. This has inspired my question of the day: If you won or if you had to serve a celebratory dinner to a group of colleagues and friends that was expected to represent your heritage, taste, background or personality and also delight the guests with its deliciousness, what would you serve? You only get three courses but you can do drink pairings. You have a lot of money to spend but might not want to look show offy. You can fly in people or foods for this. The menu will be published.
I need a reality check on whether I’m handling conflict well. Long story, but last night our teenager was in the mood to pick a fight. He was mad at everyone in the house for frankly, nonsensical reasons that I’m chalking up to back to school stress. Both DH and I tried to have a conversation about what was on his mind and what we’d done that was so offensive. It just ended up being a lot of talking in circles and was not solving anything. No real raised voices or anything, but lots of tense conversation. After awhile of this, I excused myself and said I needed to take a walk. I occasionally do this when I know I am on the verge of saying something I’ll regret later or losing my cool. I literally walk around the block, which is 6 to 10 minutes depending on how much steam I need to blow off, lol.
Anyway, DH hates when I do this, and my kid isn’t crazy about this later. He sees it as ignoring the problem. I see it as taking a breather so I don’t contribute to a circular conversation that is going nowhere. DH is more likely to take the bait with our teen, TBH, and I don’t love that!
Is it that terrible to leave the house for a brief period of time? I told them that I needed a break. I didn’t raise my voice or slam doors or anything like that. They really don’t like it, so I should probably stop. It is true that I really do not like conflict, but dang, sometimes I really need that breather.
I think it’s fine as long as a condition is met – you explain what you’re doing (which you did!). There’s a huge difference between angrily sulking your way out the door (which often pairs with the all-too-toxic silent treatment) and calmly saying “We’re going in circles and I think we could use a break. I’m going to take a walk and we can talk more when I’m back if you want to.”
Everyone is different. I would hate it if done to me, but there’s nothing to really fault. I like to go until you can’t go no more.
And I find that exhausting and feel emotionally beat up when that happens.
Same, especially when you’re dealing with someone who has to have the last word or who uses a minor dispute as a tool for bringing up old grievances. A lifelong friend and I very nearly lost our entirely relationship over that.
I think there’s nothing wrong with taking a walk/break from a nonsensical fight. In fact, more people should do it!
I’ll share a new framing of your kid that might be helpful, or might not: the kids I know who pick fights are usually doing it because their brains are craving the dopamine hit of getting all hot and bothered, and a fight is the quickest way to get that. I’ve had luck saying that to my kid — “Kid, I think your brain is looking for some dopamine and it thinks getting riled up is the best way to achieve that. Maybe do this instead” (and “this” is something like 10 jumping jacks, or punching a pillow, or screaming loud nonsensical words). (To be fair, my kids are not yet teens.)
Anyway. You’re good to take a walk.
Oh, this is 100% what is happening. He has ADHD and absolutely craves the argument at times.