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Suit of the Week: Ann Taylor

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dusky blue pants suit with collarless blazer

I love grayish blue suits like this — they're unexpectedly versatile, both as separates and as suits.

This pretty one from Ann Taylor is an online exclusive — and it's 40% off, huzzah! The blazer has a matching pencil skirt, ankle pants, and sheath dress — in regular as well as petites. Pieces are $98-$189 full price; at 40% off pieces come down to $59-$113. Nice!

Sales of note for 3/26/25:

  • Nordstrom – 15% off beauty (ends 3/30) + Nordy Club members earn 3X the points!
  • Ann Taylor – Extra 50% off sale + additional 20% off + 30% off your purchase
  • Banana Republic Factory – Friends & Family Event: 50% off purchase + extra 20% off
  • Eloquii – 50% off select styles + extra 50% off all sale
  • J.Crew – 30% off tops, tees, dresses, accessories, sale styles + warm-weather styles
  • J.Crew Factory – Shorts under $30 + extra 60% off clearance + up to 60% off everything
  • M.M.LaFleur – 25% off travel favorites + use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – $64.50 spring cardigans + BOGO 50% off everything else

113 Comments

  1. Does anyone here work in commercial real estate leasing? If so, can you explain your job to me like I’m 12? I have joined CREW in my city and it is very interesting, but I’m a tax person and need to understand the business better than I feel like I do. I get that strip malls are different than malls are different than commercial downtown core office buildings, but my reference point is multifamily leasing, which is really, really different.

    1. I’m a commercial real estate sales broker but work in tandem with our leasing team a lot. Leasing brokers either rep the tenants or the landlords. Sometimes the same firm will be on both sides of the transaction but the individual brokers either do one or the other so theoretically conflicts are limited in that way. Tenant rep (lessee) and landlord rep (lessor) ultimately represent both sides of a lease transaction, ultimately putting the tenant in to the building. Leasing brokers are paid handsomlyyyy, a percent of the base rent due per year of each year of the lease term. Usually the percentage steps down year over year.

      Does that help?

    2. I’m in-house counsel at a retail focused real estate developer and I work very closely with our leasing team. We have an in-house leasing team and we don’t use outside brokers. Our leasing team works with our development team to determine what kinds of tenants we want in each of our spaces at a shopping center (i.e. boutique fitness, fast-casual restaurant, nail/hair salon or spa etc.) and they have relationships with Tenant-side brokers to find interest from the types of tenants they want. They then negotiate a Letter of Intent with the prospective tenant, setting out the key business terms (rent, term length, use etc.). Once they have a final LOI, it comes to me and I draft the lease and the leasing team makes the business decisions as we negotiate the lease.

  2. I’m taking a lifeguarding class. I usually wear a rashguard or coverup, but this is swimming in a pool with teens and people less than half my age. I’m a bit self-conscious. Swim-team type suits flatten me out tragically. I don’t want a wonderbra-type suit, but is there anything good for swimming (one-piece) where an aging small bust can get some loving support and pads/built in soft bra so no one knows how cold I am?

    I’m not going to be a lifeguard as a job, but it was strongly suggested that someone on a summer 2024 planned boat-packing trip have that training (along with wilderness first aid, which I’ve already done).

    1. Just wear the rash guard, especially if it’s an outdoor pool. Lots of the guards here (FL) do. Besides, sunburn sucks.

    2. I like the Nike Swim Tankini top. I wear it with a set of bottoms from another brand that provides a bit more coverage.

    5. I say wear the rashguard to the training and don’t worry about what others wear. I love my rashguard! I burn easily, so I wear it over my 2 piece. I felt a little strange at first, but 3 years without a sunburn feel soooo good!

    6. Shoot — typed too soon. The class is in an INDOOR pool, so it is uncomfortably cold to wear a wet rashguard when we are frequently in / out of the water. Outside in the heat I need it for sun and prefer the cooling effect.

    8. I bought a super cute one piece from Target that has short sleeves and a zip up front – good support. And two long sleeve suits from Amazon – brand was AXESEA. They also have built in support – just enough, and super cute patterns.

    9. One thing to note–lifeguarding for a pool is very different that open water. They’re two completely different training classes and open water is way more difficult. You may get a refresher on how to do CPR and ways to help support a distressed swimmer with various methods, but IMO it’s not going to be super helpful for boating. For one thing, you can see to the bottom of a pool and easily identify the distressed swimmer/drowning person. On a lake/in the ocean that’s much more difficult.

      1. OP here — I agree — totally different! There is no current in a pool, either. Still, the ideal course isn’t local to me and requires a plan ticket and at least a week off of work, so this is better than nothing (and a prerequisite to the advanced class). I figure, it is better than nothing and I will be a stronger swimmer and more serious water safety person after it. I do have a book from NOLS (which does WFA) to read and it is some strong stuff.

    10. I grew up in SoCal in the 1970s. I started using sunscreen, wearing UPF clothes and hats in the mid 1990s. In September, I will be starting a several-session laser treatment to “erase” the sun damage on my chest. Wear the rashguard and revel in your good skin in a couple decades.

    11. Athleta has some flattering options. The Maldives tankini was not flattening at all.

  3. I want high waist Jean shorts with a reasonable length, like 4-6”. I am a size 0-2. I want a clean edge at the bottom, folded is fine, but no cut off/torn/frayed/ripped edges. I can’t seem to find anything in the $30-50 range – they’re either mid rise, or short shorts, or have holes or frayed edges. Help?

    2. I’d wait for the July 4th sale before buying but Madewell and Jcrew both seem to have these and they’re currently in the $60-$80 range so if they go on sale for 30% off or more (which is pretty common) you should be able to snag them in your budget.

    4. Buy the jeans at a thrift shop then get them taken up to the EXACT length you want! It’s the ideal solution.

  4. Does anyone keep a bullet journal here? What kinds of things do you track or journal about?

    1. I have one with a calendar, a “future log” for events past the end of the calendar, to-do lists, lists of books/music/movies I want to consume, holiday gift lists, notes from meetings for my volunteer work–basically all my non-work administration and notes.

    2. Sort of, but I don’t keep it pretty or spend much time on the upkeep. I keep lists of books I want to read, personal projects I want to work on, things on my to-do list, stuff I want to try (restaurants, events, flowers for my garden, just whatever strikes me). Recently I started seasonal meal ideas, and man, that has been helpful when I’m making my shopping list for the week without going down the meal planning rabbit hole. Basically, it’s all notes for myself.

    3. Yes it’s my daily planner. Every day I make a heading for the day, write my appointments to the right, and then try to jot down my priorities for the day. As the day goes along i make notes.

      I do a monthly planner as well just to lay out big stuff like conferences and holidays, and the first day of the month I write down my hours from the prior month (I’m a consultant who bills monthly).

      My bullet journal is a productivity tool and is not pretty to look at.

  5. can someone please explain to me in layman’s terms what exactly is going on with these canadian wildfires and when the might be dealt with? this was not an issue on my radar for potentially ruining my summer…

      1. I laughed so hard at this.

        I love that we have people here who are such control-freak planners that they feel it’s reasonable to ask a question about when Canada – like, the country – can do everyone a favor and get those pesky climate-change-driven massive wildfires under control? Like, does Canada (the country) not understand that people’s summer plans are being ruined??? Come on, people, get it together!! LMAO

    3. Our city had smoke from them two months ago. So there is not a quick fix here. You can probably google around and find somewhere in Canada that is issuing updates and has news about the strategy for addressing them.

      1. Yeah it started in March! It hasn’t been bad in the US until recently, but this has been going on for quite a while.

      1. Which is expected to be when?

        Signed,

        Planning a coast to coast Canandian train trip in late September

        1. Who the hell knows? It’s not like there’s a rainy season.

          The 2021 wildfire season went June to Dec (the one where the West Coast was on fire).

        2. You’re from California, aren’t you? I’d think you’d be a little more knowledgeable and a little less flip about this.

        4. Honestly, what do you want me or anybody on this thread to do about wildfires?

          Yes, I’m from California and of course I am terribly sympathetic to everybody who is affected. And yet I don’t see how that is inconsistent with wondering how and whether it is going to affect my planned trip, which is OF COURSE not the most important thing here but is nevertheless of some importance to me. I do the best I can to be environmentally friendly in my daily life and most notably I vote for candidates who actually want to take action on global warming. Beyond that, spare me the sanctimoniousness.

    5. This is the new normal, sadly. The earth is getting hotter and drier and is going to burn every summer.

    6. Basically it’s a vast area that isn’t densely populated, so they are letting it burn with the exception of protecting lives and built structures as much as possible.

      1. Thank you for the helpful response. I usually think of US west coast wildfires where there are thousands of buildings in the fire path, so of course they do everything possible to extinguish it.

        As a Chicagoan I’m not used to this type of climate change fallout. We get the occasional polar vortex or 95° heat wave but our location normally insulates us from natural disasters. We pay our climate dues by putting up with frigid gray winters so we’re very defensive of our summers.

        1. It’s all on a different scale, unfortunately. 2020 was a bad fire year in California, and 1.8M hectares were burned. This year’s fire activity in Canada is already vastly surpassing all the recent years on record, and 7.8M hectares have burned, with half the year still to come.
          The population of both CAs is the same, but of course Canada is far bigger and nobody lives in a lot of places. Plus they don’t have the 8-month dry season that California has, meaning they may not have the same resources devoted to wildfires.

      2. Ehhh I’m finally traveling post covid and after dealing with that plus multiple health issues in my family, I was really looking forward to enjoying my summer finally. We are allowed to be disappointed that we have to deal with another thing interfering with our lives.

    8. They’ll stop when we stop burning fossil fuels, the oceans absorb the excess CO2, and the climate cools again. So a few hundred or thousand years, depending on what we decide to do.

      1. And when we come up with better management plans for places that need to burn regularly so we don’t end up with huge overgrowths of underbrush.

        1. Yes, better management of thousands of square miles of nature/land. We must hire a better lawn service….. so sloppy of us…..

          1. Tell me you know nothing about forest management without telling me you know nothing about forest management….

        2. Yeah, that’s pretty much impossible on the scale we’re discussing here. We’re talking about most of Canada, huge areas of which are wilderness with no roads. That’s simply not feasible.

          1. In the US many of the wildfire issues have been caused by previous no-burn policies.

          2. I should add, I do think we need better forest management and more controlled burns in particular. But it’s very difficult to manage controlled burns as the climate gets hotter and drier, and it’s quite expensive, not to mention the risk management and PR issues when burns go awry. And it’s very difficult to do on a large scale in remote areas, which makes it especially difficult in large parts of Canada. It can help, but it won’t solve the problem.

          3. I think people who live in cities just simply can’t wrap their minds around the scale we’re talking about.

        3. This is more lightening strikes (warmer temps lead to an increase in lightening strikes), which means more opportunity for fires to start. It’s less rain and warmer/drier temps which leads that underbrush to dry out faster and be stronger tinder. It’s a weakening jet stream that means weather conditions move slower and and means that weather/fire conditions get amplified and it takes longer for natural solutions (rain) to come in.

          This isn’t land-management putting out fires too early and letting brush build up unnaturally, like led to the Yellowstone Fires in the late 80s. This is a changing climate that continues to create more brush tinder than there should be, and also keeps fire-favorable conditions in place for longer, resulting in bigger fires.

          1. +1. Storms have also been getting worse and dry lightening has also been striking in areas that have never seen much wildfire activity. And we live in an area where they do try to do controlled burns, but in the drought years there isn’t much of a window for it.

        4. LOL yeah no, they’re gonna happen on massive scales anyway. It’s climate change, stupid, to paraphrase James Carville.

        5. I encourage you to visit the sierra nevada mountain range, as an example, and explain to me how we’re going to rake a forest that covers something like 27 million acres. You don’t understand how vast it is.

          2. I am a lawyer now, but my background is forestry. I have both academic training and practical experience in wildland fire, including both controlled burns and firefighting. Poor forest management is to blame for much of the situation in the American west – specifically the longstanding policy of extinguishing all fires. It will take decades to undo that damage. Compare this to areas where fire was always part of forest management (eg SEUS) and you can see the impact.

          3. That’s not a fair comparison – again, as the scale and the weather of those two areas of the country are completely different.

          4. I’m noticing more controlled burns this Summer, so maybe we (state of CA) are learning from the past/trying??

    10. You probably didn’t mean it that way, but this is totally giving off “I’d like to speak to the wildfire manager” vibes!

      2. Bahahaha! I’d also like to speak to the bushfire manager.
        It was astonishing watching the news in Australia about the smoke in New York without actual coverage of the wildfire themselves.

  6. A good friend (not local) has had flooding in her first floor and has to tear everything out. What can I do from a distance to support her?

    3. Send money. Target gift cards or Amazon gift cards would be great. It’s a ton of work to go through this and requires so much new stuff to get back into the house.

    4. Agree. If she doesn’t have a working kitchen, food cards for the win!

    5. OP – her kitchen is on the second floor so she does have a kitchen fortunately! She is losing access during remediation to a bathroom, spare room, laundry room, and kids bedroom.

    6. Between this post and the one this morning about supporting friend through egg retrieval, the people on this board really show up for their friends

  7. Is anyone wearing cropped blazers? How are you wearing them? I always think the proportions aren’t going to be flattering on anyone but I could be wrong.

    1. I am, because I am short (5’2″) and to boot, have a very short torso and look young. So normal blazers often seem too long. A cropped blazer on me fits me but does not look cropped on my body. They’re so much more flattering and I don’t look like I’m playing dress up.

    2. Actually they are quite flattering on my shape, but just aren’t the most current style right now.

    3. I’m tall so they don’t work on me, it just looks like I couldn’t find a jacket my size. I sometimes feel like I’m the only poster on here celebrating the return of long blazers! Shrunken blazer life was miserable for me haha

    4. I wear collarless cropped blazers over sheath dresses or straight leg pants to court.

    5. yes, generally over a sheath dress. You have more leeway with proportions when you’re not trying to deal with whether the jacket hits vs. your pants waistline.

    6. I have a short torso so I love them over dresses. I wear them over pants sometimes, but that is trickier to me depending on where the waist of the pants hit.

      1. Hi short torso friend! How do you avoid them making you look boxy?

  8. Hello Californians – any recommendations for a service/driver to pick up from Sacramento airport and transport to Napa? Recommendations appreciated. :)

    1. I don’t have anything specific but I ususally just go on Viator and pick the one with the best price and highest rating.

    3. FWIW, I took a Lyft from Sacramento to Sonoma, and it was not that pricey or hard to find.

  9. Long shot, but – does anyone know of a free/cheap to-do-list app that lets you make things that are due years away — but then will send that task to another app when it’s within X days? So like in my iPhone I say “set reminder for 4 years to seal grout” and then on may 28, 2027 it pushes that notification to another app like Slack or Asana? thx

    2. or, i guess, what is your favorite free/cheap to do list app? so many of them out there now.

    3. I think you could do this on iphone, assuming your icloud/calendar stays the same.

    4. Why not just put it in Outlook and set a reminder for a week out or some custom period? Seems less complicated than involving multiple apps. If multiple apps are needed then I don’t know…. Good luck!

      1. I’ve never gotten the hang of tasks, but yeah I just put an event on google calendar, and you can customize how it notifies you – push notification or email. I tell it to send me a reminder email 2 weeks before e.g. a relative’s birthday.

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