The best skirt shape for your body shape

Posted & under Dressing for your shape.

Love this website WHOWHATWEAR as they give some really practical fashion tips to help women dress for their body shape, which is what i’m all about.

We categorise body shapes – often using the humble fruit – to help people understand what styles will look best on them and which ones to steer clear of, but we must take in to account that not many people are a textbook. For example, a small apple can wear quite different styles compared with a larger sized apple, and that is the case here.

The first high-waist flouncy skirt is not suitable for a larger sized apple as the skirt will hang too far away from the thighs and look very unattractive. So a lot of the guides you read for what styles a particular body shape should wear, are generally steered towards the smaller size version of that fruit.

Have a read here.

Finding a diamond in the rough

Posted & under Australian high street, The value of clothes.

Not that i’m one for throw away fashion, i do appreciate that there is a place in our wardrobes for a few lower priced items that are a bit more trend driven. After the interesting L&B experiment by Best & Less, it got me thinking about other shops with a stigma attached when buying clothes, and so i had a browse in KMart and found this little gem.

It’s easy to wear and not too masculine or rock ‘n roll, and as I would have bought it for $40, I thought it was a wise purchase. I trimmed the armhole a little so it looked a bit more authentic and styled it with a vintage red leather skirt, Zara heels & a lace bra peeping through. No one would have guessed it was from KMart – or is that a bad thing – should i be proud of that fact I love my $8 tee?

It’s all about how much you value your purchase.

How to wear…the essential white jean

Posted & under How to wear the essentials.

Yes, white jeans are a little difficult to wear for some of us. But if you do have the figure, they are surprisingly versatile. The actually give a less harsh outline than dark jeans so can be surprisingly flattering. Make sure you go for a heavyweight denim so to give you good coverage and like all jeans, make sure the back pockets are in the correct place for your bottom shape.

Best&Less launches ‘The L&B Experiment’

Posted & under Australian high street, The value of clothes.

 

I love this, it’s such a fantastic social experiment. Ricki from Campaign Brief reports on the success of the latest, and very bold experiment, by Banjo – the PR agency for Best & Less. By presenting exactly the same clothes within a more beautiful retail environment, peoples perception of the value of the items changed dramatically. They could view the garments without the stigma and indeed, appeal to a lot more people that wouldn’t have usually stepped foot inside a Best & Less. Customers were even prepared to pay a higher price for these items, almost 4 times the correct price! The video is a must watch.

Due to this lower end market not giving the love the clothes that they should ie. steaming garments before hanging, using decent hangers, merchandising in to outfits etc, it’s often hard for potential customers to imagine how good they could look once they get them home and mix them with their own wardrobe. I think there is definitely a place for lower priced fashion. But it should still fit well, be made of a cloth that doesn’t give you a rash and be a considered purchase. You should never buy an item because it’s cheap. If that’s the motivation, you’ll never love it, and it’s just a waste.

I visited Best & Less yesterday and was pleasantly surprised by their knitwear and encourage any one to go in and take a fresh look, particularly at this category.

http://www.campaignbrief.com/2014/02/bestless-launches-the-lb-exper.html

Click on the image to enlarge & read.

Skirting Around The Issue

Posted & under Clothes reflecting our personalities.

This is a great article in UK Grazia, September 2013, discussing how what you wear on a date can ‘make or break’ it. We all know that making a good first impression is key to any important meeting, but after fashion blogger Natalie Joos wrote about her date who complained about her designer jeans went viral, Rebecca Holman decided to see for herself. Rebecca details her experience as she embarks on 4 dates that she organised using on-line dating websites and then got the men she met with, to judge her outfits.

Rebecca enlisted the advice of psychologist Jennifer Baumgartner who states that “Not only does the outfit affect how you feel….it becomes part of the non-verbal package unconsciously used to assess you.”

It’s interesting that the short LBD generated the most positive response from any of her dates because he could see her ‘great legs’, despite Rebecca feeling incredibly uncomfortable in it. The man asked her on a second date but Rebecca declined however as she would have rather be asked out again because of her ‘winning personality.’

Rebecca concludes that next time she would definitely choose to wear an outfit that reflects her true personality and that from now on, she would perhaps be less judgemental of her date’s outfit…

Click on the article to enlarge & read.

In Search Of Frugal Fashion

Posted & under Wasting money.

Can you put together a fashion savvy outfit that suits your shape and personality for under $100? An article in The Age online 2012, puts it to the test. It encourages people to look at alternative places to shop, such as second hand shops and market stalls. It’s not about buying cheap fast fashion that satisfies for only a moment, but searching other avenues that can give you the same look and quality, but for less money.

The  people in the article discuss the need for versatile clothes that can easily take them from day-to-evening and it is exactly these types of styles that i would help you identify. we acn then build around these depending on your particular needs.

To read more, click here.

That’s A Wrap!

Posted & under Wasting money.

According to WRAP, the waste reduction body, “a third of all unwanted clothes – 430,000 tons of them – end up in landfill, when they could be sent to charity shops or given a new lease of life”. Clothes swap parties are a great idea when you have become bored or no longer fit in certain styles, or customising your clothes to reinvigorate them with little or no extra money. All these ideas i can help with.

The WRAP report also studied the behaviour of almost 8,000 adults in Britain and found that “the average household spends £1,700 a year on clothes, second only to food and drink expenditure”. When you realise how much we spend on our clothes, you also realise how much more thought we should give our purchases. Often there is so little thought yet they are our third largest financial outlay.

To read more, click here.

Britons Waste £30billion In Unworn Clothes Every Year

Posted & under Wasting money.

Researches estimate that over the past year Britons have left 1.7billion clothing items, unworn. This is valued at more than £30billion, averaging 28 items per person.

This is a huge waste of not just money, but our time too. Just imagine adding another 28 items of clothing to your wardrobe that had been better thought-out purchases and how much of an improvement that would have made to your wardrobe. 28 items spread over 1 year could be a whole new work wardrobe or your years worth of wardrobe staples that would last you for several years to come. Every purchase should make a positive addition to your wardrobe which would save you a lot of time in the longrun.

In a different report, ‘Valuing Our Clothes’, it states that typically 30% of our wardrobes remains unworn, generally for reasons such as, no longer fitting in them, saving them for an occasion or not getting round to throwing them away. These reasons are very common and i hear them time and time again. The trick is to be honest with yourself about these reasons. You don’t have to throw clothes away that don’t fit or those you can’t bear to part with for sentimental reasons, but put them in to storage. This way you will keep in your wardrobe clear of clutter and make it easier to dress every morning. You know it’s time to throw clothes away when you haven’t worn them for over 1year.

To read more, click here.