Sewing My Wardrobe From Vogue

I fell in love with Peter Lindberg's fashion shoot featured in the January 2011 edition of American Vogue, modeled by Daria Werbowy and actor David Strathairn, called Brief Encounters.  I especially loved this dress by Yves Saint Laurent but would never in my life dream of dropping the amount of money needed to grab this little number off the racks, so I jerry-rigged my own version out of Vogue pattern 2960.

Daily Outfit: 15

Dress and belt from Madewell, shoes from JCrew

Daily Outfit: 14

Fremont Shirtdress and shoes from Anthropologie, necklace handmade by Conner Finn, huge ring from Ebay, and little ring from my Grandma.

Daily Outfit: 13

I went out to cocktail hour with the ladies on Friday and didn't get home in time to take photographs with that nice golden evening sun.  All the photos I took with the flash ended up being terrible, although I did try.  In lieu of my failed photographs, I've posted a previous one taken with the same Cupcake Princess dress that I wore on Friday.

Daily Outfit: 12

Daily Outfit: 12

Daily Outfit: 11

Oh man, I cheated again!  I got rid of my gray loafers and added these brown brogues from JCrew and added some gray pants.  There are some days that a girl just does not want to wear white pants.

Daily Outfit: 10

 

Mondays are always difficult, no?  I'm thinking of a couple of songs, off the bat, that attest to this fact.  This one was just like all those woe-is-Monday sentiments with work but I have lots of hope for tomorrow because The Love Leighs are playing tomorrow night and I do so want to go see them.

Daily Outfit: 9

Daily Outfit: 8

This is the car that my man and I lived in on the road for a little over a year. We call her Breathless Mahoney.

Daily Outfit: 7

What's that I'm reading, you ask?  Why that's my new subscription, the first one to arrive at my new house!  I have large dreams of being a better hostess in the near future and Ms. Martha Stewart is just the lady to help me get there.  And that gentleman there is my special man, Conner.

Daily Outfit: 6

Daily Outfit: 5

Channeling the 1950's

Daily Outfit: 4

Daily Outfit: 3

Simple makeup (foundation, mascara, and brow pencil), hot pink lip (Revlon Fuchsia Super Lustrous Lipstick), and a retro hair-style complete with lots of bobby-pins and a curling iron.

Daily Outfit: 2

 

Ok, it's only Day 2 of my month-long experiment and I've cheated; I added another piece of clothing.  There's one thing I've learned about Texas in the 6 years that I've lived here: during summer it may be blistering hot outside but it's still necessary to carry a sweater every where you go.  It's true!  It'll be 101 degrees outside and you go into a movie theater where it's 56 degree and freezing!  This is the case at work, air conditioning on full blast makes it absolutely vital for me to grab a sweater on the way out the door in the morning.  So I just had to add one more piece of clothing to the roster.

Daily Outfit: 1

There are many things I need to learn about this Daily Outfit project; #1 thing to learn: How to Pose.

A Personal Style Experiment

I'm going to start a bit of an experiment. I usually wake up in the morning and spend a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what I'm going to wear that day before I even get out of bed.  This daily time-consuming chore is only alleviated if one has to wear scrubs to work; something I had to do for a hot minute when I worked at an optometrist office.  However, whatever happiness I felt about having an extra 10 minutes of unimpeded sleep was replaced with feelings of being a 1980's single mom complete with a bowl haircut--a cut I got in an effort to be more "fun and hip" at work.  Whoops.

I am now employed at an office where I must dress in what is described as "date casual", something I can totally jive with.  However, lately I've been having a terrible time figuring out what to wear.  So I've decided to pick 20 items total to wear over the next month and see how creative I can be--this includes tops. bottoms, shoes, jewelry, and accessories.  Bottom line: this is really an attempt to distill and streamline my personal style and become effortlessly and awesomely stylish. 

Here are the contestants:

Bottoms from right to left: Yellow skirt-handmade out of old draperies, 2. Long black dress-Anthropologie, 3. White jeans-Urban Outfitters, 4. Full tangerine skirt-handmade out of fabric from Hancock Fabrics.

Tops from right to left: 1. Striped shirt-JCrew, 2. Lilac Tee-Target, 3. Cream flutter top-Urban Outfitters, 4. Watercolor top-Anthropologie, 5. Chambrey button down-Anthropologie, 6. (unpictured) Gray tanktop-Target

Clockwise from top: 1. Black booties-Steve Madden, 2. Panama Hat-Target, 3. Brown wide belt-Anthropologie, 4. Tangerine Sandals-JCrew, 5. White leather belt-Goodwill, 6. (unpictured) Gray loafers-Steve Madden.

That makes 16 items so far.  I figure that leaves 4 different pieces of jewelry and I simply haven't decided which ones I should limit myself to for a month.  I'll figure that out tonight and post the remaining 4 pieces soon.  The experiment starts Monday!