dresses Archives

July 2021 – Six Scarves, 12 Months, 12 Outfits

July 2, 2021

I've got a special treat for us today - the kind people at Echo are offering a FREE scarf (of your choice, of course!) to one of you...

How to win? Leave a comment, and I will choose a random number on Monday morning; the reader who left the comment that corresponds to that number will have a new, beautiful scarf!

And if they let me know which one they choose, I will do a travel wardrobe based on it, too!

Pretty nice, eh?

And if you're an Instagram person, DEFINITELY follow Echo Scarves there, too...

Let's get started!

It occurred to me that these wardrobes do not yet have a dress! What is one to wear to the weddings and other festivities of summer?

How about a simple dress, with a sparkly ... View the Post

Chic Sighting, and Rethinking the Role of Linen in my Wardrobe

June 30, 2021

Yesterday was my birthday, and I had to go shopping...

I had my eye on a linen dress from Eileen Fisher...

When I got to the store at Water Tower Place, the lovely young woman who approached me was wearing the EXACT dress I was looking for, but she was wearing it with a much more "cool weather" feel that I would have imagined. The store was very cold, of course...

This is how she wore the dress:

Okay, you wouldn't wear this out into a blizzard, but this outfit would be more than acceptable in the early autumn, or late spring...

It reminded me of the way that women in Paris wear their summer dresses with sweaters, tights and warm shoes or boots - long past the time of year when most of us would have ... View the Post

Weekly Timeless Wardrobe #13 – a summer dress

June 7, 2021

Dresses! I wear a LOT of dresses in the summer time, because they're fast, easy, and modest but still cool...

I know that the list of garments that I wrote years ago specifically says "shirtdress," but we can be flexible... I like shirtdresses because you can wear another top under them, or use them as a swimsuit coverup, or as a duster jacket over another outfit etc.

Let's look at some ideas!

For those of you who are saving the individual garment images, here's the glorious dress all on its own:

I often see women wear button-front dresses with a contrast top underneath, and the dress itself unbutton down to mid-torso. It's a nice look...

And I'm picturing this scarf tied around a pony ... View the Post

The Weekly Timeless Wardrobe, Week 52: Sleeveless Dress or Sundress

July 27, 2020

The END of this project! I'm feeling a bit wistful...

But let's look at summer dresses. I live in dresses (well, in normal times I live in dresses) in the summer, because they're cool, always appropriate, and so easy. Make sure you've got the right undergarments, and you're comfortable and good to go!

I'm starting with this dress because it's a great deal, and would be madly versatile. I see this worn over something, in cooler weather...

At this point in wardrobe building, there aren't many rules for choosing this dress! Something you love, something for which you have all of the right accessories, and something that will be cool in hot weather...

For those who are building wardrobe around our 6 Scarves, ... View the Post

Chic Sighting! Olive Dress with Red Accessories

June 23, 2020

Finally! We were outdoors, and saw someone who was NOT dressed just to lie on the sofa and binge-watch television...

In all honesty, we only saw her from the back, so I'm just assuming that her mask was red!

Part of why this worked is that her dress (not this exact one, but similar) fitted her perfectly, and she seemed to be completely comfortable with how she was dressed. She walked with good posture and a feeling of energy. Overall, she seemed to have confidence, and that makes pretty much anybody look good!

But also, green and red are opposites on the color wheel. Supposedly, opposites are supposed to go well together. (but then, so are colors that form a triangle, rectangle, square, and also those that are ... View the Post

Raiding my French Books: 4 Season Dresses from Chic! by Christine Lombard & Lucille Renié

May 26, 2020

It's an occupational hazard - I read French personal style books. Well, "read" is charitable because I don't fully grasp every last single solitary word that's there, but I manage okay...

And I find some of their advice to be interesting and possibly useful for us! All of these books have some sort of "must-have garments" list (which I of course think is errant nonsense, and should never exist...); my current book strongly promotes the idea of having a dress in a floral print that could be worn all year... hmm...

This is the book in question:

Seriously, ladies, a book will NOT give someone style. It's a fun book, nonetheless!

In response to this suggestion, I found a couple of dresses that I thought ... View the Post

Start with a Scarf: A Long Weekend with a Robin Scarf from Aspinal of London

April 16, 2020 Urban Heart... She misses the city. So much. Just to sit with a cup of coffee and watch the people walk by - the stories, the personalities, the style...

And she's tired. She wants to be able to get dressed without any exertion! So she pulled out her favorite scarf, and her favorite dresses, and started to pack:

Black. White. Gold. No muss, no fuss...

Her favorite dress is a bit roomy - she can easily layer a tee shirt or other shirt under it! In unreliable weather, this is SO helpful. And in a travel capsule wardrobe like this, it is really ALL about the accessories, isn't it?

She start packing - 2 more black dresses! The "fit and flare" dress is perfect with cardigans, or alone with a gold wrap for ... View the Post

The Weekly Timeless Wardrobe, Week 39: A Shirt-dress or Warm-Weather Dress

March 28, 2020

I'm in full "dreaming of my summer wardrobe" mode right now, although I'm not sure how soon I'll be able to actually go OUTSIDE to wear it... Or how often I'll be able to go out, for a while.

That's what fantasy is for, right? And we will all be out and about eventually; we just have to do what's most important for a while...

There are no real rules for buying a dress, except of course making certain that you adore it, and that you'll wear it to pieces...

If you're following along with the Six Scarves wardrobes, I was easily able to find lovely dresses to go with each of the scarves:

I swear, when we're all out and about again, I'm going to be a LOT less of a sissy about wearing white clothes. You ... View the Post

The Holidays with Edith and the Kingpin, by Jack Vetriano

December 25, 2019

Remember these 2? We first met them back in the summer of 2015, then Edith went to interview to work at the resort, and then AGAIN after she was hired...

Even during the first week of December, the resort was still quite busy; Edith has not realized when she was hired that they had an extensive winter sports complex in the forested areas behind the lodgings. She was thrilled - rather than just a summer job, this had become real, full-time work!

She clocked out from her lunch hostess shift and checked her mail cubby hole for any notes. And found this very imposing envelope:

Probably just a holiday card, although it felt sort of... hefty...

She was a bit excited, but she took a deep breath, composed ... View the Post

The Weekly Timeless Wardrobe, Week 26: A Warm Dress

December 23, 2019

The last garment for winter! I know that I plan these wardrobes to be forward-thinking; the best clothes are always in the stores long before a normal person could wear them (unless they're traveling). But this seems early, even to me!

Next Monday I'm going to show a couple of "what a Weekly Timeless Wardrobe might look like" options, and then in January we will plunge back in and start getting our wardrobes ready for the advent of Spring...

Scarf update - my Aspinal of London scarf arrived, and I'm VERY pleased with the quality. These scarves cost literally 36% of what an Hermes scarf costs! Yes, there are differences. Yes, they're a bit thinner, and then hems aren't hand-stitched. BUT STILL... It's a beautiful ... View the Post

Dressing for the Winter Holidays – Festive but not Foolish

November 15, 2019

It's an indelible memory: a corporate holiday party, back in the 80's. Most of the women were wearing those silk jacquard dresses that were so easy to find back then. (mine was red, with a dropped waist, and a big bow on my left hip, at the dropped waist; the skirt was a bit flaired below the dropped waist, so that it moved when I danced. And THE SHOULDER PADS were a thing of wonder...)

One women showed up in strapless sequins. Oh my. I felt bad for her...

Since then, dressing for holiday events has been stressful for me; I've always been frightened that I would make that kind of "career limiting move," or otherwise just not fit in.

So let's be sensible, and intelligent in this planning, eh? Since ... View the Post

Start with Art: Revisiting Yellow Tree by Linda Jacobson

October 4, 2019

Five years ago, I talked at some length about how to assemble a 4 by 4 Wardrobe, using this painting as the inspiration for the color palette. I used the most muted colors visible in the painting, at the time...

Someone recently asked me to take a look at the brighter colors - there are plenty from which to choose, aren't there?

So You Can't Travel Anymore? When her medical condition began to strongly suggest that wearing dresses or skirts was going to be MUCH better than wearing pants, her friends suddenly assumed that meant that she was going to sit at home, wearing your grandmother's mu-mu, and watch daytime television...

So she packed her tote bag, made dinner reservations and bought concert tickets, and ... View the Post