shopping Archives

If I Were Shopping: The Nordstrom Anniversary Sale

August 12, 2020

It's the biggest event of the year, for bloggers. Nordstrom having a sale is kind of big news in the retail/style industries, but for bloggers it's more than just a big sale. Nordstrom is probably the most generous retailer to bloggers - their commissions are substantial...

And that's why you're going to see lots of people talking about this sale in the next couple of weeks!

I always have mixed feelings about all of this; I don't suspect that you all believe that I'm writing The Vivienne Files just for the karmic bonuses that I earn from trying to be entertaining and helpful!

But I don't like to recommend things to you just because I make money, or just because things are on sale. Often, sale merchandise is stuff ... View the Post

Expanding a Travel Capsule Wardrobe: Shopping with the Countess de Martel!

July 3, 2020

Okay, she's no longer living; for our purposes, our heroine is a fictional character who looks a lot like her...

When we left our heroine, stocking her pantry in Paris with the essentials, she was traveling with this wardrobe:

She has just learned that she's going to have to stay in Paris for at LEAST 2 weeks longer than she expected! (let's not get into the details of why - it's fiction, and a fantasy!)

She certainly could stay with just the 8 garments she has - a little bit of well-timed laundry would be really all she would need to manage. But since she's going to be staying there regularly in the future, she decides that she will very carefully buy more clothes...

Even though she can't leave ... View the Post

What Do I Need in My Wardrobe? Navy, Teal, Plum and Lavender

May 13, 2020

It was a sort of urgent email - I get those sometimes! In the middle of quarantining and lots of disruption, SHE GOT A PROMOTION!!!! A big one...

After much back and forth, we settled on the 4 colors in our palette, and she has already isolated these 8 things to launch her work wardrobe:

These are her chosen colors:

She's going to need to travel some, and be on screens for teleconferences a lot, so I'm targeting - eventually - a 20-piece wardrobe for her for these "visible" work activities. I thought maybe this template would help me be organized in making recommendations:

So the first thing we need to do is show her 8 existing garments in this template, so we can see where we have ... View the Post

Some “Not Quite Perfect” Weekly Timeless Wardrobes, and Some Fixes

April 6, 2020

I'm going to take a break for a couple of weeks from the Weekly Timeless Wardrobe "1 garment per week," in order to let the lagging clothing markets catch up to the season!

But I do want to look back at some of the wardrobes from Spring that sort of evolved over the last 13 weeks, and see how they turned out...

I just opened ALL of the files of each post from the last 13 weeks, and accumulated the "example" garments I showed into 6 wardrobes. THIS was a laptop-killer...

First up - almost perfect...

You saw me do this last week in the last wardrobe - the one that sort of mirrors my own wardrobe. That red tee shirt is fine - you don't have to wear it with the pink top, or with the awesome madras dress. But the ... View the Post

What Pants Go With my Warm Neutral Tops?

Last Friday, I sang a small serenade in praise of stone-color cotton pants, as a vehicle for getting more mileage out of a LOT of garments... And some of you asked - rightly - if they would work well with warmer colors...

Yes, but not as well as these:

I think that these pants will go with almost any other color, but I particularly wanted to see how they would work with these neutral colors...

Some are more successful than others - of course! - but I think that these pants are a good possibility if your wardrobe has some "orphaned" tops in warm shades...

These colors are perfect together:

If you're moving from cool colors - especially black - to warmer colors, these pants might help you transition some of your ... View the Post

Do You Have a Shopping List for Clothing?

If not, why not?

To me, clothing is an essential item in life, and as such, should be purchased with care, and with a plan. In order to have a plan, I think that a shopping list is important, if not essential.

For example, you wouldn't buy any sort of furnishing for your home without thinking about it and having a plan. The clothes that you wear can be thought of as furnishings for your body. You can live in a completely empty home, and you can live without clothing, but neither of these options is great!

So I'm pondering the most obvious things that I might purchase for the upcoming cool weather....

I'm heartened to see a number of lovely garments in warm, "autumn or spring" colors, and I've chosen to share quite a few of them ... View the Post

Why I Didn’t Start Collecting Antique Postcards Again…

I was thrown into the deep end, back in the day. But 10 binders full of postcards, for $100, was too interesting to pass up!

And so I immersed myself in the hundreds of floral birthday cards, and the handful of Ireland scenic cards for St. Patrick's Day, and the occasional Washington's Birthday card, or Valentine. And the I fell in love with this guy:

I discovered that he had brothers:

and cousins!

And so for about 6 or 7 years, I collected post cards...

Fast forward to 2005 - we moved to Ireland, and before we left, I sold off my collection. I hadn't had a lot of time to do anything much with it, and it seemed reasonable to not pay to move heavy binders! The revenue was handy when we were moving...

So you can ... View the Post

Part 1: What I Saw Being Worn (and Purchased) in Paris, May 2018

One of the advantages of the unexpectedly warm weather in Paris is that I got to see the entire city shifting into their warmer-weather wardrobes!

As I always do when I travel, I tried to keep my eyes open for things that I saw - in stores or on people - that were different from what I would see in Chicago. In Paris, there were LOTS of things that caught me eye - so much that it's going to take me 2 days to tell you about them all!

I can't swear that white eyelet is a trend this year, or if it's just something that everyone pulls out and starts to wear when the weather warms up. It really is more of a classic... But we saw lots of cute little dresses, and PLENTY of tops with eyelet trip being worn with shorts, flowing skirts, and ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – March 2018

Who couldn't be happy that it's finally March? (I swear, I think February might have been the longest month of my life!) Let's buy some sweaters and skirts, if only in our imaginations...

For some reason it's become a tradition for me to include canvas shoes or espadrilles with the outfits in March. Some of them are a stretch, I'll admit!

This wardrobe is unlike anything else I've ever assembled!

Seriously, couldn't someone get married in this outfit?

I think this is become really pretty...

There's something about stripes with dots... especially in navy! (and the espadrilles have little round perforations...)

I'm loving this one too... It all feels very easy to wear...

There was no way to resist ... View the Post

“Fixing” a Wardrobe that Just Doesn’t Feel Right…

She's worn navy forever, and really, legitimately loves it. She also really feels comfortable with bright colors - she doesn't mind the high contrast. But, for some reason she can't quite put her finger on, she's not quite "right" with her wardrobe...

This is what's she's got for spring:

She really doesn't know what to do to feel more comfortable with these pieces, so she just started getting dressed as normal, but changing 2 small things:

She pulls out and wears what she really "feels" like wearing, rather than trying to carefully rotate everything in her wardrobe. If she focuses on what she most likes, it might help her learn something, and She keeps careful track of what she wears.

After three weeks, she sorts things out based on ... View the Post

How to Focus and Refine a Pretty Good Wardrobe

I am asked this question more frequently than I might have expected - it goes kind of like this: "I really like my wardrobe, for the most part, but I feel like I don't really have a good focus or defined style...."

That's tough to address, but I'm going to give it a try!

Let's start with this wardrobe; frankly, it looks pretty nice just like this!

My first thought is to sort all of the clothes by function, to see if maybe our heroine doesn't have enough pants, or needs a couple of tee shirts - that sort of solution would be pretty straightforward! But this wardrobe seems pretty well-balanced for functionality...

My next thought is to see if we can gain some insights into our heroine's preferences by sorting her wardrobe by color... ... View the Post

How Much Clothing Do You Need? A New Year’s Thought…

Could you fit your entire wardrobe for the current season in this armoire?

I could fit things in terms of physical volume, but I'd struggle with how to hang my dresses - how DO women who only have armoires hang long garments?

A couple of years ago I wrote a lengthy post with an equation to help calculate an actual number of garments that would be in your ideal wardrobe - you had to answer a few questions, and then do a calculation (or you can buy the Excel document I built that does the math for you!). It's a question that doesn't grow old... Unless you have a terribly limited wardrobe, it's something that merits repeated analysis, so that we don't wander into old patterns of over-consumption. Wasting money is almost as bad as ... View the Post