signatures Archives

The Easiest Way to Get Dressed? Find Your Personal Uniform!

March 29, 2018 I've seen him twice in the Pedway in downtown Chicago. The first time, he was wearing black jeans, some sort of white shirt, and a RED VELVET TUXEDO JACKET. In the middle of the day, in the middle of the business district. And he looked amazingly cool...He's average height, very slender, young, and quite nice. (Yes, the 2nd time I saw him, I had to stop him and compliment him...)The 2nd time I saw him, he was wearing a white shirt and black jeans again, but this time his jacket was BLUE BROCADE. It's a uniform, and it's his!

Of course this got me thinking how this might translate for all of us...

Say you have this outfit, and you love it:

This would be so easy to build - when you see a jacket that you love, you ... View the Post

Daisies! The Birth Flower for April

March 27, 2018

I think that daisies are popular for lots of reasons - in real life, they're a great cut flower to buy because they're generally very inexpensive, last a REALLY long time, and the buds will actually open after you buy them...

For ornamental purposes, they're simple in design, familiar to almost all of us, and for many people have associations that make us smile...

So if you want to add a daisy or five to your wardrobe, you have options:

If you don't want the actual daisy - but the "feel" of the daisy, you could wear white with any color in the world (I don't think I need to show you how to do that!), or you could choose to add a dash of yellow to your wardrobe... (yes, this is indeed the 2nd month in a row ... View the Post

My 3rd Most Popular Post – This is Why I Blog

February 15, 2018

I'm so happy that this post is so high on this list - I really did start writing The Vivienne Files in order to encourage women to buy less clothing, and to spend a little bit of time listening to their hearts, and less time listening to advertising. Nobody else knows what you want or need, and don't let them tell you otherwise!

The image shown, from 4 years ago, is so easily replicable today; I don't still have the original grey dress, but everything else there is still with me, and still in my regular rotation. That makes me feel like I'm not destroying my budget, nor my planet...

Here's an updated version:

If you choose simple, classic pieces, and use a little bit of imagination, you don't need a ton of ... 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 ... View the Post

Can You Really Travel with Only SIX Pieces of Clothing? I’m Going to Find Out…

November 8, 2017

Yes, I am going back to Paris on Tuesday...It's a combination of a free plane ticket, a really inexpensive hotel (I'll tell you all about that when I'm back!) and a bone-deep yearning to see holiday decorations in another country.

But more than anything, I'm really eager to see how completely... unfettered? light? I can feel while traveling. Normally, there's the suitcase and the carry-on, and maybe a handbag, and while I know that this is necessary, I don't feel relaxed when I have these things to corral and transport. I want to be focused on external things - other people, mostly, and be able to put my own "stuff" out of my mind.

This isn't impossible - one could, in theory, go almost any place that has similar ... View the Post

Are You More “Matisse” or “Monet?” Using Art to Help Define Personal Style

A long time ago, I did a post like this comparing garments that, to me, reflected either Calder or Mondrian - i.e. fluid, curving and draping lines versus a more angular silhouette. These posts aren't easy, mostly because I really struggle to find a pair of artists that have a clearly-cut difference between them... If you have suggestions, I'd love to do this more! I think it can be important and useful to refine our preferences and to learn to clearly define what we do and don't like in our wardrobes - fewer mistakes!

In the last few months, I spent some time looking at Matisse "cut-outs" at the Modern Art Museum in Paris, and the clear demarcations between colors really caught my eye. There was something... crisp?... about how these ... View the Post

Does Anybody Care About Making and Selling Beautiful, Comfortable Shoes? Heck YES!

This is a shamelessly sponsored post! Yes, I was given a pair of shoes, which is a pretty sweet deal. But I hope that you know me well enough by now to know that if I didn't think that something was worth your time and effort, I wouldn't write about it - I'm not going to sell out and waste your time, and my good reputation...Last week, I was invited to the Thierry Rabotin shoes trunk show at Hanig's Footwear. I've been buying shoes from Hanig's for... 25 years? maybe, and I've been buying Thierry Rabotin (1 pair every 6 months, VERY carefully chosen) since they began carrying them. So I just thought that they were inviting me because I'm an old, and pretty good, customer...

Heck no! They offered me a pair of CUSTOM SHOES, in exchange for ... View the Post

What I’m Packing For Ireland, August 2017

August 2, 2017

I leave tomorrow! My original plan was to go to Italy, but my friend had to postpone, so Belovedest and I decided that I would just get off the plane in Dublin (through which I was originally connecting) and spend the 12 days there. I'll be in an Air BNB for 6 days, and then B arrives and we'll move into a hotel. I'm mad excited...

This is a really uncharacteristic pack for me - it's a TON more stuff than I often take. But I'm going to get up in the mornings and do an alternate sprint/walk down the river toward the docks. (The wander back will probably require coffee shops...) That means that I need running skorts, shoes, tee shirts, socks, and probably some 2nd layer; Ireland is a lot cooler than Chicago, this time of ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – August 2017

July 31, 2017

Although most of us in the Northern Hemisphere still have at least 8 weeks of hot weather in front of us, you can't tell it by what's in the stores. Cashmere, leather goods, lots of winter coats... Sigh...

But the August outfit last year, and again this year, is oriented to the season ahead:

As always, I like to see how the newest additions look when arrayed with the earlier pieces in each wardrobe:

It's always wise to make certain that you can wear any new garment in at least 3 different ways, so I like to check on this too!

I went a bit mad dressy here... sigh...

Such lovely colors...

I went a bit overboard here too, I suspect...

The brooch ... View the Post

How Do I Choose My Favorite Colors?

July 28, 2017

This sounds like a silly question - we've all known our favorite colors since we were children, haven't we?

Well, in a nutshell, no. I get emails every day from people who still struggle to choose their neutrals, or to find a signature accent color, or some other variation on these themes that boils down to the issue of knowing what we most like.

Recently, one of you commented that you found peridot green as an accent when you kept seeing that color when you meditated! I personally found this to be utterly brilliant, and about as fail-safe a way to choose a signature as humanly possible. But what if you don't meditate?

I'm suggesting that you start looking for opportunities to make choices - all KINDS of choices - ... View the Post

How to Add Accent Colors to Your Capsule Wardrobe – Hot Pink and Green

Remember this beautiful painting, and intriguing color palette?

And of course you remember this wardrobe from last week...

In and of itself, this is a pretty good assortment of clothes:

But for most of us, for the entire summer, we're going to want more than 16 pieces... So let's have our heroine start out her shopping by adding some hot pink, as well as a bit more black and white. For many of us, these shorts might be a big longer (like capri pant length!), or one could also find a skirt in this color...

This is how her wardrobe now looks with the additional pieces. The hot pink definitely doesn't blend in with everything else, but since it's meant to be an accent color, it really doesn't have to go with everything ... View the Post

My Year Without Shopping – January 2017. The Reasons, The Method, and The Rules

January 3, 2017

Yes, it's true, and it's long overdue; I'm taking a year off from shopping! I've begun to feel just a bit too much like this:

Untitled (I Shop Therefore I Am) by Barbara Kruger

(By shopping, I'm including clothes, jewelry, and all accessories.) It's become apparent that I have a lot more clothes than I need, especially when considering my current life. It's not uncommon for me to spend at least 2 days a week in gym clothes - I'll wake up and put them on immediately, but then won't actually GET to the gym until mid- to late-afternoon. By the time I've finished working out and cooling down, (at least in the winter) it's time for me to shower and put on my pajamas! I could get ... View the Post