Month: May 2012

bad outfit days

Just like every woman has a bad hair day now and then, usually coinciding with an event for which she’s extra focused on needing it to look good, like for a date, we also have bad outfit days.

Bad outfit days usually reveal themselves within minutes of their wearer being far enough away from home that it’s too late to rectify matters. Sometimes bad outfit days don’t make themselves apparent until after the outfit has seen several days of wear (not consecutively, of course). And under the worst case scenario, the bad outfit isn’t uncovered until many years later as the wearer combs through photographic evidence of days past. In the last case, these bad outfits aren’t just a representations of a long-gone trend or victims of the passage of time. You know deep inside they were as horrible then as they are now.

I had such an outfit that plagued too many days of my life two summers ago. I was experimenting with the mixing of patterns. You know, stripes with florals, florals with dots, dots with stripes. (J. Crew used to make it look effortless, though I’d describe their current combinations as erring on the side of the ridiculous.) Anyway, I had this olive green and ivory striped long-sleeved shirt.  And I thought it would be super cute to wear with it a short-sleeved floral cardigan with predominant tones of olive, orange, pink and purple. I threw a multi-strand pearl necklace over the whole thing, paired it with jeans and waited for compliments that did not come.

Me: DC isn’t ready for this coolness.

I seriously thought my ensemble was awesome, so I wore the combination again. And again. And again. Then one day, I looked in the mirror and realized, “this is just awful.” (Or rather, that’s the sanitized version of what I said to myself.)

The point I’m trying to make is that bad outfit days happen to everyone. Maybe they happen to those who experiment and envelop push more than they happen to others. Or maybe because (for me personally) the pressure is high to always have on a great outfit, I’m more sensitive to the bad ones when they occur. Whatever the case, I typically advise to go with what your gut says when you stand in front of the mirror and ask yourself, “does this work?”

You just have to recognize that sometimes your gut is going to be wrong.

men’s wear wednesday

Gentlemen, are you tired of reading or rather, skimming my blog for tidbits of juiciness like the words nude or milf? Do you wish I didn’t spend so much time on women’s fashion, my dress dilemmas and don’t wears that clearly have no relevance to you unless you are willing to share them with the woman in your life?

Fret no more.

In an attempt to continue my effort to make the world (or our little slice of it in DC) a more fashionable place, I have advice for you too. And dearest female readers, don’t avoid Wednesdays just because they will be tailored to the guys. I know you’ve had the experience of dressing up for an event, looking at what your husband or boyfriend was wearing, and cringing inside because his ensemble looked like it came from the (dirty) laundry basket not from an actual hanger in his closet. Or maybe you’re tired of the khaki-pants-blue-button-down uniform so omnipresent in DC. At the next BBQ, perhaps you can get him to wear something other than cargo shorts and a t-shirt from college (a note to the guys: just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s vintage).

Ideally, just like my women readers do, my male readers/skimmers will reach out to me with a wardrobe dilemma. Since I didn’t decide on this post until last night, today’s advice for those guys who hate to shop or don’t know what to look for is this: hire some help. A personal stylist such as DC Style Factory (who will start by auditing your closet and compiling a style profile) is well worth the investment. Or did you know that you can call (or email) Nordstrom, tell them what you need, your size and your price range and they will make an appointment for you to come in to a dressing room already full of items for you to try? No scouring the racks for outfits you don’t know how to put together or searching to find what section of the store carries the items you need. By the way, this service is free.

And so is my advice, so take it or leave it, but if you leave it, don’t say I didn’t tell you so the next time your significant other looks you up and down and lets out a heavy sigh. It might be because she can’t wait for you to get those clothes off, but not for the reason you think.