style_salon | Recent Entries

Welcome to the Style Salon, a place for thoughtful discussion about style. This community was inspired by the LJ community

stylishly_yours.

This is not a fashion community, nor an outfit of the day community, nor a place to criticise or snark about other people's style. Rather, it's a place to talk about questions like:

What is style?
What is my personal style?
How does style adapt to the stuff going on in our lives? (Work, family, travel, events...)
How can we be creatively stylish without spending a pile of money?
Who are our style icons, and why?

Remember that style is not just about clothes. It can also encompass anything from home furnishings to online presence.

I've created some guidelines which are included in the community profile. Consider this version 1.0; comments/suggestions are welcome.

Style Salon Guidelines:

* We believe that everyone can be stylish, and that each person's style is unique.

* We respect everyone's individual style and the process of finding their style, regardless of the vagaries of fashion.

* We don't criticise anyone's style -- whether members of this community or not (including famous people) -- unless they have specifically requested feedback.

* We don't criticise anyone's personal appearance (hair, skin, shape) nor suggest that any particular bodily features are "bad". While each of us may choose to adapt our personal styles to emphasise the features we love and draw attention away from those we don't, those are our personal decisions, and we won't assume that others share them.

* The Style Salon is gender inclusive, and welcomes people of all gender identities and expressions.

skud

Does anyone here use Pinterest for style-related purposes? How do you use it -- pinning your own stuff, looking at other people's, ??? Or, do you use something else, and if so what?

sasha_feather

Who or what are your style inspirations? Friends, celebrities, fictional characters, periods of history, particular pieces or art or items that you own?

eta: Feel free to post pictures in comments, but please also include image descriptions to keep things accessible. Thanks!

jest

Hi! I'm Jest. I live in Scotland and work in a bookshop. I've only really developed an interest in personal style in the last few years, so my own style is still undergoing a period of rapid evolution while I try to define which sort of things suit me and which don't. I currently follow a lot of fashion blogs that are not hosted on dreamwidth, and I was thinking it would be nice to have a community where I could make the occasional post of my own without boring all the people who subscribe to my journal. So here I am!

Three things I own that are most me:

1. My 1939 New York World's Fair scarf and charm bracelet. The history nerd in me is obsessed with the 1939 NYWF. I love the deco style. I also love the feeling that I am wearing a piece of history.

2. My 8 eye Doc Martins. I always feel 100% more badass when I'm wearing them.

3. My grey wool/silk blend pleated mini dress. It's the best article of clothing I've ever owned. It looks smart at work and yet is still chic in the evening. It's appropriate for pretty much any occasion I might find myself in (with the possible exception of sweltering summer heat). It also fits me absolutely perfectly, which is pretty much unheard of. My confidence gets an instant boost whenever I have it on.

sasha_feather

I have a thing for jackets, coats, and blazers. I probably own at least 25. This is my newest:

( picture of my new tuxedo coat )

Description: tallish white woman with short hair, wearing white tuxedo coat, blue jeans, black t-shirt, and gray driver cap, and a beaded necklace, smiling.

Bought for 50 cents from a queer neighbor's yard sale. \o/ I also bought a wool blanket for 2 dollars. These jeans are too big, which I can see now from this photo.

damned_colonial

treesahquiche just pointed out that I should crosspost this here! (Previously posted on my own journal.)

So this happened today and was just strange enough that I want to post about it.

When I was a teenager, Levis (the jeans company) opened a store in Melbourne for the first time. Before that, I don't think Levis jeans were readily available in Australia, or weren't really a thing, or something. I don't really know -- I wasn't very aware before that. But the store opening came with a heap of advertising and promotion, and suddenly everyone wanted to be wearing Levis 501s, including me.

I don't know how much Levis 501s cost then-and-there, but whatever it was, it was way beyond what I usually paid for jeans. Like maybe three times what I paid? At the time I was usually shopping at discount/outlet stores, and basically never went into a normal retail outlet or department store for clothes. So the 501s were way beyond my reach. But every other jeans company made knockoff button-fly jeans so I just wore them. Then the button flies went out of fashion or something, and I was sad, but I moved on.

Actually that's a lie. I totally didn't move on. I have been wistfully wishing for button fly jeans for at least a decade. Look, they're just hot, OK?

Today I was in a surplus store on Market St looking for driving gloves (no luck, sigh) when I realised that they had Levis 501s in a variety of colours for $29.99 (or $36.99 for some washes). I gather this is a particularly good price for them, but still, wow. Also, I realised I'd been assuming that because 501s were high fashion luxury import items, they wouldn't be available in larger sizes. But in fact, they go up to a 60" waist.

So now I have two pairs of Levis 501s (button flies! dark wash and black!) in my size, for the first time ever.

Consider me boggled.

sasha_feather

Hello! I'm Sasha, cis female, I work in an office in an academic/health-care research area. To my own great surprise, I've lately gotten quite interested in fashion and style. This is because I got a whole lot more comfortable with myself when I came out as queer last year. I've played with dressing more traditionally-feminine and more traditionally-masculine or neutral; the latter seems much more visibly queer, but I like wearing both kinds of clothes, sometimes at the same time, and experimenting with my presentation. I've never worn makeup but that is not unusual for women in my region/culture. I have lately added several dresses to my wardrobe, and a tie. To work, I usually wear trousers, a dress shirt, a jacket/blazer, my Danskos, and my cap (which I wear everywhere due to light sensitivity). Sometimes I wear skirts to work with knee socks or tights. I've become extremely fond of pinstripes, tweed, and things that are red leather. One thing that was a revelation for me was that if I admire a look on men, I can wear it too! (This seems obvious now but it never consciously occurred to me before I came out.)

For three things that are very "me", I tried to think of things that I wear a lot, since my style is very much in flux these days.

*My red leather Danskos. photo at Flickr

*My cap. I think it's called a driver cap? It's charcoal colored. I've been told it looks very queer, and that pleases me. photo of me wearing my cap.

*My pendants. I wear a necklace nearly every day, and it's usually the only jewelry I wear, although lately I've been wearing some rings and a bead bracelet too. I like "semi-precious" stones the best, fairly large ones that I can fiddle with. In fact, the fiddling-with feature is the best aspect of jewelry for me, and it helps me with anxiety. A photo of a few of my pendants (the blue ones)

jeshyr

For various reasons detailed in the rest of my journal I have basically spent the last 10 years in bed and the only criteria that I've been able to use for clothes has been:

Is it trivially easy to get on and off (especially considering any tubes that were at that time attached semi-permanently to my person)?

Is it really comfortable to wear while lying in bed?

Because of the aforementioned lying in bed thing, even though there were some options within these guidelines (colour, slogans, etc.) I was either too sick to care about them or didn't have the option because other people were buying my clothes for me.

So now I am suddenly healthier, thanks to Miracles Of Modern Medicine[*] and have the physical energy to sit up (sofa or wheelchair) for a few hours a day and the emotional energy to care about what I am wearing. This is brilliant!

So what's the hitch? Last time I really had the energy to care about style I was nineteen and at college. Now I am thirty five. The style of a 19 year old college student really does not seem so appropriate, but neither does the style of a normative[**] 35 year old because - having missed the intervening years - I do not feel 35 and also I do not have any of the trappings (home ownership, paid work/career, long term romantic partner, etc.) that a normative 35 year old has and could not afford that stuff. Also, normative is usually boring.

I started reading this community with the thought that I did not have any idea of what I wanted in terms of style. Having just read every single post and comment on the entire community, and keeping a cut&paste file as I went along of anything that stood out as particularly me or very very not-me or even just interesting I can tell you that I have quite a lot of preferences, actually! I still have no idea how to bring them together in terms of "a style" for myself, but I am way further along than I thought I was. Thank you!

So, if I could get up now and wear anything, I'd put on black jeans, black ankle-length boots (or sneakers), a dark coloured plain T-shirt or casual men's button-down shirt (probably untucked) and a ridiculously bright waistcoat (unbuttoned) over the top, with a black denim coat over the top. This is almost exactly what my nineteen year old self's "uniform" was at college though (denim jacket, not denim coat, but otherwise identical), so I would like to make it a bit different now, even if only to mark that I am not that person now.

Thus we have preferences. This is very choppy, partly because it was written referring to my cut&paste of community bits and partly because I have no underlying theme or ... drawing-together-thingy of which I am aware.

Things I don't like:

I abhor clothes that make me feel uncomfortable - physically or emotionally.

Physical discomfort includes:
- Anything made of wool or lace that's touching my skin itches me to death unless it's really unusually soft wool or lace (a wooly jumper over a long-sleeve T-shirt is fine, for example, as are beanies which don't really touch any skin).
- I also don't like stuff around my neck, so polo-necks, skivvies and scarves are out. Buisiness type shirts are OK but I'll never wear them with the top button done up.
- Anything that digs in or is otherwise not comfy to wear sitting down, since I am always sitting down if I'm not lying down.
Emotional discomfort changes more often, but currently includes:
- Tight clothes that show my body, although I'm reasonably happy to wear tight stuff as a base-layer as long as it's mostly covered by other clothes.
... plus various things that seemed to fit better further down the list.

I don't like clothes which are high maintenance (exceptions are made for handmade-for-me stuff which I will happily hand-wash, iron, water, fertilise, salt to taste, and otherwise cherish as needed). By "high maintenance" I basically mean anything that can't be thrown through the washing machine and dealt with via a max of 30 seconds of ironing. I barely own anything that needs ironing at all, come to think of it. This is partly preference and partly still related to physical limitations of disability.

I hate anything that makes me look "girly" or "feminine". Androgynous clothing and stuff that hides my actual body shape are my comfort zone at the moment. Obviously that may change in the future but I'm not interested in working specifically on changing it because I'm happy with being that way.

I refuse to wear make-up or heels, under the "girly" and both varieties of the "uncomfortable" clauses. Also, I feel like I look exceptionally stupid in them (not sure if this is actually true, but it's emotionally real) and as if I'm in the bad sort of forced-into-this drag.

I'm not fond of things with hoods attached. At the moment it's a "can't sit back/lie down with this" issue as well, but I've never liked attached hoods on clothes for some reason.

I hate the thigh-chafing deal with skirts and dresses and always feel way too exposed wearing them anyway, so I have no incentive to find a way to deal with the problem (I now know there's a bunch of ways I could try if I wanted to, having read the community!).

Things I do like:

I like wearing black, grey, khaki or dark blue as a base with one or two brightly coloured things as highlights - bright waistcoats, bright socks mostly hidden under dark jeans, etc.

I like metallic silver (or similarly coloured metals) and copper, but not gold or brass for metal accessories.

This guy's denim coat makes me drool with lust, and so does his very similar khaki coat. Where does one find long coats like this??

I really really love mandarin-collared shirts, although they're scarily hard to find. My favourite-ever shirt was an op-shop soft black cotton mandarin-collared shirt.

I like wearing things which are not meant to be "top layer" as a top layer - for example a long sleeved men's shirt that's too big for me in heavyweight cotton makes a nifty lightweight coat once I've taken up the sleeves.

I'm also time-limited in that I only get about 2 hours a day out of bed, so I'm not wanting to wear anything I can't quickly skim out of or convert into a comfortable-in-bed outfit for the rest of the day.

In terms of wardrobe development, it's important to note that the op shops (goodwill, second-hand clothes, whatever your country calls them) around here are significantly too chock full of stuff to be able to fit a wheelchair around them so they are effectively out of my reach. eBay I can do though (although it's not nearly as much fun). I am also able to sew (or get somebody to help) enough to alter things fairly significantly to suit myself.

What three appearance-related things are most "me"?

* My plain and simple black analog watch and plain silver chain necklace.

* A mostly-black backpack or messenger bag. Currently I have one of the 3ELove messenger bags which is plain and simple although I've created more pockets by sewing large $2-shop pencil cases in strategic spots inside and out.

* My funky bright waistcoats.

Cheers,
Ricky

[*] "Miracles Of Modern Medicine" in this case being a cool drug called Midodrine, for the curious.

[**] "Normative" being a very cool word meaning "statistically average" which is a way of saying "regular" or "common-type" without any of the baggage of the word "normal". I love that!

damned_colonial

So I've been thinking a bit lately about style and gender, and how I dress differently depending on how I'm performing gender at a given time, and that my styles are kind of different and even incompatible in some ways -- that is, my "masculine" style isn't directly related to my "feminine" style, and if you were to put them next to each other they wouldn't match. Does anyone else do this?

( my personal take on masculine/feminine style )

princess

So I got a very generous gift certificate for Amazon from my department, and I bought a bunch of books. I'd had It's So You on my wishlist for a while, so I picked it up! I'm going to start reading it today at lunch.

And because I never did the introductory exercise...

The three things I own that are most "me".

1) My silver heart topped Tiffany keys. I have two, a small one and a big one. I don't wear much jewelry, but these are in the rotation a lot.

2) Ribbed tank-tops (the kind that are often sold in 3 packs as men's undershirts). I wear them with jeans, with skirts, under sweaters, on their own with my undies, with knee socks and running shorts. The options are endless. I prefer the longer ones that go past the waistband of my jeans though. Recently I discovered Target sells them as sleep tops and I danced the dance of the happy princess.

3) Does bright red hair dye count? I use the "color enhancer" that's meant to make dye more red, but I just slather it on on its own.

sofiaviolet

I'm Sofia. 22, undergrad, looking at a future of employment in the basements of academic institutions.

Three things I own that are most "me"

1. My "concert jeans." They're a pair of oddly soft, too-long, dark-rinse jeans with seams down the backs of the legs. I love them and I wear them a lot, especially to concerts.

2. My glasses. I'm on my second pair of purple plastic frames, which are of course absurdly appropriate for someone whose username includes violet. And my glasses have the wonderful effect of balancing my face a bit. I look like a different person without them (and once had to remove them in order to get a professor from before I was wearing them to recognize me).

3. Hello Kitty t-shirts. I have... kind of a lot of them. /o\

lasergirl

Hi! I'm a friend of

damned_colonial's and I've been avoiding joining communities here on DreamWidth because for some reason I have a fear of commitment. But lately I've been hanging around

homeeconomics101 and did a 'closet organizing' post and it was suggested I check this group out, and then I got hooked.... darn.

Ok, so. I'm 31 and I'm a theatrical costume designer/stitcher. One bonus part of my job is that I have access to a lot of different sources of inspiration for my own looks, and as I shop secondhand for a good deal of my more modern-day costumes, I often find great items that I can't leave in the store! Of course, this means that I have a lot of special one-or-two-times-a-year sort of garments that require proper storage and gentle care, but that's sort of the fun with vintage.

One problem I have with reconciling my 'looks' is that, although I enjoy dressing up in pretty frocks and fancy shoes, they are uncomfortable and I quite often feel like I am in drag. I can usually only do a poofy dress for 4 or 5 hours (or the amount of time it takes to go to opening night of a play I've worked on) but it's usually worth the trouble for the response it gets.

What I can usually be found in is sneakers or boots (depending on the season), jeans or the good old leggings/skirt combo and tshirts and hoodies. I tend towards things vaguely military in inspiration, particularly 20th century.

Three Things I Own That Are Most Me:

My bag. It's a messenger-style canvas bag I got from Old Navy, with four big eyelets along the covering flap. It has no structure at all, and few internal divisions, but it does hae a little zippered inside pocket and it holds my laptop if I need it to. It started out a light grey faux-mailbag kind of camo pattern, but I dyed it black. Over the years the dye has started to wear out again, so the pattern is back. The bag has been with me to London, China and San Francisco and is on its last legs (it was fixed on the street in China by a woman with a treadle machine AND by myself with needle and thread in Sherlock Holmes' sitting room in London). I have plans to duplicate it, with slightly better internal divisions, in canvas and leather so it will last FOREVER.

My hoodies. I like wearing layers, and I like having a hood I can pull up in case of inclement weather. My most recent acquisitions to hoodie-dom have been lululemon hoodies, because I was working at the store seasonally and got a really good discount. My rules for hoodies are: they have to be black, they have to have ties in the hood, the sleeves must be able to be pushed up without cutting off circulation to my arms, and the pockets have to actually hold stuff.

My boots. I suffered a great loss recently when my knee-high leather boots I've been wearing for 3 years had a zipper blowout for the second time (inconveniently, on a trip to SF). They were by Born and somewhat resembled the 'Yvette' boot in that link. I have pretty much worn out everything but the leather. As the soles can't be re-soled, I basically have to let these boots die. I was able to replace them, rather surprisingly, with a secondhand-but-basically-brand-new pair of Guess boots which have the potential to be my look for the next three or four years.

damned_colonial

This came up on IRC this evening, and I decided to make it into a style exercise (not least because I want something I can point people to, going forward).

Imagine that your family, friends, etc, have asked for suggestions on what gifts to give you for Christmas/birthday/etc. But they (or you, or both) think that explicit wishlists are tacky. Describe the items that would be on your wishlist, without enumerating specific items.

Feel free to post your own style wishlist on this comm at any time, or do it in comments, or do it in your own journal and comment with the link, as you prefer. I'm going to do it in my own journal and link it in comments when I'm done.

daedala

A long time ago, inspired by

oracne's Ode to My Trench Coat, I bought a used hunter-green microfiber trench coat by London Fog. Ebay usually has a variety of sizes and colors at any one time. It fits well for a fairly broad range of weights (at least for my figure). It's very durable -- mine looks quite reasonable for years of hard wear, being dragged through mud, caught on fences, etc. The zip-out lining helps it be fairly warm, though not warm enough for Minnesota winters. It is, indeed, machine washable. I wear it spring and fall for as long as I can; it is my favorite coat. Here is me in my trench coat on the last day before I had to get out the serious winter coat. Note the half-frozen waterfall. (The pictures will look better on a Mac; I forgot to fix the gamma, so they're too dark on the PC. The coat really is green.)

For a serious winter coat, I have a Land's End long down commuter coat. The pockets are roomy and warm, and so is the coat. It doesn't feel as utterly ridiculous to me as the quilted puffy coats, too. I can attest to its ability to protect against -40F (wind chill, I don't think I've actually been out in -40F!) while standing at the bus stop or train station. The "security pocket" by the zipper is pretty good for iPods. I walk through the wind tunnel Minneapolis calls a downtown, and it's pretty good at cutting the wind, too.

What is your favorite winter coat?

Current Mood: cold

niqaeli

Does anyone have a source for thigh-highs that fit those of us with fat thighs? I consistently have problems with them digging in and rolling down. And while I don't mind having above-the-knee tights, for warmth and coverage I'd like to have some actual thigh-highs!

I'm eyeing hopefully some of the ones at Sock Dreams, but I wouldn't mind having more than one site to look at. Or retail stores, if there're any you're aware of. :)

Current Mood: cold

daedala

I'm Daedala, I'm 33 and white, and I think of my style as, well, pretty boring. But in a good way! I like it! I feel very grounded, and I feel like I look great a lot of the time. It's somewhat stereotypical-librarian-ish. I have a very decided sense of what my style is.

I live in the Twin Cities (MN). I work for a very large bank in information security, and I love my job. I wear suits to work. I guess that means I'm a suit, but I've been told this is ok because (unlike many suits), I am happy and excited about my work and feel it has meaning.

What three things that you own are most you?

Ok, what I chose was more generic than that...

My hair. I have very, very long hennaed hair. The original color is dark brown, so henna makes it a dark reddish-auburn brown (and doesn't damage it the way other dyes would). When it's down, it's usually braided (and past my waist). When it's up, I have a variety of hair sticks, hair forks, bobby pins, etc. I get a fair number of random compliments on both the color and length. At first I was growing it out because I liked long hair; I keep it this way because I am lazy and it is easier -- I almost never have bad hair days. When my hair was shorter, it would sometimes wave in weird directions or stick up and I had to get it trimmed all the time and I had to blow-dry it. Now I spend more time brushing it, but less time doing everything else.

Brown. Once I started using henna in my hair, I began looking fabulous in earth tones (if you're into color analysis, I went from "winter" to "autumn"). I started building my wardrobe around them, especially dark chocolatey brown. My favorite outfit is a long sweeping medium-brown skirt, a soft darker-brown sweater with a surplice neckline, and tall brown boots. I do still wear colors, particularly greens and rusts.

Suits. How could I leave this out? I wear suits to work about 60% of the time. I am a contractor in IT, so I don't really have to -- I could do business casual and jeans all the time if I wanted -- but I'm in a bank, and I want to get hired, so I try to look uberprofessional. (Not professional enough to wear makeup, but nevermind.) Looking professional also seems to help with calls where I am telling people who far outrank me what they have to do for me. And, honestly, I like suits: I look good in tailored clothes, and through the magic of Ebay and consignment shops I can get a variety of decent ones without spending much. They don't fit as perfectly as I'd like, but the only way I'll ever get a perfect fit is by having them made custom, as I am not built the way the industry expects.

Current Mood: artistic

niqaeli

I thought I'd share this resource: Makeyourownjeans.com.

It's what it says on the tin! Custom-jeans. For about $50/pair. Caveat is that I haven't used them myself but I do know people who have. They're apparently decent quality, and they'll FIT. Given what jeans cost generally, it's a very good deal I think.

I haven't scraped up the dough for a pair, but I plan to. Part of the raeson I've moved over to skirts is the fact that I cannot find off-the-rack slacks or pants of any kind that FIT. Since my hips spread again, my old LB Right Fit black jeans which originally fit me okay if a bit slouchily manage the neat feat of cutting into my belly and falling off of me, at the the same time!

My problem is that I have a really, *really* special snowflake figure and all the stuff made to fit one aspect of me tends to not fit in about three other ways. I have broad, deep hips, but no ass. I have a large bust/small ribcage, and absolutely no waist or torso. And on it goes!

What are your fit challenges when dealing with off-the-rack? How do you deal with them? Are there aspects of your wardrobe/style that might be different, or that you've adapted because of this?

Current Mood: thoughtful

saintseverus

Hello! I am new. My name is Sara, I am 26 and I live in Portland, OR with my boyfriend, best friend, her boyfriend and a very talkative cat. I work as a waitress at a very interesting and popular 24 hr diner and surprisingly enough this has helped my style, not hindered it as there is no dress code. Being able to wear whatever the hell you want to work is very helpful because with the exception of shoes I never have to ask myself when buying clothing "will I be able to wear this at work and when not at work?" I've always liked clothing but it wasn't until around the age of 21 that I really took an interest in what was stylish and what looked good on me and it wasn't until the past year or so that my style has really solidified and I figured out what I really like. My wardrobe consists of mainly black and I love Victorian and military inspired stuff, fuller skirts, ruffles, lace and feminine menswear inspired clothing. Here are some examples of recent outfits. I have no clue how I would even describe my personal style, but please, do not call me goth. Goth inspired, perhaps, may work.

Three things I own that are most me

"bellhop jacket". I would wear this daily if I could. I really do not know how to explain WHY it is so me, but everyone I know has told me some variation of "if I had to imagine the perfect jacket for you, it would look a lot like that".

iphone!. It's probably bad that I feel slightly lost if I don't have it with me, but it is true. It is an extension of my hand. I can do almost everything with this phone. I have the internet and music wherever I am, I can write notes to myself without having to worry about having a pen, take pictures, play scrabble etc etc.

Chloe Paddington bagI can carry my life around in this bag It is probably my most prized material possession. I honestly don't think I'll ever need to buy another purse besides this one.

Anyhow, that was much harder than I thought it would be and I hope at least someone enjoys it. I look forward to getting to know everyone in this community.

delight

I'm Rue, also known as

delight. I'm a 21-year-old girl who has been 21 for maybe ~~two weeks now~~ a month (because it took me two weeks to finish this post); thus I actually had to stop and think and fix where I had written '20.' I'm a Manhattan native now living in central New York studying to be a paramedic alongside my (studying to be a) massage therapist boyfriend. The best way to describe me, according to most people I ask, is "eclectic." When most people say the same thing and I don't actually have to prompt anyone, it's probably a good descriptor.

I joined this community the day it was created and every day since have been stressing beyond belief about the intro – I couldn't pick things! It was too hard! I own almost nothing that isn't absolutely me except for my work uniform (I work for a municipal rescue squad. The outfit is decidedly not me) and so I had to ask the previously mentioned boyfriend for help. And it was still way too hard: I own a lot of eclectic clothing that is all very individual and a lot of stuff that stands out. (This is me in an example of how I like to dress when not attending school; this is more standard school-day wear.) Narrowing it down to three was almost an impossibility.

Here's my attempt, though.

What three things that you own are most you?

1. A necklace that my boyfriend had his friend make for my birthday. While I have as of yet not actually worn it as a necklace, it embodies things about me: I like eccentric, outlandish things; my personal symbol as much as I ever had one is an old-fashioned key (see default icon); and more than any other stone I love wearing amethyst. I'm pretty poor at describing things, which is why there will be a picture edited in as soon as I get ahold of the one that was taken. I feel strange not wearing a necklace in general, and people who think of me often think of me wearing necklaces, bt not as often as:

2. My hats, pretty much all of them. A day does not go by that I'm not wearing a hat, except when I'm working in the hospital, and then there's one waiting in the car for when my shift is over. I feel uncomfortable not wearing a hat. I have fedoras of various shapes and sizes, a cloche hat, velveteen beanies, an array of amazing bizarre caps, a couple of baseball caps, my rescue squad cap (part of the uniform seen above, but it's still a hat), antique hats, imported handmade hats given as gifts ... I'm not even sure how to describe some of the hats I have. But I have hats, and have had hats daily since I was about fourteen. I'm not really sure how this happened, as it certainly was no conscious decision to start wearing a hat every day – it's just what I do. Anyone who knows me off the Internet would probably be unsettled to see me without a hat. Some people never have.

3. ... okay, I admit, I wrote the above and then sat on this for another week trying to come up with a third. It was that hard to just come up with two. And I'm not sure if it's certain shirts, or certain coats, or certain earrings; if it's my engagement ring or my stethoscope or my perfectly ordinary wristwatch; if it's other necklaces that were made for me with me in mind, if it's my collection of stuffed animals, if it's my vintage clothes or my odd collection of bags. If it's something else. (Maybe it's my overuse of parentheses!) If it's the fact that I don't think materialistically enough to be able to define myself by the things that I own and that the various people who know me all think of more than three things. I figure it's probably the last one: I'm way too eclectic for just three things, and way too easily driven to anxiety to be able to actually narrow it down to three. If the question were what twenty things I owned were most me, I would probably be okay!

... so long as I could still count all 37 individual and different hats as one item.

hillarygayle

I'm Hillary. I'm 30, married to an Alpha Nerd, mother of an Evil Overlord, BFF to Distilled Awesome, and I'm a hospital floor nurse. I have always paid attention to the way I look, but I fell into the body acceptance movement by accident ("OOPS, I just realized I'm both fat & hot! Who knew?!") and suddenly I felt much more like paying attention to fashion, and how my clothing might make a statement about me. My mood changes day to day, but I almost always try to use my clothing to evoke the same core adjectives: intelligent, aware, adventurous, quirky. I love people, I love things, I love events, and I want to eat the whole world up. I want my appearance to reflect this, or at least make you suspect it when you look at me.

That said, the three things that I own that are most me:

1) Makeup!
I am a HUGE MAKEUP FAN! My favorite type is eyeshadow, and I never wear neutrals. Well, okay, I'll wear neutrals on either lips or eyes, but never both. If I wanted my face to look "natural" I'd just not wear any makeup at all. :) I'm a redhead but for whatever reason, cool colors tend to look much better on me, so I go for a lot of bright greens & blues & sometimes cool purples.

2) My iPhone
It's the internet in my pocket. I'm up to the minute, engaged in everything, no matter where I am. I can take pictures of anything, email them to my blogs, communicate with friends, look up information. I even have software for my job on it; Mosby's Nursing Drug Guide was the best $35 I ever spent!

3) Knee-length skirts
I suppose it's cheating to call a "category" something that's me, but seriously. I own a million knee-length skirts. Once upon a time I'd have told you I wear knee-length to cover up my large knees because I didn't like them. Screw that. I will now tell you that I wear knee-length because y'all, my calves are FINE. ^o^ I have really pretty calves and very nice ankles, and a knee-length skirt shows them off to great effect. In the winter, nothing is better than a knee-length skirt with tights & tall boots, & in the summer you get to wear bare legs & cute sandals with nail polish. It's a win all around.

Anyway, looking forward to some good discussion.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: "One In, One Out" ++ Jeff Coffin Mu'tet

juleself

Hi! I'm Jules, I'm 34, I'm German. I'm also currently unemployed and dealing with some health issues and perpetually looking for my place in life. And until recently, I was quite convinced that I didn't have a personal style. ;-) I don't have a 'signature' style as such, but there are definitely a few themes going through my wardrobe and my furniture.

Three things I own that are most me:

1.) My purple fleece hoodie. I love fleece in various forms and I love hoodies. I lusted after this particular one for weeks before I bought it last winter and I simply love it. It's soft and snug and incredibly warm. I abhor clothes that make me feel uncomfortable (tights...ugh!) and the hoodie is the piece of comfort clothing that I own.

2.) My jewelry: two silver rings on my left hand, my late Mom's gold wedding band on my right (a great deceptive tool too *g*) and my silver necklace with a Thor's hammer pendant.

3.) My laptop. Half my life is in here. *pats*

Style Salon

Sticky: Welcome to the Style Salon

Pinterest?

Style Inspirations

Introduction!

Tuxedo Coat

Jeans!

Introduction

Help, Help, I've Got No Style!

style and gender

Book!

introduction

About Me.

Wishlist exercise

Winter Coats

looking for thigh-highs

Intro

jeans and figures

(no subject)

this took entirely too long, and is the fault of an indecision never solved

Introduction!

Introduction

Profile

May 2012

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