White pants?!

I have spent years terrified of white pants. I mean terrified. I would see them in a store and turn and go in the opposite direction! I'm being seriously. I felt the same way about them as I feel about swimwear. I'm just not in that confident wear and love it stage.

So anyway, I was on a shopping adventure a few months back. More than anything else I was blowing some time waiting on something to be done, or fixed, or whatever. I went into one of my favorite little boutiques, and there in my walkway was a pair of white denim beside a pair of white pants. You can blame the door opening and closing, but they were swaying and taunting me. Now, I never, NEVER, back down from a challenge. Well unless I just don't really care, I never back down from a challenge. So I snatched my size, and the size above, and went into the dressing room. I turned on the iPod feature on my iPhone, got some motivational tunes going, and slipped into the evil pants. What? Wow? When? Why? Hot diggity, damn sexy! The pants were fabulous! I stayed in the dressing room impressed with myself for awhile. When I finally came out still singing, now Beautiful by Snoop ft. Pharrell...oh Pharrell!!!!, I practically skipped to the cash wrap.

The moral, I was never really afraid of white denim. Not really afraid. I was obsessed and intimated. I'd owned beautiful white canvas pants back in junior high or high school They were Ann Taylor, wide leg, and so very perfect. There was a lot of firmness on my frame back then, and I loved those pants. Most girls didn't understand them...this was when flare leg denim was all the rage. They were so glam! Then last summer white jeans were the it item next to all things yellow and Kelly green. I didn't have my white pant body anymore. Plus, they only advertised white pants on thin women wearing huge boyfriend cardigans that made their legs look even thinner. No fair! So I figure it wasn't my trend. And I was right. Dammit, it's my staple. I will always and forever have white pants in my wardrobe. They are now officially, stamped with my approval, apart of my personal style.

This is all to say, there are very few true blue, not trend, items in fashion that won't adjust themselves to any body type. You just have to remember the importance of fit, appropriateness, and comfort.

GLAMAZON 101

I am passionate about all things glamour. This does not mean I follow, or agree, with every trend. I don't purchase every item I like. I don't sacrifice comfort. I have rules. These rules fit MY STYLE. They make me a wonderful teacher of GLAMAZON 101. (Actually I nominated myself, seconded the nomination, and intimated the "na's.") I just feel strong about personal style. I think it is the essence of someone. It's using your body as real estate to market, to advertise, who you are and what you are here to do. You can be trendy, casual, bohemian, business, sexy, and on and on and on. Just be glam about it. Dammit please, be glam about it.

As women we are far to naturally fab to be hiding ourselves away. I mean, over lunch, cigarettes, or ice cream cones look at the people around you. Women come in so many shapes and sizes. We have such amazing oddities about ourselves. We are beautiful in drastically different ways. Look at the comfortable women. I use the word comfortable because it's impossible not to find beauty in someone who is comfortable in their own skin.

That brings us to the first lesson.

1. Be comfortable in your own skin. Look at yourself long and hard in the mirror. Identify every glitch and hang up. Then realize it ain't so bad. There's someone out there dealing with a physical imperfection far worse. No one is perfect. No one is made from a perfect plastic mold. We are all designed to be flawed. Get over it. Once you embrace your cellulite, extra pounds, big nose, front gapped teeth, thin lips, or clef lip, no one can use those things against you. Love who you are today. Yes you should aspire to be better tomorrow, but do not shit on yourself today. The moral of this long story is this, people can sense your comfort like a crazy dog can sense your fear. So, be comfortable in your own skin!

2. Be yourself. Duh, but not really. I remember back in the gap of time, I had this friend who had this friend. We all spent a weekend together in my Dallas apartment with wild girl's night out plans. First thing first, let's say to hell with all our great clothes and start fresh with a shopping excursion. That's when it went to hell in a hand basket. My friend, Ashley, is a strong personality. She's such a strong personality I don't always adore her. Ashley's friend Lauren has a weak personality. She attaches herself to the strongest personality in the room like a tick to blood. Somehow Lauren ended up shopping with me. I'm a no nonsense, like what I like, make a final decision in moments, kind of girl. Bad grouping. She ended up picking out clothes and asking me over and over if I though Ashley would like them. Frustrated, I asked her why she was shopping for Ashley? She wasn't! She told me she was shopping for herself, but wanted to be sure that Ashley would like what she bought. She was having a damn anxiety attack about it. She bought a few pieces, for herself, to let Ashley choose from, for her to wear. Ugh! Stand on your own two feet with your own style. This continued for a couple years. Lauren was becoming Ashley, and I think Ashley liked it. This was Mini Me long before Mike Myers' Austin Powers thought of it. So most of the time I saw or heard anything Ashley and Lauren, they had the same hair style, same stylist, same clothes, same shoes, same size, coming from the same eatery, after leaving the same dentist, running behind because their same alarm clocks went off the same fifteen minutes too late. No! Anyone desperate to mock my PERSONAL style scares me! I would think you were planning to skin me and wear me as a coat. My personal style is just that. It belongs to me. You can't have it or copycat it. Let me help you find your personal style. Ashley and Lauren are no longer two peas from the same pod. Years and confidence have changed them both. Thank you Lord.

3. Know your size. There's nothing like an outfit being great in theory. I see women all the time marching around in beautiful clothes that look like they are being horribly abused. Figure out your most comfortable number in that piece and buy it. My closet is a vast array of numbers. Different articles are different sizes. Different designers are different sizes. Different cuts are different sizes. I'm a pear shape. I have to purchase a different top and bottom size. This way I can look more like a hourglass. If I made my numbers match I'd look a hot ass mess! Even with dresses, an A line dress typically works well with my top size, but a straight dress works with my bottom size and gets belted. No matter the dress, I have to try it on, and I typically enter the dressing room with three sizes.

These rules are important for comfort and confidence! I don't know everything and this isn't everything I know. I will add to it, and you feel free to do the same.

"Fashion? Fashion is..." they say. (QUOTES)

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous."

-Coco Chanel

"The difference between style and fashion is quality."

-Giorgio Armani

"I don't do fashion, I am fashion."

-Coco Chanel

"Elegance is a question of personality, more than one's clothing."

-Jean-Paul Gaultier

"Style is primarily a matter of instinct."

-Bill Blass

"Chanel is composed of only a few elements, white camellias, quilted bags and Austrian doorman's jackets, pearls, chains, shoes with black toes. I use these elements like notes to play with."

-Karl Lagerfeld

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time."

-Jean Cocteau

"Beauty of style and harmony and grace and good rhythm depend on simplicity."

-Plato

"Fashion is made to become unfashionable."

-Coco Chanel

"We live not according to reason, but according to fashion."

-Seneca

"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society."

-Mark Twain

"The expression a woman wears on her face is more important than the clothes she wears on her back."

-Dale Carnegie

"Fashion condemns us to many follies; the greatest is to make ourselves its slave."

-Napoleon Bonaparte

"While clothes may not make the woman, they certainly have a strong effect on her self-confidence - which, I believe, does make the woman."

-Mary Kay Ashe

"Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it's an open mind."

-Gail Rubin Bereny

"I've always thought of the T-shirt as the Alpha and Omega of the fashion alphabet."

-Giorgio Armani

"I dress for the image. Not for myself, not for the public, not for fashion, not for men."

-Marlene Dietrich

"Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women."

-Elsa Schiaparelli

"Fashions fade, style is eternal."

-Yves Saint Laurent

"Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening."

-Coco Chanel

"Jeans represent democracy in fashion."

-Giorgio Armani

"The well-dressed man is he whose clothes you never notice."

-W. Somerset Maugham

MOTIVATE ME

I love to display the things I love. In my business notebook I have pages of cardstock collages with beautiful items that motivate me. When I make a new page I can pull an old one out and post it on a cork board. It helps my creative process to keep motivating items all around me. These items can be little beads I'm trying to figure out how to use, pictures of fun times with my son, or fashion forward photos from magazines. Whatever gets or keeps my mind going. Honestly this isn't just business, I use these tidbits in my day to day fashion. I learn new ways to belt a cardigan or tunic, work a vest, or take a basic dress from day to evening. I need motivation in my life, in heavy doses!

In keeping with this, I recently found ways to make your own glam bulletin boards using recycled materials.

A large, ornate frame makes a great bulletin board for a child's room or home office. Begin by painting the frame. Measure and cut thick corkboard to fit the frame. If the corkboard is less than a half-inch thick, back it with inch-thick foam core secured with spray mount or hot glue. Fit the corkboard into the frame by attaching it with brads at the back. Glue grosgrain ribbon around the edges of the cork to create a border inside the frame.

An old office corkboard can be converted to a stylish magnetic message board with the help of fabric, zinc-coated steel (aluminum and stainless steel will not hold magnets), and a whitewashed frame.

Transform a flea-market picture frame into a pretty — and practical — pocket organizer with some mat board. Cut a mat board to fit your frame. Cut additional strips of mat board to the same width as the frame. To create a decorative look, glue seamstress's tape to the top edge of each strip. Working from top to bottom, create "pockets" by gluing the bottom edge of the strips to the board with hot glue. Overlap strips as you go. Fit the mat into the frame and secure it to the back of the frame with hot glue or a few brads.