His and Hers, Or, Matching, A Cautionary Tale

It must not have worked out with Cecil, because this pattern is folded, uncut. (We could have told her!)
There should be a warning label on patterns that show Happy Couples wearing matching outfits, saying "Proceed With Caution", or as Mr. Hunting Creek quipped, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."
For a sewing person, it is an early temptation. (Older and wiser sewists nod sadly). She/he likes to sew.. She/he wants to make a nice something for the Special Someone. This route is Fraught With Peril. Many a magazine has advised upon the dangers of "over-gifting.". You know: When you give him a hand knit fisherman's sweater made of hand-spun wool from your own antique heirloom sheep breed, and he gives YOU a Cross Pen Set for your desk.(Mr. Hunting Creek interjects here, "You aren't going to bring up that bicycle pump again?" Why yes. Yes I am. The Bicycle pump gift will never be forgotten in the annals of cross-gender gift giving.) How many sad tales of hand sewn gifts have we heard from our fellow sewists?
Handmade silk ties for him, he gives you a Magic Bullet. Hand made silk pajamas? A Cat Calendar in return.
But Love is deaf to warnings as well as blind, so our  fellow sewist purchased this fine pattern back in 1976, determined to make a trendy top for their beloved. To make this top most authentically, the use of ethnically inspired fabrics is strongly encouraged. Ikat, batik, Guatemalan hand-woven, African Wax prints  all good. Bonus points if you went to Africa/Guatemala/Peru YOURSELF to acquire this fabric  This will give the wearer the feeling of being a World Citizen, which was quite the thing among certain college students of my acquaintance back in 1976. (I myself had a dashiki shirt that I wore often with jeans to my classes, where one of my TA's announced blithely, "You don't have to be a Socialist in this class to get an A, but it will help.".This caused quite a sensation back at UC Irvine, heart of then staunchly Republican Orange County. I think my shirt may have shown how non-Orange County I was. I did get an A. I was not then nor have I ever been a Socialist, but I think the shirt helped.)
Make the shirt and iron it well. If you make a matching shirt for yourself, be aware that most men do not like to wear matching items of clothing. Mr. Hunting Creek, for example, would prefer to have hot sticks of flaming bamboo stuck under his fingernails than wear even so much as the same color shirt as his spouse to an outing. If he sees that I am wearing a dark blue sweater, and he has on a dark blue sweater that is close in color, he will demand that I change my top. Since like most women, I spent some mental energy selecting an outfit, so I refuse. He grumbles and changes.
Don't wrap the gift too nicely - just do it nice enough. Most men do not understand the niceties of excellent gift wrapping and your efforts (like the effort expended in making this shirt, most likely) will be wasted.
I have a spotty track record in the Gift Shirt, so I speak from experience here. I have made lovely, professional quality shirts for three boyfriends, two of whom broke up with me and one of whom married me. I admit, the sample size is small. But I have extensive anecdotal evidence that sewing a shirt for your boyfriend is like entering the Food Chain. Proceed with caution!

Match Game

Some people take matching seriously. Mr. Hunting Creek and I were cruising through Old Town Alexandria last Saturday, when I spied this car/house combo..  "Look!, Her car matches her house!"  Mr. Hunting Creek looked, then willingly drove around the block again so that I could take a picture. (Normally he doesn't approve of backtracking.) This car matches her house, the doors and shutters. Do you suppose she has that parking pace reserved? I say she, because what Red-blooded American Man, even in liberal Alexandria Virginia, would have a pink car and a matching pink house? No man I know.

I like matching, but lately tie fashion is to Not Match. It actually bothers me to see models wearing black hose and white shoes. Perish the thought! That combination will never be seen on my legs. I don't think necessarily that shoes must match purses must match belts, but I do like it when they harmonize. When I choose fabrics to go together, I like then to have something in common to talk about.I don't want my top and pants or skirt to sit together like two deaf mutes at a funeral. 
I may be too conservative here, but it is difficult to change after a life time of matching. That's why we so often see old ladies with hairstyles from their youth, frozen in time. ( I always wonder, don't those ladies have daughters? Their daughters are slacking! My daughter would march me right to her favorite hair stylist and say firmly, "Fix This.")
What do you think about modern matching, or the lack thereof? Do you mix it up? Would you wear black tights with white shoes? Discuss.

You’re Not Just Paying for the Dress

Anyone who has taken Econ 101 knows that there is no such thing as a free lunch.When you buy something in a retail establishment, you aren’t just paying for the raw materials. For example, in this amusing video on Slate, a bride asks why her wedding dress was so expensive, when the fabric and labor cost so little.
Dear Brides-to-be: you aren’t just paying for the dress. When you buy any dress any where, say for example, Nordstrom, built into that dress price is profit for the store, which will pay for that nice store, the real estate, the parking lot, the clerk, the electricity, the hangers,… you get the idea. You are also paying for the shipping, the handling, the boat trip and air trip from China/Malaysia/India/Mexico, as well as the designer, the patternmaker, the marketing and the wages of the multiple workers who assembled the dress. But why, you ask, is the dress so very much more expensive than a maxi dress?
One, there is more to a wedding dress than your average maxi or evening dress. Two, people don’t buy very many wedding dresses. You buy many dresses over the course of a year, but most people, (the non-Kardashian part of the population) only buy one wedding dress per lifetime. The manufacturers know this. That’s why they sell wedding dresses with so much fantasy attached. It’s your Special Day! You’ll have these memories for a lifetime! The Wedding Industrial Complex has spent a lot of time learning just what buttons to push in our psyches to get us to pay exorbitant sums for what should just be a short service with a nice party with guests and cake and dance music.
They know that no woman in her right mind would pay thousands of dollars for a Cinderella costume that she will only wear a few hours. So they make sure that you aren’t in your right mind. Go to any Bridal Salon. It’s fancy – it has couches.
You have to make an appointment. So far, all of the messages you are getting indicate that this is no ordinary dress. This is a Magic Dress that will transform you into a Princess. You want to be a Princess, right? I did the whole princess for a day thing, but back when I married; it wasn’t such a huge deal. The dress wasn’t that expensive. Nowadays though, they can be thousands of dollars. If you’re comfortable spending thousands, fine. But after seeing many of my daughters’ friends get married, I’ve decided this whole wedding racket is Bogus. A Conspiracy to get perfect sane young people and their parents to part with their hard earned money for a fantasy. Tell the truth, now. Don’t you think that modern weddings are BORING?
They are all the same. All the brides wear that same strapless dress. They all have the same script…yawn. Such a lot of dullness for so very much money.
My kids and I have discussed this, and we agree that we’re going to do things differently.
If they ever get married, they aren’t doing the same old same old.
We break those wedding rules – you don’t have to wear the official Wedding Dress. It can be any nice dress, it doesn’t even have to be white – but it can be. Make your own, or have a dressmaker make you a pretty dress. Be different. You don’t have to have cake.
Remember that this whole wedding Fantasy Script was brought to you by the same Mad Men who convinced women that a Diamond was Forever, when they are nothing but clear rocks. And we all know that they have our best interests at heart.
I spent $400 in 1980 for my wedding dress. I made my own veil (it came out great for less than 25 dollars!). How much did you spend on your wedding dress?

Jeans and a Turtleneck Can Change the World

My kids and I used to joke that Steve Jobs' closet had a row of 30 identical black turtlenecks and a row of just-cleaned, worn-just-the-right amount jeans.
He showed us the power of knowing what his personal look is and sticking to it. When you know your personal look, you don't have to think about fashion and can focus on changing the world.

Black Tie, Optional - BANNED

Black Tie, Optional

Attention: Wedding Planners
RE: Black Tie, Optional

Dear Sir or Madam,

The category “Black Tie, Optional” is not a valid dress code for weddings, engagement parties and anniversaries. It has been BANNED by the FIT, Nobel Committee and the Cotillion Society of America.

For all events, the following Dress Codes should be used:

Formal: White Tie
White tie or evening dress, is the Big Deal Dress Code. You are going to an Inauguration, or have won the Nobel Prize. (Your Mother is So Proud) According to Wikipedia (and who would argue with Wikipedia?)"The chief components for men are the dress coat, white bow tie and waistcoat, and starched shirt, while women wear a suitable dress for the occasion, such as a ball gown."

Semi-Formal: Black Tie
The Semi-Formal code has two components: Day or evening. For day wear, men should wear a black tail-less coat with formal trousers (Think JFK at his inauguration - and he also wore a Top Hat, because it was outside) After 6pm, the men wear black tie (commonly called a Tuxedo).Ladies would wear a short dress or cocktail dress.
A long dress is evening wear, and formal (White Tie, see above).

And then there is Casual. There are all kinds of casual, which is where a great many people get in trouble. My daughter called yesterday asking for advice. "What do you wear to a wedding that says the dress code is Black Tie, Optional?"
"There's No Such Thing," I told her, firmly. "It's either Black Tie, Semi-Formal, or it is Not!"
"I think they really mean Casual, but they also want to imply, no jeans."
"If they say Black Tie, optional, their guests could wear anything" I countered. Because there is no such thing." We decided that people who put that on invitations should be given difficult in-laws as their punishment. No wait, two sets of difficult in-laws.

Casual is situational. It can be kind of dressy but not, like Business Casual, or Playboy Mansion Casual, nighties and jammies encouraged, or couples Caribbean Resort Med Casual, which is clothing optional - the most casual of all. This is why we have Dress Codes. Imagine your horror if you go to an event in your nightie (because you thought it was Pajama Optional Dress Code)and everyone else is in Evening Gowns. Remember Bridget Jones in her Playboy Bunny costume at the party and you'll get the idea. Be kind to your guests. Say Formal, Semi-Formal, or Casual. They will thank you. Really.

Formal Jeans

Do you iron your jeans? Are the words "formal jeans" an oxymoron? Mr. Hunting Creek asked me yesterday if I ever ironed my jeans. "Jeans are work clothes, real work clothes. It may be against Rebel Law to iron them. Never!"
"Spoken like a true Berkeley Girl" , he said. "What do you think of jeans worn to movie openings and other fancy events?"
"I would wear jeans to the movies, but on the other hand, I didn't star in that movie, so there are different expectations for my dress, versus what the star should wear. I think Movie Stars should dress up."
"You may be the last person on earth to think so."
Who still pays attention to movie openings, anyway? Sometimes I wonder what all the fuss is about. Still, to me that's a professional obligation on the part of the actors, so they should dress accordingly. (Am I turning into my mother in law? That's just what she would have said!)
When we were in college we wore our jeans constantly, until they could stand up by themselves. (Mainly because we had to pay to do laundry, so we'd space laundry use out accordingly.) I prefer dark wash, and I like to fade mine naturally. I won't buy prefaded or already worn out jeans. That's cheating.
What do you think? Are jeans acceptable formal wear? Do you iron your jeans?

The Importance of Clothes

"I leaned back and closed my eyes - and instantly the whole day danced before me. I wasn't merely remembering, it seemed to be trapped inside my eyelids; the City, the traffic, the shops were all there, shimmering, merging. Then my brain began to pick out the bits it wanted to think about and I realized how the day made a pattern of clothes - first our white dresses in the early morning, then the consciousness of what people were wearing in London, then Aunt Millicent's poor dead clothes, then all of the exquisite things in the shop, then our furs. And I thought of how important clothes were to women and always had been. I thought of Norman ladies in Belmotte Tower-keep, and Plantagenet ladies living in Godsend Castle, and Stuart ladies when our house was built on the ruins - and hoops and Jane Austin dresses and crinolines and bustles, and Rose longing for a little black suit."

I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith, page 84, 1948

Poor Rose! She and her sister Cassandra went to London and when they got there, they realized that they were dressed all wrong! We all know how awkward that feels. Ever show up for a party all dressed in party wear to disover that everyone else was dressed casually? Or worse, the opposite? We all hate that feeling - like saying the wrong thing. Oh wait - you are saying the wrong thing - but with your clothes.

Clothes have their own language, and we can all read it and speak it. We know someone's socio-economic status, their job, their social standing, their role in life itself by reading what they are wearing. Like any language, context is everything. Ripped jeans and shredded finery are a statement about fashion's fleeting nature, or they are worn by a homeless person making an even larger unspoken statement about the strange heartlessness of fate.
I always feel frustrated by people who say, (always with that tone of smug superiority) that they don't follow fashion. Everybody follows fashion. Whether or not you actively participate in either setting or following fashion, you have an influence every day on everyone you come in contact with. We all see your clothes and make judgements about you based on what you are wearing. Wouldn't it be in your best interests to influence those judgements in a positive way?
My grandmother used to joke when we were kids that she was going to dress us in pillowcases with a ribbon tied around us. Some people do make clothes out of pillowcases. But they are recognizably clothes. And they do speak a language.
Translate this - black boots, wool pencil skirt, cashmere sweater, pearl necklace. It says city woman, probably working in an office. Now take that same woman, but dress her in overalls. If clothes didn't matter, she'd get the same treament wherever she went. But they do matter, and she probably won't.
Now I work at home. I could wear anything. But I have noticed that I feel better and work better if I am wearing nicer clothes. I don't wear pajamas, although I have some co-workers who do; (they call them work pajamas.) If I have new clothes to wear I feel happier.(It's important to me that I look nice, even if no one sees me. I feel more in control.) I read one essay where the author worked at home in pajamas every day, but one day she was dressed to go out, and the UPS man said, "It's nice to see you finally dressed!' See? People notice what you wear.
My sister in law says that she loves new tshirts so much that she is tempted to just wear them once and then give them away. I'm not that extreme, but I won't apologize for taking an interest in sewing or fashion, because no matter what anyone says, it is important, and looking nice makes me happier. I've been going through my closet and getting rid of everything that doesn't work for me, and that made me happier too.
So when people give you humbug (as we used to say when I lived in Hawaii) about clothes or fashion, tell them they just don't get it. I give you permission to use a tone of smug superiority.

Cautionary Tale

Be careful when making pencil skirts not to make them too tight, or your head will correspondingly expand.
Penciled notes on the envelope read: Dec 1960, White fur-Carol. E-skirt 6/89- material left from folding seat covers.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not feeling the folding seat cover fabric idea.
Pattern found here, if you have a better idea.

Quotable Friday

In the "you have got to be kidding me" category:

For Lyz Olko, a designer of the punk-chic label Obesity and Speed, the layered floral/tough girl Elaine look is nostalgic. “My entire wardrobe consists of floral, denim and black leather,” she said. Recently Ms. Olko, a self-proclaimed pack rat, retrieved many of her ’90s dresses from storage to wear again. (“I was also into floral print rompers,” she noted, “but I’ve retired them.”) On a recent thrifting excursion, she emptied an entire rack of floral dresses into her cart.

“I went into Screaming Mimi’s the other day,” she said of the venerable vintage shop in NoLIta, “and it was all dresses you would see in Arizona.”

NY Times August 18

Sometimes I think that the New York Times zeitgeist-trackers need to get out more, and see some new people. And what exactly do they mean by, "all the dresses you would see in Arizona." Obscure Morman polygamist cult wear? Laura Ashley floral leg o'mutton sleeved atrocities? Annie Oakley costumes? Discuss.

Bad Memories Circa 1980's

Sometimes we see a vintage pattern and think, "I want that! How beautiful!" This is not one of those patterns.
Did women really wear floral printed jumpsuits?
I have no memory of doing so, but time may have drawn a merciful veil over my youthful excesses. What vintage style do you remember with horror? Tie-dyed jeans? Ripped sweats? Leg warmers?

Mini thoughts

My sister (who is taller than I am , and could wear minis with style if she wanted to) had the following comment:

"B-- and a lot of men at the lake seemed very interested in buying CDs from the young lady with the band at the Country Hoe Down that was selling the band's CDs. She had a little mini denim skirt on just below her butt with white boots. She was blonde, very fit with very tan legs.

None of the men mentioned that she looked undignified or child like, hee hee. They stood in line to get that band's CDs very patiently!

I thought it was funny. When one of the women asked if I would wear such a thing I said, H**** YES, if my legs looked like that AND I was her age.

It was very amusing.

However, if you are a normal woman, short skirts ride up when you sit and everything hangs out."

We are fortunate to live in in a place and time where we can wear what we want. I'd be the last person to tell a woman what to wear - I was voted Most Liberated in high school, after all. When I started high school girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. (Part of our argument was that skirts of the 70's showed more legs than pants, and thus pants were actually more modest than the skirts in style at the time. Which was entirely true. We won.) But we can't rest on our laurels. It seems like every generation ends up having to fight for the freedom to dress as they please.
Other cultures and countries are still trying to control what people wear - for morality's sake (always their excuse). The Clothes Police even want to dictate women's underwear! France has outlawed full veils and Britain looks like it will follow.
In the interest of Free Speech (and what is more of an expression than what you wear?) I stand firmly on the side of being able to wear or not wear whatever we please. So it turns out, after some thought, that I am technically in favor of the right to wear mini-skirts.

Mini Skirts - yes or no?

The pattern above would be cute made today at the above-the-knee length shown at right. But I would have never worn the mini length - my mother would never have let me out of the house!

I don't like clothes that require the wearer to be careful. That's one reason out of many why I don't like short skirts. I don't like fussing with my clothes, or watching how I sit or stand or lean over. I think skirts that are too short are sexist and make women appear childlike and undignified. I think that the super short skirts offered by stores like Anthropologie and Forever 21 are silly. But hey- that's my opinion. What do you think? Are short-short skirts a tool of male oppression (which sadly deluded women unthinkingly buy) or are they cute?

Something's Missing

A friend commented on my last post and she said the reason we like vintage patterns so much was that they were "grown-up clothes". Nowadays, she said, the clothes are all for kids. "They never show what the clothes look like on someone over 16." she complained. "or a person of color, or a handicapped person." I agreed. It's as if anyone old or handicapped or ethnic doesn't exist in fashion retail world. "Don't they want my money?" she complained.
A co-worker asked me how I shop for clothes now that I can't walk that far. I shop online or I sew my clothes, I told her. Going to the mall is just too hard for me.
"They don't make it easy to spend money." she said.
This made me start thinking, why is it so difficult to find clothes for grown-ups? And why does retail ignore older women, larger women, ethnic women, handicapped women...basically all women who don't fit their very narrow demographic? Something is wrong if almost all of my coworkers, in all ages and size ranges, feel left out by retail fashion. They have money to buy clothes, but they can't find anything that fits. Or they can fit into the clothes, but the clothes are inappropriate for adults.
"You're lucky you can sew", my neighbor said. Believe me, I know it.
I feel like Carrie Bradshaw by ending my essay by asking, "Where does a woman find grown-up clothes today?"

The Clothes Police are Real

Once again, I am grateful that I live in the United States, where we are free to wear what we please (for now anyway), even if it is in bad taste.

A real life example of the Clothes Police:
MEULABOH, Indonesia – Authorities in a devoutly Islamic district of Indonesia's Aceh province have distributed 20,000 long skirts and prohibited shops from selling tight dresses as a regulation banning Muslim women from wearing revealing clothing took effect Thursday.

The long skirts are to be given to Muslim women caught violating the dress code during a two-month campaign to enforce the regulation, said Ramli Mansur, head of West Aceh district.

Islamic police will determine whether a woman's clothing violates the dress code, he said.

The Clothes Police everywhere are always very worried about how women are dressed, I have noticed. Not so much men.

Tesco Implements a Dress Code

Striking a blow towards preserving Civilization As We Know It, Tesco, a British grocery chain, implements a dress code:
After receiving many customer complaints of other shoppers in their night clothes, the supermarket, Tesco, has implemented a dress code for its Cardiff, South Wales store.
Shoppers at the Tesco supermarket are now warned by the new dress code signs:
"To avoid causing offence or embarrassment to others, we ask that our customers are appropriately dressed when visiting our store (footwear must be worn at all times and no nightwear is permitted)."
A Tesco spokeswoman stated:
"We're not a nightclub with a strict dress code, and jeans and trainers are of course more than welcome. We do, however, request that customers do not shop in their PJs or nightgowns. This is in response to other customers. We would never dictate to people, but we have listened to customer feedback that it makes them uncomfortable and embarrassed."

My favorite comment on this:
Sky News presenter, Colin Brazier, wrote:
If you can't be bothered to change out of your night-clothes, it's not likely you possess any of the aptitudes which make the world around us a better place; stoical parenting, selfless duty to others, or the ability to hold down a job.

Here in the Land Of The Free, we are still free to shop in our jammies.(I particularly admired the Bugs Bunny jammies I saw worn at Wegman's, last time I was there. One of the many reasons why I love America.)
I wonder if they have Clothes Police stationed at the doors at Tesco?
(Thanks to my sister, who sent me the Tesco info. My daughter has actually shopped at Tesco, but not, I am proud to state, in her pajamas.)
Have you ever shopped in your pajamas? Would you?

The New Casualness

"Can't you see that Betty Helen has no idea what goes on here?" he said. "She's either evil or lobotomized, Why did she just tell you that the Western Union messenger was your friend?"

"It's hard for a normal person to tell who's an artist and who isn't these days," Guido said. "It's the new casualness. Holly says it's making slobs of us all. Betty Helen has the right attitude. Now, for example, the other day, a guy selling office equipment came in dressed like a bank president. Then the guy from the bank came in dressed like a college professor, Then Cyril Serber came in. He's the poet and classicist but he works out with weights. He came up on his way from the gym and Betty Helen probably thought he was from the delicatessen. So you see, it's easy to be confused."

Laurie Colwin, Happy All the Time, page 77. Copyright 1971

As you can see from the excerpt above, the New Casualness has been driving us all crazy since the 1970's. Once the iron curtain of rigid dress codes began to fall, there was no turning back. Yet we are all left adrift on a sea of too much choice.
In my own experience, I began high school in a system where boys wore shirts and ties and girls were forbidden to wear pants to school, and four years later we were wearing shorts and tshirts to class (with our swim suits on underneath so we could drive directly to Salt Creek Beach after class let out in June.)
My daughter says perhaps we need to implement new rules, a modern dress code 'containment' policy, so we will all know what Not to Wear in any situation. And certainly there is no shortage of advice out there.
(If you want to make a grown woman cry, just tell her she is invited to a daytime wedding and put semi-formal on the invite and then drop the news that it's outside. Or a beach wedding - what on earth would you wear to that?)
Do we need new rules? And if we do, what would those rules be?

Can't Judge D.C. ...

A commenter noted:
You can't judge DC based on the suburbs. Especially not the suburbs that are in a different state. The suburbs of DC are totally different from DC itself. In DC proper, everyone is quite nicely dressed, as they mostly work on or near the Hill (that would be Capitol Hill, for those of you who aren't up with DC speech
But, as we say in our family, "Au contraire!"
My daughter lives on Capitol Hill, and she reports that the women of D.C. dress exactly as the women of Arlington, Alexandria, and Mt. Vernon, which is to say: sloppily. Remember - I was talking about Weekend dressing, not work dressing. (Although I worked downtown at Metro Center for many years at several high powered law firms, and I Can say with authority that Washington is the opposite of fashionable. Instead people dress to blend in.)For every nicely dressed woman out there on a Saturday, there are ten other frumpily dressed sisters. And this is not just Washington! Co-workers in San Diego, Los Angeles and Las Vegas advise that the same phenomenon occurs there.
Some cities are fashionable - some are not.
What cities would you rank as fashionable? I recall Montreal as having nicely dressed people, yet Reno most emphatically did not.
Vote in the comments!

Anti-Fashion Show

Yesterday Mr. Hunting Creek took me out to lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant, THAI in Shirlington (Big Bowl Lunch Special $6.95!) before we did our Saturday chores. The weather was nice so we sat outside and watched the street scene. One thing became increasingly clear: Washington women (at least those in Shirlington and Alexandria) have no style. NONE.
They were wearing sweats in public, they were wearing baggy cargo shorts, they were wearing track shoes with shorts and men's' ripped up T shirts. I have seen Italian trash men that were better dressed. (One complaint to The Sartorialist was that he never shows women of Washington...based on what I saw yesterday, ladies, you need to step up your game)
I have had the good fortune to eat in cafes and observe the street scenes in many cities all over the world: Kyoto,Kuala Lumpur, Florence, Novara, Rome, Singapore, Vancouver, Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Montreal...to name a few. And in every single one of those places the women were dressed better than the women of Washington. Why do they dress so casually? Is it that they just can't be bothered to make any effort at all? How you dress makes a big difference in your attitude and happiness. My sister never goes out without makeup and looking nicely put together; neither does my daughter. We were brought up that way.
Why are New York women fashionable on the weekends, and Washington women so very NOT?

Dear NY Times Fashion Editor

Dear New York Times Fashion Editor,

What were you thinking? Oh, wait...you weren't thinking. (or thinking like a five year old girl who wears her ballet tutu even to bed, she loves it SO MUCH!)
What sane woman, what normal American gal wants to wear tight black sequined leather leggings? Or as one male member of the Little Hunting Creek Fashion Advice Team put it, "what gal wants sequins on her butt?"
Dear Editor, in future, please show some pants that non-pole dancers would wear.
These pants are shown with the model reclining. This is because she had to lie down and suck it in to get them on, even though she is a size negative zero, and also because she could not stand up in those shoes. Also, they are described as a "bargain" at $245.00. After we were all done laughing hysterically, we decided that perhaps there were places where one COULD theoretically wear them. For instance, if one were able to drive ones' silver DeLorean back in time to the 80's disco Studio 54. Or to Rat Pack concert at the Sands hotel in Vegas, baby. One MUST be careful to wear them in appropriate venues; however, one would not wish to be mistaken for a Pretty Woman kind of girl. We are pretty sure that designing these pants would result in elimination from Project Runway

Sincerely,
The Little Hunting Creek Fashion Advice Team

Where would you wear THAT?

Sometimes my customers call me with a sewing or quilting question and that's always fun. I love talking to people about sewing and they always have something interesting to say. Yesterday a nice woman named Alicia called me to ask about some of the Vintage Vogue Patterns we have on the website. She wanted to know what kind of fabric to use for one of the dresses and how I would go about making it. I offered my suggestions and she said, "what about that Mrs Peel Jumpsuit? Where would you wear THAT?"
Now normally most people don't ask for guidance from me about where to wear their creations. Usually I leave this up to your discretion. But I realize that some people might appreciate my guidance; after all, it is commonly assumed that we lead pretty glamourous lives here at Little Hunting Creek.
Let's see...how about at a meeting with James Bond, after dark at Rock Creek Park to snatch up a dead drop from a double agent before the other side gets wind of the documents? In gorgeous iridescent silk, in a New York bar? Don't forget the killer heels! Or there's that wedding on a windy beach in Northern California - the wind would blow a skirt all over the place, but a Mrs. Peel Jumpsuit might be just the thing. Riding in an open jeep on the road to Hana. And helping out the Ferrari Pit Crew! Or parachuting into Bhutan. Where CAN'T you wear a jumpsuit? Better order that silk now!
Next time you need advice, our highly trained Fashion Advice Team is standing by.
Happy Sewing!