Category: 2the9s

2the9s, Style, WWK Events

Stylin’

the outside lane

I am going to be the special speaker at our next Women Worth Knowing event, and I’ll be talking about a topic I am frequently asked to discuss: Style. I won’t be telling you how to get MY style, though. I’ll be talking to you about how to take your personal style, your personal comfort level, and build on that to find the next step up in your look.

Here’s what I dislike about the shows where stylists go throw away everything in someone’s closet and force them into a-line skirts and tiny blouses: Not everyone feels comfortable in Spring’s Hottest Fashions. I sure don’t. If you don’t feel good in it, you won’t wear it with confidence, no matter how cute it is. And, 3/4s of Style is confidence.

I firmly believe that everyone’s personal fashion choices are valid. How else can you explain the success of Patricia Fields? It’s a matter of fit, and functionality, and feeling good about yourself. It’s also a matter of understanding your audience and your core demographic.

If you are looking for a job in the finance industry, you have to adapt your style to meet that audience. Your core demographic is different from Lady Gaga’s. If you are dressing for a night at the opera, your audience is different from a night at Coachella. (My grandmother loved telling the story of a friend who dressed up in finery and furs to go see the Grand Ole Opry, thinking it was her Southern friend’s way of saying Grand Old Opera. Boy was she disappointed. Grandma was delighted, though. Gave her a story to tell for 60 years.)

So, I’ll be talking about a few different things:

  • Finding your personal style/comfort zone
  • Understanding other people’s perception of your style
  • Adapting your style to different audiences/occasions
  • Appreciating yourself and other people as fine art

I hope we see you there!

2the9s, Style

Lashing Out

the outside lane

I have been gabbling about getting eyelash extensions since I knew such a thing existed, but who has $250 to spend on fake lashes? Other than the cast of True Blood, whose ladies’ lashes look like they might be wearing four or five sets a piece. Last month, Groupon ran a coupon I couldn’t resist, and I snapped up a full set of extensions, plus a lash tint for $89.

In the wild, my lashes are a very good length, but they are so blonde they might as well be transparent. See:

I very rarely leave the house without mascara. Nothing against rabbits–I just don’t like looking like one.

The lash tint took about 10 minutes, and was fine. My technician, Vanessa at the Lash Lounge, daubed my lower lids with vaseline and stuck eyepads to them to keep tint from staining my skin. I closed my eyes onto the eyepads, and she went to work painting tint onto my lashes. I blinked and got a little tint in my eye, and it burned like the dickens, but she rinsed me out with saline solution and all was well with the world.

Once my lashes had some color, eyepads replaced with fresh ones, I closed my eyes and chatted with Vanessa while she laid in lashes one at a time. It was comfortable and pleasant, and I dozed off a couple of times. If the client across from me hadn’t had an unhappy dog in her purse (what puppy wants to sit in a purse at a lash salon for two hours?), I might have gotten a nap.

Some of the lashes going in tickled. Once or twice I felt a poke, as if being pricked by a tiny broomstick, but otherwise, it just felt like someone was playing in my eyelashes.

The result? Definitely worth the Groupon and most likely worth follow up appointments.

2the9s, Style

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s Only 39 for a few More Hours

the outside lane

Tomorrow is my birthday. I am turning 40. I’ve never been the type to shy away from my age, or from aging. My life has only gotten better as I have gotten older. I wouldn’t trade the arse I had at 17 for any of the knowledge I have now, even though that was one glorious arse. A casting director liked it well enough to put it in a pair of Lee jeans for advertisement. (Your friends never believe you when you point out a random, faceless backside and yelp, “That’s my butt!”)

My teens were the usual random horrors. My twenties were spent confused, hurt, and misguided. My thirties were fantastic. I spent seven years out of my thirties married to B, and two more dating him. I’ve had Thor for the last half of the previous decade, and nothing will spice up your life like a Thor. In the last couple of years, I have regained the self-confidence I lost somewhere around 21.

I am still surprised to realize that I’m not 17. I am surprised when my body won’t give me the output it did just ten years ago. I am surprised when it hits home that I am the adult with a child, not the child hanging out with adults. It’s funny to think that when my mother was 40, I was 12. I’m 40 and Thor is 5. I got a late start!

Oh, I am always taken aback when I look down and see these grown-up hands. But none of that is bad. It is all very, very good.

I feel like I am young enough to still do the things I want to do, but mature enough to properly estimate the level of importance to place on each desire. I am good at prioritizing, and good at keeping balanced. My memory is going south, and that’s a fact, so I need to start doing brain teasers or something to stimulate it. I’m looking forward to the next ten years.

And as a Hobbit style birthday present from me to Kim, here’s what I’m wearing today.
The shoes are actually a different style by Maripe, but are very similar to the Maripes pictured. Mine have a pointy toe and the buckle strap runs vertical to the ankle. Obviously, my earrings and ring are not nearly so expensive as those pictured, but one style is quite like the other.

2the9s, Style

Waist Not, Want Lot

the outside lane

I think I may have posted about the difficulties of changing your wardrobe along with changing jobs, but I don’t remember. Once it’s written down, it’s gone. No recollection. Actually, these days, once it is spoken it’s gone. I repeated the same thing to my husband last night without blinking. He said I used very similar inflection. I’m like a droid with a malfunctioning chip.

I digress.

When I left Posh Car Company, I was two years invested in a high profile business casual wardrobe. That meant I had a lot of really nice heels, good dresses, skirts, and trousers. Laid off from that job, I realized the folly of having rarely purchased anything that would not double for work wear. I invested in maxi dresses (the fashionable woman’s caftan) and lost my waist. You don’t realize how much your waistband works as an appetite suppresant until you spend two months in a muu-muu, then try to zip up your jeans. Oi!

My next job was at the Frat House, where the dress code was jeans and elderly metal band t-shirts. 4″ heels worn with wiggle dresses did not blend. And there was that whole 10lbs of jiggle I had added to my wiggle during the layoff. I bought some jeans and a few casual tops, enough to last for the few months of my contract there, but I never quite got my wardrobe under control.

I spent another two months on the job market, this time wearing my jeans because a) it was winter, and b) I wasn’t making the no-waistband mistake again! I went to work for Best Bank in Town, and that was decidedly professional. Hose required. Well, none of my pre-maxi dress debacle clothes fit me anymore. I had to transition again. With the help of Ross and the Norma Kamali line at WalMart, I did okay. I had just gotten my clothes into the shape I prefer when we started our move, and I started a new job.

Guess what? Business casual.

Once again, I find myself looking through my things wondering, “What am I supposed to do with my Joan Harris Hollaway dresses now?” Because I like to blend in to my office environment, not stand out like my former high school Vice Principal, who was known for her wearing of tea-length, spangled versions of Stevie Nicks style gowns, nosebleed high heels, and prom hair to do her walk throughs during lunch hours in the cafeteria. But I also want to feel purty.

Another issue is that it is winter again, and I am freezing, and I don’t care about being cute when I am cold. I only care about being comfortable. If cute happens to happen, bully for me, but my main concern is that my toes are warm.

All that to say, I am culling my wardrobe again, trying to find what works. So far, I’ve got it down to a few nice pair of trousers, and a couple of tops. I need more tops, but I have to find what works best on me. I’ll let you know what I come up with.

Meanwhile, today I am wearing a grape colored twin set over gray trousers, with pewter maryjanes on a 2″ heel.

2the9s, Uncategorized

Wrapping Jewelry

the outside lane

image

We are packing to move. Ugh. But in the midst of the ugh, there are always a few opportunities for creativity. I got creative with my jewelry box today. If you’re like me, you love untangling necklaces about as much as you enjoy reaching up inside a raw chicken to pull out the innards. The idea of having to pack all of my necklaces, one by one, so that they didn’t tangle was making my teeth hurt, so I had to find a work-around.

I am fortunate to have a really nice jewelry box. Two Christmases ago, my mother decided I needed a three way mirror and a grand jewelry box, so she gifted me with a 6′ tall, rotating box with 3 mirrored doors. The doors open to create a 3 way mirror. Inside in each door are earring racks, a bracelet rack, and necklace hooks. Inside each cabinet is a ring keeper, another set of necklace hooks, and small cabinets for jewelry that doesn’t fit in the rest.

While most of my stuff is only costume, every piece (right down to a ring out of a literal bubble gum machine) has some sentimental value, and I don’t want to lose any of it. And I also don’t want to have to pack earrings by pairs, or sort through the mess of studs that might fall when the whole jewelry box is moved.
So…

Saran Wrap and packing tape.

I bought Press’n Seal Saran Wrap and wrapped each section of the inner door and cabinet separately, then put packing tape along the edges to hold it in place. On the earring section, I put the wrap on sticky side down. That way, if an earring is jogged out of it’s rack, it will stick where it is. Everywhere else, I used sticky side up. I really don’t want the gunk on the jewelry. On the necklaces, I strapped packing tape across the top, middle and bottoms of the longest strands, so that should hold them all in place nicely.

The move isn’t for a few more days, but I’ll let you know how it works next week. In the meantime, UGH!