Armchair Fashionista

I admit it. I have become an armchair fashionista....My coffee table is piling high with issues of Vogue and Elle and Harper's Bazaar, and Lucky and In Style. I have succumbed to buying celebrity magazines like Star and Us, not so much to know the marital woes of Jessica Simpson and the latest twist in the Lindsay Lohan diet saga, but to look at what they are wearing, how they carry it off, how they fix their hair.

Now that I have dieted down enough that plus shops are not the only option (and mostly becoming an ex-option as I hit that twilight zone of size 16, both plus and not plus) I find myself searching the internet for neat clothing stores to window shop. "Could I pull that look off?" I wonder as I glance through the offerings, or "Doesn't anyone here know how to design a dress that doesn't look like everybody else's sundress? or worse, ugly sack?"

This is really how I am judging sites: Can they offer a dress that is interesting, and not a copy of the style everybody else is doing with only minor differences.

It's been great fun. I point things out to my husband. "See how that doesn't work?" I say of one of the latest pouf skirts. "If you show that much shoulder, you really need a longer skirt. The eye doesn't know where to go." I wonder and am amazed at some of the hairdos the models are wearing. I drool over a 50s retro suit that some designer has made...very lean lines that even if I was a size 3, I couldn't pull off because I am too short (but I think are so beautiful).

I long to design something and sew it, but I've been losing weight too fast, and my dress form, even adjustable as it is, was padded to fit my overly large size, and I am not sure I can make it fit me properly now. So I am making notes in my head. I want to start a scrapbook of design ideas for when I have the size and shape I want, or the one I end up with anyway.

If fashion isn't fun, it's not worth doing. As I can afford to, I will add what chic I can to the clothes I am replacing...but the anticipation of being further down the road makes it even more fun.