Creative clothing tips

In May I converted from local guru to personal style blogger, and although my interviews with awesome Oxfordshire women will be back on the blog soon I thought I might strut further along the style street this month.

If, like some Fe-liners of late, you are trying to cut back on fashion spending then here are some helpful tips to make your current wardrobe take you that bit further and advice on how to handle any splurges you do make so they don’t go to waste.

Try Clothes On

In vintage or charity shops, don’t look at the size on the label look at the shape, feel the texture and pop the garment on. I’m a 12-14 in most current UK sizing, but I have size 8 tops and size 16 skirts that look fantastic when worn – or at least can do so with a few well placed safety pins. It’s good to get to know what your shape actually looks and feels like rather than thinking of it as a number. Clothing construction has evolved over time so a dress in a different size to what you think you should wear can look much better than you’d expect. Even if a piece of clothing is the ‘right size’ for you, smaller or bigger sizes might actually look a whole lot better. Obviously sometimes bigger or smaller sizes don’t look so good, but the point is you should give things a go and not get blocked by an insignificant number.

Layering

You don’t have to reserve some clothes for the summer and others for the winter. If you have a lovely summery top, why not find a good base layer to wear underneath it, so you can wear it all year round. I generally wear very summery looking clothes no matter what the season and just wear tights, vests and tops underneath and adorn with cardigans and scarves. The more layers you wear the more clothes you can fit into an outfit – layer under and layer over!

Play with your clothes

Have you ever worn a skirt as a top with a belt to define your waist? Used a hairpiece as a brooch, or to jazz up a bag? Wrapped a headscarf around your waist as a belt, or around your wrist as a bracelet? Just because an item might be labelled or considered to be one thing doesn’t mean it can’t have plenty of other creative uses – experiment with what you’ve got and you might surprise yourself.

Buy what feels comfortable

If you are going to buy an item of clothing, you want it to last and you want to make sure you’ll get good wear out of it. I ask myself “will this feel as comfortable after a big meal?” as I want to enjoy plenty of big meals and wear clothes than can accommodate a healthy, happy food-baby. If a piece of clothing can’t adjust according to my enjoyment of big social meals, then there’s no point in me buying it to then either not wear it, or wear it and feel uncomfortable.

These are just a few of the things I consider when buying clothes or putting together an outfit – leave a comment if you’ve got other tips or advice on resourceful and creative shopping and styling.

 

 

 

The Vagenda: A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media

The Vagenda is one of my regular go-to blogs for entertaining and also potentially enlightening articles. Set up in 2012 in an attempt to “subject the media and the way it ‘speaks’ to women to all the ridicule it deserves,” The Vagenda’s founders have since developed this concept into a fully-fledged book, The Vagenda: A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media, commissioned as ‘a call to arms for young women’.

The article that introduced me to the blog and remains an all-time favourite piece is Hair! (Not the Musical) – if you want a taste for how great The Vagenda can be then you must read this hilarious and personal post.

Because the book has grown from a blog and is written by blogger/journalists (check out Holly & Rhiannon’s contributions to The Guardian & New Statesmen) it’s written in a really conversational, friendly (read: sweary) style. This is probably aided by the fact that much of the content is lots of the usual stuff you would talk to friends about on a girly night, but mostly it is that Holly and Rhiannon have an incisive and witty way of explaining things, create great images and make continuously good points. Between chuckling to myself and doing my pensive-reading face (head tilted slightly forward, brow either furrowed or slightly raised, hand on chin) there were some bits of information in the book that made my jaw drop to my tits and my eyebrows meet my hairline. Imagine the funniest ranting blogs you’ve read, times that by the 11 chapters in A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media and you’ve got yourself a bloody good read.

As you’ll learn through reading the book, the gist is that magazines rely massively on advertising and will create all their content around peddling new products and satisfying those advertisers. Magazines have to keep you in a web of anxiousness so you keep buying them and seeking their advice as to how to solve your array of problems (including lots of problems that you didn’t even know you had), and mostly these problems can be solved through just buying even more things. The book travels through different themes from make-up, fashion and relationships to dieting and careers and all of this is nicely framed between an introductory chapter on the history of the woman’s magazine, and a very chilling and well-placed final chapter on Lad Culture.

Amongst the research, facts, opinions and cracking jokes there are also occasional tiny glimpses into the lives of Holly and Rhiannon – for example that Rhiannon used to intern at fashion magazines. The personal anecdotes and stories were real highlights and I wanted more of an insight into the two women’s lives. There’s a lot of “trust us, we’ve been there” statements that tease me and make me want to know more about exactly where they’ve been and the experiences that taught them what they know. Holly and Rhiannon clearly have a sound understanding of what it is really like to work in the media and I have a lot of respect for the fact that they do hold back quite a lot of their private lives and are very deliberate in what they do and don’t reveal, but on the other hand the personal titbits were very compelling and left me wanting more.

Whether you’re a man or a woman, whether you love or loathe magazines The Vagenda: A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media is worth a read. It’s refreshing, accessible, humorous and relevant. I’ve even bought a copy for my 17-year-old sister as the younger you can arm yourself to understand the way the media manipulates you, the better – I wish I had something like this to read when I was seventeen.

Check out The Vagenda, and get your hands on a copy of A Zero Tolerance Guide to the Media, pronto.