Pearls have been harvested and treasured for centuries. Ever since that first fisherman discovered the iridescent beauty inside the shell of an oyster, each generation has found its own way of wearing pearls. This week, Jodie and her crew from JTouchofStyle.com have been kind enough to join me in a Fab Collab to demonstrate how four decades …
Girling Up La Garçonne
If last week was about embracing my masculine side with the 1920s “tomboy” trend known as La Garçonne, this week is about going girlie on the guy look. Below is a photo of a woman who would fit right in to Coco Chanel’s La Garçonne era. Isn’t she gorgeous? I thought about recreating this look for my …
Let’s Hear It For La Garçonne
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 It’s hard to imagine a time when women’s apparel wasn’t inspired in some way by menswear. Trousers, blazers, the button-down collared shirt, oxford …
Going Casual in a Chanel-Inspired Little Black Dress
“Luxury must be comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.” ~ Coco Chanel Coco Chanel was one of the first designers to bring sportswear into everyday wear. She saw the necessity (and luxury) in comfort. One of the many values of making comfort a priority was the freedom it gave women to move like normal people. …
The Versatility of Coco Chanel’s Original Little Black Dress
It’s hard to argue with the fact that Coco Chanel was a fashion genius. She single-handedly changed how women dress in the modern Western world. We went from wearing nearly 20 pounds of corsetry and underwear to freeform drop waists and wool jersey almost overnight, all thanks to Chanel. We can also thank her for gifting us …
Casual Styles inspired by Coco Chanel
Trying on the iconic styles of the 1920s has been a lot of fun. It is an era that apparently speaks to me because I’m still working on it. Up until now, I’ve been moved by the finer looks of the era — the fabrics, the beading, the fringe. It seems blasphemous to consider wearing …
Vintage Feminine for Valentine’s Day
In spite of the huge trend in the 1920s for women to sport a more tomboy look (short hair, shapeless dresses, and sportswear inspired by men’s fashion), it can never be said that women back then looked anything other than feminine. The outfit below was modeled in 1919, a year before the decade of my current …
Simple Accessories Create a Timeless Style
My family tree is not scattered with royalty and millionaires — at least none I’ve been able to find yet. But I am lucky to be able to look back as far as the 1920s to see what some of them looked like. Even they, with their coal mining and farming incomes, they pulled off some …