Jane and Knit Dresses

I met Jane Fonda at a fundraiser tonight, she is 70 and looks great. Not that she's trying too hard to look less than 60, however, which seems like a great age to shoot for if you're 10 years older (that scary line between "great for your age" and "why are you trying so hard?"doesn't get crossed. Spunky hair, trendy glasses, classic pants suit, comfortable shoes. 

Great cause: Equality Now: Adolescent Girls' Legal Defense Fund, which sends legal teams to, so far, victims of rape and kidnapping in Africa who are often the first to ever come forward and look for justice in cases where communities have accepted and often legally sanctioned child rape and forced marriage. The cases take years, often must go all the way to a country's highest appeals court, and in one case a judge is now being prosecuted for allowing a 2-time rapist to go free. 

Besides Jane, there were a lot of women there (it's about 40 degrees and raining in NYC) in knit dresses and point 2" heeled boots. Seems like last years' flat suede boho look is out (or maybe it was never in with the philanthropic set in the first place. Some women had light sweaters over their dresses, and the whole look was chic and warm. I was impressed (and cold, in a bad choice of cork wedges and a think silk shirt). With age, I hope, comes money to give to good causes and the style to dress well and look effortless even in the grossest New York weather. 

Great vs. New vs. Slutty

I found an amazing pair of boots last week, knee high, grey suede, and only 1.5 inch heel! They're by Seychelles, the style is Mason. They are suede but with synthetic soles and lining, so they do have that chemical smell up close. I am usually really snotty about this, but these are so comfortable, and soooo fabulous looking, I don't care! I wore them from 7am to 9pm the other day, my feet were tired, but not in pain. Amazing. I’ll upload a picture when my camera isn’t so tempermental.

I am also in the market for a new fall coat. I have a classic knee-length coat, button down, mock turtle collar; bought it something like 8 years ago at an Elie Tahari outlet. For the first year since, I am bored with it!

I keep seeing women in coats with seams not at the waist but up at the shoulder blades, and sleeves that fan out slightly, the silhouette is really beautiful. I love this coat, and you will never guess where it’s from.

Victoria’s Secret! No comment. Certainly I’ll buy one from somewhere else. I bought clothes from their catalogue in high school (my dad was skeptical, in retrospect I can’t even believe he agreed) and even on my [former] athletic, shapeless body they looked slutty slutty slutty. An underwear company that sells clothes clearly has an ulterior motive: clothes that you want to take off quickly to give that lingerie more airtime.

A special hello to my adorable boyfriend (who has started reading this blog) and is happier when my feet don’t hurt. Or when Victoria’s Secret is in the conversation.

Foot Love

When a pair of shoes are so cushy and spacious a baby mouse sets up a nest inside the left one, you should be justified in tossing that comfort-shoe urge out the window. 

True story, see below, yet I also need to add that my feet are the feet of someone twice my age. This is for two reasons: 1:working in a middle school I walk/hurry/sprint around hallways all day, and 2: I refuse to revisit my college Dansko collection, therefore my delicate feet have been mashed into every type of pointy toe heel, high wedge, supportless footwear imaginable. I refuse to wear ugly shoes, but I know exactly which pair of brown 2-inch, pointy heels gave me this hammertoe, and which shoes make that bone in my left foot ache, once so much that I took them off and walked barefoot back to my office. Gross.

Yet I am always on the lookout for that magical pair of comfortable, sensible, doesn't-look-trashy-with-my-Club-Monaco-pencil-skirt (on sale, for sure) footwear. Last year I was Zappos obsessed, and bought a pair of black moccasins that turned my feet black, and these horrid black velvet clogs with some garish victorian pattern stamped on the top and a wooden sole. They were awful but I convinced myself they weren't, wore them for a day, then couldn't send them back.

Those are the shoes Fievel set up shop in; that horror became my excuse to toss them. 

Today, throwing more money at my sad feet, I bought grey and black classic New Balance sneakers. I literally came up with a dreamworld on the subway to Foot Locker, wherein my long shapely legs look athletic and cooly practical in a mature pair of sneakers and the aforementioned pencil skirt.

When I got home, I remembered that I am 5'4" with a long torso (short legs), and really overly muscular calves. In fact the sneakers made my calves look larger, my size 9 feet look longer, and drove home the utter ridiculousness that I would actually wear sneakers with my carefully tailored, belted, ironed and accessorized work wardrobe.

So tomorrow i'll probably wear my gold Jack Rogers, which have so little support my knees ache by noon, and those slippery soles that seem to rub a layer off my big toe as it clenches to hold on for dear life. 

Fashion Reality

This is my reality: I am single, live in a shoebox apartment in Upper Manhattan, make just enough money to support myself, and earn that salary at a public school in the Bronx. A glamorous life I do not lead, I assure you.

Yet as my professional life progresses, and as my personal sense of style grows and improves, I find myself shopping with more purpose, willing to spend more money, and less accepting of having "nothing to wear." I am too mature, too successful, to show up to work looking disheveled or uninspired.

Here I will attempt to document my quest (because its more than a simple search, really) for truth and beauty, and great pencil skirts, through two lenses: one, the rose-colored glasses of someone admittedly smitten with fashion, and two, the realism of a young professional on a serious budget. How do I, and so many other women, sustain difficult jobs in depressingly ugly offices, wake up at absurdly early hours with puffy eyes and certainly no time for ironing, bring home aching feet and just enough money to shop on a budget, yet still clothe ourselves in a manner that does justice to our right to look and feel fantastic? This is not a Devil Wears Prada fairy tale, I have no investment banker secretly financing me, and truthfully, my closet is 20 inches wide. Any bigger and it would have to double as a bed. Stay tuned!