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Change style by changing jacket

October 13, 2012

If you typically wear a ‘Key 3’ outfit of top, bottom, and layer – you probably already know it’s easy to change the whole look simply by changing the layer (or, even easier, the fabric).

Janice of the Vivienne Files recently suggested a basic wardrobe of classic knits, tees, shirts, slim pants/ jeans. Here’s her post on it. And my post on possible patterns.

Janice’s only ‘layer’ was a denim shirt-jacket. Which made the whole wardrobe look ultra-casual.

Very easy to change the style of this garment group by changing the jacket.
Here are some of the many options.

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Soft cascade styles, short drape (McCall’s 6444), or long drape (McCall’s 6084), depending which flatters your body shape.

”m6444” ”m6064”

Other casual styles, such as hoodie (McCall’s 6614), or quilted (Butterick 5532).

”m6614” ”b5532”

More fitted, such as notched collar blazer (Palmer-Pletsch McCall’s 6655), or collarless (Palmer-Pletsch McCall’s 6441).

”m6655” ”m6441”

These are all ‘modern classics’.

Angie at You Look Fab suggests the blazer version as a fashion formula for this season.
(Though actually it’s been a fashion formula for decades. I can remember navy blazer/ white shirt/ blue jeans/ black flats being standard Parisienne style around 1990.)

More edgy/ trendy – the ‘tough-luxe’ look : biker (Kwik Sew 3764), or military (Kwik Sew 3466)

”ks3764” ”ks3466”

Try lace instead of leather for a biker jacket this season.
‘Military’ is emphasised in the November issues of UK Elle and In Style. Easy to use a double breasted jacket and add lots of gold buttons, including on the sleeves.

More arty-creative : asymmetric (Sewing Workshop Riviera), or oversized (Sewing Workshop Ikina).

”swriviera” ”swikina”

Janice at The Vivienne Files herself suggests a similar variety of jacket choices in a post on alternatives to the blazer.

(P.S. See photos of winter 2012-13 versions of these jacket styles from YouLookFab here.)

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All these layering possibilities would look good with a tee and slim pants/ jeans/ skirt. No wonder those are considered ‘basics’ !
(See new wardrobe pattern for wovens, Butterick 5821 – hurrah – a wardrobe pattern with a top with sleeves !)

”b5821”

If, like me, you like a top with a collar (more flattering with my body shape and hair style), take a little more care with neckline co-ordination.
I think a mandarin/ band collar would look better with many of these jackets than a shirt collar.

If you like this season’s bow collar blouse, I think a blazer or other classic V-neck or slightly lowered round neck (examples in Simplicity 2154) looks best.

To go with the rest of the basic wardrobe in the colours Janice suggested, use tan, grey, navy, black, or your accent colour.
For jackets that will last for seasons, use solid fabrics.
For jackets that look ‘winter 2012’, use unusual tweed, brocade, brightly coloured fake fur, leather or leather trim.

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Which layer is your style ?
Pick your favourite pattern with this style, and make it in casual, business, and special occasion colours or fabrics.
See Imogen Lamport at Inside-Out Style on changing the level of refinement of your clothes by changing the fabrics.
Even a hoodie can be multi-purpose ‘sports luxe’ if made in quality fabric.

Or alter your jacket using trims and embellishment.

There are a couple of on-line videos from Sewing with Nancy : ‘1 easy jacket pattern, 6 terrific looks’ : part 1, part 2. (The pattern used is Indygo Junction 885 Chinois coat, but many patterns are possible.) (book pattern DVD package)

Or, even more adventurous, Marcy Tilton’s Jackets CD.

Personally I’m happiest in a shirt-jacket, though definitely not a blue denim one. Only one pattern – hmm, that I would have difficulty with 😀 In winter I wear thicker fabrics and more ease for multiple layering. And my layers are where I like the interest of my outfits. There are luscious choices by named designers in the shirt section at Vogue. And over 2,000 vintage patterns on Etsy !

Or if you have many moods, make one of each jacket style 😀 and add some vests in a similar range of styles.
(Wear them with dresses and skirts too.)

What’s your pick from all the possibilities ?

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Patterns and links available October 2012

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Categories: co-ordinates, personal style

Comments: 6 Comments

Extreme accessories ?

October 6, 2012

What is your accessories style ? None at all – or wild profusion 😀
What is the style of your accessories ? hard-edged or soft, colours or neutrals. . .

Janice of The Vivienne Files recently suggested a very basic wardrobe of classic knits, tees, shirts and slim jeans/ pants, to be worn as the background to interesting accessories. Here’s her post, and my post on possible patterns for the clothes.

Nancy Nix-Rice suggested a basic group of accessories as part of her classic wardrobe plan. I have a post on that here. She uses accessories to integrate an outfit and give a finishing touch, not for individual expression.

Here’s another style consultant’s post about trendy accessories.

The approach of Janice’s simple wardrobe is to wear clothes which attract no attention, and add your own special style with the accessories. While Nancy’s approach is to choose accessories in the same neutral colours as the clothes. Opposites.
A huge range of possible choices.

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Your personal style for accessories

Specific accessories can be high fashion, and ‘must have at all costs’ items for fashionistas.
(Bringing home the Birkin by Michael Tonello is an entertaining read. Nowadays there are many Birkin bags and Hermes scarves on eBay !)

Paying £500, £5000, £50,000 for a bag or shoes is not something I aspire to.
Hermes wants £1350 from me for replacing my wallet, and it doesn’t look as useful as my present one. I think I would look elsewhere even if I was a multi-millionaire (which I also don’t aspire to :D).
Though I agree it must be real leather. Hmm, back to using baskets or fabric bags. . .

Happily accessories can be a way of expressing individuality.

For the students round here, cheap clothes are black, grey, or denim. So they wear a fascinating range of scarves, boots, and bags.

Have you got a ‘signature’ accessory ? shoes, or boots, or bags, or scarves, hats, eyeglasses, gloves, socks, belts, patterned pantyhose ? or do you always wear earrings, or bracelets, or pins, necklaces, rings, hair ornaments, body piercing, special watches ?
I’m a bags and scarves person, occasional pins or bangles. . .

And what style of accessories would you choose ?
What prints/ textures/ shapes/ colours for your scarves ?
What materials, shapes, embellishments for your bags, your shoes, your hats ?
There’s a huge variety of possible styles for each jewellery item – dainty or striking, angular or curved, smooth or textured, modern or antique, real or fake, in different materials – wood, stone, fabric, metal, plastic.

If you’re not sure, visit an accessories store and allow yourself to notice what you’re attracted to, without censoring that those things are too vulgar/ dainty/ impractical/ dull. . . Then try them – do they make you feel special ? centred ? ready for a laugh ?

The fun aspect of scarves and jewellery is that it’s possible to experiment, without overspending if your choice turns out to be a long-term mistake.

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Janice’s accessory choices

After her post on the basic common wardrobe, Janice of The Vivienne Files has several posts with suggested accessories to wear with it. I found these fascinating, as her suggestions are usually monochromatic and follow the colours in the basic wardrobe. Much quieter than I was expecting 😀

Using the original ‘common wardrobe’ colours (white grey black tan indigo) :
silver
marcasite
grey
black and white
black, white, gold polka dots
tan/gold and black, plus pink flowers
amber
brown
blue

Monochromatic use of accent colour :
soft purple
cherry red
hot pink
green

All these accent colours contain some blue. As the wardrobe is mainly denim blue, yellow toned accents like yellow, orange, scarlet would make a much more forceful contrast – not to everyone’s taste. Animal prints could work well.

P.S. Janice added a ‘common wardrobe’ in warm colours, here.
And here’s her warm wardrobe with accessories :
romance (muted pale peach pink)
peach
gold
amber

P.P.S. There are many more of these, as Janice adds a new colour to her accessory suggestions nearly weekly. She has also added a ‘common office wardrobe” with a skirt and blazer. Here’s her ‘common wardrobe’ category.

Janice is an excellent source of accessory inspiration to try out, if you like non-aggressive combinations.
The Vivienne Files always has an underlying focus on elegance.

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Wild and outrageous

I had assumed the ‘creative’ accessory style Janice refers to would have wild variety – in-your-face colours and lots of mixed patterns and bling. Altogether more flamboyant – something like these :

”river

recent ads from UK River Island

This is called ‘blogger’ style by UK Elle (October 2012) : over-sized accessories, bold clashing prints, fun fur, patchwork, plus chunky knits and added fabric textures such as studs and embossing, also slim pants, below knee pencil skirts, and ankle socks or ankle boots.

Sadly it can actually take considerable styling skill to do this successfully. Any-old-mixture of items thrown together can look terrible. Though this is an area where people make very different judgements. Other people may greatly admire an outfit that I think looks awful 😀

Develop your skill. Experiment by putting together colours/ patterns/ shapes/ styles that you don’t think will work, that are supposed to be ‘wrong’ together, and see if you like/ enjoy/ have fun with the result.
Try some barely noticeable integration. Perhaps mainly blue toned colours, like the top photos. Or mainly yellow toned colours. Or smaller amounts of varied colours mixed with a lot of black white grey and metallics, like the lower photo.

Here’s a You Tube from Iris Apfel about her love of accessories.

Sadly I haven’t seen any students round here looking like this. (Current popular look is very short denim shorts over black leggings.)

Using clashing accessories does look a fun style, but not one I would be comfortable wearing myself.
I may blog but I’ve never aimed for attention grabbing !

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Which of these accessory styles is more to your taste ?
What colours/ materials/ shapes/ sizes/ amount of variety do you enjoy wearing for your accessories ?

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Links available October 2012

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Categories: personal style

Comments: 2 Comments

Style interest from accessories rather than clothes ?

September 28, 2012

Many of us focus on clothes with interesting style elements – each garment is different. The pattern companies encourage us in this, so we go on buying more patterns. And many of us like to make something ‘different’ each time we sew.

But there’s a completely different approach to ‘looking interesting’. Janice of The Vivienne Files has one of her thought provoking pieces, on a ‘creative’ group of people who wear ultra-basic clothes, and add all the interest with accessories – scarves, hats, belts, jewellery, eyeglasses, gloves, socks, shoes. . .

Here’s her post. She picks a basic wardrobe to use as an ‘unnoticed’ background for interesting accessories.

Emphasise the quality – this needn’t be a way of looking cheap and scruffy.

These base garments are very simple to copy.

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The wardrobe

Janice picks 12 items, in 4 groups of 3 :

Sweater knits – turtleneck (UK polo neck), classic twinset – all in black
Cashmere to underline the quality. There’s a lot of poor quality cashmere in catalogues and on-line – feels worse than good merino wool. You do need to touch and handle it to find the good stuff. Only then do you understand why cashmere is such a prestige fibre.

”black-knits”

Crew neck tees – white, grey, black

”3-tees”

Shirts – white, chambray, and shirt jacket in denim

”denim-shirts”

(Judith Rasband in a recent e-mail advocated classic denim shirts and relaxed fit white silk shirts as good additions to any wardrobe this season.
P.S. Janice has multiple other outfit suggestions for wearing a denim shirt, here.)

Pants – chinos and slim jeans/ pants – tan, black, dark indigo

”pants”

(Several stylists recommend adding to your jeans this season.)

Photos from J. Crew – of course you can get similar basics from many sources.

(P.S. This wardrobe has focus on cool colour – blue. Janice has now posted a similar basic wardrobe in warm colours here. It’s a bit short on layers for me – I would add a tan shirt-jacket.)

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Patterns

Even for the most basic styles, it’s a good idea to use recent patterns – for current proportions and shoulder shaping.

(I’ve assumed you buy the sweater knits.)

Crew neck tee (instead use your most flattering neckline).

Kwik Sew Kwik Start 3766.

”ks3766”

Palmer-Pletsch new unisex shirt (make a larger size with flapped chest pockets for a shirt jacket), McCall’s 6613.

”m6613”

Many other shirt patterns available if you want something with a bit more individuality. And many independent designers have tee/ shirt/ pant patterns with interesting details. But that isn’t the point here. These clothes are background – basics which don’t draw attention, so they don’t distract from the individual choice of accessories.

Chinos, Palmer-Pletsch McCall’s 6361.

”m6361”

Slim pants and jeans, Butterick 5682.

”b5682”

Or use Wendy Mullin’s Sew U and Sew U Home Stretch pattern books – she’s an example of a designer who aims for a ‘creative’ customer group. Her books are about being creative with clothes, but the starting points she gives are the most basic styles.

”sewucombo”

Classic shirts and jeans can be quite challenging to sew. It’s possible to start with similar but much easier styles, such as beginner patterns :

Kwik Sew Kwik Start 3475 camp shirt.

”ks3475”

Kwik Sew Kwik Start 3314 elastic waist pants with side-seam pockets.

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Does this idea appeal ? or does the thought of having to wear such simple casuals appall you 😀 Don’t forget people using this approach look much more interesting than the clothes in the basic wardrobe, as they add their individual accessories.

Getting style interest by wearing the simplest clothes and adding all the creativity in accessories is the opposite of all the books and independent patterns which tell you how to use a simple starting point to make a wide variety of clothes styles.

There are of course many ways of adding more variety to a small group of clothes. I have a post planned on some of them.

Also very easy to change this clothing group to different personal styles, by changing the shirt-jacket to a more arty or prettier jacket style, or replacing it with a blazer. Post planned on this.

If you do like this approach – what are your favourite accessories, to add interest to these very basic clothes ?
I have a post planned about accessory styles.

Well, are you an accessories person ? Have you got a closet full of bags, or shoes, hats, scarves, belts, gloves, statement jewellery. . . Would these simple garments be a way for you to build the most basic of wardrobe starting points, to use as background to all these exciting elements ?

Or perhaps you’re someone who has difficulty picking up any interest in accessories, and find clothes with minimum style elements very boring 😀

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Patterns and links available September 2012

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Wheee – 150 posts (since August 2009).
As I don’t include huge photos, videos, music – I’ve only used 0% of my allocated blog storage space ! Efficiency habits go back not just to the days of dial-up connection, but 30 years ago to my first ever personal computer (a Commodore PET) which had 32k of memory and no hard drive. . .

Thanks for your continuing interest 😀 😀 😀 😀 😀

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Categories: personal style, specific capsules

Comments: 18 Comments

My choices for a/w 2012 : new BMV patterns

September 15, 2012

This season I’ve just picked for myself, not patterns of general interest.
There are some marvellous new Vogue designer patterns for people who want to look both stunning and professional. But I’m past that stage of my life.

I keep saying this, but I wear big shirts and vests – a look that does appear on the runway and in many stores – though the fashion journalists rarely mention it and the wardrobe planners never do. Happily the pattern companies cater well for my tastes, even if the fashion writers don’t !

Here’s some of the new possibilities.

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Big shirts

I love a yoked shirt – works well for my personal style and my body shape.
The yoke gives a bit of definition to my skimpy shoulders.
And the gathers below allow a trim slim look over the shoulders combined with extra fabric to cover my hips.

I also prefer a style that closes up to the neck, rather then a V-neck. I feel the cold, it suits my face shape better, and it gives a bit of dimension to the front of a garment – needed as I have a small bust.

Here’s a couple of very different styles.

A big loose shirt with choice of 3 necklines, 2 sleeves and 2 hems (similar big yoke at back), McCall’s 6605.

”m6605”

Best to wear leggings or slim pants with such a big top, if you don’t want to look like a balloon !

By contrast, here’s a neat slim fit, Butterick 5826.

”b5826”

Possible to wear a much wider range of pant leg widths with a closer fitting style like this.

I also like an inset yoke and a smock style, but patterns for those are mainly from Simplicity/ New Look.

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Big tops

For wovens – the front of this drape style (left) is cut on the bias, McCall’s 6604.

”m6604”

Butterick 5816 has multiple options.

”b5816”

If you like the comfort of big loose tops, here are wide poncho-like styles for indoor wear, 3 necklines including a hoodie, 4 sleeves, 2 hems, McCall’s 6603.

”m6603”

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Vests and sleeveless tops

An easy-wear extra layer of warmth without encumbering the arms.

Here’s a fairly conventional vest pattern – ah, no, it has actually got both bust and back neck darts ! Looks spectacular made in fur (and fur gilets are high fashion). Large enough to layer over a fitted jacket, Vogue 8838.

”v8838-1”

(Safari and trench styled vests are also current. And closely fitted tailored versions.)

Or a deep cowl sleeveless layering knit tunic with 3 hems by Nancy Zieman, McCall’s 6607.

”m6607”

Leave off the cowl, add a scarf instead, change neckline/ add collar if you’re adventurous – many easy style changes.

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Piecing and Jackets

Many crafters like the challenge of pieced jackets. Modern ones are made with areas of different tones of similar solid fabrics, rather than myriad small pieces of patterned patchwork fabrics.

(P.S. though see the Givenchy Resort 2013 collection for some fantastic piecing and fabric combining.)

There’s a multi-fabric option for the jacket with the fur vest, Vogue 8838. The skill involved in making that back will only be appreciated by other sewers !

”v8838-2”

There’s also a new jacket from Marcy Tilton, Vogue 8839. For knits including fleece. It has a short cascade collar, more flattering for my small busted top. And interesting options for combining fabrics. A bit straight up and down for my shape, I might add some flare.

”v8839”

Somewhat similar – the new style multi-fabric shirt has each pattern piece in a different solid fabric (collar, placket, yoke, etc.). Not the main pattern sections (front, back, sleeves) pieced from multiple fabrics. (Or use large rather than small areas of fabric for your ‘piecing’.)

Use your favourite classic shirt pattern, or there’s a new version of the Palmer-Pletsch unisex shirt, McCall’s 6613.

”modcloths”
(These examples aren’t the Palmer-Pletsch pattern, they’re from Modcloth.)

And there are multi-fabric options for the Butterick 5816 top.

Not pieced (though it could be) : a new pattern for my usual shape of jacket – Connie Crawford Butterick 5828.

”b5828”

Or exaggerate the size – Style.com says oversized coats are a big fashion idea for this a/w.

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Bag

I’m a fan of Marcy Tilton bags, this one is Vogue 8843. But what’s with the big green leaf ? I confess I didn’t notice the bag at first, and thought the pattern was for a leaf shaped bag. Not something to take on the bus in the rush hour !

”v8843”

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Finally a skirt

There are many attractive new pants patterns this season, from very slim to wide. But I only wear one style of pants, simple classics – slightly tapered or slightly more tapered. I haven’t got the right shape legs for leggings, but I do need to look for a slim pair of pants, to have the current proportions with those big tops. Hmmm. . . Palmer-Pletsch McCall’s 6440 is not new but recent.

There is a pattern which might entice me back to skirt wearing – a long skirt with matching jacket, Vogue 8841. I could wear this round here without looking odd. Slightly shorter jacket is like the proportions of skirts and jackets in the early 20th century, my favourite historic period for style.

”v8841”