Change style by changing jacket

Posted October 13, 2012 by sewingplums
Categories: co-ordinates, personal style

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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Comments: 6 Comments

Extreme accessories ?

Posted October 6, 2012 by sewingplums
Categories: personal style

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
”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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Comments: 2 Comments

Style interest from accessories rather than clothes ?

Posted September 28, 2012 by sewingplums
Categories: personal style, specific capsules

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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Comments: 18 Comments

Touches of high fashion for a/w 2012

Posted September 22, 2012 by sewingplums
Categories: current fashion

I’ve been lazy about images. For lots of photos of runway styles, look at the Style.com (US Vogue) Trend Report for the a/w 2012 season.
Also the UK Elle Trend Report.
UK In Style has separate reports on each fashion city, if you want to be reminded that the fashion journalists pick out a small selection of possibilities from a huge variety of styles.

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Fabrics
Brocade is the season’s big idea for a patterned fabric.
Fur used in unusual ways, such as sleeves or yokes only, or inset strips.

Patterns and embellishments
brocades again.
Chinese inspired.
baroque arabesques.
geometric patterns with right angles.
big dark florals.
leopard and python animal skins.
glued or sewn jewels or metal plates/ studs.

Pant and skirt suits made with top and bottom in the same print/ non-classic weave.
Or the opposite – make different sections of the garment in different prints.

Colours
(For the Fall 2012 Pantone Report scroll down the left side of their site to Features.)

Red in all its shades, but especially berry, is the key colour for this season.
Black leather and lace is neo-Goth.
Silver, especially in accessories and hard-edged minimalist ‘futuristic’ clothes styles.
Gold, especially in added baroque pattern.

Shapes
Oversize coats.
Bow-neck blouses.
Waist emphasis – peplums, padded hips, waist belts from narrow to wide cinch.
Jumpsuits – though just with a bib front as in overalls/ dungarees, not a complete top with back and sleeves.

Style details (this season’s ‘masculine’ styles)
Military – browns, olives, or brights for colour.
Equestrian – leather and high boots.

Accessories
Clutch purse.
Mule shoes, ankle boots.
Snoods, neck rings, fun fur scarves.

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These are the key trends picked out by US Vogue and UK Elle, but if you look through all the runway shows you can find designers who support most style enthusiasms 😀

Different fashion writers can pick out different themes.
Here’s Angie of You Look Fab’s similar summary of the season.
Here’s an update on Angie’s must-haves for this season.
There’s a rather different selection of trends from Connie Crawford here.
Here are Nancy Nix-Rice’s wearable ideas on the season’s trends.
With lots of inspirational current outfit photos from her here.

As usual, there are possibilities to suit many tastes. And not to worry – go your own way if nothing appeals !

For more focus on casual clothes, it can help to look at the ‘resort’ collections.

Eek, on the insider sites, the 2012 autumn-winter runway collections are now ‘old news’. You can already look at the 2013 spring-summer collections if you want to be really fashion forward ! (Style.com, firstVIEW, Tom and Lorenzo)

Actually, you can only impress people with your high style if they know the same fashion references.
Nancy Erickson had a quote from Chanel in her July/August newsletter :
“A really well dressed woman. . . should be able to pass through a motley crowd unnoticed, but should create a mild sensation on entering a drawing room among the knowing elite.”

Perhaps your favourite ‘knowing elite’ is not clothes high spenders in expensive drawing rooms or on the red carpet, but top professionals, sports fans, vintage lovers, goths, gym users, cafe-bar party goers, people in the countryside, at art gallery openings, music festivals.

Is that important to you ?
or celebrate the creativity and skill shown on the runways, and treat it all as entertainment 😀

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Links available September 2012

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Comments: 4 Comments

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