Setting the Stage for 2015

This year I am participating in the Goodbye Valentino 2015 RTW Fast and Colette's Wardrobe Architect challenge.  I am hoping that the Wardrobe Architect Challenge will help me to define and reflect on my core style and that the RTW Fast will help me execute it.

Here are my responses to two prompts from the first round of Wardrobe Architect questions:

In what way does body image inform your clothing choices?


My relationship to clothes vis-a-vis body image...ahhhhh, where to begin? It's complicated for every woman.  For the last 15 years, I haven't been too happy with my body and am always planning to lose those pesky 15 lbs  in my rear, hips, and thighs. Of course, this impacts the way I shop.  I almost never buy pants (let alone try them on) since they never fit my proportions:  small waist and big bum.  When I do buy RTW, it's usually fit and flare dresses or knit tops.

How has your personal history and culture informed the way you dress?

My mom is my style icon. As my mother, she is one of the primary repositories of my personal history and the "architect" of my cultural attachments...not to mention, it was her pocketbook that provided my clothes for my first 20 years! Thus, it makes sense that her own French identity and the way that identity has manifested itself in her sartorial choices has trickled down to me. 

My parents at our rehearsal dinner

Several years ago, i found a pack of letters she wrote my grandmother from her first year in South Carolina in 1977.  At the time, she was in Columbia for a one-year post grad engineering internship. Her wardrobe was important, as she was one of the only professional female engineers in the office AND she was young and attractive.  In one letter, she wrote that she had been to Atlanta recently and had  in fact purchased some clothes for the office--but, not to worry, she had found clothes that were appropriately French (read: not American) and had been pleasantly surprised by their quality and low price.  

Hmm...lots of resemblances here

 Although South Carolina has now been her home for 30+ years, she still dresses with the same style, that is to say very "BCBG."  (That's "Bon Chic Bon Genre," not the mainstream designer.)  So, yes, I am in the (un?)enviable position of having a sophisticated Parisienne as my benchmark!