Shop Your Closet: Little Black Dress Club

I am apart of a fabulous club called The Little Black Dress Club. It is a great social club for professional women of all ages and backgrounds to come together and bond as women. Anyways, for this particular event that we went to, we had to wear our "little black dress", hence the name of the club. Unfortunately, due to my weight going up and down, I can no longer fit any of my black dresses, and I can't buy anymore. So this is where I have to become creative. I decided to piece together my long sleeve black lace shirt (the one I wore on NY) with a high wasted black pencil skirt and a chunky waist belt. Instead of wearing a bra under the lace, I just layered a spaghetti strapped tank top. And since I love color and couldn't possible wear just all black, I decided to place a red rose in my hair and red earrings with black shoes. I must say I was happy with how it all turned out.
                                                                       

Shop Your Closet: New York Fashion Week

So here I am, in New York, at Fashion Week no less, so I needed an outfit that was dying to impress. To reach this task, I decided to go with my long sleeve black lace shirt, with tuxedo jacket, and shiny black dress slacks. For a pop of color, I decided to top it off with my red fedora style hat. And since the shirt is lace, I placed a black bra up under it, just for that extra spice of sexiness. I must say, that I was very pleased with my choice. What do you think?

NYC Bound

Recently I have received an opportunity to fly to New York to attend New York Fashion Week, and obviously, I couldn't pass it up. Lots of fashion, tons of excitement, and the hustle and bustle of a real major city is just what I needed. The downside is that I had to stay true to my shopping fast. You see, the old me would have ran to the mall and gotten all types of new outfits to wear on my vacation. But the new me, was not allowed so I had to become inventive. So I devised a plan to still showcase my fabulous fashion sense without spending a dime. I call it the external closet method.

The basis behind the external closet method is to actually see everything that you are packing all at once before you put it into the suitcase. I devised the plan because I'm known to be a bit of an overpacker. With this method, I used a clothing rack and actually hung all of my clothes and shoes on and then I decided if I really needed everything I pulled out. I noticed that I had a lot of extra clothes, or duplicates (such as the same type of sweater in a different color) that I just didn't need. But there were some things that I did pack that are essential to any vacation.

1) The Blazer - It goes over any shirt and can quickly change the look of any outfit just by using the layering technique. Also the blazer being very practical if it starts of being warm in the day and chilly in the evening. Just throw it on and your outfit goes from day to night in a instant.

2) The Everything Shoe - This is the shoe that goes with anything. Day to evening, warm to cold, it is the go to shoe. For my trip, I had two of pair of these shoes. The first one was my tall black boots. I could were them with my jeans or with my skirt and tights and they were super comfortable. The second pair were my black heels. If I wanted to dress up my jeans or hit the town in my dress pants, they were the perfect choice.

3) The Trusty Jean- You can dress them up or dress them down and they still look amazing. I prefer the skinny jean. It tucks nicely into my boots, great with my flats, and perfect with the cute shoes that I want to show off in the evening.

4) The Colored Tank- It goes under any sweater of shirt for that pop of color that you need.

I followed my external closet method and I ended up packing less that I would have normally packed and still had all of the choices that I needed to make excellent outfits on my trip. This is definitely how I will pack for any vacation I have from here on out.

Recap: January 2012

This was the first official month of my shopping fast, and I must say that it got off to a pretty rocky start. There were so many tempations with the after Christmas sales and new stores opening for the new year. But I am happy to report that I maintained my ground and sucessfully completed this month of my shopping fast! YAY!! Not only that, but I have also paid off one of my major debts off of my credit report. One down and eleven more to go. February involves all sorts of challenges with me taking a trip to New York for Fashion Week (super excited)!! So stay tuned, its only going to get better from here.