Filed Under : | Why, I’m even talking about this I don’t know. I was emailed this by BlogLovin. *Sigh* You know I wish stuff like this would just stop. It’s so unhealthy to the blogging community. Yet again, the same tired people (year in and year out) no diversity what so ever. People bringing their ‘high-school popularity contest’ mentality onto the web. Don’t see how crap like this benefits the fashion/personal style blogging community. I also do not see ANY diversity in this line-up. I don’t see any African-Americans or Hispanics bloggers. I do not see bloggers that focus on affordable fashion or Plus size fashions, and what’s up with the reality TV actress, really, I mean really? This is just a numbers / traffic game for BlogLovin’. I can’t! What are your thoughts? |
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Category : Fashion Rant
| I wrote this post in February of 2009 and felt like I needed to pull this out of the archives today!
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 People make careers out of pestering women with stupid rules about what they can and can’t wear and where they should and shouldn’t shop. Ordaining themselves self-appointment experts and running around the blogosphere promoting their so-called expertise. Hitting folks over the head and shaking their bony little fingers of authority at the women who dare not to play by the “rules”. They’re all quite dreadful, really. Wasting energy trying to control what other people put on their own bodies instead of focusing that energy on something more productive. Independent women will always do what they want when it comes to their choice in dress, hair and make-up. Keywords here is ‘their choice’ not someone else’s. |
No style manual trying to have more importance then the constitution can enforce or change that. Well, they might get a few newbies to buy-in but if their own sense of style is very strong, those “rules” will start going to the wayside pretty quickly and the next thing you know that $50 style manual of ‘dos and don’t’ is up for sale on Ebay.  Now, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with purchasing a style guide, in my opinion, and I use that term loosely – but guide means just that, it’s all relative not absolute. What leaves my nose upturned like I just walked by a dumper of rotten fish guts is rules of what someone thinks a woman should definitely “not” wear or where they should definitely “not” shop – if they’re tall, short, fat, skinny, old or young. Ask yourself this: “who’s money is it?” Who worked hard for it? Shouldn’t a person be able to spend their hard earned money any way they want?I also wish younger women would stop using that same tired, reharshed excuse that women are trying to recapture their youth if they decided to purchase a top at Forever21. Give it a rest! It’s been used so many times, in discussions like this, its starting to become standard defacto. Just a weak, overused, ideology used by the fashion industry to control what women put on their backs. |
Yawn….I’m falling asleep on that lame excuse. Sarah Jessica Parker looked incredible in everything she wore in that movie. She would give any twentysomething a run for their money and I bet ya they absolutely HATE it because she twenty years older and still FIERCE! This chick is so bad, her body is better then a whole lot of twenty and thirty year olds, shame on them for not staying on top of their game! Kudos to Patricia Field (SATC stylist) for having the insight and guts to buck the nonsense called “age-appropriate dressing”. People can easily become jealous of one another and this “age-appropriate” dressing babble, again I believe, a way for the industry to control independent thinking women who are secure enough and confident enough to own their look. I say let people dress however they want to dress, if you can’t be happy for someone who is happy with themselves and their fashion choices, then just mind your business, stop trying to throw weak-ass shade and direct that wasted energy on doing something positive and meaningful instead of being obsessed with what the next woman is wearing. I’m sure who ever they are, they not wasting a minute of their time thinking about y.o.u. |
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French Elle Features Plus Size Beauty
Apr.7,2010| French Elle does a Plus Size edition! I think this is great and definitely a step in the right direction, even though I don’t think this issue is really going to move the industry to sudden change. Baby steps right! However, where is the love for the size 4-6-8-10-12 women? Why must magazine go from one extreme to the next. From featuring exclusively sizes 00 to 2 only then leap over to size 16 and up! Where is the issue for the women from size 4 to 12? Why are women in the misses category always neglected when it comes to talking about and featuring real-size women in fashion mags? |
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Got this comment today. Okay, why am I catching heat because I prefer to wear leather shoes?
Well dang, hello to you too lady! Look, I don’t condone the abuse or killing of animals that are not in a state where they are naturally going to died due to age or sickness. I do not wear fur, I don’t make a habit of buying leather handbags or bags made from the skins of exotic animals or reptiles. I do my best not to purchase products that are tested on animals.
Yes, I buy leather shoes because most PVC shoes hurt my feet and the fabrication with the majority of these shoes are horrible. Most PVC manufacturers mass produce their shoes to sell under $25 dollars. There are sizing issues, the shoes are put together with cheap glue so they fall apart quicker, etc…..it’s a long list of woes. I did a whole review on these brands 2 years ago. There are, in my opinion, many problems with the way these shoes are crafted and how this non-breathable material is used. I would love it if some of the leading shoe manufacturers took the time to create well-made vegan shoes. I would switch over in a heart beat if I knew my feet would not be cut-up, bleeding or forming corns and bunions due to ill-fitting shoes. I don’t want any animals to be hurt and I also don’t want my feet to be torn to shreds screaming “hammertime” either. Is there a happy medium in all of this?
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| WTH – Check out this story about H&M and Wal-Mart destroying bags and bags of unsold clothing instead of marking it all the way down and throwing it on a clearance bin or better yet giving it away to a Homeless Shelter. I know this has been common practice for a lot of stores for years now, but with more than half this country still weighted down behind this recession, I just think this it is downright shameful that this is still going on; knowing that most consumers are struggling and are looking for deep discounts in the store, so they can save money to buy food or pay their freakin mortgage or rent! |  Cynthia Magnus holds up unworn, destroyed clothing she found in the garbage. Photo by Suzanne DeChillo/New York Times |
| These big box retailers beg us to spend our money but they are throwing away merchandise instead of marking it down to say $0.50 or something; so that families who are struggling can buy items for their kids and themselves. Instead they chose to cut up and destroy brand new clothes and throw it away, just to preserve the name of their brand from being found in second hand stores. How selfish and short-sighted is that – H&M! Your clothes are not all that, you are not a high-end retailer so what’s the problem! Now they got caught with their pants down so they want to back peddle and tell the media NOW they’ll be donating the clothing from now on. Typical damage-control!
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Definitely Not a Shoe Snob….but
Nov.10,2009
I’m definitely not a shoe snob but I don’t want a closet full of PVC shoes either. A co-worker of mine asked me yesterday how many shoes I owned. I told her around 75 pairs (excluding boots and flats) and that I rotate them out so it’s never more then 70 to 75 pairs at one time. She told me that she owned 200 pairs of shoes. Now I’ve seen the type of shoes she wears and the majority of them are PVC brands like Anne Michelle, Delicious, Wild Diva, etc.
Though, there is nothing wrong with these brands because they are very affordable (most under $25), they do keep up with the latest trends and some are decent dupes of designer offerings. My personal issue with these brands most of the time is fabrication. That makes me reluctant to have a lot of these kind of shoes in my closet.
A few pair here and there is fine, no biggie. I have like five pairs from F21 and they buy from shoe manufacturers like Qupid, Wild Diva, Anne Michelle, and Michael Antonio and just stick their logo on it.
However, at some point I need to be able to resell my shoes. I have better luck if it’s a mid-priced brand (Nine West, Guess, Aldo) that most women are familiar with in terms of quality, sizing, etc. Plus, I have been able to find mid-priced shoes on sale or clearance at the same or a few dollars over the price of the PVC ones at stores like Ross for Less, the clearance rack at T.J. Maxx, Amazon, and some department stores as well. I’m all about saving money but if I can pick up a pair of Guess shoes for $28 dollars vs. a PVC shoe at $24, I mean that’s a no-brainer, go for the better made shoes for the extra $4 bucks. If you’re a good bargain shopper you can find these deals and you won’t have to resort to stocking your entire shoe rack with non-leather shoes. Again, there is nothing wrong with buying PVC shoes, some of the manufacturers like Qupid are making better looking shoes and using better materials. I just think it’s a good idea to have a nice mix and selection of brands in different price points.
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Man, I really, really miss the Dillard’s Clearance Center. The store closed in my city late last year I believe. I use to be able to get some really great deals in there on beautiful quality clothing. That was a way for me to get a few designer names on the cheap. Especially when they had their additional 50% to 70% markdowns. When Fall was approaching I knew I would be able to get quite a few expensive boots for under $20. This was a great resource for me. When the sub-par mall that they were housed in switched owners, they closed down and now the nearest one is like a 2.5 hour away in a whole other city. I keep hoping that they will turn one of their existing stores into an outlet (especially since they were rumored to have financial problems last year) or see the need to keep an outlet store in my city. Below are pictures of the store I took in ’06 or ’07 |
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Typical Stuff
I'm a fortysomething year old hard working mom that loves fashion, but my purse strings ain't so flexible! My 20 year old son is off at college, so I got some time on my hands *wink* Now that you got the 5 second rundown; pull up a chair, get that Latte and browse around.
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Chinese Laundry
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Jessica Simpson Shoes
H & M
Kohl's
JC Penney
Macy's
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Ross Dress for Less
Guess
New York & Company
Newport-News
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Old Navy
Nordstroms Rack
Old Navy
Sears
Spiegel
Steve Madden
The Gap
TJ Maxx
Twelve by Twelve
Target.com
Am A Fashion Blogger: Vote for Me! Yeah Okay…
Not only that I’ve come to realization that I really don’t think it’s healthy to promote a ‘spirit of competition’ over who should be deemed ‘most stylish’ blogger. Especially among very young bloggers, don’t they have enough pressure in the real world, why drag that foolishness on-line as well. I use to vote for people before I started thinking this thing through, now I don’t. It just feels to high school and has the distinct smell of popularity contest. I’m just a little too old to be getting involved with stuff like that and quite frankly I think it’s stupid and counterproductive. I want to keep progressing with my blog interaction not regressing.
I have always believed the internet should be an open media or forum for anyone to express themselves creatively and not be judged (contest or otherwise) or categorized. When I first started interacting with other college students socially on the internet back in ’97-’98 it was so much fun and it was just a really grassroots geeky kind of thing with no commercial undertones in the background. Now you have to be careful what you get involved in on the web because so many commercial and retail companies are duping bloggers into participating in ‘who’s the best’ contest or any other gimmick they run through their company’s blog as a marketing angle to push a product or service or through other websites they have paid agreements with.
I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with direct business partnerships between commercial entities and bloggers if the product and services fit within the range of that blogger’s core readership. However, why run around the blogosphere ‘begging for votes’ and exerting energy to ultimately benefit someone or something else? Emailing everybody and their momma’s momma, just asking anybody for a vote, with a line, gimmick or sob story on their blog, facebook or twitter account to solicit votes. I’ve even heard of someone offering a expensive handbag as a giveaway/trade for votes, I was like my goodness, is it that serious? As I said previously, I don’t like the competition thing where you’re pegging your blogs against others to see who can get more shine. Everybody’s style and content SHOULD vary and those readers you appeal to will come, visit, read and enjoy. Everything else is gravy.
I also don’t feel like I have to be in constant competition mode or participating in things where I have to ‘beg for votes’ to progress with my blog. This is me, either you like my style or you don’t. I’m not going to do the ‘dog and pony’ show and give up exclusive rights to my images and my content thinking that a bigger sites is going to ‘blow me up’ or give me crazy exposure. IMO that can easily water down a quality site. I know a person can quickly get caught-up in it all – this fashion blogging thing, but sometimes you have to do a self-check and get back to basics and remember what was great about blogging in the first place. Keeping it simple and enjoying the art of blogging whether you have 3 visitors or 300,000. It can make the experience much more rewarding and certainly a lot more pleasant.
From Budget Chic – How to do Fashion On A Budget, post Am A Fashion Blogger: Vote for Me! Yeah Okay…
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