Interesting Post About J. Crew at youlookfab.com

Angie at youlookfab.com (an always fun and informative site) posted a blog entry today called "Your Opinion About J. Crew". To read all of the 35+ interesting comments that have piled up, go here.   I quote (and they're her choice of pictures, too):

I remember J. Crew as the chain store that was a cut above the rest. They were not mainstream like Banana Republic, Gap or Anne Taylor and there was definitely a level of exclusivity associated with the brand. Their preppy and fashionable products were more expensive, but the quality and drape was impeccable. When you bought an item from J. Crew, you knew you had something fairly special that would last and look good for several seasons. J. Crew also hardly ever went on sale, sticking to two main markdowns a year.
Unfortunately, my impression of J. Crew has changed over the last few seasons because I think they’ve decided to become more mainstream. I’m still super excited when I receive their state of the art catalogs because the colours and ensemble combinations are innovative, attractive and inspiring. But when I get to stores with my clients, I’m usually disappointed because the look, feel and fit does not pack the same punch. The prices are lower than they used to be, but the quality and overall integrity of the merchandise has gone downhill too.
Don’t get me wrong, J. Crew still offers fantastic products and I have a few hanging in my wardrobe. But part of me misses what I know as the old J. Crew. I’ve only lived in America for six years so my perception might be distorted. Am I being unduly harsh? Or am I mistaken that their products used to have more crispness and panache? Do you think the merchandise lives up to the catalog?

Current J. Crew CEO, Mickey Drexler, used to run Gap INC. I can’t help but wonder whether his strategy is to move J. Crew to a more mainstream target audience.

What say you, JCA's?

Interesting Post About J. Crew at youlookfab.com

Follow-up Report on JC Customer Service

Hey folks!

Just a quickie to report a happy ending to the tale of the wee, tiny Featherweight Cashmere Short-Sleeved Cardigan I had to return.  You may remember that a Final Sale size XS (at LEAST -- maybe XXS!) arrived at my home erroneously tagged as a size M.  I blogged about this here.  JC customer service was great, and authorized me to return it, of course.  I returned the mis-sized sweater to my usual JC B&M, then re-ordered it (catching my beloved Spicy Olive color on a Sunday popback, yay) and crossed my fingers.


The replacement arrived on Thursday and it's PERFECT.

And I got icing for the cake, too.   DH was out of town, DS #2 is back at college, so I took my DS #1 to dinner and then to my regular B&M on Thursday night for a new pair of jeans and a coveted sherpa fleece hoodie. (You KNOW I had to treat my boy to celebrate his having taken the MCAT -- he felt good about it, too  -- on Thursday after a whole summer of studying hard for it!!)  While my sweet boy was trying on jeans, I told a couple of the salesgals (who of course know me) about the happy ending to the itty bitty sweater story.

They hire some sneaky women at JC, I'm tellin' ya.  I discovered when we got home that when DS #1 and I checked out they'd tucked a $15 reward card into our bag, with a little note that said "Sorry about the cardi but glad you got the replacement!"

Above and beyond.  That's how they've built a great mousetrap. :-)

Follow-up Report on JC Customer Service

Review: J. Crew Dream Meribel Tunic Dress

I mentioned yesterday that I'd called around and found the "two doggies tee" at a B&M in a very nice but quiet and suburban "festival"-style strip mall here -- a tiny little JC store that I rarely visit.  So I buzzed over there to pick up the tee and ended up spending a really fun hour playing.  I went home with a few new goodies, notably this one:

The Dream Meribel Tunic Dress

 

 Here it is in camel.  Funky pose, I must say.

And in navy.  Definitely not a "hanger piece"... but read on!

J. Crew describes the dress this way:

This is a piece you'll reach for again and again—it's got the polish of our chicest dress combined with the coziness of our softest knits. Easy, effortless elegance perfect for work or play. Spun from a supersoft merino wool and cashmere blend (with more cashmere than ever) in a lofty 12-gauge knit. Merino wool/nylon/cashmere. Fitted. Scoopneck. Long sleeves. Hits at midthigh, 18 1/2'' from natural waist. Import. Dry clean.

I bought the dress in black, which must be B&M only, and the store also had it in light grey (sort of tee-shirt athletic grey).  There was a sign in the store identifying it as the "Meribel Tunic", and the dress I bought is tagged as style number 18295 which is, in fact, the Meribel dress.  But my receipt identified it as the "Moon Tunic Dress."  And get this -- it was marked down from $118 to $88.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this piece and highly recommend it, especially if you can snag it on sale as I did.

I imagine this dress is pretty in any color, but I must say that the black is truly an inky, true winter black. Yummy.

As you all know now, I'm a short-shinner girl and the length of this piece worn unbelted as a dress was perfect on me, hitting just a couple of inches or slightly less above my knee.  If you're taller or a long-shinner, you might find it slightly short for your taste, but read on because it is precious worn as a belted tunic over skinny pants or leggings with ballet flats, driving moccasins or boots.

The fit runs slightly large, I'd say.  A Small gave me plenty of room to layer something underneath, if I liked.

The Dream cashmere/merino blend is soft and lightweight enough to be wearable in my warm climate but heavy enough so that (especially in the darker colors) it doesn't cling to the body uncomfortably.  You'll notice in the online photos that the rearview shot of the model wearing this dress in camel does show a bit of silhouetting around the tush.  But nothing that Spanx couldn't totally cure, if you cared.

The sleeves are flatteringly narrow and have a very long knit cuff that rolls, folds and also pushes up to the elbow and stays nicely.  (See my post on "Skinny Bits", girls.  Show those forearms!)  I've got arms like a gorilla and the length was fine for me, but would also be easily adjustable for women with more humanly-average arms. ;-)

The scoopneck isn't too low to wear the dress alone, but it also is deeply-cut enough to allow for layering, which can make for a much more casual look.  The store displayed this piece in grey over the Ruffle-Front Herringbone-Print Perfect Shirt in riviera blue, and the blue/grey combo was stunning.  I tried the black over the Ruffle-Front Vine-Print Perfect Shirt in blossom and the effect was equally beautiful.  This particular Perfect Shirt, by the way (in both prints) is great for layering because the cotton/silk fabric is light and fluid.  For a slightly dressier layered look (and with the bonus of adding no extra bulk to your sleeves), we tried the sleeveless Frances cami and Kelsey top.  Both looked great and I especially liked the Kelsey top myself.  Again, the color choices for mixing and matching are endless.  I think the deeply-saturated colors like plum raisin would be gorgeous with the grey or camel dress.

We also belted the Meribel dress up (layered and by itself) and can I tell you how beyond adorable this dress is worn as a tunic??  I tried it over leggings (the best, we decided), over the Ankle Stretch Toothpick jeans that I had worn into the store (also very cute), and over the Minnie pants in black and khaki (this we liked but not as much). 

Finally, my PS and I played around with wearing this alone as a "little black dress" and glamming it up.   Both the Tiered Crystal Libretto necklace and the Crystal Symphony necklace much-loved by our pal A Bigger Closet looked beautiful with the dress.  We also layered those larger pieces with some of the smaller-scaled necklaces, as Jenna no doubt would do, and the effect was stunning.

Lesson learned big-time on this fun and unexpected shopping trip:  Visit smaller JC stores that aren't as heavily-trafficked.  While they can't stock as much merchandise, this store still had great things and almost every tee shirt that has been sold out at the larger B&M's here in Atlanta for weeks.  When I commented on that and told the manager how surprised I'd been to find the doggies tee, let alone all of these OTHER tees, she manager said "Yes, that happens to us a lot, and we wonder why more people don't FIND us out here."  I WILL from now on!

I took home the doggies tee, plus the Evening Primrose cardi and a very fun Skinny Studded Belt that I don't see on the website yet in a color called "Fresh Pear" that's the exact color of the splash of citron yellow in the EP cardi.  Look for it if you've bought that cardi or the EP silk top!

Review: J. Crew Dream Meribel Tunic Dress

Tips & Tricks: Using Your "Skinny Bits"

Well, girls, I've about used up my blog time this afternoon pathetically begging for my other blog (see my previous post :-)), but I do want to share with you quickly another of the many tips & tricks I learned in my years in the clothing biz.

This one's about your "Skinny Bits".

"Skinny Bits" is a rag trade term that refers to the two faithful parts of a woman's body that stay slim, no matter what, 99.9999% of the time.  No matter the shape of the rest of you, your Skinny Bits are always on standby to help you look taller, longer and leaner.  And they reliably work their magic every single time you ask them to.  I always thought "Skinny Bits" was a wonderful, well-deserved, vaguely British, fabulously cheeky-sounding term to use to name two such magnificent body parts. 

Your Skinny Bits are:

• Your forearms from mid-elbow down and
• Your upper chest and neck; specifically, the V-shaped area that starts just at the top of a little peek of cleavage (that's the bottom of the V) and extends upward in a fairly narrow V to include your upper chest, a bit of collarbone area and your neck.
  

For some mysterious reason my partner and I always had a lot of short women as customers, and "Skinny Bits" became their second favorite fashion trick (right behind "Find Your Perfect Skirt Length").

The trick is all about creating the illusion of more length, leanness, and height for you using visual "V" silhouettes.  Here's how the Skinny Bits help you do this.

Your neck/chest Skinny Bit area helps to draw the human eye (the person looking at you, in other words) in the shape of a "V".  Your observer will naturally and not at all consciously be drawn to look from your shoulder to your other shoulder to your waist.  The impression that's subtly created is that YOU are "V"-shaped.  Oo-la-la, shades of Barbie.  Who doesn't want to have a tinier waist??  Your neck/chest SB also creates visual length for your neck, which is universally flattering to the face.  Of course, the easiest way to highlight the neck/chest Skinny Bit is by wearing V-necked blouses and cardigans (with a tiny bit of cami showing -- that's fine and doesn't break the visual line).  But don't worry if you're wearing a crew or scoop-necked top --- just create more visual length from your neck down (the illusion of a V-neck, if you will) by wearing mid-length necklaces that hang in that "V" shape.

Your forearms Skinny Bit also helps you create a subtle visual "V" shape -- this time, an inverted V that's formed by looking UP your arm (which hangs, of course, slightly away from your body), to your armpit, then down the side of your body back to your waist.  To get the human eye of your observer to travel that very flattering, very feminine inverted "V", simply push up your sleeves to just below the crook of your elbow.  Now your exposed, slim forearm (with a little eye-catching bling on it, perhaps) catches the eye, and starts the eye traveling UP to the elbow and thru the inverted "V" of this Skinny Bit.  The effect is to create a visually long, lean extension of your upper body.  Fabulous.  We used to tell our customers NEVER to wear their long-sleeved tops or casual jackets all the way to the wrist.  So girls, push those sleeves up and look at the difference in the mirror -- it's like you just lost 3 pounds, I'm tellin' ya.  If your sleeves are wide, fold them like you'd do the hem of jeans in the famous J. Crew "skinny fold".  The object is to have a slim-lined bunch of fabric at the elbow, not a big messy wad.

By the way, the existence of the universally-flattering forearm Skinny Bit is precisely why 3/4-length-sleeved henleys and tees look good on almost everyone!

One other tiny tip related to the forearm Skinny Bit:  When you buy a jacket, pay attention to how WIDE the sleeves are.  If they're bulky, especially below the elbow, have the sleeve tapered from top to bottom by a seamstress.  The technical term for this tapering (and you should ask to have this done with your trousers, too, when you have them hemmed, but that's a topic for another post) is "pegging" -- it means gradually narrowing from top to bottom, or in this case from shoulder to wrist.  Next time you try on a jacket in the store, fold back that wide sleeve and look at the difference in the mirror.  Once again, girls, this is one of those small expenditures that will make a HUGE difference in the way your clothes fit and look.

That's it for now -- nothing complex here, just a ridiculously simple but never-fail trick or two to make you feel and look like a tall(er) drink of cool water!

Tips & Tricks: Using Your "Skinny Bits"

Tips & Tricks: How to Decide Your Ideal Skirt Length (Part 2)

Hi again, everybody! In my previous post I mentioned that one of the things I learned in my years in the "high-end rag trade" was how to size and fit my customers proportionally correctly.  Believe it or not, your 'ideal skirt length' is something you can figure out to an exact mathematically-perfect measurement.  It's worth taking the time to do, because you're going to present your most well-groomed, elegant self when your skirts are proportionally correct for your body.

In a female body with ideal leg proportions (like the cute gal at left), the length of the upper leg (top of hipbone to mid-kneecap) and the length of the lower leg (mid-kneecap to mid-ankle bone) would be identical numbers.  But this body type -- we'll call her the "neutral-shinner" -- is pretty rare.  Almost all of us have some significant difference between our upper leg and the lower leg measurements.  The most common "leg type" among American women is long upper leg-short lower leg, which is what I have.  Call us "short-shinners".  The less common leg type is short upper leg-long lower leg ("long-shinners"). 

The result of our varying leg proportions is that we don't all look equally fabulous in the same skirt lengths, and you're about to understand why.

Don't assume you know your leg proportions just because of your height, by the way.  Whether you're short-shinned or long-shinned is not connected to how tall you are.  Go grab your tape measure and take your leg measurements (with a helper, if needed).  Here's how to do it:

• First, place your fingertip right on the protruding knobby outer part of your hipbone just below the navel.  (If you're having trouble finding this spot, think of your pelvic bone and hips as being shaped like a pair of "Mickey Mouse" ears, and now put your fingertip on the top outer edge of the Mickey Mouse ear.)

• Next, take your measuring tape, and measure precisely from the place where your fingertip is resting on your hipbone straight down the outside of your leg to the middle of your kneecap.  This is your upper leg length.  Mine's 17 inches.

• Now place your fingertip onto the middle of your kneecap -- right where you ended the upper leg measurement -- and slide your fingertip out carefully from there, in a straight line, to the outside edge of your kneecap.  Starting from that exact place, measure straight down to the middle of your ankle bone.  That's your lower leg length.  Mine's 13 inches.  I have 4 inches less leg on the bottom than on the top.  I am a classic short-shinner.
  

Now, try to imagine me in a skirt -- any style -- that hits me at my knee or hovers just below my knee.  No matter what shoes I am wearing, I will still look like I'm Ms. Frump standing in a hole.  This is because when you look at me, I'm all skirt.  Visually, my legs seem to appear out from underneath this long piece of fabric and abruptly disappear too soon!

I'll use myself as an example to illustrate how to use the formula for figuring out how long your skirts should be:

• LONGER leg length (for me, that's the upper leg at 17 inches) minus SHORTER leg length (for me, that's the lower leg at 13 inches) = DIFFERENCE (for me, 4 inches) -- This is the "discrepancy" between your leg proportions.

• Half of DIFFERENCE (for me, 4) = YOUR MAGIC NUMBER.  For me, the MAGIC NUMBER is 2 inches -- In other words, if my shins were 2 inches longer and my thighs were 2 inches shorter, my upper and lower legs would be perfectly proportional.

• To VISUALLY correct your leg proportions if you're a short-shinner:  Raise your skirt hem ABOVE the middle of your kneecap exactly the same number of inches as your "MAGIC NUMBER."

• To VISUALLY correct your leg proportions if you're a long-shinner:  Drop your hemline BELOW the middle of your kneecap by exactly the same number of inches as your "MAGIC NUMBER". 

Thus, for me, if I place my skirt hem 2 inches above the middle of my kneecap, then when you look at my leg silhouette you see 50% skirt and 50% leg.  A visually-perfected, more eye-pleasing proportion!  When I figured this out,

Once I understood my "MAGIC NUMBER", I applied it to all of my clothes.  Miniskirts and 5"-inseam shorts became my friends for life.  (And by the way, this little mystery was forever solved for me:  Why I Look Like Crap in Bermuda Shorts. ;-))  I do keep a couple of business suits hemmed just a shade longer because there are certainly situations in which we need to err on the side of conservative clothing. 

If you're a long-shinner, you need to wear your skirts longer to visually correct the proportions of your short thighs and long shins.  You look great in Bermuda shorts, too, but not shorter shorts for the same mathematical and visual reason.

Try these tips for yourselves, everybody.  I promise you it will change the way you strategically view your entire lower-body wardrobe.  Short-shinners, pin up some of your knee-length skirts.  Long-shinners, put away your 5" shorts and minis and try on a pair of Bermudas or a pencil skirt.  Now  look in the mirror at the difference.  Hem your skirts to your "correct length" if they need hemming.  Pay for it if you don't sew.  I'll tell you what I told my clothing customers for years:  If you pay top dollar for a great skirt and it looks mediocre on you, you've wasted every nickel.  But if you spend an extra $15 to have that skirt hemmed to the perfect length for your body, your off-the-rack great skirt will look like a $1,000 custom-tailored skirt. 
 
That's the basics, y'all!  If you have any specific questions feel free to comment or e-mail me at jcauncmom@gmail.com.   Hope this has been a fun and helpful read, and happy measuring!!

Tips & Tricks: How to Decide Your Ideal Skirt Length (Part 2)

Tips & Tricks: How To Decide Your Ideal Skirt Length (Part I)

Good afternoon, everybody!

I am recuperating from a bout of weirdly off-season out-of-nowhere bronchitis, which totally wrecked all holiday plans for us besides DH bringing me soup on a tray. :-)  Sweet sweet man, my DH.

And I'm under doc's orders to do pretty much nothing til Friday -- meaning, for me, life in temporary purgatory, since I'm a workout-a-day-aholic.  Also meaning that I've got unusual time on my hands, so I've been reading and catching up on your blogs, playing on Polyvore and coming dangerously close to busting out my AmEx card again for no really compelling reason.  Even QVC's starting to look enticing.  Yikes.

I caught Gi Gi's post about the luscious double serge pencil skirts (Sidebar (as we lawyers say): Gi Gi, you're looking fab-u-LUSS, girl).  Here, she was musing about whether to get the Regular or Petite skirt:

I also ordered the skirts in 4p and had a hard time deciding if they looked better than the size 2. Ultimately I went with the size 2 because a more covered knee = a more professional or demure look. The 4P wasn't like a miniskirt or anything. It just clicked that my legs are a little on the longer side for a shortie so sometimes I prefer regular sizes.

Definitely true that a more covered knee = more demure, more covered, more traditionally professional.  But Gi Gi's comment reminded me of my add-on belief, based on experience, which is that on some women, a tiny bit of knee showing actually creates -- sneakily and subliminally -- a more perfectly professional look. That is, if what you're aiming for is a skirt length that says "Oh yes, I'm aware that I'm an educated and accomplished woman and that I'm a peer amongst you men.  But that doesn't mean that I have to sacrifice just the right trace of femininity in my clothes.  Notice my absolutely perfectly-tailored power ensemble including this gorgeous skirt which is neither matronly nor showy but which hits my leg at exactly the right spot to make me look fabulous."  

How do we each find that "sweet spot" where our appropriate-but-oh-so-flattering hems should hit?  Well, yours truly can tell ya.  I will now publicly, for the first time, share a trick I used to teach my customers about skirt length.

Customers, you say? Yep.  I did have 'em, and I do have "street cred" on this stuff.

Many years back, during one of my periodic hiatuses from my law practice (I have a really juvenile attention span, I've decided :-)) , I co-owned a women's clothing business.  My partner and I sold for one of the uber-expensive brands that is sold thru "home shows" (we used to call it Tupperware Togs, but of course only where our big-spending customers couldn't hear us :-)).  The majority of our customers were lawyers, doctors, and other high-falutin' executive-type gals, and what we sold them for the most part was executive office wear.

We did well (for lots of reasons, a big one of which was that we were just plain lucky because, as "temporarily retired" professionals, we naturally had an easier time attracting customers from our own peer group).  In our six years in the biz we sold a boatload of clothes for the company (which still exists, still makes gazillions of dollars, and is privately-held by the lone SOB misogynistic owner -- but that's another ironic tale.) In our 4th year of selling the company asked us to join the faculty at their semi-annual training institute for novice "consultants" (saleswomen, in fancy parlance).  They taught us what and how to teach the newbies, and we loved hamming it up on stage.  Two years later they recruited us to move full-time away from sales and onto the management side of the house, as salaried "Regional Trainers."  This sounded vaguely glamorous and a whole lot more fun than our commissioned and increasingly hectic business.  And they trained us some more, so we enjoyed that.  But the job turned out to be much more of a traveling grind for us working moms than we'd thought it would be.  So after 18 months we both moved on to other horizons.


Overall, though, it was pretty darned wonderful to be immersed in the insiders' world of almost-haute-couture fashion for years.  I learned so much about fabric (I recognize all the mills where J. Crew buys their silk, linen and wools), garment construction (and what to look for to see how well something's made and where the corners were cut), alterations techniques, color and pattern mixing, sizing and -- here's the biggie for today -- how to clothe my customers in garments and patterns that were proportionally correct for their bodies.

We passed along lots of tips to our customers over the years -- we even accompanied them to get their clothes altered so we could teach them along the way.  Gauging from their responses, the number one fave tip by FAR was how to answer this question: How do I decide where to hem my skirts or what length to buy?


I'm going to tell YOU how to answer this question... in Part 2 of this post.  Only because Part 1 has gotten seriously long.  Grab your tape measure (not optional) and I'll be back as soon as I throw some chicken in the oven for dinner. :-)

Tips & Tricks: How To Decide Your Ideal Skirt Length (Part I)

Sharing A Positive Crew Final Sale Customer Service Episode

Hello again to my tiny little band of followers (who would be totally justified in deserting me, seeing as how I never seem to find time to post on my own blog!)

Since it's "Final Sale" season and the time when we all seem to post our most negative (and understandable!) feelings about J. Crew's Final Sale policies, I thought you all might find it encouraging to hear about my positive J. Crew customer service experience this past week.

About a month ago I bought the Featherweight Cashmere Short-Sleeve Cardigan in Spicy Olive (shown in the picture to the left). As so often happens these days, I had fallen head over heels for this item after seeing it featured (along with several things I happened to already own) by our beautiful and creative pal A Bigger Closet in one of her Polyvore sets. ABC, you are suuuuuuuch a terrible influence. :-)

So the sweater arrived, and was just as adorable as I'd hoped. Cute little ruffle along the neck and placket, gorgeous color, delicate weight and dense weave to the cashmere. I de-bagged it, de-tagged it and carefully put it away -- since in the dog days of Atlanta's August even a short-sleeve cashmere sweater is ridiculously out of the question. But here's what I did NOT do, though, folks. I did not try the sweater on. It wasn't the only cardi in that day's arriving box; I was unpacking the box after a workout and was sweaty (so I didn't try ANYTHING on, actually); I'd ordered it in my usual cardigan Medium and they sent me a Medium; it looked Medium-ish; and it was flawless on inspection -- I saw no holes, nothing amiss, etc. Lesson learned. I'll never make that mistake again.

Monday of this week we had a rainy, ever-so-slightly cooler day and I immediately thought "YAY, Spicy Olive cardi!!" (Side note: Kinda pitiful, I think, to be sooooooooo thrilled by a sweater. Wink & grin.) After my little morning cardio session I showered, dressed and did hair and makeup, and just as I was leaving the house I slipped gracefully into my new cardi.

Not.

This Medium felt like an XXS, seriously. It lacked four inches even buttoning. I fiddled with it for several minutes, thinking that I was just doing something wrong -- I'd forgotten to unbutton something or I'd left some thread un-clipped. Nope. It was just plain mis-sized.

Right away (while wearing a different cardi and feeling miffed about that, LOL) I e-mailed JC's Customer Service with my sad story. I admitted openly to them that I'd not tried the sweater on and that it was de-tagged. I asked if I could return the sweater or exchange it even though it was a FS item.

By late Monday afternoon I had a reply from "Joan" in Customer Service:

Dear [JCAUNCMom]: We are truly sorry to learn of the size discrepancy of item 15534. As a customer of J.Crew, you are probably aware that this sort of issue is not typical for our product. Though we would prefer that item 15534 be returned to us via mail, with a merchandise return label, we would be happy to accept the return at your local J. Crew retail store. Your order has been noted that you are able to return the short-sleeve cardigan.

She went on to say that, regrettably, Spicy Olive was sold out but that I was welcome to re-order a different color after I returned the defective sweater. At this I admit I thought "Duh, ya THINK?"

Yesterday I took the itty bitty cardi and a copy of my order summary plus a copy of Joan's e-mail to my B&M, and they were lovely and quite apologetic -- they even gave me a $10 GC for my trouble. The icing on the cake: today I discovered quite by accident -- when I was writing this post, actually, and went to the Crew site to copy the link for y'all -- that Spicy Olive in my size is back in stock!! WOW! So I've reordered it (and let's all cross our fingers that it really IS a Medium!)

It did seem to me, to be honest, that there just wasn't any other reasonable way for J. Crew to respond to my e-mail than to allow this return -- any other response would fly in the face of their "defective merchandise" policy. Then again, since I'd de-tagged the sweater, for all they knew I might have worn it to a party, taken it on a trip abroad, loaned it to a friend, steamed it and then complained about the sizing. But they stood by their product, trusted their customer, and re-earned my trust in them.

Don't ya just love happy endings? :-)

Sharing A Positive Crew Final Sale Customer Service Episode

Love at First Sight: Merino Ethereal Ruffle Cardigan

Yesterday I made a long-overdue trip to my closest B&M to return a few impulse buys and ride-alongs that didn't work (including, sadly, the Malabar sandals that look so cute on the always-smashing Miss A Bigger Closet here -- they didn't fit my skinny feet and looked, well, ridiculous. Drat.)

I had no intention of buying anything seeing as how I've been on a bit of a binge this spring and summer. But my PS/SA shrewdly and casually said "Hey, I do have one sweater to show you..." That girl is good at her job.

What she showed me was the very, very lightweight, silky merino wool "Merino Ethereal Ruffle Cardigan." J. Crew rather elaborately (as usual) describes this gem this way:

We're utterly enamored with this ladylike cardigan (and think you will be too). A dainty ruffle of crinkled silk chiffon trims the delicately flounced neckline, giving it that certain je ne sais quoi. It dresses up your favorite jeans and pairs perfectly with a pencil skirt. Spun from the finest whisper-weight Italian merino wool in a 14-gauge knit. Fitted. V-neck. Three-quarter sleeves. Hits at hip. Import. Dry clean.

This cardi fits TTS, and has 3/4 sleeves and a wonderful drape on the body. What the pictures don't show very well at all (best, I think, if you look at the Dark Rust color) is how well JC has succeeded with the trim this time. The buttons are adorable and the crinkled chiffon truly is delicate and so feminine -- AND is a beautifully-coordinated, slightly lighter shade of the color of the wool.

The Heathered Cypress (picture above) size M came home with me, along with the Deco Patent Leather Belt in Ripe Avocado that blends with this sweater (and echoes the slight glossiness of the buttons) so beautifully. I think this color will be a lot of fun to play with and will jazz up my neutrals and my jeans this fall. Unfortunately it is the dreaded Dry Clean Only. But since I discovered Dryel (so sorry, neighborhood mom 'n pop dry cleaners, nothin' but love for ya sincerely), I'm not especially deterred by a DCO tag.

My B&M also had this cardi in Dark Rust, which is very pretty but looks similar to Glazed Pecan, and the Barely Peach, which IRL isn't as dark as it appears online -- it looks to me more like this spring's Warm Blush. Been there, done both colors enough already.

What do y'all think of this cardi? Too much like too many recent JC items (how they do love that chiffon trim!)? Or does it ring that "Welcome to my closet!" bell in your head too? :-)

Love at First Sight: Merino Ethereal Ruffle Cardigan

Detouring from the Crewse Lane for a Stop in Catheland

Every few weeks, it seems, I surface and have time to blog (although I manage to find time to read YOUR blogs quite a bit, I must say!) Today I'm snorkeling up to tell y'all about my weekend last week. This is seriously OT from the Crewniverse of usual discussion, so skip on outta here if you're jonesing for a fashion read because I won't be providing that for you this time.

There WAS fashion, of a sort, involved in my weekend junket, but it was fitness fashion. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Ryka, Asics, Lucy, OhMyBod and UnderArmour reigned supreme. My weekend was spent at the annual Cathe Friedrich Road Trip in Glassboro, New Jersey, where I was once again (for the 5th time) one of the Road Trip Coordinators -- meaning that I've been working for months behind-the-scenes planning this yearly fanfest & workout lollapalooza event with Cathe, her staff and my very dear friends who are the Co-Coordinators.

For those of you who don't know Cathe, let me clue you in. She's the best-kept secret in the world of fitness, in my biased view. Cathe pioneered one of the very first at-home step videos in 1989, and since then she's carved out a niche catering to the advanced (or aspiring to be advanced, like me!) exerciser who is aiming for a time-efficient, gym-quality workout but wants or needs to workout at home. She's created over 120 workout videos covering everything from hi/lo, step, boot camp and kickbox to strength training, circuit training and stretching. Being the die-hard fan that I am, I have collected and used ALL of them, love them all even though I have favorites, and can tell you just about anything you wanna know about them! In the crowd picture here, that's Cathe, third from left in the front row, having a good time at our Saturday night party, flanked by her usual "crew" of video regulars who dropped by and backed up by happy Road Trippers.

Cathe's now a working mom in her mid 40's (but she looks a decade younger), and she's wickedly buff, impossibly tiny, really beautiful and on top of that one of the nicest, warmest, most generous and certainly most hard-working women you'd ever meet. She co-owns a beautiful health club (Four Seasons Health Club: http://www.hugeclub.com) in Glassboro, New Jersey (just outside Philly) with her longtime business partner. She still teaches four or more weekly classes there and keeps a low and modest profile around the gym -- except when the Road Trippers invade. :-) Five times since 2005, 105 of her delirious fans from around the world have met at her gym in Glassboro for a whole "Road Trip" weekend crammed full of classes with Cathe, teambuilding games and socializing, a DJ-led Saturday night party and, of course, many fabulous refueling meals.

In the five years we've been doing Cathe Road Trips, Cathe's celebrity has grown tremendously. She is now a regular on FitTV, she's on Facebook, she's on Twitter, her Fitness by Cathe products are in stores nationwide, she's been on Good Morning America, she's been featured in magazines, and it's been reported that her worldwide fanbase now "hits" her websites more than 10 million (!) times each month. I couldn't even imagine how many million kick-butt videos she's sold. (The "I wanna look like THAT" photo here is from Cathe's kickbox workout that's part of her 2008 series release "Four Day Split".) But somehow, she's still mostly flying under the radar, and since she's by nature a little shy and very self-effacing, she kinda likes it this way. I asked her recently if she gets mobbed when she travels with her two young sons, and she said that almost no one ever approaches her in airports, on a plane or in public. Seeing as how this pint-sized powerhouse is so much a part of my daily life, I'm always surprised that most people I meet have never heard of her. But I'm flat-out amazed that to this day most of her gym's members haven't got a clue that she's famous -- and getting more famous fast. To them she's just the gym owner and a great instructor -- even though Cathe's video filming studio is on the premises, even though her merchandise is prominently for sale at the front desk, and even though her fans regularly make impromptu "pilgrimages" to take a class with her. Mysterious, huh? Proof positive that people often don't look far beyond the telescope view of their own daily lives, I suppose. In any case, the members at Four Seasons always seem amused (although they're pleasantly tolerant) when 105 starstruck people (mostly but not all women) invade their gym with cameras blazing and Sharpies ready for autographs.

Let me pause to say that I'm aware that this post must sound to some of you like so much public relations ballyhooing. But I assure you I'm utterly sincere. Cathe's been life-changing for me, and not just because she's gotten me fit, raised my consciousness about my own health and wellness, and provided me with an endless supply of challenges -- she's also responsible for my having been able to meet and make dear friends with like-minded Cathe exercisers all over the map. Some of my closest friends now are women (and a few guys) who I first met through the web world of Cathe. I see most of them once a year at our Road Trips, but our friendships are nourished by phone calls, cards, gift exchanges and an endless string of chatty e-mails. And I am so glad to have had circumstances evolve that have allowed me to get to know Cathe personally, too. I count her among my inner circle of BFF's.

So forgive the bragging if you can, folks. I'm shameless. She's my pal, I'm proud of her and I love her, and I consider it a privilege and a blessing to introduce people to her. If you want to know more, read on. :-)

I've been a regular member of Cathe's online forums (Click here to visit: http://www.thecathenation.com/forum/) since the mid 1990's -- we've always called ourselves "Catheites", but recently Cathe's webmaster began to call us "Cathletes", a term that we've all adopted and use amongst ourselves. I know, it's a little silly, but it's awesomely empowering.

Cathe now has two main websites, one (Cathe dot com: http://www.cathe.com) devoted principally to information about her and her products (which include her fitness DVD's, of course, as well as the Fitness by Cathe line of at-home fitness equipment and accessories, plus shirts and hats and all manner of cute "Cathe gear"), and one (The Cathe Nation: http://www.thecathenation.com) devoted to our "Cathlete" community. At the Cathe Nation website we're able to create, share, record and track our own workout "rotations", as well as blog and communicate in lots of other ways with other Cathe devotees. Almost 20,000 of us are Cathe Nation forums members.

So, as I was saying, last weekend 105 of us from all around the country and the world gathered for Road Trip 2009. From Friday afternoon until the last "early bird" class at 7 on Sunday morning, Cathe taught like the Energizer Bunny (and looked gorgeous throughout it all, honest to goodness.) She led us in two step classes, one stretch class, one boot camp class (she actually taught this twice, but we were split into 2 groups for this one and while one group "boot camped" the other group either listened to a guest speaker or took an optional yoga class with a guest instructor), a lower body blast class, a kickbox class and, sprinkled throughout other classes, abs and upper body blast work. On paper that sounds almost impossible, but we all did it, and everyone went comfortably at his or her own pace without any pressure. Just awesome. We ate very nutritious food in large amounts, and we ate gooey bakery cake in large amounts, and we drank coffee and water by the gallon and played games and danced and laughed and oohed and ahhed over the gifts in our Cathe RT 2009 goodie bags and proudly wore our new "Cathlete" shirts.

It was, as always, an emotion-filled weekend (mostly very high highs!), and one that came and went way too fast. A highlight of my year, EVERY year, and one that I hope I'll be able to keep doing until I'm so old that when I take that microphone to do my usual "WELCOME!" speech the younger Road Trippers will look at each other and whisper "HOW old did she say she is?????"

I'm happy as a clam in the mud to share Cathe info with any of you who want to know more. Hit me up here (as my sons say), or e-mail me at jcauncmom@gmail.com.

And now back to your regularly-scheduled Crew-gramming. Loving that plum raisin color in the new rollout!

Detouring from the Crewse Lane for a Stop in Catheland

Walking the Mom Clothes Line -- Crewsers, I need your advice!

Yes, it's me, Crewsers, surfacing after weeks of silent blogosphere surfing. It's been a busy, busy month and we've been traveling a lot, but I confess I've spent my bits and pieces of free time the last two weeks enjoying YOUR blogs and trying to figure out how to Polyvore my ensembles. You'd think, being a computer literate person like I honestly am, that this wouldn't be the Black Hole Time Sucking Eye Reddening endeavor that it's been. But nooooooooooo, you'd be wrong. :-) Expert Polyvorer bichonluvr has given me some helpful tips (Polyvore for Idiots) and I have finally managed to post ONE lonely little set. More ARE to come, I swear cross my heart Scout's honor.

So here I am reappearing, and (here comes another confession, be ready!) I have an ulterior motive. I need advice, ladies.

Y'all may remember how I told you that I, fit yet fifty-something college mom that I am, am very mindful of trying to find that perfect "Mom who is stylish, young-ish but appropriately dressed." I don't wanna be "Mom who is dressing a little too much like her 22-year-old son's 21-year-old girlfriend" and I don't want to be "Mom who is dressing a shade too frumpy/matronly/boringly."

Here's how that relates to the adorable picture on this post. I've spotted this pair of sandals on eBay that must be from Crew '08, because I would remember these puppies if I'd seen them this year! They're called "Vachetta Sandals" in the color "Driftwood". My little heart goes pitter-patter when I see them. (Side note: Oh how pitiful is that, that some pieces of shoe leather can produce such an emotion. I am really needing to face my addictions.....)

Aside from the fact that I have no idea how these feel or fit (Anybody know? Sing out!), I am wondering whether this gladiator-ankle wrap style is on the wrong side of the "Mom Clothes Line" for me. I have held off on buying this year's Rimini sandal for the same reason. I bought the Danielles, which was my nod to the look. But the Rimini, and this totally precious Vachetta, seem a little more trendy.

So whatcha think, friends? Yay or nay? Am I going to look like a stylin' yet appropriate mama, or am I gonna make my friends shake their heads in pity behind my back? (Down here in the South they might say "Ohmigosh, she is just having the hardest time growing older gracefully, bless her heart.")

Lemme hear from you, and thanks so much!!

P.S. It strikes me that this entire blog post would probably come across to most of the universe as seriously shallow, and I'm really glad that you Crewsers out there "get" it because, like you gals, I am anything BUT shallow. I just have this one weeeeeeee little area of rather secretly obsessive interest which I suppose you COULD call, well, lightweight. Keep my secret for me girls, will ya?

Walking the Mom Clothes Line -- Crewsers, I need your advice!

Why I Love Man Caves (Having Nothing To Do With J.Crew :-))

Hello everybody! We've been away at the beach for our vacation/graduation celebratory trip for our son the UNC-CH graduate. It was a fantastic week and I am sporting a grand new crop of freckles. :-)

I was catching up on all my favorite blogs (yours!) this morning and saw, at Musings on the Mountain's fabulous blog, her request that folks comment on what their favorite thing is about summer. She's offering a really cute giveaway for the best summertime comment, so get on over there and chime in, folks.

This got me to thinkin', as my grandfather would have said. But I didn't have to think long to come up with my answer. I posted a short version over at MotM's blog, and here, I'll elaborate. This has zero to do with J.Crew -- fair warning -- but clothing in general WILL be mentioned. Wink wink!

My favorite thing about summer, hands down, is having what we call our "infant adult" sons (they're 19 and 22) home. Waking up in the morning knowing they're here, I feel like I hit the lottery every single day. Hearing those adorably rumbling baritone voices trading brotherly good-natured insults and laughing on the phone with their buddies -- wow, heaven to a mom's ears. What a grand thing these big, bear-like guy creatures are!

They're just LIKE bears, actually. Within minutes of arriving home from college they began creating cozy darkened habitats for themselves, and three weeks later the transformation of their rooms is complete. What used to be two sunny, tidy, sweet-smelling Empty Nest bedrooms are now full-fledged Man Caves. They leave the blinds closed all the time (this is way mysterious to sunlight-loving me, but it seems to be a college-age guy thing because their friends' moms report the exact same thing).

Their Man Caves smell, too, pretty much like you'd expect from the place where a bear lives. I confess I stand in their doorways and inhale. I think this has got to be a hormonal, primal, maternal thing, because logic and reason tell me that Man Cave smells can't all be pleasant, and yet they are wonderful aromas to me. A mystical combination of dirty socks, airlessness, Downy Fabric Softener and some strange but powerful and earthy manly essence -- that musky, faint but definite "a young adult, totally hormonal guy lives here" smell. Each one of our boys has his own unique manly essence, and I can tell them apart. I smell their "personal scent" on their pillowcases and their clothes and their necks when they hug me goodnight. YUMMY.

They spend hours in their rooms hibernating. They text their friends, talk on the phone, e-mail and IM, web-surf, listen to music, reorganize their iTunes libraries and plan their busy lives. Periodically they emerge, car keys jingling, spiffily dressed, and announce to their "P Units" (that's DH and me -- the "Parental Units") a social itinerary so complex that the Pentagon would be impressed with their logistical skills.

It's always kinda amazing to see them appear clean, dressed in nicely-executed outfits and with phone and car keys in hand, too, because I honestly don't know how they find a flippin' thing in their rooms. When I stand in the doorways of their rooms to inhale, I also stand there and gawk into the darkness inside in absolute amazement. It's dark as night, and random gear is scattered all over every single surface and the floor. (This is another mystery, by the way -- how college stuff multiplies like sprouting mushrooms. You send your man-boy to college with 2 towels. He comes home with 4, none of them being the ones you sent him. :-)) Granted, both of our boys do make their beds, they do tidy up their bathrooms, and they do handle their laundry responsibly -- all clues that they will indeed someday be conscientious about their own homes. But aside from their neat-ish beds, kinda-hung-up towels and ever-evolving laundry baskets, their rooms look remarkably like two very focused tornadoes just ripped through the house.

I don't let this bother my sense of order one bit. I just close their doors as I walk by -- after pausing in the doorways to take a quick sniff and to do a bit of astonished rubber-necking at the chaos. Secretly I love it all.

So whatever else this summer brings, I'm contented just having my big babies home for a while. Oh sure, we're buying extra groceries, I'm cooking extra food, we're paying a bigger water bill and we are definitely dealing with a lot of extra clutter. Those goodnight bear hugs from my smelly, almost-grown-up cubs make it all worth it.

Next post, I promise you all, will have something to do with my never-ending passion for J.Crew goodies. I see there's an Extra20 sale today................ :-)

Why I Love Man Caves (Having Nothing To Do With J.Crew :-))

Winding down from Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day to all of you JCA's, and happy Monday to the always-stunning Ms. A Bigger Closet in Canada! :-) Thanks so much for the blogosphere welcome, folks!

We're recuperating here from a wonderful weekend visit by my DH's brother, his wife and their 9- and 12-year-old kids. And recuperating is definitely the operative word (I'm sure for them, too!) DH and I, as you all know, have two "grown college men" sons, and it's been quite a while since the energy of the elementary and middle-school permeated our house. Even our dog's been asleep all afternoon. We really had such fun, ate too much ribs 'n chicken 'n stuff, stayed up too late and killed way too many bottles of nice wine. But I don't feel even a smidge of caloric guilt -- another sure sign that I've hit Midlife Mellow. Life's just too fleeting not to savor all the over-the-topness of a rare visit from these folks I'm so privileged to call family. This weekend I thought for the 100,000th time that I really hit the In-laws Jackpot when I married DH. Love his parents, love his siblings, love their spouses, adore their children. Wahoo!

The weather here in the Southeastern U.S. in the springtime is fickle. What they famously say in Denver about their weather is just as true of ours: If you don't like it, wait a coupla minutes. Sure enough, Mother Nature has been pouting and refusing to cooperate this weekend for her own mysterious reasons. Most of the weekend has been cloudy, warm and muggy -- the kind of weather that in our climate makes your skin feel sticky within seconds of stepping outside and that makes the annual bumper crop of mosquitoes stand up and say "YESSSSSSSSSS!!" But we braved it and spent most of our days out by the pool anyhow, lathering on our sunscreen for no apparent reason and spritzing Deep Woods Off in every possible direction like we were vampire hunters holding up our garlic strands. Every now and then we'd have ten minutes of total downpour, but on the other hand every so often the sun would burst gloriously through with such intensity that we'd all stop dead in our tracks, eyes closed, faces turned upwards. If you happened to be a little birdie member of the family of cardinals who live in our backyard and you'd been winging your way overhead just as the sunshine peeked out, for sure you'd have thought that we humans looked weirdly choreographed.

I'm both proud (as a JCA) and more than a little embarrassed (as a slightly compulsive JCA) to admit that I snuck (is that a word? Sneaked?) away a few times to browse J.Crew's Memorial Day weekend sale. Nothing made me want to yell "Well, welcome to my closet!", much as I expected that inner voice to sing out. So in the end I left a cartload of things un-bought. And I can't complain -- I've drunk the Crewlade several times this year (and flat-out guzzled it during my April Red Card manic phase.)

But I sure did have a great time looking for goodies and practicing my new stealth-style J.Crew sale-shopping skills, and for those I must thank JCA pros Heather and Bekah. Skip this if you're a JCA pro, too, but if, like me, you are jonesing to improve your J.Crew Sale Skillset and want to learn how to be way more effective at navigating the World of Popbacks and Price-Shifting that is J.Crew's online sale section, read on. Here's what Heather and Bekah had to sayover at J.Crew Aficionada's addictive blog, in response to my pitiful pleas for help.

Heather shared this (and props to Heather for being not only wise but also wickedly funny):
[T]o answer your question... I'm certain that many JCAs have their own technique for pop backs & hidden sales. In my case, I use the search, snipe, save, & stalk approach. Here's how it works: I'm in love with an item, like an ecole jacket, but I'm not too certain if I should buy now or wait. Sooo I snipe the jacket by selecting it in my size & colour & entering a high # in the quantity field before adding it to my cart. Now a pop-up appears to tell me how many are left, say 37 at the reg price of $160+. I keep adding everything that interests me into the basket & take a screenshot using shift+alt+4 to save the info for later. Then I will stalk those items by reg checking the site using the search field & the item #s. Lesse, now my ecole is on sale, down to &39.99, & there are still 30 left . Also, there is no free shipping or good disc on offer, so I don't need it as a ride along. I decide to wait for an addt'l off sale. A few days may pass & I discover - here's the sale, but my size sold out! No worries... I'll just keep searching & stalking to see what happens. Yay! The search shows 3 ecoles in my size & colour "popped back" & now they're priced at $33.99 - score! Now things don't always work out so favourably. The price may go back up or the "pop back" may never appear. Still, it does add a certain spice to the shopping exp. Most esp if you're getting extra colours of something you already love or are undecided about something & need a great price to make it worth your effort.

As if my head weren't spinning enough from this impressive and sage tutorial, Bekah added these tips for me:

JCAUNCMom, I notice the popbacks simply by the numbers. Usually in the 400s they haven't restocked, in the 6-7-800s they have. I find Monday-Thursday it's usually around 10:45, with the weekend being earlier (sometimes before I get up!) but variable. I don't know if other people have found that too or if I am imagining a pattern where there isn't one. I usually check the sale section every forty five minutes or so and wait for the total number of items to jump.

Wow. With sharpshooter shoppers like Heather and Bekah lurking out there, it's a wonder that novices like me ever score any of the best items. ;-) But look out, teachers, this student's gonna practice and have you two squarely in my sights during the next great sale.

Nothin' but love for ya in the meantime, of course!

Next time I won't be so long-winded, folks. Have a wonderful rest-of-day -- I am outta here to practice Polyvoring and to read your blogs! Ciao!!!

P.S. OOTD (no pic but I'll describe): J.Crew 5" chino shorts in papaya (2008) with Perfect Fit crewneck s/s shirt in chocolate, ColeHaan chocolate 1.5" belt with pewter buckle, J.Crew fabric flip-flops in madras with cantaloupe polka-dotted V-strips, and funky old Liz Claiborne silver hoop earrings embellished with tiny caramel & cantaloupe dangling beads. Not too shabby for lounging around!

Winding down from Memorial Day Weekend

Polyvore, J.Crew blogging and the legacy of paper dolls

So I'm putting this "out there", ladies (and gents, perhaps?), feeling a bit like I'm tossing flower petals into the breeze and wondering where they'll land. Being past 50 makes me a bit longer in the tooth, you might say, than the average J.Crew Aficionada (JCA, I proudly know to abbreviate). But it doesn't make me any older at heart than all of the 30- and 40-something (and younger) JCA's whose blogs I have recently discovered and spent WAY too many hours browsing. A special hat tip to A Bigger Closet (here's a gal who could accessorize a flour sack), Gigi, Heidi, FFM, the original J.Crew Aficionada blog hostess, and so many more. You ladies are feeding -- nope, not accurate; you are accelerating -- my long-time J.Crew habit. American Express thanks you.

And Polyvore? Ohmigosh. How can I thank you all for introducing me to that wonder? Most of you JCA's out there are too young to remember "paper dolls". But if there any other JCA's out there of a certain age, you'll know what I mean by this in the MOST complimentary way: Polyvore is the Paper Dolls of the internet. Wahoo to that!

Like most women my age, I spent many a happy young childhood hour "playing" paper dolls. There wasn't much "play" about it, actually, but it was a humdinger of a hand-eye-coordination exercise, and it nurtured my whole generation of clothes hounds. Paper dolls were purchased in booklets that looked like comic books and cost a few bucks, and you could find them almost anywhere. Each booklet came with a cardboard two-dimensional doll (the heavier the cardboard, the costlier the booklet). And each booklet had pages and pages of colorful clothes and accessories. If you were lazy, you'd pay extra for the paper doll booklets that had clothes you could "punch" out -- they had perforated edging around the clothing. But my pals and I thought that was some kind of SERIOUS cheating. For us, the whole point of the exercise was to use your best, sharpest scissors expertly so that YOUR fashion pieces emerged from their paper cocoon with absolutely no white edging. And anybody who knew anything at all knew that punching out perforated-edged clothes left those annoying little white nubbies on the clothes. Kiss of death, those nubbies.

We, the more discerning paper dollers, would carefully -- ohhhhhh so carefully -- snip the white boundaries from around the clothes (except for the critically-important paper tabs, the "bra straps" of paper doll clothing, if you will). This could take a very long time, and little fingers cramped up, but we didn't complain. We gently placed our finished clothing into piles around us -- tops here, pants there, jewelry alongside. And when all was cut out and the floor and table around us was a wasteland of white debris and used-up paper doll booklets, then and only then did we get to dress our always perfectly-coiffed and impossibly-tiny-waisted paper dolls. We folded those little paper "bra straps" into place for each piece, added jewelry and shoes, and voila, instant outfit.

You might wonder -- as do I, actually -- what was so fascinating about this time-consuming endeavor, seeing as how at the end of all that labor you had laying on the table in front of you a two-dimensional girl, precariously and temporarily dressed in two-dimensional clothes. Your coiffed, dressed and accessorized paper doll didn't move, bend, or even stand up. But the deeply satisfying thing was this: your own unique fashionista touch was right there in her outfit, ya know? You might look over at your best friend's paper doll and silently think to yourself "Gee whiz, I can't believe she put THAT top with THOSE pants". Out loud, of course, you'd say to your best friend "That's neat" or "That looks good" -- because much as you didn't love the ensemble, you loved your friend that much more and wanted to encourage her fashion experimentation. So you didn't insult. Instead, you might just say "Hey, try this top on her with those pants... See, awesome!"

I've always had a strong sense of my own style, and it's pretty J.Crew-ish --- clean-lined, simple, not a lot of frou-frou but with a touch of feminine. Nowadays, though, I am navigating the treacherous waters of trying to dress well as a young-at-heart 50-something. Like so many of my friends, I'm walking a tightrope: I want to dress fashionably and with a classic yet fresh look, but I do NOT want to make the dreadful mistake of being one of those moms who tries to wear clothes that are too young for me. This is far easier said than done. When your birthday says 50-something, your heart, soul and self-image don't necessarily keep pace, and those cute little low-rise jeans still look awfully cute on the hanger. That's where all of you JCA's and Polyvore come in, and why I so love this newfound hobby of keeping up with your blogs and your Polyvore sets. You are the paper dollers of your generation, ladies. You put together your ensembles with such care that I can practically FEEL those sharp scissors in your hands trimming the white edges off the beautiful clothes. I look at your Polyvore sets and your wonderfully descriptive blogs (verbal paper dolls, truly). And I learn. And I remember. :-)

Thank you. I hope these floating flower petal words find some of you.

Polyvore, J.Crew blogging and the legacy of paper dolls