I feel that almost every person, no matter whether they avoid fashion like the plague or are the definitive fashion victim, has an icon or two. Even if they won’t 
admit it or haven’t really thought about it. We all have moments when we sort of go ‘ooh…they look cool’ or ‘I wish I could pull that off..’ when we see people on TV or in music videos or in films. Sometimes it isn’t really the person we admire, but the outfit. I do find that what makes an outfit is that it doesn’t wear the person – the person actually suits and wears that outfit. Maybe that’s why women feel they need style advice – because they need to build up their confidence and feel they know what will look interesting or stylish on them.
As I’ve mentioned in the previous posts, I don’t like the whole ‘rules’ thing for body shapes or whatever, because its always good to try different things to see how they work or if they suit you. If you don’t feel comfortable in something, it shows. There’s 
no point trying to squeeze yourself into something that is three sizes too small – believe me, I know from experience that wearing the right size is important. Life is too short to spend it in ill fitting clothes that make you feel rubbish. Experiment – you only get to know what looks good by trial and error.
Anyway, it often feels as if I have many contradictory style icons – at one end, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe, at the other end – Madonna and rock icons like Joan Jett and Karen O (Yeah Yeah Yeah’s) or Gwen Stefani. Sometimes I like certain outfits they wore, rather than their style all the time. I don’t think just because we like someone’s style means that we want to emulate them – in some case it’s about appreciating and enjoying their style. A lot of the time, for me, it’s about inspiration; if I’m having a dull fashion day, I might look 
to them to provide me with a bit of inspiration. Not necessarily to look like them, but it’s like a painting or photo can inspire you to write something. Inspiration isn’t copying; it’s using that flash of something exciting to create something that comes from you.
Sometimes certain styles and icons capture moments in time with their style. Fashion and style is illusion – we cover our bodies with signs and meanings that other people around us need to interpret. If we dress in a music influenced way – indie style or goth/emo style, it is up to the people around us to interpret what this means. Sometimes we lack the vocabulary to understand this – like sometimes older people won’t get that gothic style isn’t an indication of ‘devil 
worship’ or anything, it’s an indication of music preference. My love of black eyeliner and black jewellery doesn’t mean I’m trying to cause ‘offence’ or anything – but people will take offence at the weirdest things.
I do feel that fashion and style can be a reaction to something – to protest, to be rebellious. This is what rock, indie and gothic style do so well – they are not ‘prim and proper’ but messy, uncontrolled. Yet you could argue that instead of being rebellious, the more people adopting a style, the more diluted this reactionary message becomes.
It’s like the whole tattoos and piercings thing – lots of people across age groups and classes have piercings and tattoos now. I suppose it’s more about how ’socially acceptable’ something is and pushing at those boundaries. People expect to see pierced ears, and maybe a small nose stud; but they don’t expect to see eyebrow rings, nose rings and tongue piercings. I guess that’s what makes something more meaningfully rebellious?
It’s only been a few hours since I last posted, but I’ve already been struck by the ‘ohmigod, that’s beautiful…but I can’t really afford it…can I?’ bug a few times. Thanks to subscribing to online newsletters, I get bombed with beautiful clothes in my inbox on most days. I’ve found that despite my feeling that I went off t-shirts with logos or pictures on them when I went through my oversized t-shirt and baggy trousers phase when I was 11 or 12 – I still rather like t-shirts with funky designs on them. They tend to be less baggy nowadays though!
Last year, I bought this gorgeous unicorn t-shirt from Urban Outfitters and really love it but it’s a bit on the clingy side. I think it’s okay to buy clothes that don’t fit if you think you can adjust them or add material to them. The t-shirt is great but I think it might need some material added to it or made into a longer t-shirt as I think it’s a bit too short for me. I don’t have the t-shirt up here in Scotland with me so I’ll have to take a photo of it when I get home.
However, because I’m into all things science fiction and fantasy, this beautiful t-shirt 
from Evans caught my eye today! It would look great with black jeans or even the leather skirt in the post below. I just don’t know if that’s good enough for me to buy it because it’s £27 – and I may have to wait until I next get paid before I can afford to buy it. I’ve definitely got my sartorial eye on it though! I’m worried that since my wardrobe is already full to bursting, I might have to start letting some of my clothes go – car boot sales or charity shops, probably. I know that some of the things I have are probably very outdated and I hardly wear them so it’s a waste of space and maybe someone out there can do something to them to make them more interesting!
It looks as though everyone is going 80’s crazy this year – I also saw a t-shirt at Dorothy Perkins that I really like but have no idea whether it would suit me or if it’s just too 80s. The whole ‘neon’ thing and the shape are definitely a reference to the 80s and the style seems sort of like it would look even more 80s paired with fingerless leather gloves! Speaking of fingerless leather gloves, apparently they are making a 
‘comeback’ but I can’t see myself wearing them. I was a baby and a toddler during the 80s so definitely missed out on the craziness. I look back at the Madonna style and think it’s kind of cool though – the wild hair, the black lace gloves, the mix of leather, lace and chains. It looks like a mix between punk/gothic.
Maybe I am a bit of an 80’s girl at heart – I tend to try and blur out the 90’s in terms of my personal style because it was bad. And I do mean bad – I look back and cringe! I guess when you’re growing up, there are always style issues and you’re not sure what to wear or who to look at as a role model. I didn’t come into my own style until the last year of my A-Levels and going off to University. I shopped mostly at topshop and dorothy perkins, with a dash of ’street’ – Paul Frank, Goldigga, etc. It took me even longer to end up where I am now – confident of my choices and how to wear things. Teenagers now definitely have more sense of style – a lot of them are influenced by the kind of music they listen to, pretty much the same as it’s always been.
The 90’s were pretty rubbish for me, music wise – either manufactured pop groups or britpop (don’t get me wrong, I do like britpop but didn’t follow it much back then…) or grunge stuff. I’ve only finally been able to appreciate grunge and britpop in the last few years – so yeah, my music choice wasn’t very cool in the 90s! Michael Jackson, however, has always been present in my music choices – from age 7 to age 24, now. And copying his style would have been a bit of a weird thing to do! I’m more influenced now by the music I like and a certain feeling of ‘rebellion’, that I think by-passed me when I was a teen…
It looks like t-shirts are becoming more artistic and less ‘logo’ now. I never liked the whole ’slogan’ thing on t-shirts, thankfully. Then again, I kind of like animal pictures 
on t-shirts, whoops. Having said that, they tend to be more funky designs rather than the big oversized t-shirts with fantasy type images of wolves or whatever! 
A bit like this t-shirt from dorothy perkins (which is sold out now) – it’s more subtle and doesn’t look like it’s been sold at a tourist shop! I also have a green t-shirt with a panda on it from dorothy perkins – it’s really cute but still looks like a drawing or etching rather than a photo or computer image. It probably also depends what animal you have on the t-shirt – I would draw the line at kittens or puppies (no matter how cute they are, they look a bit naff on t-shirts)!!
I also like t-shirts with references to the great outdoors, like trees or forests. I do have a t-shirt from Evans with a tree/branch motif on it – its a recent purchase so I’ve only worn it a couple of times with cutoff 
jeans and birkenstocks (sounds kind of hippy/surf-dudette, eh?). The weather has been rubbish here in Scotland in the past two weeks so I haven’t been wearing my cutoff jeans or t-shirts – therefore I have a fading tan that I got from my last two weeks in London! Oh well…
It’s been ages since I posted on this blog – and not from lack of shopping, oh no! I’ve been up North in Scotland (where I still am, at least until the beginning of Sept), doing my writing course and generally having a rethink about my life. I promised myself I wouldn’t go shopping, but unfortunately I’ve been too enthused and excited about all the funky fashion ideas and looks on my fellow fatshionista’s blogs. Also, there are far too many sales and far too much temptation…
I’ve found myself in a bit of uncharted territory because I found this beautiful leather pencil skirt in the dorothy perkins online sale. I didn’t know what to wear it 
with but started thinking about different textures and raw materials. A bit of online browsing later and I also decided to buy a purple silk top to go with it. I think the further you go with clothes, the more confident you are to wear things that you might not have thought would look good.
Fashion is about experimentation and having fun. I think the whole ‘fat women can’t wear….[stripes/prints/figure hugging things]‘ is boring and doesn’t inspire creativity at all. I’m not happy with people dictating what you can and can’t wear.
They get paid to tell us that big ladies have to wear black, that we can’t wear 
anything that would draw attention to us, because our bodies are “too big”. I don’t really care for this at all – I love bright colours, bold prints, stripes, dresses. Anyway – the point being that this pencil skirt was just too good to be true and I had to have it. It’s waiting for me in London, with the purple silk top (did I mention that purple is my favourite colour?).
I also took advantage of the Evans 20% off sale a couple of weeks ago and bought this great leopard print ponte dress. It’s different to how I expected it to be – it has smaller print than I thought it had in the first place but it still looks good when you 
wear it with black leggings or black tights and a black or grey cardigan. I thought about adding a splash of colour but wasn’t sure whether it would work or not, so I’ll have to try that one out! The shape of the dress is more fitted than I would usually go for but again – never be stifled by the so-called ‘rules’! It goes past the knees so is a comfortable length – I’m not exactly comfortable with short or above the knee styles. I’m not sure why that is – it could just be because I worry about constantly checking if my underwear is showing, eek! Anyway, it’s still being sold at Evans if you want to take a look, although it’s more expensive without the 20% off…also, sorry about the quality of the image, I’ll have to take my own close up photos of the material and print at some point!
I’ve also added MAC to my favourite make up brands, mostly because of their lipsticks and eye shadows. I bought a true pastel pink lipstick from the website a 
few weeks ago called Saint Germain (err..a reference to Paris, I think) - I have yet to give it a trial run as I’m not sure what style to wear with it or what eye colours (I think blue looks a bit bizarre with pastel pink so I could try black eyeliner or purple eye make up…).
I also use their ‘Shroom’ eyeshadow as a base and mixer for darker eye colours – it really tones things down well. By the way, I’m fair skinned, so I’m not sure how it would look on darker skin tones! It would probably go well with darker skin tones on it’s own as it’s a very light sort of beige with slight sparkles. It is an expensive brand though, so I’m sure there are similar colours in cheaper brands. I think I tend to spend more on cosmetics than I do on clothes…although sometimes that’s debateable, whoops.
I’m definitely going to tone down the spending for the coming months as I need to save my pennies and sort out my finances. A job search is also on the cards. Its all so confusing because we live in a culture that bombards us with things to buy that we convince ourselves we need (or really really want, anyway..), yet we’re living in a recession where we can’t really afford to buy all these things. That is where the debt comes from – capitalism. Is the government really so surprised that our national debt is so heavy when advertising is everywhere?
I did say a few months ago that I would post stuff to do with makeup and maybe pictures of my day to day outfits so I’ll have to start sorting that out. I did find a really good tutorial on how to apply cat eyes liner with liquid eyeliner that I wanted to share with you – the link is here. I’ve been trying the method out and it works really well, no matter how big you want the flick to be. So hopefully the next month or so I’ll be sorting this blog out, adding fashion inspiration and posting my favourite outfits and things…
The weather has been very changeable recently in London – one day it’s sunny and hot and then it’s thunderstorms and pouring with rain. Another thing is that it’s been kind of humid but then today it was sort of cooler. This is making it a bit of a dilemma deciding what to wear, or whether to wear a thicker cardigan or a pashmina.
Generally I tend to tote around my favourite everyday bag which could probably pass as a kind of overnight bag because its an oversized bag which tends to act as a ‘take my room out with me’ kind of thing – so it has room for a cardigan or pashmina if the weather gets colder. Another dilemma is whether to wear flat ballerinas or my trusty birkenstocks – if it rains birkenstocks don’t exactly hold up very well, with the footbed tending to get soaked and feel suspiciously squelchy (the same could be said of canvas flats, but at least they mostly keep your feet dry).
Anyway, I’ve bought three new dresses recently – I don’t know what has come over me but I seem to be drawn to flowery frocks with suspiciously bright colours that smack of summer (despite the rain tap being turned on and off). I’m wearing one of them now, from Evans – it’s slightly more fitted than I expected but it fits in all the right places and is very cool and comfortable. What isn’t clear in the picture is that the two pleats at the sides are in fact pockets, but it works well if you get the right size – they don’t gape or anything.
It can also be dressed up and down – a day to night dress. The cotton is very lightweight and slightly see through so I feel more comfortable wearing black leggings underneath. Purple or green leggings could also be worn if you toned it down with a black or darker cardigan, but that’s just me – I sometimes tend to the conservative side of colours! I was apprehensive about the yellow when I first received it, but it all seems to work with clever accessorizing and a bit of confidence. I never thought I would wear a dress with bright flowers on it – this shows what sort of happy go lucky mindset I get into when summer peeks it’s head around the corner. I also absolutely love different shades of purple and green, as well as black, which is probably what attracted me to this particular dress! Sometimes Evans really gets it right with certain things, sometimes it doesn’t. Over the years, I’ve tended to view Evans as being quite conservative, but it looks as though there is a new verve and lease of life being breathed into the store.
I also bought a dress from Dorothy Perkins - cream with a ‘hitchy’ hem, because they were doing 20% off. It turns out they are now doing 50% off – so if you are sizes 18-22, as well as 6-16 (UK) they have some fabulous dresses at the moment.
Perhaps I was just having a rather feminine moment! It accessorizes well with blues and browns – I wore a blue cardigan and my blue jean cutoffs to add a bit more of an edge. I was worried about the fact that it was cream and I don’t have a lot of cream or white in my wardrobe. I think I was relying on the accent colours of blue and coral/light orange to provide the colour for the accessories and shoes etc. It is also longer than I thought it would be – just sitting at the knee or just below the knee. I’m quite short though – 5 feet 3, so it probably depends how tall you are. I’m hoping that the dresses I’ve got will last a few years – it all depends upon styling and accessories if you want things to last. I’m impressed with the quality of the stuff Dorothy Perkins and Evans have made in the past two years as they really hold up well. I’m still wearing things and mixing them up from four or five years ago from them. You know what they say though – fashion goes through cycles!
Last but not least, I bought a dress from Joe Browns Plus on Simply Be that hasn’t arrived yet. Joe Browns has been a bit hit or miss for me in general, but most of the clothes I’ve bought from them have worked really well. They are really good for feelgood laid back style, with a slight edge.
I also love the dresses and tunics on their non plus size website, where sizes go up to 18, but am wary of buying from there when I don’t know what the fit will be like. I like their philosophy, anyway! They seem to be all about bohemian and surf fashion with a rock sort of edge. Or maybe that’s just me…
Again, I can’t be sure what the material and print of the dress is like until it arrives, but I was attracted to the different colours and possibilities of different accessorizing with these colours. I could pick out the red with a red cardigan, or wear the dress with black leggings and a black cardigan, or play up the blue. I’m a little worried about the low neckline because I’m not ample in the cleavage department and might need to wear a vest underneath!
I’m quite happy with my choices, I don’t generally find dresses that tick all the boxes with me (comfortable, not too fussy, easy to accessorise, reasonably priced). The only problem is that it’s so tempting at the moment – the sales seem to be picking up and it would be so easy to go mad and bag a bargain. I’m trying to save my pennies this summer, and work with what I’ve got rather than impulse buying. So you might see some accessorising, make up and styling focused posts rather than ‘what I’ve bought’ focused posts in the next few months!
I am however, really interested in the Beth Ditto for Evans range…some of the pieces are really strong and appeal to me. However, I will only buy if I feel that I’ll wear something again and again – some of the pieces are a little pricey. We’ll see! 
Taking a long hard look at my wardrobe and it’s contents, I am reminded that my particular style seems to be a mish-mash of different things. I have staples that I love – baggy jeans, colourful cardigans, jersey dresses in various colours and prints, rocket dog flats, etc but there are also things that I am at a loss to categorise.
That would be stuff like a pink tweed skirt I got a few years ago from Boden, a gypsy style skirt with black and flowery alternate tiers, a polyester mid length work skirt which I never wear (and I wonder what possessed me to buy it…), a Joe Browns halterneck dress which is far too low for me to wear and halter dresses hurt the back of my neck (and also it is a bizarre print that I probably wouldn’t have bought if I’d seen it in a shop – such is the peril of online shopping). The pink tweed skirt looks good with some of my tops, especially since it’s sort of flippy around the hem and is good quality, so I think it’s a keeper, really. But I really don’t like the feel of polyester – I’m not being snobbish or anything – I just can’t wear it as it doesn’t go with the rest of the stuff in my wardrobe. I think my problem is that I’ve got a sort of rebellious streak when it comes to clothes – I don’t like being too smart at all, and prefer to have a bit of a rough and thrown on look.
Periodically I like to have clear outs, but sometimes I can’t part from things with that old adage of ‘I might wear it someday…’. You know the thing – I’m always thinking that I might actually have a job where smart clothes is a must. I can’t afford anything except polyester smart trousers for workwear – but I do have two pairs of lovely tweed(lookalike)widelegged smart trousers that would work in a workplace.
Not to mention the shoes. The bottom of my wardrobe is home to a mass of shoes which I really must sort out. I have my favourites which I wear all the time, but some of them, even though I have worn them occasionally, don’t get much wear at all. This has started me thinking about why we feel the need to buy stuff all the time. Why am I not content with just a few pairs of shoes that I can wear with 
everything? I bought some lovely polka dot shoes from Evans two weeks ago – slingbacks with a dark blue heel and black with white polka dots. My idea of wildly inappropriate (but totally desirable) shoes that I probably won’t wear very much at all.
Heels are a sticking point for me – I love them, but they really hurt after about half an hour, especially if they are higher than 4cm. I could never be the woman walking down the street to work in high heels. I find it hard enough to break in some flats sometimes, let alone high heels. Maybe the thing about heels is that they are sort of like fantasy items – we wish we were like Marilyn Monroe (Jello on Springs!!) or Katherine Hepburn or Audrey Hepburn walking around in heels with what looks like relative ease.
For me though, it is the people I see everyday which inspire me with fashion and clothes. My younger sister (by four years) has an indie kid style which I really like. I have a friend who wears gorgeous dresses she finds in charity shops and from rockabilly websites, over baggy jeans, with eye makeup inspired by the Ronettes (like Amy Winehouse – the feline flicks). She also has a penchant for bright colours and bright leopard print cardigans. So I really feel that what we wear can be quite personal sometimes. I guess I’m inspired by 50’s and 60’s movie icons as well as trailblazing women in music with outlandish and rocky style.
I don’t read women’s magazines anymore (a choice I made after realising how contradictory the features and messages were, and how shit they made me feel about being a large lady and a deaf person), so I don’t necessarily keep up with fashion. You can’t avoid finding out what the latest style is though by walking along the high street seeing the mannequins in shop windows and watching TV programmes. At the moment I can see there is an abundance of tribal print stuff, nautical stuff and leopard print (or maybe that’s just me, I kind of like bright leopard prints…).
I’ve never thought of style as following fashion – stepping out of the box and doing unique things, customising and so on, has always been more exciting to me. What’s more, I think that you can achieve your own style when you’re plus size. It takes a little bit of imagination, mixing it up, customising and reworking things. I am aware that a lot of people can’t afford to do this, but it is essentially also about attitude – don’t be afraid to try new things!
One of my favourite books ever, which I would recommend to anyone, is ‘It’s So You: 35 Women Write About Personal Expression Through Fashion and Style.’ edited by Michelle Tea. It is a series of essays written by a myriad of women – some writing about a particular item of clothing that has memories for them, some writing about how their style has changed, writing about accepting their bodies and even their daily beauty routine and what make-up means to them.
It shows that fashion, style and beauty has an intensely personal and sometimes intimate meaning to many women. Far from being shallow, about ‘keeping up’ with whatever trends, style and clothes can be something that affects your moods, the way you feel about yourself, about who you are. Even when clothes don’t mean an awful lot to you, you still find that you have to buy them periodically to replace old ones – what affects your choices? Practicality? Colour? ‘Types’ of clothes?
Even as a self confessed clothes, shoes, make-up and accessories junkie, a lot of the items in my wardrobe have significance to me. A lot of my occasion dresses I have worn to events such as weddings, graduation parties, birthdays, anniversaries, christenings. Some of the dresses I have evoke these celebratory memories and make me feel happy just to see them hung up on a hanger.
Some of my shoes are beaten up and worn, yet still I keep wearing them because they mean something to me. I find it hard to let go of clothes I’ve got that don’t fit anymore or don’t really go with my current style because they have important or happy memories. As a result, my wardrobe is fit for bursting and probably needs a good spring clean. I am less sentimental with other objects like old make-up or old school work. I have given away some clothing before to charity shops but it doesn’t seem to have affected the density of my wardrobe at all, despite my best efforts. In 24 years (well, more like 12 years, seeing as they are adult sizes), I seem to have accumulated more clothes than I know what to do with!
I didn’t really settle on a ’style’ of my own until I was about 20 or 21, after being at University for the first time. I now sort of cherry pick things from current trends that I actually like and will wear, rather than focusing on a particular trend. I lean towards polka dots, purple, teal, interesting patterns like a mix of stars, hearts and whimsy (unicorns, animal print, etc). I generally don’t like floral patterns all that much, especially BIG floral patterns, which has been a staple of plus size clothing for years!
This brings me to the difficulty of finding things that work from plus size ranges. Sure, I’m not at the bigger end of plus size, so I can buy things around size 16, 18 and 20 where they are available from some high street shops. Like most women, different parts of my body need different sizes. This is the thing that really bothers me about standardized sizes – I have a problem finding sizes that fit well up top (that aren’t baggy or too tight) because I am roughly a B-C cup yet have wide shoulders and my rib cage is quite wide too. This is why I find the idea of having made to measure clothes really excellent, but too expensive for my pocket. But a woman can dream, right?
In the 90s, plus size clothing really wasn’t good at all, so I used to drool over clothes, bags and make-up instead when I was a teen. In ‘It’s So You’ one author talks about being plus size and how her addiction for shoes stems from not having enough choice in the clothes department. I really related to this, the idea that shoes and bags are a big woman’s saving grace.
Yet I am really encouraged that some high street shops and chains are becoming more aware that their customers are much more diverse. I used to associate Evans with mumsy, dispiriting styles. Its so much more exciting now, and I have bought clothes from them – and I’m excited about the Beth Ditto collaboration, considering she’s the singer from one of my favourite bands. Clothes and music have always been huge sources of inspiration and creativity for me – I like clothes with a bit of a tough edge, and my music taste goes all over the place (from Aerosmith to Norah Jones).
Lipstick, lipgloss and eyeliner are also big addictions of mine. The best eyeliner I have ever used are Urban Decay’s 24/7 eyeliners. They add a pop of colour, definition and are difficult to budge (I do have a hard time getting them off afterwards..). Lipgloss wise, I like Pure’s lipglosses – they have great colours and smell rather yummy. Paul and Joe’s lipsticks are also heaven to use, particularly their Lipstick N range, which is like a touch of satin on your lips.
Then again, Urban Decay and Benefit are my favourite brands, even with how expensive they are (I look out for deals and price reductions). Bourjois is also really good sometimes. But then, you can’t beat a bit of Vaseline to keep your lips protected from cracking! At least, I always go back to Vaseline, no matter how many different lip balms I try. Lush do some yummy lip balms, Whipstick (real chocolate and tangerine) is my favourite 
Reading around on other fatshionista blogs, I’ve been inspired to set up this blog, even though I have another blog where I discuss loads of other things. I thought that it would be good to have somewhere to talk about fatshion, beauty and inspiration. What inspires you? What clothes do you love wearing? What beauty product can’t you be parted from? Instead of being dictated to by magazines, its more important to love whatever the hell you want to love!
