Shopping with Lindsay

One of my most favorite things to do is help someone find the perfect dress.  Well, the perfect dress, pair of jeans, outfit, even bra.  I love helping people to look their absolute best.  It not only makes them shine from the outside but the perfect clothing on the outside can make you feel amazing on the inside.  My beautiful cousin Lindsay needed a dress for an outdoor wedding in Charleston, South Carolina and I was so excited when she contacted me.  I popped in to Monkee's over at the Morocroft Shopping Center and they have some beautiful things.  I pulled some dresses that morning that I thought would be perfect for the occasion and for Lindsay's personal style.  Lindsay is a beautiful petite woman with a great reddish brown hair color.  She can wear a size 0 or 2 so it is easy to find things that will fit her.  Here are a few of the things we tried.

This cute little Alice + Olivia number caught my attention on the rack.  It was a fun little print and it had straps on the back that looked like buckles.  We both loved it but when Lindsay put it on, the top was just too big on her petite frame.  We tightened the buckles (which is a nice feature of the dress) but it just still didn't fit right.  As you can see in the picture above, the bunchiness at the top just didn't do anything for her figure.

This was another cute option.  We loved the comfort of the easy strapless cotton, but it was just not right for the occasion.  This would be great for the beach in the summer with a pair of Rainbows and cute with a pair of strappies for a night out in Charlotte, but it was not the look that we wanted for the event.

When I picked this up, I was attracted to the green color.  Green looks amazing on Lindsay.  With her hair color and her skin tone, this color is great for her.  And, hello, this is Susana Monaco!  Remember the fab tube tops from a few years back!  I haven't seen them around in so long but this maxi dress was amazing.  Yes, it would definitely need to be hemmed but we loved this.  Again though, we just didn't think that this was the look Lindsay was going for.  The wedding was in Charleston in April and it was an outdoors so we wanted something more colorful, more fun.  The following dress was the first one that I picked up when I walked into Monkees.

This Shoshanna dress was PERFECT!  The colors were so vibrant and it fit Lindsay perfectly.  The best thing about this dress was that it required zero alterations.  The length was perfect on Lindsay's petite frame.  It is always hard for petite girls to find a dress that doesn't require any alterations on the length.  Lindsay is about 5'2"...Our beloved Yiayia (grandmother in Greek) was a teeny tiny thing and my lovely Aunt Loula (Lindsay's mom) is tiny as well, so this runs in our family.  The wonderful thing about this dress is that the straps are adjustable, so it could be fitted on top to fit Lindsay's frame.  I have helped my Aunt Loula find a dress many times and we have always had to have them altered so it was an added bonus that this dress did not need any alterations.  Shoshanna dresses are wonderful for all body types.

You can see from this side profile picture how the dress hits Lindsay perfectly in the waist.  The most flattering part of a woman's body is the waist, it is the smallest part of our bodies and should always be emphasized.  You can see how flattering it is on Lindsay.  You can also see in this picture the adjustable straps in the back.  This will be beautiful on Lindsay at the wedding in Charleston with a great pair of nude heels and she can wear it over and over, just changing up the shoes.  She can pop on a pair of wedges for a look that is a little less dressy and she can take it to the beach in the summer for a fun dinner out.  We all love dresses that we can wear again and again by just changing up a few things.

A big thank you to Lindsay for letting me use her on my blog.  She looks beautiful!  If I can help anyone find a dress, please email me at johann.wheatley@me.com.  This is my passion and I would love to work with anyone!  Thanks for reading!!

A Few of my Favorite Summer Things!

I think that every Southern girl has one place that they love to vacation, the beach!!  It doesn't matter if it's Wrightsville, Edisto, Sullivan's or my home away from home, Ocean Isle Beach, NC...There is just something about being in a bikini, a visor and some sunglasses that we love.  Not only is style so easy in the summer, hello maxi dresses and bare feet, but we all have more time to hang out with family and friends and everything just seems a little sweeter.  Oh, and did I mention ice cold beer???  Since I am sitting on the porch swing at my parents house soaking up the last few minutes of the coast, I thought I would go ahead and blog about all of my favorite summertime products.  I love the ease of a summer beauty routine.

This Bobbi Brown Beach Sunscreen Body Spray is always in my beach bag and a constant in my summer routine.  It has SPF 15 which keeps my skin safe but is light enough to let some of my beloved rays in.  It has an incredible light fragrance and a texture of an oil so it looks great on your skin as well.

You will have to forgive me about being dramatic when it comes to Estee Lauder's Bronze Goddess, but if there is one scent I could have follow me around forever, it would be this one!  Estee Lauder comes out with the Bronze Goddess line during Spring and Summer and quantities are always limited.  I love to use the fragrance but have also used the body oil, which is lovely in the summertime, especially to make legs look amazing.  There are also beautiful bronzer's and other eye shadows etc., that are part of this line.  Don't just take my word for it, go into you local retailer, find it, smell it, I know you will want to take it home with you...

During the summer when I am tan, and spending more time outdoors, the last thing I want to do is mess with a bunch of makeup, especially foundation.  My go to product during those months is Laura Mercier's tinted moisturizer.  I use the oil free version.  It goes on easy, I just use my fingers, and feels extremely light on my skin.  It gives a light coverage but still gives me that dewey look that I love.

Finally, Chanel always comes out with amazing nail polish colors.  The one that I am currently loving is Black Pearl.  The cool thing about this color is that it can look silver, grey, or even green.  When I have it on, I always hear a different color, which is a lot of fun.  I think that this is a great transitional color from fall into spring.  This is great before breaking out the fun corals and pinks to come.

Clothes are my first love, but I am a sucker for anything that makes you feel pretty!  These are just a few of my favorites!  What are yours?

Practicing What I Preach!

I talk to so many people about their closets and what they have in them.  I am embarrassed to say that mine was such a mess before I got down to it and dove in to take control over my own closet!

Here is a look at what I started out with....

From the pictures above you can see what a mess I had on my hands.  Clothes hung up with no rhyme or reason, just thrown in the racks.  Shoes and handbags everywhere on the floor and on random racks.  Hats, scarves, a mysterious cardboard box, that I finally realized had Christmas decorations in it.  I was wasting so much space and could not even see half the clothes that I had, much less the ones that I definitely needed to part with.  I dug in with my first task being to get rid of every hanger that came from a dry cleaner!!  I could not believe the amount of hangers I had in my closet.  The space that opened up from just removing those was amazing.  I then started throwing things out of my closet.  Things that I hadn't worn in years, things that I looked at and said, "what the hell was I thinking?!", things that didn't fit anymore (sad face!) and things that would just never fit again (double sad face!).  I went at it trying to be realistic as possible.  All of the free "gift with purchases" that you think are going to come in handy one day, they gotta go.  Here is a few picture of what I got rid of...

The cardboard box with those Christmas decoration, gone and filled with hangers, the pile of clothes, going to Goodwill along with those red Stuart Weitzman suede heels, that I truly loved, but bought a half size too big and when they stretched out, I just couldn't walk in them anymore.  I hope they find a very happy home, they were like brand new!  

When I dug into organizing my closet, I went with the way I have learned to merchandise.  I started with my underpinnings, I started with the sleeveless tops and tanks, started with white, moved to colors and then to black.  I then went into the short sleeved underpinnings and moved on form there.  This is an easy way to work with the items in your closet because when you need something to go under a jacket or cardigan, you have all of your sleeveless underpinnings in one place.  You need a t-shirt, they come next and so forth.  I kept to mostly solids and then added novelty tops toward the end.  

I have a ton of black jackets!  Black jackets and other blazers and cardigans.  I knew I wanted them in an order where I could see them all, but I didn't use them on a daily basis so I chose to put them on a lower rack.  I kept my underpinnings and tee's up top and hung these below.

I also put some other printed jackets and cardigans on that rack, along with hanging my shorts and skirts all together at the end of the rack as well.  I like having things in groups so that I know where everything is when I want to reach for it!

These are the two racks I worked on first and I feel like when they were completed, I could see everything which would lead to coming up with outfits a breeze.  Anyone who knows me, knows that I am a complete dress girl.  I love dresses!  Long dresses, short dresses, medium length dresses, I have room for you all in my closet!  When I started to organize them, I thought back again to the way I organized my tops and went with short to long and started with sleeve length.  I started out with my sleeveless dresses and went on from there.  This way, I could feel out what my mood was and go from there.  If I am feeling beachy and casual I go for a long cotton maxi dress, if I want to turn it on with a pair of heels and a mini, I go for my DVF vintage print minis, they're all together in the same place.

The last thing I did was organize my shoes and handbags on my shelves.  I also organized my boots on the floor.  Really it was just straightening them from the pile that they were in.  I also used little bins to organize my Hanky Panky's, tights and socks, sleep tanks and shorts and other items of lingerie.  This makes it easy after laundry and I even put my tights in zip lock bags, a trick I learned from Brooke's modeling box.  I labeled them so I wouldn't have to dig through four pairs of black tights to find the ones that I was looking for.

One other thing I think is important is to keep sweaters folded.  Hanging sweaters can get those annoying hanger marks on the shoulders and they can also get stretched and misshapen.  I fold all of my good sweaters and pop them on the shelves.  It will make them last longer and they are easy to see.  I also folded my leggings and they are easy to see by color so when I want to wear them I just pull them out and they don't take up as much room.

Finally as a personal touch, I found this little sign years ago when I was visiting my brother in college at Auburn in Alabama.  I popped into a cute little boutique and I saw this hanging there.  It has followed me to many of the places I have lived throughout the years.  It basically sums it all up!!

Xoxo!!