Clothing | Fashion Dimensions

Keep Your Partner Intrigued with Your Personal Style

Everyone is unique. But too often, what’s really unique is covered under layers of fashion disasters and poor self-esteem. You owe it to yourself, and your partner, to keep your personal style fresh and alive.

Fashion Style

They say clothes make the man (and woman). What do your clothes say about you? If you buy virtually everything based on media influences and seasonal fashion trends, it says absolutely nothing about you. When you prepare for online dating with parship, forget about the labels and remember why you bought the clothes. It might be time to dump your old clothes and breathe some new life into your wardrobe.

Dating Style

Your partner deserves a little mystery and a lot of attention. Change your old habits and shake the cobwebs out of your routine. Try new restaurants. Ask for relationship advice from experts. Take a different path for your walks. Break out of your rut and show your partner you can still surprise them.

Personal Style

Beyond clothes are the accessories. Accessories are the accent of life. It may be time to change your hairstyle and try something new. The right hair stylist can do amazing things. Ditch the glasses and try contact lenses. Are you checking your phone for the time? A quality watch can be functional and stylish. Some classics never go out of style.

Professional Style

Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. Shake up the office with a new look. Trade in the trainers for dress shoes and the T-shirt for a collared shirt. Use a briefcase instead of a backpack. Trade your cheap biro for a classy fountain pen. It won’t be long before you get noticed.

Filed Under: Celebrity Influence, Current Trends Tagged With: Clothing, Design, Fashion

Fashion No-No’s for Any Body Shape

No one person’s body is the exact same as someone else’s despite what we see on television. Clothes will naturally hand differently and look differently on each individual person. Here are some ideas to keep in mind when shopping for clothes that a woman of any shape or size should stay away from.

The best advice that any woman can get is to know what your trouble areas are and what areas to play up. Just because you are well-endowed doesn’t exactly mean you need them spilling out to draw the eye to that area if your middle is a little larger. In some cases this may accentuate your middle. The point is to know your bodies good and bad areas before you buy the clothes.

Stay away from horizontal stripes. Even if you are very slim horizontal stripes can make your body look wider in spots you may not want to accentuate. Perhaps not through your middle but maybe through your shoulders and this can make the body proportions look off. If you are a larger woman the horizontal stripes are a no-no. Your body’s widest areas will look wider.

Image by richardmasoner via Flickr

If you want to keep updated in fashion, consider the new Direct TV packages that offer a good amount of fashion-related channels and shows where you can do research from. Every woman has the standard black dress or pant suit in their closet, if not these two items then at least some stand-by black outfit. This is a must-have in any woman’s closet. The trick here is to break up the color. An all-black outfit is boring on any woman. Take the little black dress for example; you can pair this with colored pumps and matching bag or shawl.

Filed Under: Apparel, Designer Influence, General Tagged With: Clothing, Little black dress, Woman

3 Ways to Save on Designer Clothing

Designer clothing is typically known for being expensive. Indeed, there are labels that don’t go on sale very often. But saving on designer clothing can be accomplished with the right resources and a bit of luck. Here are a few ways to save.

1. The Right Resources

If you want to save on designer clothing, take advantage of the sites that will do it for you. This is something to take advantage of in order to save, and it expedites your savings search.

A site such as Offers.com demonstrates this clearly. With sections dedicated to specific topics within fashion, for instance, this could be an excellent go-to site for your needs in saving on designer clothes.

2. Find the Gems in Your Area

In the search for designer clothes, you might be at the mercy of larger stores if that’s all you are visiting. Use the Internet or phone book to locate the slightly-unknown boutiques in your area, high-end outlet malls, and other locations. You might be surprised at the prices you’ll get that beat where you normally go.

3. Use Financial Means

Sometimes you have to face the facts: some high-end designer clothes simply don’t go on sale. Yet that doesn’t mean that you have to pay full price when everything is said and done.

Take advantage of means you have to save. Are you getting cash back on your purchases? Don’t overlook all of your options when it comes to reducing the price of that perfect fashion piece.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Designer Influence Tagged With: Clothing, Designer clothing, Offers.com

Vintage Fashion Time

Cover of Marlene Dietrich

Watching timeless movies from bygone eras or perusing old photos at the museum makes one take note of yesterdays fashions. There are some interesting designs in clothes from eras past. Whether it is Marilyn Monroe’s halter top dress, the Marlene Dietrich look, or Ginger Rogers in a ballroom gown, it leaves you yearning because those clothes are not to be found. If you know where to look in many of your larger metropolitan areas there are stores that sell vintage clothing, and there is a Vintage Fashion Show Exposition.

The Vintage Fashion Show Exposition is located in La Verne, California puts on a set of traveling shows five times a year.The shows attract fashion experts, costume designers, and the general public. Over 75 dealers set up booths to sell vintage clothing, accessories, and jewelery. Clothes come from the Victorian Era to about the 1980′s retro style wear. Fashion artists from around the world come to view the clothes. Many modern styles of clothing inspiration come from a designer team pouring over clothes of yesteryear. Since all five shows happen in California many of the Hollywood crowd come out to buy for movie sets.The five shows occur in the San Franciso and Santa Monica areas from September to May.

Metropolitan areas such as New York, or Houston have whole streets dedicated to vintage clothing. In most urban areas the stores are scattered and must be sought. FashionDig provides a website where a person can do an Internet search by city, state, country, or zip code to locate vintage clothing and paraphenailia.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Runway Tagged With: Clothing, Marilyn Monroe, Vintage clothing

Looking Regal Without Paying Royally

Image by CyrilChen via Flickr

With a royal wedding fast approaching, women are paying close attention to what the future princess is wearing. You can look like royalty in a variety of inexpensive ways, either by using what you already own, or if you know your way around sewing machines, making it yourself.

Instead of worrying about spending too much money on your apparel, make two outfits out of one, make four out of two, and so on. You can match colors of separates or mix them, or you can match light colored garments with a darker hue of the same color. You might choose busy patterns to compliment subtler ones. If you are creative and want to toot your own fashion horn, you can make combinations of crazy, wild prints with others.

Match the color in layers

You can wear plaid, that is making a comeback in big ways, in two tones such as yellow and black, and wear a bright color yellow turtleneck and a black over-sized shirt on top. Leaving the top buttons open on the plaid coat, the underlying colors will bring out both the color and dimension of the plaid design

Neutral and Fluorescent

Choose a bright colored skirt, pair it up with separates of neutral colors such as tan or gray. One color will flatter the other in a way that is not overdone, but will definitely not look plain either.

Passionate Patterns

Choose any herringbone patterned vest or sweater and match it up with striped or dotted separates. Add a puka shell necklace and a bangle bracelet to resemble the free spirit of young people in the 1960′s.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Designer Influence Tagged With: Clothing, Color, Sewing machine

Fashion For Those of Us Less Than Perfect

Image by susu9 via Flickr

If a person receives the privilege of living a long time there often comes a point where clothing has to be adapted to what the body has become. Then there are the mishaps and tragedies in life that change us forever. The image and the life identity a person once had is gone and replaced with something different. Physical disabilities happen through accidents and aging. No matter what, society requires us to wear clothes. If you have to wear clothes they might as well be functional and fashionable.

There are companies out there who create functional and fashionable clothes for seniors, and people with disabilities. No matter who you are or what life has dealt you, you would like to look good for you. Clothes are adapted for those with mobility issues, wheelchair inhabitants, parapalegics, and I can no longer reach the toes people. The clothes range from practical to absolutely gorgeous. Normal designs of pants, blouses, shirts, etc. have been modified for easy putting on and taking off. Clothes have been also designed in a manner that makes a caregivers life easier as well. A short browse through each Internet store shows a person the clothes are reasonably priced and look great. Even if there is no disability the comfort provided by the design tempts one to buy anyway.

The companies are scattered throughout the world and easily accessed with the Internet. There is Care Apparel Center in Hong Kong, Leeds Solutions in Canada, Care Apparel in Ohio, and Designed to Care in England to name a few. This could definitely start a new fashion trend.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Runway Tagged With: Clothing, Fashion, Ohio

The Hottest Brand for Men

Have that special man in your life and want to get him something nice to wear? Or, are you a male and desperately in need to some in-style clothes? In either case, you could do much worse than to observe some of the styles from one of the hottest urban lines available.

There are plenty of styles from the brand Ecko that make excellent choices. Since the late 1990s, Ecko has taken the scene by storm, providing some of the most popular products for men – and women and children. Appealing to a wide variety of men in different areas, it is a great way to update the wardrobe.

You may already be aware of the popularity of the brand. Its appeal to a variety of audiences is easy to see. The Zoo York line based around skateboarding is not to be overlooked, as is the Marc Ecko Cut and Sew, which is a more preppy clothing line. UFC fighters Michael Bisping and Frank Mir, along with Miguel Cotto (boxing) and John Cena (WWE), have also sported the line.

Along with other clothing lines in the area of urban style, you should consider this brand for your needs. Try getting your significant other a stylish Zoo York tee, or perhaps a nice belt or watch for the office. If you are looking for yourself, you can see plenty of choices online very easily, from dressier to clothes that are more casual.

Take a look at this extremely popular brand for men. You may have already witnessed its popularity, so consider some of the brands and clothing options that are available. If you’re missing that perfect, wearable gift for the man in your life, this is the way to go. Don’t forget to consider some of the options that in style from this hot brand.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Designer Influence Tagged With: Clothing, Eckō, Frank Mir

Do Exotic Clothing on Runways Influence Day to Day Fashion?

Almost everyday in the newspapers, magazines, Television and other mass media such as internet, one can see models, mostly females in a very exotic attire walking on runways. Some of these clothing is so unusual and imaginative that it is mind boggling to think a secretary, a businessman, a lawyer, a doctor, or a teacher in high school would wear such a dress in daily life.

So the obvious question is, why do fashion designers take such creative liberties to make exotic clothing for fashion runways? One chief factor in determining the actions and choices for fashion designers is that they almost always need media attention and nothing attracts more than the most exotic and imaginative pieces of clothing.

Fashion designers often can count on rich investors, media magnates, publishing houses and clothing industry to provide funds for such creative adventures and challenge the normal people to open up to new vistas and possibilities in clothing, especially extreme design.

This is very beneficial for the fashion designers since the limelight keeps them always in the news, and the news magazines keep publishing these new and creative designs, which startle the people’s imaginations thereby garnering even more sales and more revenues for new exotic fashion adventures.

The total advertising revenue from the sales of various fashion magazines is in the Billions of dollars and this is more than enough money to hire young and ambitious designers to create ever more exotic clothing for the runways, keeping Americans and Westerners always startled and in awe with their new creations.

Filed Under: Celebrity Influence, Runway Tagged With: Clothing, Fashion, Runway

Do Russians Make One of the Best Winter Clothing?

Russian civilization is more than 1200 years old and the old Slavic history and story books have a lot of discussions on furs, fur clothing, fur caps and protective layers of bedding from severe Winter. Russian culture and civilization is deeply influenced by the geography of northern cold climates which include severe cold emerging from Siberia, the Arctic and spreading all over the Great Russian plains.

Russian winters are one of the most challenging and are matched only by the winters in sparsely populated Tibet and Scandinavia. Russians have extensive experience and design flair in making winter clothing from fur and skins. Russian expertise and artistic insight can be seen anywhere from its strong influence in the international design and acceptance of Russian fur cap, which is either available in genuine natural fur, or artificial materials which provide a fur like appearance and warmth.

The Russian fur cap protects the entire cranium, ears, jaw line, forehead and confers a great overall protection against cold weather. The Russian fur gloves which go above the elbows are especially famous for their elegant design and charming but subdued colors and patterns.

Russian boots are especially famous for their insulation against cold seeping from the ground and can provide solid warmth and protection from cold bites, dryness and temperature shock. Russian winter clothing and styles have international appeal and can be seen universally representing the best in winter clothing.

After the fall of the Soviet communism, Russia went through a period of hyperinflation and total devastation of its economic and social life, so this country has not been able to manage the creativity of its core fashion and style niche, but there is hope that when Russia becomes prosperous and vibrant, it will contribute richly to winter fashion design.

Filed Under: Current Trends, Runway Tagged With: Arctic, Clothing, Siberia

Does Indian Fashion Have the Capacity to Across the Globe?

India is known for its unique and expressive clothing with rich colors, shapes, tapestries and exotic design. Indian female clothing such as Sari, the long single piece garment worn around the body, Salwar Kameez, the two piece clothing to cover upper and lower body is almost universally recognized. But outside India, it is worn mostly by the Indian and Indianized diaspora.

These East Indian oriented dresses are not worn at all in vast regions like China, Europe, Americas and Africa and have not been accepted as a day to day clothing style in these regions.

Indian fashion designers have spread their wings across the globe and many famous names such as Saloni Lodha have tried to introduce Indian colors and shapes by fusing them with Western style clothing. Fusion themes have worked better than startlingly exotic and purely Indian clothing which might look odd and even goofy in a Western setting.

Designers like Saloni Lodha have worked for top fashion conglomerates and her work has been prominently depicted in fashion magazines such as Vogue.

Western dresses have a rich variety of colors, shapes and designs, and Indian colors and fashion sense have made them even richer. It is almost certain that as Indian Subcontinent’s population rapidly multiplies, and the region becomes more prosperous, fashion designers of Indian extraction will introduce and impose their fashion sense and talented designs on conventional Western clothing and this might transform the way the World wears its clothes.

At a very minimum, there could be a fusion fashion style which could emerge from Western and Indian fashion designers working together to bring elements of Eastern and Western style in harmony and combining them into one.

Saloni Lodha who works in Europe, is a good example of this emerging fusion. As the portfolio and leverage of such International designers becomes more accepted and common place, we might see a more universal style of clothing, some changes in traditional Western clothing, particularly in color combinations that might enrich the global fashion sense.

Filed Under: Apparel, General Tagged With: Clothing, Clothing in India, India