Changing Your Clothes

Shopping, Sewing, Upcycling, Repairing: Make the most of your clothes!

Category Archives: Wardrobe Creation

Ideas for creating mini-wardrobes, starting with what you already have. These are mostly based around themes, e.g. Long Weekend in Santa Fe.


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Doing a Warm-up: Winterizing Your Clothes

Here’s a great question from 24/7 in France: “What about really cold winter weather? I get tired of wearing turtlenecks and sweaters over them all the time— any ideas? I’m traveling soon to cold weather.”

I’ll do a more extensive follow-up on this later, but for now, I’ll offer this suggestion: silk long johns. When I was living in Ohio on a horse farm, I was down in the barn for the daily chores, which, in winter, involved trying to ward off frostbite in -20 F temperatures. I was uncomfortable in really heavy, thick clothes; I don’t like the feeling of being weighed down, not to mention that layer upon layer made it harder to move around.

Silk long john top from WinterSilks Silk long john top, Warmth Factor 5, from WinterSilks; this is just one style and color of many available. And they have styles for men, women, and children! (Click the photo to see all Warmth Factor 5 styles.) Continue reading →


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Shopping Alert: Martin Margiela for H & M, coming soon!

I hope you don’t mind me posting 2 slideshows in a row, but I just had to show-and-tell you this: on November 15, H & M will debut a fabulous collection that’s a collaboration with the amazing Martin Margiela! Here’s one of my personal favorites:

Margiela for H & M dress Maison Martin Margiela for H & M dress, from the collaborative collection available beginning November 15. Love the peek of leg! (Click on the picture to go to the slideshow.) Continue reading →


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Go Big: It’s All About the Balance!

Yes, the fickle fashion cycle has swung around again to embracing the oversized, but as the ensembles in this Refinery29 slideshow demonstrate, the key to making this look work is in keeping everything balanced.

Oversized skirt, fitted sweater Oversized skirt, fitted sweater; this look works because the sweater is proportionally as fitted as the skirt is voluminous. And I’m loving the pastel-with-bright color combination! (Click on the picture to go directly to the slideshow.) Continue reading →


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Dressing for Your Body: Wedding Gown Inspiration

I was just looking at this slideshow from RealSimple, showing wedding gowns for various body types. I love looking at wedding gowns anyway, but this time it occurred to me that I could take some of their advice and adapt it for clothes I might wear more than once in my lifetime.

(Semi-serious disclaimer: if you detest the use of fruit names as euphemisms for body types, as I do, frankly, don’t say I didn’t warn you. That said, if you can ignore that part, there’s good information here.)

Here’s an example:

Wedding Dress for Full Figures Wedding gown for full figures. (Click on this picture to go see the entire slideshow.) Continue reading →


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Easiest Weekend Dressing Ever!

Okay, we now have no excuses left for looking sloppy on the weekends! Refinery29 has put together 5 outfits, each comprised of the following pieces:

1. Jeans

2. T-shirt

3. Flats

4. Sweater

5. Accessories (handbags, jewelry)

Example:

Easy Weekend Outfits Easy weekend outfits, courtesy of Refinery29. Each is based on jeans, T-shirt, sweater, and flats, with handbags and a little jewelry thrown in. Continue reading →


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Lindy Reads: The Thoughtful Dresser

The Thoughtful Dresser, a book by Linda Grant that started as a blog, is one of my favorite clothes-related reads in the past few years. (Click here to go to Linda’s blog; click here to find the book for sale at Amazon.) Its subtitle, The Art of Adornment, The Pleasures of Shopping, and Why Clothes Matter, really describes the content so well that I don’t have anything to add. Except, now that I think about it, that this book not only relates some remarkable stories of the ways in which clothes can transform lives, it also dispels the erroneous mindset that people who love fashion are superficial (or worse, boring). I highly recommend this book, and would love to know what you think of it!

The Thoughtful Dresser

The Thoughtful Dresser, by Linda Grant: one of my favorite books on the subject of clothes. (Click on the picture to go to Linda’s blog.)


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In Transition: A Postscript

After my last two posts (In Transition and In Transition Encore), I just wanted to add a few words on why I’m exploring this topic. I mean, it’s enough work to come up with seasonal wardrobes in the first place— now we have to mix them together?!

Every year I have the same struggle with getting my summer wardrobe together: why should I invest a lot of money, time, and effort into hot-weather clothes that in all likelihood will only be worn for a few weeks out of the year? (This applies to clothes that are bought, as well as ones that I make myself.) Well, as I’ve been finding out this year, the key is in planning. If I put more of the up-front effort into strategic planning, it should not only save shopping time, but also the time I might otherwise spend later in either returning items that don’t work, or in taking them to the thrift store. Not to mention whatever it takes to replace those rejected pieces! Continue reading →


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In Transition Encore: Fall into a Summer Dress

As promised, here is another trio of transitional fall outfits, each based on the same summery dress shown here. This is a cotton jersey knit, so it’s basically a long sleeveless T-shirt, to be honest. (Actually, I made this dress with the same pattern, Vogue 1234, as the printed one in my Santa Fe wardrobe; the only difference is that this one doesn’t have the cap sleeves. They look really different, don’t they?) I love the tie-dye print in these bright, rich oranges, which incidentally is a great color for fall.

Cotton jersey knit summer dress; the interesting draping at the sides makes the hemline nearly ankle-length at its longest point, which bodes well for making it work for fall. Continue reading →


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In Transition: Wearing Your Summer Clothes in the Fall

After my last post, in which I mentioned that the darker stripes on the sides of my linen trousers might enable them to be worn into the fall, I decided to follow up on that and show some actual examples of how I would do that. (All these outfits came out of what I already have in my closet, by the way. Everything I write about here comes out of my own experience— and closet.)

Outfit #1:

Linen Trousers Fall Outfit 1 Linen trousers for fall, outfit #1: Here I’ve simply added a mohair and silk sweater and fab color-blocked suede heels. Continue reading →


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Closet Confessions: How My Trousers Got Their Stripes

Remember my pale sage green linen trousers I made for my Santa Fe travel wardrobe? Well, there’s a reason they have those sporty side stripes— and I’m willing to tell all, purely out of consideration for you, dear readers.

For my sewing friends: have you run into this problem with multi-sized patterns? The one where the size range is, say, 6-14 or 16-22, but you are in between? This is what happened to me with the trouser pattern I used. It went up to a size 14; in ready-to-wear, I’m more like a size 12, but in sewing patterns (which are sized differently), I’m finding that a 14 or 16 is more appropriate, depending on what type of garment it is. (But even that isn’t consistent across pattern brands. Aargh.) When purchasing the pattern, I decided optimistically to get the smaller size range, intending to cut the largest size (14). Which I did.

Problem:  <Deeeep breath>  The trousers were too small. In some fabrics (stretch wovens, for example), this might not have been such an issue, but I was using a substantial linen, and the trousers were cut with wide legs, so I didn’t want the fit to be tight. Aargh encore. Continue reading →