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If you love fashion, you know what it’s like to count down to Fashion Week, excited to watch the trends for next year come parading down the runway and trying to envision how you’re going to interpret the style and make it your own. And then you look forward to said new trends hitting the shelves, combing through the racks and trying them on.

Until they don’t fit.

Because, let’s face it, most of this country cannot fit into the small sizes designers produce. Even more, it seems that sizes are getting smaller and smaller and what once fit you as a size ten, you can no longer even pull up over your legs!

But that may not be the case much longer. Much like fashion magazines, it looks like designers are starting to get the hint. (Let me take a moment to say MAZEL TOV! What took you so long?!) Starting this fall, Saks is going to start carrying extended sizes from designer faves like Chanel, YSL, Dolce & Gabanna, Fendi, Roberto Cavalli and Alexander McQueen. (Sizes will range from a 14 up to a size 20 depending on the line). OK, so most of us can’t afford those pricey labels, but we all know trickle down theory: what top designers do, the rest of the fashion industry does soon after. That means more fierce fashion in a range of sizes that will fit every woman, not just the size zero celebrities walking the red carpet.

And what’s more, it looks like Marc Jacobs may be joining the plus-size party in about a year! Marc’s business partner Robert Duffy Tweeted over the weekend saying:

“Your right. We gotta do larger sizes. I’m with you. As soon as I get back to NY. I’m on it! It will take me about a year. But stay with us”

Despite the fact that Robert’s grammar is a bit off (you’d think a businessman would know the difference between ‘your’ and ‘you’re’), this is most definitely something worth knowing about. And celebrating! FINALLY designers are getting the memo that the majority of us who pour over their designs season after season can’t even wear them without looking like a sausage casing. But not for long, ladies! Pretty soon girls of all sizes can rock a Chanel frock or a Marc Jacobs trench!

It’s about damn time.

Lately, every fashion magazine on the newsstands has had some variation of a plus size model photo spread. Editors claim to be celebrating the real American woman, but we know it’s just a feeble attempt to boost sales and save their dying businesses.

Being a plus sized girl myself, I’m torn on the whole trend. On the one hand, it’s great to see women with a little meat on their bones (or any meat on their bones, for that matter) displayed so beautifully across the pages of my favorite fashion mags. It’s refreshing to finally be able to look at a fashion spread and see how clothing really looks on real people. People like me.

On the other hand, though, focusing entire spreads and features on plus sized women seems a little exploitative. It’s as if the magazines are saying, “See! We like fat people, too!” And if their goal, as they state, is to change the way we view beauty and really represent the real women living and shopping in this country, they’re going about it all wrong. Read More »

So, apparently that’s Beyonce.

I know, right? I didn’t recognize her either. Her face looks completely different, her right boob is computer generated, and check out that waist! Did she have some ribs removed? That’s gotta be airbrushing, right?

RIGHT?!

I mean, no one’s body can look like that naturally. And I hope this cover doesn’t inspire women to try.

I. Love. Plaid.

I don’t know what it is about that winsome pattern, but I can’t get enough.

I suspect it has something to do with the years I spent looking at fashion magazines with my mother. Every September, from the time I was 11 until I was 17, my mom would come home with a copy of the Seventeen: Back To School issue. And we devoured that sh*t.

And for some reason, every September without fail, that magazine would be busting at the seams with plaid. Plaid dresses, plaid shirts, plaid fricking socks–is plaid in every fall? The answer, my friends, is yes.

I don’t read Seventeen’s Back to School issue anymore (although my mother still does), but plaid don’t fade and neither do my love.

So here, for your viewing pleasure, is the creme of the crop of this season’s fall plaids. Pair with otherwise simple pieces, a smile, and a nostalgia that time will never defeat. Ahhhh. Plaid. Read More »

I love fashion. I even love everything that is just soo ridiculous about fashion. Like how sweaters are in store windows in July and bathing suits in January. Or how friends will tease you for buying into a trend that “is so ugly it makes me want to vomit all over you” only to be wearing it three months later (while you have already moved on to something else -that they want to “vomit all over” -all over again).

Or how magazines will spend an entire season convincing you to get rid of your wide-legs because “Skinny is here to stay!” and then four months later, all you see in the same magazine are super-duper-I could fit 5 kegs in here-wide legs that are a “Must Have” for the upcoming season… “Wide legs are here to stay!” Riiiight.

And I even love what is perhaps, the most ridiculous concept about fashion: nothing is really ever all that original. Sure Marc Jacobs (whom I adore and would date if he wasn’t on another team) makes Flannel look effortlessly chic- but at the same time, my brothers wore plaid flannels in high school along with Doc Martens and their Walkman clipped inside their Z. Cavaricci’s (ah the 90′s….).

I’m usually all for fashion comebacks. Since I’m a vintage junkie, I will jump at the chance to wear something that was once the IT style. Partly because I’m a sappy nostalgic- I love the idea of wearing bell bottoms and imagining what my life would have been like had I grown up in the 70′s. I like to give fashion the benefit of the doubt. I enjoy playing dressup. I do believe that a flannel top could be cute. And aside from the recent seasons of awful Maternity wear, I usually look forward to the “New” (recycled) trends coming out each season- wondering what era will be in this year. Read More »