Redressing Style Icons: Refreshing the way you dress

I want to begin a series of posts for you all featuring style icons, vintage divas and domestic goddesses I have found wearing highly desirable dress styles. Some of these styles you can copy directly, or they can easily be translated to suit your own personal style and I'm also hoping to stock something similar to the styles I feature on the Redressing website. I find the lives and experiences of these stylish women very interesting; I call it looking backwards for forward strength.

The style icon for this first post in the series just has to be Audrey Hepburn. The classic black long dress, string of authentic vintage pearls and satin or velvet elbow length gloves is an easy style to emulate and quite flattering on most figures too.

Audrey Hepburn was one of the first women in the spotlight to use her fame to help others and, beyond that, to help those whom most people did not care about, or barely thought of and often travelled in a tiny little plane to some of the most desolate places on Earth-  Ethiopia, El Salvador and Nicaragua, Sudan, Bangladesh and finally Somalia  to help promote the good work of UNICEF.*

Emulating Audrey means continuing to champion the causes she thought worthwhile and to genuinely value everybody. That's why I've chosen her; not only is her timeless classic style absolutely fabulous, but her ethics were too. A true Redressing style icon!

This dress has some of the same style features as Audrey's classic LBD and is sure to create the same 'Wow!' factor. Perfect for both hourglass and straight up and down figures, this style will highlight your femininity, giving you curves if you need help shaping your frame, or accentuating your existing curves in all the right places.

*What Would Audrey Do? Pamela Keogh

Dresses to Impress:The A-Z of fetching frocks and gorgeous gowns....

Dresses to Impress- A

A is for All dresses!
Any woman can successfully wear a dress and have that chic confidence and individual style a well fitting dress can bring. It's a myth, a myth I tell you that some women simply 'don't do dresses'! Why ever not?! They don't all have to be 'Posh Frocks' for weddings and special occasions, require a pair of high heels or be dry clean only! There are lots of gorgeous frocks out there and there is definitely one(quite possibly more than one) to suit you!

This new series of posts is designed to refresh the way you feel about a dress; what look you want to achieve, what style of dress will suit you and what makes a dress a girl's best friend. We will cover everything from body shapes to colour analysis, the origins of popular styles and the resurgence of many vintage inspired dresses.

 The key to successfully wearing a dress is truly loving it! Loving the way you feel in it; the way it feels on you and enjoying the second glances you get when you look good!It might even be an everyday style dress; nothing fancy, just something you 'threw on' with leggings of jeans. By the end of these posts, I hope to have inspired you to return to the safe haven that is a dress; to restore the joy of dress wearing well and to encourage you all to refresh the way you dress......til next time X

Successful style mixing.....the art of hinting at a bygone era!

It can be tricky to suddenly morph from ordinary, usual, run of the mill fashion conscious wife/mother/office gal into vintage style fashionista....but, not impossible!

I have only recently embraced externally my inner love of vintage and retro as I have sourced more and more vintage inspired dresses for the website and wanting to wear them all! But how to move from jeans and T-shirts into tea dresses and pencil skirts?! Actually, it hasn't been that hard. Firstly, as the main promoter of Redressing I began to wear more and more dresses; dresses over jeans, dresses with leggings, dresses and tights....then I stumbled upon the 'Think Frock It's Friday' section of the glorious lottie loves blog. This was quickly followed by a dawning realisation that I could embrace my inner Vintage siren without suddenly having hair extensions (in order to create bangs!) or throwing out my jeans (especially when I have to walk everywhere and it's been freezing!) So, what did I do?

 Well it began I suppose last summer with the heatwave when halterneck 50s style full skirted dresses hit my radar. (The dress above was one of my first). I was complimented every time I wore one and it spiralled from there. Although I love all bygone eras, I think it's got to be the 40s and 50s which inspire me most as I've rambled on about in earlier posts as I really hold the values promoted back then about marriage and family in particular! It became easy to pick up little matching cardies and vintage style shoes and as as lover of hair accessories I jumped onto the flower clip like a leitmotif and wear one virtually everyday!

 I tried to think about what aspects of vintage style I liked and brought some of those into my everyday wardrobe. The fact that I sell regular, everyday dresses helps- especially when it's so easy to create a vintage inspired outfit using a regular dress which you know will fit you!

So, if you're thinking of embracing your inner 40s siren or 50s domestic Goddess externally- go for it! Especially when the values held in the past are alive and kicking in your present!

Passing on the Vintage Baton.....

I have recently wondered why I'm so interested in all things vintage? I guess it's my age....perhaps I'm starting to appreciate what went before and embrace the softer, more tea dress and floral  side of my femininity as I approach 40? I often find myself looking at an object or photograph and wondering about who had it before me? What were it's origins or who are the people? I've even been known to watch 'Who Do You Think You Are' to glean authentic clues to real lives in a bygone era! (As well as 'Mad Men' for further 'research'!!!) I've mentioned in previous posts about the values or ethics I admire in the women of bygone eras, especially the 40's and 50s, but what will we leave about our values and ethics to our children?

 I caught my 11 year old looking at dresses the other day which mirrored my style and had that slightly vintage edge; she has implicitly picked up on something I place value upon and it has become her own.(in fact I often find her on the Cath Kidston website!) When my 4 year olds make believe games include answering pretend emails and talking on the phone to an imaginary friend who would like to come and buy a dress then I know I've deposited something of me into them! It's made me think a lot about what exactly I want to deposit into them...I'm happy to say that I love the fact that my eldest has her own style and doesn't blindly follow fad fashion, but she also needs to hear from me what my values behind this are all about. It's secondary school next year and so its become twice as important that we sow the right seeds into them all (I have 3 daughters), about who they really are; what matters is on the inside and the cardinal rule 'it's style that matters not sizing'!!!

 So, whenever possible, I want to pass on the baton that life has purpose, what you wear does indeed reflect your outlook on life and you can have self worth outworked through personal style.They have to know it doesn't cost a lot to look great; style is something you exude not something you are chained too! All women are beautiful; be it for their immediate beauty, or more usually, their strength of character, integrity of heart and desire to value themselves because we are all worth it! (Hair products aside for a moment!) We really are though- worth hoping in, trusting in and believing in and those are the batons I want to pass on.