A big massive thank you to all who entered the armwarmer giveaway. Your answers were gorgeous and Captian Apricot and myself had a hard time coming up with the winner. 

BUT… we both loved Scribbles and her love notes so congratulations love! The armwarmers are yours. Just email me at lady(at)smagglestyle.com and I’ll pass your deets along to the Captain!

Again, thanks for entering! I love you all. And thanks Captain Apricot for sponsoring the first Smaggle giveaway!

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

A wee little while ago I received an email from a super gorgeous gal who has an Etsy store called Captain Apricot and she sells hand made armwarmers. She very kindly sent me a pair to road test and I have to say I’m literally in love. These babies have been with me since the day I received them. Last week I thought that I lost them and I was literally devastated. They are so warm and they scrunch beautifully around the wrist when worn. It makes SUCH a difference that they are made from wool. My arms have never been toastier! And I can easily hold a glass of Merlot without it slipping through my fingers. Absolute genius design.

AND to top it all off the gorgeous Captain Apricot is giving all Smaggle readers the chance to win a pair of super awesome armwarmers! Holy crap! 

All you have to do to win is visit her store, mosey on over to the armwarmers section, pick which ones are your favourite (personally I’m all over the champagne shorties) and leave me a comment. Not just any comment. I want to know your favourite thing about Winter. And if ANYONE says ‘Hot chocolate in front of the fire place’ NO ARMWARMERS FOR YOU! Be creative people. Impress us! Don’t forget to tell us which armwarmers are your fave! 

So…

1. Visit the store

2. Pick your favourite armwarmers

3. Make a comment on Smaggle saying what your favourite thing is about Winter

It’s that easy!

You have until Wednesday at midnight to leave your comment. The Captain and the Lady will then decide the winner and it will be announced later this week. 

Oh the excitement! 

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

A few weeks ago I received an email from the gorgeous Ninaribena over at Canberra’s Got Style. She made my SJP top that I’ve nearly worn to death. Anyway aside from being ridiculously talented she is also a gem. Sensing that I was having a bad week she popped these gorgeous earrings in the post to cheer me up. Bless! They are from her Etsy store Tango and James. I’ve very awesomely styled these earrings with my OH&S school appropriate head scarf and clear lens glasses that I wore to make filigree today. I do apologise for not giving the earrings a better podium for their debut but the fact that they look pretty tops on this deranged librarian speaks volumes about their coolness. 

Thanks Ninaribena! Smaggle loves you!

Now I’m off to have a few gins with Co-Dependent Smaggle. I’m going to kill whatever brain cells I have left after eight straight hours of delicate silver wire work…

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

This post is long overdue. I had several readers (and a close friend who has now given birth to her pregnant belly) ask me last year for a post on how to dress while pregnant but, as I stated yesterday, my cranium was cruising my nether-regions and I never got around to it. So here it is!

Why don’t you…?

* Wear a long, shimmery, clingy dress to a formal occasion? Embrace the beauty of your baby bump? Wear nail polish and sparkly rings? Use bronzer to highlight your gorgeous glow?

* Invest in leotards? Navy? Forest? Evergreen? Wear them under a-line shirts, floaty tops and cardigans? Be fabulous and try a unitard? With a white summer dress? And a million floaty scarves?

* Dismiss hideous maternity pants and have your existing pants altered? See what magic a tailor can do?

* Try being a hippy? Long flowing skirts, wrap around dresses and empire waists? Fabric draping with the line of your new figure?

* Make an effort with your beauty routine? Be sure your eyebrows are always plucked? Wear flattering make-up? Style your hair?

* Do an Audrey Hepburn? Dress in knits? Stretchy capri pants? Black ballet flats?

Julia Roberts- dark, flattering base colour and a chunky necklace. The balloon sleeves balance the silhouette.

Milla Jovovich – Gorgeous grey with sultry red lips and a whole lot of bling.

Katie Holmes does jeans and a baby doll blouse. One does wonder how confortable those jeans are though…

Nicole Richie embraces a casual wife-beater and knit combo.

Gwen Stefani kicks pregnant butt in flat jewellery sandals, Indian prints and flattering lines. The Queen Mum.

What about you? Had babies? Any advice to share with my readers? What article of clothing could you not have lived without during your pregnancy?

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

photo

• Thread heavy chain through your sneakers instead of laces?
• Wear a vintage slip, a scrappy scarf, long wool socks and your highest heels? Wrap an enormous cardigan around yourself?
• Wear a sparkly dress to work? Funk it up with a boy blazer and some chunky platforms?
• Eat a rainbow salad? Orange carrot, red capsicum, green lettuce, yellow squash?
• Go minimalist? Wear a crisp white shirt with stunning tailored pants and flawless make-up? Your hair slicked back into an elegant bun?
• Wear two scarves at once?
• Curl your hair on a Monday? Just for fun?
• Keep delicious and hideously expensive hand cream by your bed and rub it all the way up to your elbows every night?

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

Photo

Just a few tips to keep you sparkly and gorgeous through out the day…

* Get up early and sneak out for a brisk walk. It’ll get your blood pumping and will keep you glowing and sprightly for the whole day!

* Eat a VERY light and healthy breakfast. And resist drinking anything alcoholic before midday. Mama Smaggle and I make this mistake every year in the form of champagne and orange juice. We are being grown ups this year and resisting alcoholic temptation… until midday. 

* Wear something comfortable. You don’t want to be pulling at your clothes or sucking in your stomach all day. 

* Stop eating when you’re full. Sounds obvious I know but I’m such a little piggy that every year I stuff my face so that I can do little else but loosen my pants and moan on the couch all afternoon. Just remember – it’s not your last meal. It’s only Christmas lunch and you get to have one every year so don’t be all over it like a fat kid on cake. 

* Wear minimal make-up. Just enough to highlight your features for the inevitable photos but not enough so that it smears when you fall asleep in a pile of coats mid-afternoon… 

* Be pleasant. There’s nothing more unattractive than a Christmas Diva. Unless you’re on the dance floor and in that case all bets are off.

Have happy days my little ones!

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx 

Advanced Style

A wee little while ago I wrote an article on How to Dress Well in your 40’s. I got several requests from readers for such an article so I thought I would take a stab at giving my humble opinion. There is a section in my article that has caused a few readers a bit of grief. Let me set the record straight.

Yes – I wrote a section that was entitled ‘Less Colour = Classy’. I clarify that women can rock brights well into the later years of their lives but that it’s really hard to pull off. In the comments section I’m proved wrong by the gorgeous colour ambassadors Tricia from Bits and Bobbins and Wendy B. These ladies rock acid brights, leopard prints and primary colours and they look freakin fabulous! At the risk of offending either one of them, I’m fairly certain that they are both over the age of thirty and they are a perfect rebuttal to my offending statement. I ALWAYS think that people should dress however they please. Obviously. I wear turbans to work and evening gowns to the movies. I’m really not one to point the fashion finger at others. I’m terrified of colour so I rarely wear it. That’s why I wrote the section on colour. I think older women look classy and sophisticated when they tone down the colour. I think younger women look classy and sophisticated when they tone down the colour. That’s my opinion. Wendy B and Tricia are both designers and fashion bloggers. It takes practice and a keen eye to be able pull off their looks. I certainly couldn’t do it!  Colourful dressers are brave, adventurous and fabulous. I’m not one of them, so I can’t offer advice on how to wear colour. I only write what I know.

As a blog author I offer my opinions daily and I do it for free. I love a good argument and I will never delete comments from people that disagree with me. If you do disagree with something I say, I would love to have a pleasant and respectful debate with you – like WendyB and Tricia. Here are a few things I would like commenters to keep in mind…

* My age does not add or detract value from my arguments.

* I’m a person, not a corporation. When you say mean things, I read them and feel bad.

* My blog is not the Bible. Please take a chill pill before you read it.

* Don’t judge me on one post.

* If you don’t like my blog, don’t read it. It’s like hanging out with someone that you hate. It’s really weird.

I also find it strange that people are so obsessed with this article. I’ve written about WAY more controversial topics – Ethical Dilemmas in the Fashion Blogosphere, Fat Fashion and Positive Body Image and Fashion Etiquette – Is it okay to steal your style from other cultures? and for some reason people are getting all jiggy about whether or not grannies should wear colour. Bizarre.

Although having said that I’m very, very lucky that I so rarely get less-than-pleasant comments. I love all my readers so much and value the positivity and intelligence that you all bring to my blog so thank you.

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

P.S Do any of my older readers have an opinion on this? E? What are your thoughts? Is what I wrote super offensive or is it just being perceived badly?

Easton Pearson. We Aussies know to how rock a fashion week don’t we?

This collection conjures images in my head of an exceptionally tall woman wearing candy coloured wedge sandals and bright summer dresses. She keeps ducks in her garden and drinks coffee through a straw. She wears chunky clay necklaces that she made in her pottery class and she studies anthropoly. This woman is unmarried but she has a continuous string of long-haired lovers that call on her at unusual times of the day. She carries a parasol to keep the sun of her face and you can’t tell if she is 20 or 40 years old. Waking up every morning, she decorates her body with frills and lace, wraps ribbons everywhere they will fit and she always adds one more accessory before she leaves the house.

I’m beginning to wonder if anyone would mind if I wore a ballgown to work…?

I’m feeling the need to dress like a birthday present.

Love Lady Smaggle

Photos from Vogue Australia

xxx

I do love a bit of Betsey. Her ready-to-wear Fall 2008 collection makes me love her even more. The look is slightly trashy and very vintage with unexpected lines and versatility through out the collection. I get so bored when designers pick a fabric and repeat the same dress 10 times with slightly different shapes. Yawn. Not the case with Ms Johnson. Each of her outfits has an individual personality, much like the characters out of Rent - waif like band groupies who do drugs and steal but you love them anyway because they are so fabulous and tortured. The kind of girl who carries a massive bag everywhere because she is homeless and all the clothes she wears are borrowed or stolen yet she still manages to look like she fell straight off the catwalk and into a bar. Her make up is flawless, her diet consists of champagne and cigarettes and she is stuck in an abusive relationship with a guy she is in love with. Oh and she has a hidden talent like singing or painting that she either lives to pursue or halucinates about while dying from an overdose. Her life is made all the more fascinating because the girl you love to hate is wearing red lipstick, a beret, platform shoes, blue nail polish and fishnet stockings…   

Here are a few covetable items to assist you in the pursuit of the ‘Bad girl with a heart of gold’ look…

* Blue nail polish – It makes you look a little like a corpse but lets face it, it’s the kind of the look we are aiming for here.

* Fish net, polka dot or lace stockings. They give the appearance of nakedness and they never cease to make an outfit look naughty.

* Fringing. Perfect for swirling on the dance floor or strutting down the street in your platforms.

* Crimped hair. Am I the only person who still thinks this is cool? If I had straight hair I would do this every day.

* An unexpected accessory. A beret, a man’s watch, a scarf tied around your waist. You want to make it look like you just stole it from somebody else. You know because you’re just so crazy like that…

* Platform shoes. None of this stiletto crap. You need the extra stability for your slow motion running scene.

* A piece of sentimental jewellery like a locket or a ring that you wear all the time and you get misty eyed and elusive whenever someone asks you about it.

I’m breaking out the blue polish this week…

Love Lady Smaggle

xxx

There is certainly something about Alice In Wonderland. It’s this certain something that makes you want to drink poison because the bottle tells you not you, that makes you try and squeeze into tiny crevasse’s that you won’t fit through and that makes you jump off a roof wearing a circle skirt because you hope the wind will catch underneath and you’ll glide softly to the ground as if you were floating under Mary Poppins’ umbrella. Well my darlings have I got a treat for you! The far less stupid (and possibly fatal) way of embracing the land of wonder is simply to don white tights like our young Alice. How she managed to party with Tweedle twins and make it through the Mad Hatter’s tea party with out so much as a smudge on her snowy white tights I’ll never know, but she sure did look sweet while doing it.

I’ll admit it wasn’t just Alice that made me all white-tight happy. I’m pointing the finger at McQueen again. His 2008 Ready to Wear Fall collection is delicious. All icy furs, gold trimmings and sparkly embroidery. And lets not forget those gorgeous white legs…

Sigh! I’m going to get white tights and carry muffins in a basket…

Love Lady Smaggle

Photos from Style.com