Hat Trick

Friend Jane emailed us a few weeks ago with a hat conundrum.  She wants to protect her face from the sun, but she does not want to look or feel silly - something that can easily occur when donning a chapeau.  Please tell me, how do you wear or find a hat for the warmer weather?  

Thank you for asking.  We discussed the topic at our last editorial meeting and agreed that we were singularly and collectively unqualified to dispense hat advice.  Luckily, we know an expert.  Allison Hamilton-Rohe, is a style coach and founder of DailyOutfit.  Below are her thoughts on sun hats. 

The Perfect Hat
By Allison Hamilton-Rohe

 

Hats can be so difficult to get right and yet they are absolutely mandatory if you like being outdoors at all.  The good news is that I have found the perfect hat! 

Fabulous.  The design of the Scala hat ($22-$30) echoes the big, floppy sun hat you might expect poolside in Capri, but is much easier to pull off.  Because the brim is not quite as wide as your usual straw hat, it’s a little less fah-bulous without being unfabulous.  Rather, it is totally fabulous without being over-the-top. 

 

 

Practical.  Not only is this hat washable and UPF rated to 50, it also has a very handy inner drawstring which keeps it on your head.  I have tested the drawstring on the beach at the Outer Banks, on the top of Cadillac Mountain in Maine and on a boat.  It stayed on in all three situations, which is impressive!

Packable.  Because the hat is cotton versus straw, it folds, rolls and goes easily in your suitcase, backpack or big purse, which is wonderful for full day trips or if you live or are visiting a place where the weather changes rapidly.
Now what about the most important part -- how does it look?

Flattering.  I have now seen this hat on almost all the face shapes -- rectangular, oval, round and heart-shaped – and it’s looked great on all.  Short hair and long.  I can’t yet say it’s universally flattering, but I’d be surprised if that were not the case.

Color.  The most difficult part about this hat is choosing a color.  Available in 20 shades, there’s no doubt you can find at least one that brings out your eyes or flatters your skin tone.   However, you want to match the color to your situation.  A bright pink hat is great at the beach, but not so fitting on a hike.  Luckily, since it’s inexpensive, you can buy a different color for each occasion and still be a-head  (sorry, couldn’t resist the pun!)

 

Still Not Sure?  While hats can be confusing and sometimes it feels easier to just don a baseball cap and call it a day, I suggest trying the Scala hat to stretch your sartorial muscles.  If you’re not sure, order the hat and test your look by using your timer on your camera and taking a photograph of yourself in the hat.  Send the photo to some trusted friends and to me.  I promise I’ll tell you if you look foolish.  But, my guess is you might want to prepare for some compliments!

Allison Hamilton-Rohe developed DailyOutfit to help you reorganize and develop a fantastic wardrobe that flatters your body type, works for your lifestyle and helps you express who you want to be. Transform your life through your look.

 

Thank you, Jane for asking and hats off to you Allison for you help!

Enjoy the weekend.

Spring in her Closet

 The modern mother may, on occasion, wander into her closet - look around in frustration and wander back out again.  The explanation is simple of course, the poor thing has NOTHING to wear.  But wait, you might say, what are all those items hanging from racks and sitting in drawers?  Aren't those clothes?  Yes, they are clothes.  But they are not the right clothes for today.  Or any other day between now and the start of summer.  They are warm wooly clothes and cozy corduroy clothes.  They are boots and silk blouses.  They are winter clothes.  And the modern mother is sick of them all. 

At this point the modern mother may start to look for some "spring clothes" only to discover - she does not seem to have any and possibly never did.  Except for a few things that look like something a Somali Pirate might wear in a pinch.   Did we mention that the modern mother does not love to shop?  She like clothes and she likes to look nice but hours spent wandering around stores and trying things on is just not her idea of fun.

If only there was someone who could help.

 Then she remembers.  What about the lovely ladies over at W2WW?  They seem to know a lot about clothes.  So she picks up the phone and asks if they do any sort of "emergency closet intervention."   Luckily, for the modern mother, they agree to help.  She is given an appointment and expected to prepare by doing the following:

Step 1.  Closet Sweep - go through all your clothes and decide whether to a) keep, b) store or c) give away.  If it is not flattering or you never wear it - it goes away.  She learned a lot about this process in this book.

Step 2.  Once she has decided what to keep, organize her clothes by season, item and color.  If she is lucky she may be able to store out of season items in another area.

Step 3.  Have the clothes she wishes to focus on ready for the appointment.  In this case the modern mother was looking for help with everyday spring ensembles.  Some a bit dressy but in general something she could wear around town, to work in her home office and to collect the enfants terrible at school. 

Then the fun began.  The lovely Jennifer and Lisa of W2WW arrived and the intervention occurred.  The modern mother has laid out her meager spring wardrobe on her bed and hung a collection of "what do I do with this?" pieces on a garment rack she had recently picked up. 

The ladies were fabulous.  Jennifer was typing away on her laptop while she and Lisa shouted out suggested combinations and ensembles the modern mother would never have known existed.  They might look at a pair of trousers and say something like "Try those with the navy sweater, do you have a striped t-shirt? OK, add it to her list.  What about ballet flats?  You need a more neutral color. " And so on.  Or they might look at a skirt and say "That is doing nothing for you."  Which in the end may be the best help of all.

After the lovely ladies left, promising to email her some thoughts, the modern mother felt like she was getting somewhere.  Not only did she have more to wear than she thought; she had also gleaned a good sense of what strategic pieces she might need.  For this dear reader, she has learned, is her biggest problem.  The modern mother lacked a coherent strategy when shopping.  She would go to the store with some  half-baked notion that she needed some spring clothes. No list, no colors in mind, just the vague sense that she needs something to wear.  She would then gravitate to items she liked with little regard for how they would work with the rest of her wardrobe.  This friends, is how she has ended up with seven charcoal ribbed zip cardigans and thirteen kaftans in assorted colors  (apparently these are called clones in the closet re-org business).

 Before she could even start to make her list, the best thing of all happened.  An email arrived.  The most helpful fashion email ever.  It was an excel spreadsheet listing the spring items in her wardrobe in the left column followed by what items they could be worn with on the right.  It was brilliant! Stupendous! Then it got better.  Below her own clothing was a list of suggested items to "fill in" her wardrobe, what they would work with and links (dear reader, can you stand it!) to those recommended items.   Wonderful suggestions in a variety of price points such as the j.crew toothpick jeans, sperry flats, tanks from old navy, and a lovely Theory top from Sacks. 

All in all the modern mother can't thank the W2WW ladies enough for saving her from herself and her closet. 

The Maternal Arms Race

 Even the most well mannered and confident mother can get a bit wobbly at times.  No matter how put-together, the modern mother can occasionally have doubts.  Her children are well behaved,  good students and they participate in after school activities.  Yet there she stands, one sunny afternoon, blindsided by a group of mothers engaged in some sort of maternal arms race determined to out-do each other with the myriad of extracurricular, athletic, artistic and pseudo-academic pursuits in which their under-10 children are participating.  Couched as laments such as, "I don't know how I'm going to get my children to all their activities this weekend,"  or "I just wish the school could teach math at Avery's level, then I wouldn't have to be dragging her to Russian Math twice a week..."  these comments are intended to expose the brilliance of one's children and the many sacrifices of their fabulous and selfless mother.   By the time we encountered a friend after a recent episode, she was shell-shocked and, even worse, doubting her own excellent parenting philosophy.  Ridiculous.  We know.  She knows.  You know too, dear reader.  Yet, everyone has been there.  One wonders did those other mothers come away from the encounter feeling better about themselves?  Was such bravado comforting to anyone in that collective? 

We happened across a blog recently called breed 'em and weep.  It is written by a single mother in Western Massachusetts who is struggling.   She is struggling to find the meaning in her separation,  struggling to raise her children, struggling to keep her house and pay her bills.  This piece the road more taken, puts a lot of things in perspective.

A Pyrrhic Victory

The blogosphere was abuzz last week regarding the below graphic t-shirt.  The buzz got so oppressively negative that J.C. Penny pulled the shirt off its site on August 31st. 

This modern mother has a few thoughts about this silliness.  Obviously, it is an inane shirt and not at all well mannered.   It is sexist, feeding into the stereotype that men are better at math and science than women, and suggests to young women that beauty emancipates one from hard work and intellect.  

One envisions a group of 1950's marketing executives in brown suits smoking like chimneys having somehow traveled through time to design graphic t-shirts for mass market retailers.  So what if more women graduate from college, law school and medical school than men these days? It must be because they are hot, hoochie mamas.

Yet, at least this  message is direct.  The consumer is presented with a clear choice "Do you want your daughter walking around in this slogan or not?"  Often the message is not so obvious.   A recent toggle over to Abercrombie Kids (where size small would fit an average 7 or 8 year-old) shows us clothing that does not spell out that a sexy body is better than brains but these tops and sweat pants leave little doubt as to which assets a young girl should leverage to get ahead in 4th grade.  Oh, and by the way, have you seen MTV?

So, hooray, well done irate bloggers.  There is one less silly t-shirt available to the discount public.  Now please go forth and get the rest of the media and retail on board. 

Letting Boys be Boys

A modern mother of a son (or sons) might feel a mixture of horror, sadness and anxiety when reading the recent WSJ essay, “Where have all the good men gone” by Kay S. Hymowitz. After citing multiple statistics demonstrating the ascendancy of women in today’s information and service based economy (more college degrees, higher GPAs, higher earnings, more confidence and drive), the author suggests that young men today live an extended adolescence in which they sit around watching the Cartoon Network, in dirty apartments filled with empty take-out containers, while their sisters are making strides in careers, climbing the corporate ladder, building an adult life.

Sigh. So this is how it all ends up? A mother works diligently to raise her son to be a caring adult, a responsible contributor to society only to find him playing video games at the age of 28, shirking responsibility, and reading “lad” magazines like Maxim?  Really?

While stewing about this article, this mother went shopping for little boys clothes, taking note of what exactly is available: the size 4 black ACDC shirts, the skull covered onesies, fatigues for toddlers, shirts that say “slacker” or “rebel” or "look mom no hands!"

*All of these clothes are sold in size 4 or smaller. Sources: The Gap, CWD Kids, The Gap.

After wading through these visions of masculinity, she wonders about the messages they send to the boys who are supposed to wear them.  Skateboarder, sports star, rock star, military man all in navy blue, gray, black, brown.  Does this limited range of images and colors reflect more limited aspirations for boys?  Do they suggest that even young boys should already be cynical and wild; that they won't like school? It's as if we're pushing them to grow into the slackers which Ms. Hymowitz argues their 20-something counterparts have become. 

Many of these clothes and the images seem better suited to an adolescent than to the preschoolers or first graders for which they are sized. Is our culture afraid of letting our boys be children before they grow into hip, slacker teenagers? Are we afraid of letting them be vulnerable and earnest? Is it OK for a 2 year old boy to wear his older sister’s snow suit? For a 5 year old boy to like pink?  For a 9 year old boy to bring a stuffed animal to a sleep over? 

Thankfully, for dressing her son, the well mannered mother can always fall back on that basic polo shirt or plain t-shirt available practically anywhere. She could also head straight to Papo d’ Anjo and dress her son in better clothes than she buys for herself.  The challenging part, of course, will be enabling him to grow up at his own pace, letting her boy be a boy before he hits adolescence, and cross her fingers in the hope that her son doesn't grow up to be a case study for Ms. Hymowitz.