August 08, 2014
Dressing Like A Grown Up
So one of the most exciting things to me about being a curvy girl is exactly that: I have curves! This means I can’t help but look feminine in clothing. However, finding the right clothes for your body can be troublesome sometimes. In my last post I mentioned that I had to learn how to dress for my body and this isn’t a struggle for curvy gals alone. We all have different assets we want to highlight or camouflage and figuring out what works and doesn’t will save a lot of time and frustration when each new season’s looks come out. I’ve always been interested in fashion and beauty (one of my childhood dreams was to design clothes and write for fashion magazines…while also playing soccer professionally and directing movies… kids have big dreams, ok?) but until more recently I never thought of myself as fashionable. This might seem weird for someone who loved clothes as much as me but I distinctly remember going into stores, seeing the new styles and thinking “Well, these won’t work for me, I guess I’ll just stick to my jeans and tees.” As a college student who worked from home this wasn’t a big deal. However, when I started teaching at a university for my Master’s program jeans weren’t going to cut it anymore.
I HAD TO LEARN HOW TO DRESS FOR MY BODY. THIS ISN'T A STRUGGLE FOR CURVY GALS ALONE
I wanted my professors to view me as a future colleague and I wanted my students to respect me. I had to buy a new professional wardrobe and to be honest, figuring out what “professional” even meant was the first hurdle. An avid social media user and lover of all things internet, my first instinct was to search the web for “professional plus-size fashion.” My Google search worked…sort of. It was frustrating though because it just came back with so many articles and all the clicking and trying to save webpages was annoying until I remembered…Duh! Why don’t I use Pinterest for this? Pinterest is a veritable gold mine for finding wonderful fashion ideas. A search for “professional plus-size” came up with scores of hits and I was able to curate a whole pinboard dedicated to learning how to dress for my new role as a university teacher. Plus I could go back to those websites I saved from my Google search before and pin the images to my new pinboard (Which I originally named “Dressing like a grown-up” but have since changed it because I am no longer faking at this adult thing.) So after curating a pinboard full of more outfits than I could ever aspire to wear in my entire life I picked a few of my favorites and went out to the stores in hopes of finding good duplicates. It wasn’t always easy to find the styles I found on Pinterest in the stores but after seeing so many examples of outfits on people whose bodies looked like mine I got a better idea of what would work for me and where to look. Through searching that website and a lot of shopping trial and error I now have confidence in my ability to dress well. It didn’t happen overnight but I did learn how to dress and I give 85% of the credit to Pinterest. (10% goes to the designers who create the beautiful clothes for women like me and the last 5% goes to my tromping through the mall and trying on clothes several times a month for nearly 6 months). So what about you? Where did you learn how to dress for success? Was it a website like me, a role model, or something else entirely? Share with us where you got your sense of style from!