The Dressed Aesthetic

Posts Tagged“shoes”

Staycation Mode

Staycation Mode - The Dressed Aesthetic (Kitty Joseph Chroma Skirt)

I know what you’re thinking: “What?? An actual blog post?!?” Needless to say, it’s been more than a little quiet around here. So, why am I gracing these cyber pages with a splash of color, you ask? (or didn’t ask. But I have the microphone so….) Because I am officially on Spring Break! When you’re a professor, this doesn’t mean you and your 20 closest friends piling into a clown car headed for Daytona Beach. But it does mean time to breathe, time to sew, time to write a bit. A time where the endless demands blessedly cease and the…

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Something New

Pleated Paradise - The Dressed Aesthetic

Some fabrics are just destined to be pleated. It’s almost as if the print is one thing on its own, but she takes off her glasses and shakes out her pony tail, and becomes something entirely new once she’s pleated. I’ve decided to look at 2024 the same way. You might think it’s yet another year, but just fold and crease and press a bit, and it could turn into something unexpected.

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Girl on Fire

Girl on Fire - The Dressed Aesthetic

I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this way, but I swear summer days move more quickly than winter days. And I don’t just mean in a daylight savings type of way, but more a blink-and-you-miss-it-because-summer-is-much-more-fun type of way. Summer afternoons zip happily by in a fiery swirl of lazy cocktails, BBQs, and travel, without a care in the world. On the other hand, winter days crawl forward inch by frozen inch, reaching for a tomorrow that always feels just out of reach.

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New Year, Same Me

Face Off - The Dressed Aesthetic

You always hear that the start of a new year is supposed to imbue you with a renewed sense of impending possibility. Of hope for a new beginning. Now, as a glass half full kind of person, I can confess I’ve definitely bought into this a time or two. Despite knowing intellectually that New Year is just a time-honored construct of “endings” and “beginnings”, it still does help to have a mental model of leaving things in the past. But, this year I’m trying something new. This year, I think, instead of a “fresh start”, I’m going to tentatively sidestep…

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Slice of Summer

Slice of Summer - The Dressed Aesthetic

I’m not sure where you guys live, but here in North Carolina, there is an autumnal inevitability: regardless of whether you are smack in the middle of October or November and have busted out all manner of light coats and tights, there is always a day where you step outside in all of your glorious layers to feel a bit like Dorothy when she comes out of the house after the tornado. Except instead of walking from a world of black and white into one of color, you emerge from a presupposed expectation of the autumnal chill into a veritable…

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Greener Pastures

Greener Pastures - The Dressed Aesthetic

Things have certainly been pretty busy of late. And whenever this time of year rolls around, my eye can’t help but cast to some sort of greener pasture. Be it next week once that paper has been submitted or that deadline has been met. Next month, once the semester has passed and there are no longer undergraduates flooding my inbox. Or next year, when we might see the end of this long line of bone chilling weariness at the state of the world.

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{Sewing} When Pigs Fly

When Pigs Fly - The Dressed Aesthetic

I find inspiration for my skirts from all kinds of places. As many of you know, this often comes from the vintage stylings of Juli Lynne Charlot and Marjorie Montgomery. Or from dresses I never quite got my hands on. Dresses that in their original form would fit my pinkie toe (if we were lucky). But, every so often, I get a crazy, whimsical idea. And I just run with it. Or oink with it, as the case may be…

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The Farmer in the Dell

The Farmer in the Dell - The Dressed Aesthetic

Isn’t it funny the way nursery rhymes stick in your head? I mean, I know they’re designed that way…and never mind the fact that when you’re a kid, your synapses are strengthening rapid fire, so we remember all kinds of crazy things with alarming specificity from our childhood. But, it is still kind of remarkable to me that I remember every word from the Farmer in the Dell, even though upon further reflection, I realize it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

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Sartorial Garden

Sartorial Garden - The Dressed Aesthetic

I’ve never had much of a green thumb. Without ever meaning to, I am an enemy to all plant life, a horticultural assassin. Your ferns and rosebushes aren’t safe around me. I even killed a cactus in my pitiful gardening history (a feat I’m told you actually have to work at). And while basil plants wilt and grass shrivels in my presence, a flourishing wardrobe: Now, that I can cultivate…

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