Manolo for the Big Girl Fashion, Lifestyle, and Humor for the Plus Sized Woman.

October 26, 2010

Advanced Style

Howdy gang! I have returned from my two glorious weeks of vacation in Virginia and am ready to hop right back in with both immaculately-shod feet.

I’d bore you with the details of my little holiday, but the interesting parts aren’t for family television (if you know what I mean, and I think you do) and the boring parts are well, kinda boring. I mean, not boring to ME but I don’t have a television so the realization that there was an ENTIRE CHANNEL devoted to Proper Football was like that moment I discovered gin or Jesus. I basically spent an entire week watching Premier League and swearing at Wayne “Angry Eyes” Rooney for being such a total tool. Except not because tools are actually useful UNLIKE YOU, MISTER GIMPY ANKLE POTATO HEAD.

/bitter

Anyhoodle, I was bopping around my favorite blogs and came across an outstanding entry from the always entertaining Ari Seth Cohen (and can we even TALK about how cute he is? If I were a boy I’d totally kiss him) at Advanced Style.

I truly can’t say enough about Advanced Style because it’s just that good. I hate that I didn’t come up with the idea myself. It’s exactly what real style, perfectly translated is all about. Not that I don’t appreciate The Scott Schuman Sartorialist and his ilk with carefully disheveled Bright Young Things, but it’s easy to look fabulous when you’re a 22 year-old with six miles of leg and cheekbones that could cut glass. They’re fashion plates and that’s fine, but fashion is boring unless you have style and Mr Cohen’s subjects have style in spades, diamonds, moons, clovers and little marshmallow rainbows.

Plus you get gems like this, from 98 year-old Rose:

Here are Roses’ top ten beauty and lifestyle secrets on how to look and feel great at 98

1. Find your perfect perfume, people will remember you by your scent. Rose is known for her Pauline Trigere fragrance.She tells her granddaughter “I’ll give you anything in the world, but I won’t give you my perfume.”

2. Belts and Beads. Rose believes that a belt or unique strand of beads can really make an outfit and they don’t have to cost a fortune.

3. Take care of your feet and wear good shoes, but when you are going out for a night on the town “Fashion comes before comfort” At 98, Rose goes out every single night!

4. “Walking is a must, its better than doctors or medicine”

5. No need to use expensive moisturizers, Rose swears by Oil of Olay which she has been using for decades.

read the rest here, and bookmark it, love it and commit it to memory!

September 21, 2010

Patterned Tights!

Filed under: Cheap Thrills,Fashion,Lingerie — Miss Plumcake @ 12:25 pm

Okay, so we all know and love We Love Colors for our colored tights needs because they have awesome plus-size tights that actually are plus-size. Their EE fits women that are 5’5″ – 6’0″ and 320 – 375 lbs. BUT a girl cannot live in pumpkin-colored tights alone, which is why I am So. Freakin. PSYCHED about the Avenue releasing a whole slew of patterned tights at an incredible price point for the quality.

Patterned tights are a great way to transition from daywear to datewear (yeah, I hate myself for saying that, but it’s true) and add just enough downtown cool so you look put together and polished, but not stuffy or like you should be behind the counter at Macy’s telling me about my gift with any $25 Estee Lauder purchase.


And I’ve gotta tell you, I’m also kind of psyched because it’ll let me get away without buying a ton of new dresses.

As you know, Miss Plumcake keeps a very tight rein on her wardrobe, but I’ve got several pieces that have seen their seven years of service and are being set out to pasture this fall, making my wardrobe that much smaller.

A fab pair of patterned tights is an excellent way to dress up a relatively conservative dress and create a new look from a capsule wardrobe. Since the visual focus will be on the tights, not the dress, if you find yourself traveling and only being able to take one or two dresses with you, this can save you a world of heartache by creating new looks with a minimum of pieces (also try to find a dress you can wear back-to-front).

Plus, and I’m just putting this out here. I got short legs.

Yep, although I’m tall like giant, I don’t suffer from an overelongation of pins and these vertical stripes? Make my legs go on for MILES (or kilometers, depending on where you’re reading this and where my legs happen to be at the time).

(how cute would these be on a dress that’s just a teensy bit too short to rock  without legwear, so the lace peeks out a bit?)

Remember, when wearing patterned tights, ideally you want to go for a closed-toe shoe unless you KNOW you know what you’re doing.

September 17, 2010

Elle throws us a bone, with meat on it (see what I did there?)

Filed under: Fashion,Makeup,Media,Models,Movies — Miss Plumcake @ 9:08 am

So everyone else has written about it but I guess I’ve got to toss my lovely Peter Bettley chapeau in.

Fat Girl of the Moment, Gabourey Sidibe — plus-size star of Precious, in case you just got off the boat from Mars– graces one of four covers of Elle this month and people are getting their collective knickers in a twist, and for once it’s not that a fat person is on a magazine.

Nope, it’s skin lightening. Apparently Ms Sidibe’s cover shows her skin several shades lighter than how she photographs in natural and/or red carpet lighting.

Is it whitewashing?

Eeesh, I don’t know. Frankly I wouldn’t put it past Elle, but on the other hand, I really do think it’s the lighting this time. It looks like the lighting rig for that cover was pretty simple and I know from my experience my own skin shoots way way lighter (inasmuch as it’s possible for a girl who has been known to MAC face & body in WHITE as foundation to shoot lighter) in a rig like that than I do in natural light.

But I gotta say, I don’t just love Gabby on the cover of Elle. It’s a gimmick. It’s a bone to the people who complain Elle and its ilk only put thin, pretty, white women on the covers of their magazines (possibly because Elle and its ilk only put thin, pretty, white women on the covers of their magazines). It’s Beth Ditto 2.0 but even less plausible because Beth Ditto truly is interested and interesting when it comes to fashion.

Gabby, talent though she might have, is just the token fat girl 2010.

I’m fat, not stupid. I’m not getting excited over this (and yeah, don’t think we didn’t notice all the other covers are mostly body shots while Gabby’s body is mostly obscured)

Do you know what gets me excited?

When there are all manner of body shapes represented and it’s Not A Big Deal. It’s not part of a Size Issue or some nonsense about Celebrating Your Curves or Realness or (gag) Goddess blahdeblah.

For example:

Here in The Killers video Mr Brightside –which for my money ranks up there in the echelon with Express Yourself, Vogue, and Freedom 90 for Most Important Fashion Videos of All Time— you have a perfectly gorgeous luscious plus-sized woman being treated just like all the other ahem, courtesans.

Super sexy outfit, clearly comfortable with her over-the-top sexuality, she’s a featured dancer with plenty of screen time, and somehow it’s Not A Big Deal. She’s not hidden or dropped in there as a token and her skin almost certainly wasn’t lightened (the heroine’s was, although obviously that was for effect. I’ll also bet you a million imaginary dollars the makeup artist used Mac face and body in White on her, too, albeit in a heavier application than I use). THIS is progress.

And do we have to talk about how cute Brandon Flowers is in his sharp jacket (that, btw, is how a dinner jacket is supposed to fit, slim through the shoulders and arms) or how when Eric Roberts became so filthy hot? Because I am currently associated with the hottest man on the planet (seriously, you would die) and Mister R and his smoking jacket STILL make me need to take a lie down.

September 9, 2010

That’s Pants!

Filed under: Abominations,Fashion,Honey. No.,Random Annoyances — raincoaster @ 7:47 am

and that’s British slang for “that is, like, major suckitude!”

Here I was, all ready to present to you a multi-faceted, multi-pictured, multi-product post that would, if not gain widespread acclaim would at least cause a few snarky comments and YAY! Pageview bonus! and WordPress went and ate it.

In its place, we bring you the following observation: that shopping online for pants is … pants. Because all pants look exactly alike online:

Exhibit A: $698 Zenobia Slim Crepe Pants from Saks:

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Exhibit B: $178 Eileen Fisher Stretch Crepe Pants, also from Saks:

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Well, okay, these look different, but we don’t have to discuss them, do we?

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August 30, 2010

Mandatory Big Girls at the Emmys fashion post

Filed under: Fashion,Fat and Famous — Miss Plumcake @ 2:50 pm

As usual I didn’t watch the Emmys.

I only care about the red carpet and I knew it was all going to be an endless parade of one shouldered goddess or mermaid gowns (check) the annoying girl from Glee would wear too much dress for her body (double check) and no one would do anything even remotely interesting (with the exception of Alan Cumming, check).

I only spotted two big girls from my photo service:

Kay Cee Stroh

I have no idea who this girl is, but Google tells me she’s a Disney product. Pretty enough girl, Very Bad Dress (edit: Alert Reader Maura spotted this technicolor tragedy as Igigi’s Black Magic Gown)

There is a rule, generally speaking, that you don’t put a big girl in a big dress, and while it’s not especially big in the way of say, Mindy Kaling who, at 5’2″ had No Damn Business wearing that much dress:

It is a LOUD dress. There is a lot going on with the lava lamp treatment and the random shoulder shroud. As big girls, our bodies are already loud, so this is what happens when you try to drown it out with an overly busy dress.

Ooh ooh! A TV star I know! Amber Riley plays Mercedes Jones on Glee and makes a solid choice (you thought I was going to say “hits a high note” or is “on key” didn’t you? Well I didn’t, so there) in a white goddess column dress.

Honestly I don’t just love the dress. It’s fine and pretty and although I could’ve done with a bit more boob wrangling, I’m not docking points.  SHE, however, looks about 12 shades of thrilled to be there and I love her for it.

July 21, 2010

Why dress well?

Filed under: Fashion — Miss Plumcake @ 2:02 pm

A friend of mine wrote an essay for the Anthony Bourdain “Medium Raw” essay on the subject in an attempt to answer the question “Why cook well?” (it’s in competition, so read a few essays and vote for your favorite) and it got my thinker to thinkin’.

One of the things that’s always struck me as funny is the assumption that as someone who cares deeply about style I must be shallow by default. Funny because I view my interest in style –the “refinement of detail” as Scott Schuman says– as part and parcel of being a thorough and complex person.

I’ve always associated shallowness with a sort of intellectual laziness, the same laziness I associate with lack of attention to detail in all manners of activity, personal furnishings included.

When I think of someone with a great deal of style I always think of precision, of thought, of discipline. This item was chosen because it gives this effect. It’s similar to writing, or cooking or anything that required attention to detail. You pick a particular word or ingredient not because it’s the first one that springs to mind or the only thing in the fridge not growing an intriguing though potentially scientifically important mold, but because you want a desired effect.

It occurs to me I don’t know any truly stylish person who is also truly lazy, and maybe that’s why as a big girl I feel the stakes are higher for us. There’s already a stereotype against us for being lazy and sloppy. I mean, if we weren’t so lazy lounging around stuffing our piggy faces with Crisco sandwiches and only moving to wash our corpulent frames with rags on sticks then we wouldn’t be fat, would we?

June 9, 2010

Your Weekly Humpletter: The Plumcake Costume

Hello my little butternuts, how’s every little thing? Yes, it’s time for your weekly humpletter featuring ten new Plumcake-approved tidbits of deliciousness, mostly on sale!

It’s actually a fairly slow week for sales thanks to the swing back from Memorial Day, so we’re doing something a little different.   One of the things I hate hate HATE is when people I know copy my personal style –which is pretty specific– just a little too closely. It’s awkward for everyone involved. I’ll never forget that day years ago when I walked into church to find some sweet but terribly misguided Young Thing wearing what can only be described as a Plumcake costume.

In the parlance of my people, “I liketa died.”

That being said, I thought it might be fun –and I invite you all to play along in the comments– to actually CREATE a Plumcake costume using the sales this week.  Create your own costume in the comments field, just don’t worry if it takes a few minutes to post. It might get caught in the pending filter.

Always CoolFirst up are these Original Ray Ban Wayfarers in dark tortoise shell, on sale at Lord and Taylor using code FRIENDS to take 25% off your entire purchase. I never leave my house without my torties, which are just as cool as the traditional black ones but a bit more sophisticated.

These are timeless timeless timeless and perfect for either sex, so if your father is still wearing those tragiculous Blu-Blockers, why not buy him a pair of Wayfarers?  He’ll look like  an Italian movie star (white loafers not included.)

And if I’m never without my Wayfarers I’m never ever without my Hermes scarf. In fact, you could probably execute a fairly reputable Plumcake costume with just the scarf and the sunnies, plus a pair of vintage clip ons.

Pictured here is my absolute favorite foulard from my not-inconsiderable collection. pc babel scarfIt’s called Les Rivieres de Babel and although I have it in the aqua, there is precisely ONE of these available for purchase  from Potero (on sale too, it is to weep), so get it quick. It’s the only scarf I’ve ever paid a premium for and the photos simply do NOT do it justice. So pretty. So SO pretty.  When a woman d’une certain age showed up fresh off the plane from Paris with it wrapped around her neck, I fell in love and proceeded to hairlip hell until I located one and purchased it with much whimpering of bank account and a month of meal planning that involved the phrase “beans and toast” more often that I typically find ideal.  And you know what? Worth. Every. Penny.

And of course one good turn of Hermes deserves another: the Hermes Bolide in brown box calf.  Again, there’s only one of them, but it’s at 63% off retail and in great condition. Of course as with all Hermes bags, it is entitled to the legendary spa, where loved bags are buffed, primped and polished back to new. Now in the spirit of full disclosure: I don’t own a Bolide, I have a Birkin which I received as a break up gift (sorta) and have used exactly once, but for all the folderol over the Birkin being il handbag di tutti handbags, I’d kinda rather have the Bolide.

pc bolide

Moving from the screamingly expensive to the cheap and cheerful, I mentioned earlier you could compose a pretty decent Plumcake costume with just the scarf, sunglasses and a pair of vintage clip on earrings.

I couldn’t tell you how many pairs of vintage earbobs I own. Hundreds probably. I might even know where a few of them are (I always carry some sparklies in my purse in case I need to put them on in a flash, and usually a few pair at the office, in the car…wherever)

It is a shameful truth that, like snails leave slime and skunks leave stink, I leave a trail of  earrings wherever I roam.  I’ve tried to fix it, but to no avail. I almost always find them again eventually, but in case I don’t, I really hate to invest too much.

cute earrings!

I’m a sucker for figural earrings, or something with a little hint of whimsy, like these floral ear clips on clearance from La Vintage, which will set you back a measly 17 smackaroos.

These little darlings measure about 3/4″ and are just about exactly what I go for in an earring. Casual but still a little sparkly, charming but not cutesy and pretty enough to draw light but not so spectacular as to draw attention away from my face.

If you’re not in the habit of wearing earrings, give it a shot.  I have pierced ears but only wear clip-ons, so I can pull them off or put them on at a moment’s notice.  Also, you should always ALWAYS wear earrings when trying on clothing  (nothing dangly, please). You’ll be amazed on how much more put together you’ll look, just with a simple pair of bobs.

More fabulousness after the jump, clicky click!
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