No. 

No. We do not.

Oh Brian Atwood. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1. 2.

3.

But alas, our love is not meant to be. At least not until I have a job/husband/winning lottery ticket that will allow me to spend $1,000 on a pair of shoes.

I mistakenly got excited when earlier today I read that Brian was debuting a new line – B Brian Atwood – for the “girl who wants it all.” Unfortunately the prices for this new line still would not allow me to have it all. Unless by “all” you mean one pair of fabulous shoes and a pantry full of ramen noodles.

Which is a shame because I’ve fallen hard for the Pangea Suede Pump:

That gold heel is so perfect it makes me want to weep.

So I set out on a mission to find an affordable substitute that I could one day hope to love as much as these. Here’s what I came up with:

Bandolino Transpose Wedge

Pro = still a fun green suede. Con = no beautiful gold heel. Pro = but wedges are very comfy. Con = green is a little too light to be versatile. Pro = at $69 is $331 less than the Pangea pump.

Also these:

Butter Satin Platform Pump

Much more in line with the color green I was looking for and the little bow is a fun touch. But I was hoping for more of a solid platform pump that would look good with jeans and this heel is a little too dainty.

Enter Cole Haan:

Cole Haan Stephanie Air Platform Pump

Jackpot! Good neutral green color with fun zipper details and a solid heel. And it’s on sale! I never find things on sale. Possibly because I’m too impatient to dig through the sale racks. But more likely because stores hate me and refuse to put anything I like on sale ever. Yeah, I definitely blame the stores.

So while there will always be a special place in my heart for the B Brian Atwood Pangea Pump (and hopefully one day a place in my closet, too), what do we think of the much more affordable Cole Haan substitute? Can we love it for less?

I am about to betray an entire generation of women who worked so hard to gain the rights and opportunities for our gender that I so freely enjoy each and everyday, but I can’t help myself – I think Betty Draper is an idiot. Yes, I know her ex-husband is a womanizing philanderer who has multiple mistresses and a serious drinking problem. But her ex-husband also looks like this:

Hi Don – I love you.

So needless to say I was very disappointed not to be getting my summer Mad Men fix this year. (Thank goodness for this guy who is filling in for Don on Sunday nights this summer quite admirably.)

But Don Draper is not the only thing I love and miss about Mad Men. I also love the wardrobe, set design and overall look of the show. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that one of my favorite retailers was debuting a collection designed by Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant (who is an absolute genius) that was inspired by the show. Unfortunately the results left me more confused than Peggy when she went to the doctor with what she thought was a stomachache and gave birth to Pete Campbell’s love child instead. (Oops – spoiler alert)

For example – this leopard trench coat gets a thumbs up:

It would be a super-fab way to accessorize a classic Joan Holloway-Harris jewel-toned sheath dress. This “Betty dress”, however, gets a thumbs down:

The color is sad, the fabric is too shiny and I don’t believe Betty Draper has ever worn a jaunty neck scarf.

This floral-print dress gets a conditional thumbs-up:

The conditions being that you add a belt, lose the necklace and don’t stand with your hands in your pockets like that.

But this – I don’t have enough thumbs to express how much I hate this:

I’m not talking about the skirt. The skirt is boring, but fine. I’m talking about the aneurysm-inducing, dirty-looking socks that someone paired with BRONZE PUMPS. Is this going to be a thing now? If so I think I’m going to be physically ill.

So aside from that last affront to nature, how do we feel about Banana Republic’s Mad Men Collection?

Dear Piperlime:

I was giddily perusing your fall preview sale when my eyes were unexpectedly assaulted by this:

And while I appreciate your offer to take 20% off of this $460 skirt, I’m afraid I must decline. For you see, $368 is still entirely too much money to spend on what looks like a lampshade. An ugly, expensive lampshade.

Love,

Shea

The year was 1991. All my little 7th grade heart wanted for Christmas that year was a pair of these:

And although I had to promise many, many days of clean rooms and made beds to get my Mom to agree to spend $70 on them (which at the time was an insane amount of money for jeans), come Christmas morning there was a navy blue pair of button-fly Guess jeans waiting under the tree.  I shudder to think about how high-waisted they must have been.

Thus began my short, but passionate love affair with Guess jeans. Over the next year or so I somehow also convinced my Mom to buy me two more pairs – in mustard yellow and for some inexplicable reason, dusty rose.

(PS – shout out to all the tall girls like me who desperately wanted the Guess jeans with the zippers on the ankles which for some reason only came in the petite length. Stupid short people have all the fun.)

Well kids – colored denim is back. So the question is – do we love it like we did once before?

The short answers, from L to R: Yes, No, Hell No, Maybe, Sure

As a way of dipping my toes slowly back into the colored denim pool, I bought this pair over the weekend:

(from here of course)

They’re a really yummy dark green that I think will look fab with a whole array of brown boots.  I plan to treat them like a neutral bottom just like I would any other denim and I can’t think of many colors that wouldn’t look great with them. Even that big bird yellow up there could work if deployed properly.

The date: Saturday, August 6, 2011

The place: Mercy Lounge, Nashville, TN

The crime:

(The second crime is obviously the terrible photo quality, but you’ll have to take that up with Steve Jobs and his crappy iphone cameras.)

The description: That, my friends, is a zebra-print blouse with what can only be described as a black-lace sports bra attached to the top. Oh and those straps you can see on her shoulders are her regular bra.  So, so classy.

The lesson: Friends don’t let friends wear this in public. Or private. Or ever. So don’t be afraid to stop your friends from committing their own similar crime of fashion. It only takes three simple words – “Oh honey, no.”

Hi – my name is Shea and I am a summer-holic. I love everything about it. Weekends at the lake – love them. Daylight until 8 o’clock – love it. 102 degrees everyday – love that, too. But all good things must come to an end. And now that it’s August soon it will be September, then October, then it’s wintertime and now I’m depressed.

But with new seasons comes new fashion – or at least new ways to use the fashion you already have. A few weeks ago I bought this dress:

(Guess where it’s from)

LOVE that blue sash.  I’ve been wearing it with some sandals I have from last summer which are similar to these and it’s been a perfect summer dress. But I don’t want to give it up when the temperature starts to fall. So here’s the plan:

Speaking of things from the 80’s…

Now the bracelets pictured above can probably best be described as “friendship-bracelet inspired”.  But this article actually recommends that you make your own friendship bracelets. Like out of string. With beads. And ribbon. To wear on your wrist. As an adult.

I swear, if someone tries to sell me a designer slap bracelet next I will scream.

But what do you think?

You know what was great about the movie “Working Girl”? Harrison Ford. You know what was not great about the movie “Working Girl”? The clothes and the hair. I mean, COME ON:

(Image from here)

And because I couldn’t find a picture clearly displaying all of the neck bows that graced the blouses in this movie (possibly because Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver may have had them all destroyed – I would have) you’ll just have to trust me when I say they were both plentiful and ridiculous.

But like all ridiculous things in fashion, the Working Girl neck bow seems to have come back around. Like on this blouse or this one from my fave store. Or this one from Alice + Olivia. These are just not ‘working’ for me – get it? ‘Working’ for me? I love when I’m clever. 🙂

But I do think this blouse from Collective Concepts has potential:

Love the colors, love the print, love that the neck bow can be worn as more of a scarf. Plus I’m pretty sure it would look fab with this skirt that I already own:

I love a good patterned top/subtly striped bottom combo. They’re the best.

Harrison Ford we definitely love you, but Working Girl neck bows – do we love them?

Here is something I KNOW I love: Hot Yoga Nashville. That’s right – I said hot yoga. And yes, it is exactly what it sounds like. It is yoga practiced in a room heated to more than 100 degrees. And if you had told me this time last year that I would be practicing hot yoga, I imagine the conversation would have gone something like this:

You – “This time next year you will voluntarily be spending several hours per week twisting your body into unnatural shapes while sweating profusely in a room with thirty to forty other people and you will love it.”

Me – “You sir, are a liar.”

But thanks to a little encouragement from a friend and a lot of amazing affects on both the way I feel and, most importantly, the way my clothes fit, I’ve been practicing consistently since January. So I’m always on the lookout for fun new yoga clothes and accessories and I recently stumbled across this – My Custom Yoga Mat.

SO many fun options! (I may or may not have spent the equivalent of .6 billable hours today playing around with my design.) But let’s talk pros and cons:

Pro – It’s adorable.

Con – At $40 it’s a little pricey for something I’m going to drip on.

Pro – But I would use it everyday so it’s cost per use would be teeny.

Con – I would almost certainly spend many more billable hours deciding on a design.

Pro – But putting my name on a yoga mat would surely result in more “good job Shea”s  from the instructors which are my very fave part of class.

I think I’m sold. This mat is so cute it would almost be a shame to cover it up with a yoga towel. But then again, given how much I sweat during class it would also be a shame not to. 🙂