Dress Your Best 2011

The lovely ladies over at academichic are hosting another great project this year. Dress your best is a way of owning and celebrating your favourite body parts. As has been pointed out, discussing your worst body parts has sadly become a part of female bonding (as seen in Mean Girls). Celebrating your favourite parts seems to have become limited to your bum (Beyonce, Rihanna) or your boobs (Katy Perry, Niki Minaj). It's much harder to think of other body parts that we love that aren't sold to us as valid because they are sexual, whether they be our height, back, legs, eyes, hair, nose, ankles or wrists. If you want to check out more on Dress Your Best, you can do so here.



Skirt: Gap
Vest: H&M
Necklace: Next
Sports bra: Peacocks

This is one of my favourite casual outfits for studying in in the summer. The staying power of this skirt is pretty amazing, it's lined, and I bought it from Gap 10 years ago (seriously!) I have poleroids of me at 12 years old wearing this in Italy with a denim jacket and my hair in 'the Rachel'. I dressed pretty differently to most 12 year olds then.

This vest is also one of my recommendations, the girls in my family have a lot of vests from H&M. This one is lined at the top so I can wear it with my sports bra and still have good support and shape. In this outfit I'm dressing my best for my curves and arms.



1.
Shirt, skirt: New Look
Tights: Primark
Necklace: Next

2.
Jumper: Primark
Dress: my987wardrobe
Tights: Peacocks
Lipstick: Victoria Jackson

In this first outfit I'm dressing my best for my height and features. I'm petite, and for me that's not just about height. I'm about 5'4 so I'm at the top end of petite and I can buy pretty much everything from heigh street stores apart from trousers occasionally. But my features are very petite, so most of the style 'rules' for petites work for me, one of them being to tuck shirts in. I used to think this emphasised my hips, but I think this can be avoided by the cut of the skirt/pants.

The second outfit I built around the tights. It was also a cold day and I wanted layers without being too boring. The dress is one I won from a blogger giveaway with my987wardrobe (although I lost the link to the blog as it was so long ago, sorry!). It's really comfy and work appropriate. I love the neckline. The only downside is that it's hand wash only. This outfit is something I can imagine Phoebe from Friends wearing. I also want to apologise for the mess; I took these photos mid-move, can you tell? :p