Living Abstracts Style » Helping women develop their personal style

Refinery29 fashion and beauty website and a screenshot from Patricia Kiing’s MyStyle Pinterest board.

I spend a lot of time looking researching Living Abstracts Style content, looking for new style finds and inspiration. While much of it links in some way to Pinterest and is going into building resource pages to be launched in the coming month or two, I thought it might be useful to readers to see some of the most recent finds and news. So here we go …

WEBSITE: Refinery29 - a magazine/blog style website that promises to help you live a more beautiful life. I could get lost in the content and its “How to” section is my fave, with sub-sections of I DIY, Styling Tips and What to Wear.  The I-DIY section has a lot of original ideas: videos on how to make Celine-inspired knotted leather cuffs, necklaces and a Kenzo-style ribbon sweatshirt. I like the styling tips especially: one article on one piece three ways: how to pull off pastel denim (a pair of dusty pink jeans) stepped outside the regular matchy-matchy road as did 5 fresh ways to style a plain, white t-shirt (even though I am not a fan of harsh white for everyone). PS The Huarache sandals on the slide above are from Urban Outfitters (unfortunately, no longer available) and the Liberty print shorts by Thom Dolan.  The What to Wear section covered everything from wedding outfits to styling blazers.  If I could change one thing, it would probably be to add more content.  We’re now in May, this is my first visit to the site and I was going back to October 2012 in a few clicks; if I was a regular reader (as I may become), would it be worth my while?

After I had found Refinery29 via one blog, Business of Fashion mentioned it too – talking about its future.  In a couple of months, Refinery29 is going to be relaunched and rebranded, integrating commerce and content.

M&S: Business of Fashion also posted about M&S’s new clothing strategy to ‘focus on better quality and styles in womenswear, deliver more compelling and clearer sub-brands and make shopping easier in stores’ after two years of declining sales. I rather hope so. The changes are due to come into effect at Marks & Spencer from July. Fashion Editor at Large shared photographs from the new AW collection under Belinda Earl, formerly of Debenhams and Jaeger.

POP-UP SHOP: Yasmin Sewell – one of the people whose looks I find myself collecting on Pinterest has a pop-up shop in Shoreditch until August.

PINTEREST: Pinner Patricia Kiing’s My Style pinboard: a lot of pattern, many pairs of shoes and a minimalist/Scandi vibe.

SWIMWEAR: And I discovered Albion swimwear through More Design Please. US company Albion makes leisure wear including one-piece swimming costumes and bikinis, many of which have an old fashioned charm and look as they may fit all kinds of bodies.

Since becoming more inspired about sewing, I’ve discovered how many websites and blogs are available now that weren’t around last time I was sewing … probably a decade or so ago. So here is some online sewing inspiration to help if you’re starting your sewing journey.

Blogger StraightGrain is Belgian mother An sewing for her daughter the CUTEST outfits. OK, this is slightly off topic in that she’s making dresses for a three-year-old, but many of the techniques she uses are applicable to womenswear. She has tutorials on making a bubble skirt,  origami raglan sleeves (a guest post on another blog) and a dress with pleats and piping. The tulip sleeve details are something I’d like to try in the future as are the notched sleeves.

StraightGrain links to the sewing of another blogger, Sanae Ishida, who does some wonderful clothes for her six-year-old and who wrote a marvellous post about body image. I’ll let you read it yourselves, but essentially she is going to start sewing for herself and be a positive role model for her daughter and has painted the most exquisite illustrations for her story.

Great British Sewing Bee competitor Tilly Walnes has a light and airy blogsite with a great series of sewing tutorials. Her Pinterest boards are inspiring and it was sweet to see her blog post about the opening of Birmingham haberdashery shop Guthrie and Ghani by fellow GBSB competitor Lauren Guthrie.

There is some good advice in 10 Things I’ve Learned on The Sew Weekly and The Thrifty Stitcher (written by GBSB consultant Claire-Louise Hardie) including a set of PDFs on sewing basics such as getting to know your sewing machine. Sew Mama Sew has similar information, in a fab ’50s style website including a guide to buying a new sewing machine.

Squidoo has a plethora of sewing tutorials and links to free patterns – although quite a number of the links are out of date and don’t work.

Pattern company Simplicity explains ways of working with more difficult fabrics, fleece and knits.

So there you have a collection of online resources for starting sewing.  Are there resources that you love to go to for your sewing? Perhaps there are online material retailers which you especially love?   Guess I’d better find some time to crack on and sew those patterned trousers – they’re not going to make themselves.