My Love Affair With InStyle Magazine

Today’s Attire: Today I’m wearing a cotton leopard print tank top (Torrid $18) under an asymmetrical hemmed black ribbed short sleeve cardigan (White House Black Market $35) with black walking shorts (Ashley Stewart $19) and leopard print Mary Jane wedges (Betty Paige $55).

Outfit Justification: My outfit is adorable. I wasn’t able to take a picture of it, which is a shame because it’s so cute. Our department is going to have a happy hour gathering after work and I wanted to look reasonably cute for that. The outfit formulated by accident. I totally had something else in mind to wear. Next thing I knew I was reaching for the animal print tank top and everything fell together.

My Love Affair With InStyle Magazine:

One of my favorite fashion magazines is InStyle Magazine. I would spend hours perusing this magazine for items I loved. I got so many awesome ideas from looking at this magazine. Even though almost seventy percent of the magazines are ads I still find hours of amusement looking through and reading.  I like that it gives me enough info on trends in fashion, accessories and cosmetics and also includes info on some of my favorite celebrities. 

When I first started going to my current hairstylist, I used have a copy of InStyle with me every time. Even though she had plenty of interesting magazines to read, I always brought my own copy of my fashion road map. As she was doing my hair, my stylist would look over my shoulder at something I was looking at and say “I like that” or “That’s cute”. After seeing all the great stuff in the magazine she finally got a subscription for the shop, she liked the magazine so much. I loved that I had that kind of influence.

The hard part about looking at these magazines is that models in the magazine didn’t represent me very well, at least in the beginning they didn’t. Most of the models were tall, too skinny, white women. That is so not me.  The clothes that they had in there were so violently expensive I couldn’t even think of going to a store and purchasing a pair a socks. Again, I’m poor and I can’t justify spending $3,000 on a silk blouse.  Yes designer clothes are expensive, and I’m not naïve enough to think I could just buy everything in the magazine.  Often times I would get frustrated with this. But over the years those things have changed. The models were becoming more diverse in race and in size.  A few times I’ve seen them address fashion dilemmas for all sizes, petite, curvy, pear shape, and tall.  That made me fall in love with the magazine all over again. They also started displaying things that were reasonable price points as well as the high end stuff.  That gave me hope for things I could look for and buy.

When I was diagnosed with depression a few years back, I had lost my love for a lot of things that brought a lot of enjoyment to my life including singing and fashion.  My go to things that always cheered me up held no joy for me whatsoever.  I was in the process of putting together a look book. A look book is a collection of clippings from magazines and articles that provide inspiration for outfits. Emotionally I had hit rock bottom. In a fit of anger and frustration I trashed my look book and eventually threw all my magazines and clippings in the garbage. I even stopped shopping, which was devastating and sad because now I was the smallest I’d been in my adult life and could wear the cuter clothes and they fit. It was a very dark period in my history. I look back at the pictures of me that were taken at that time and my heart sinks and I feel for the girl in those pictures who was so full of such sadness and couldn’t enjoy how attractive she truly was. I’m 60 pounds heavier now and I miss the look of that girl, but wouldn’t give up the happiness I have now to switch places with her.

Last night after my third Zumba workout, I felt compelled to peruse an issue of InStyle. After a minor accident with an overflowing bathtub my issue of InStyle became a flood victim.  I was looking forward to staying in, letting my poor muscles try to relax from the brutal beating I gave them while working out and flipping through the magazine.  Then I remembered that I have the magic of technology.  I have a digital subscription to the magazine and could read it on my iPad.  Oh how I love technology.  The current issue was taking forever to download because the Fall issue of the magazine is enormous. To kill time I looked around on my newsstand app on the iPad, I realized I was behind on a few issues. So I read the previous issue while the current one was downloading. My love affair was rekindled. I was looking at current trends and making mental notes as to how the apply to my current life.  I was making connections of things I’ve seen in recent shopping sprees and what role I would play in certain trends. My current loves are studded boots and coated jeans.  I’ve got my eye on a pair of black coated jeans I tried on Monday that made me look 10 pounds thinner and made my ass look amazing. When I get back into a rock band, I can already see my next outfit.  Looking forward to rocking those items once I’ve acquired them.  

Jeff just dropped off my lunch and decided to take a picture so here it is: