Category: Style Sessions

Downtown’s Shelton Clothiers, long a favorite for men’s suiting, has good news for the fairer sex: They’re opening a women’s store this spring.

“We have an established customer base,” says Christine Shelton. “This is a natural extension of our brand.”

To celebrate — and see just what women want — they held “Mark It for Market” last weekend. With images lining the walls, attendees were supposed to mark what they wanted the Sheltons to buy while they’re at market this week.

Merry Mitchell is working with them to open the store and is already something of a walking billboard.

Shelton Clothiers already carries pashminas like the one Merry is wearing, and they also plan to carry what Merry says are very comfortable pants.

“It’s like you’re naked,” she says. “It’s a light-weight material.”

The pants come in a variety of colors: black, brown, gray, teal, and purple. Merry paired them with a simple black sweater and a classic jean jacket — “the one every girl should have in her closet” — but noted you could dress the pants up with a silk blouse and wear them to a cocktail party.

The other interesting thing about the material is that the pants aren’t hemmed. But don’t worry, you don’t need a tailor. Merry says you can cut them off and they’re fine. No hemming required.

I have to say, tons of colors, feels like you’re naked, no hemming required: I’m intrigued.

What does a president wear?

Well if it’s the president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, Terry Woodard, the answer is chocolate brown pants and a matching jacket.

“I wanted to bring out my brown eyes and I wanted to stay warm,” she says.

And probably a scarf. When I mentioned how I loved the Pop! of her scarf, she told me she collects them. Like, really collects them.

“I have more scarves in my closet than anything else,” she says. “I have more scarves then shoes.”

This week, in my other life, I wrote about the new downtown law school and how good it is for the area.

And Dani Huff is a perfect example of why.

Justin and I caught up with the law student Friday night, wearing a super-cute dress she got from a Knoxville boutique and cowgirl boots.

She said she wore the dress because it was comfortable and stylish.

“I thought it went well with my cowgirl boots and that’s always fun,” she said.

There’s no objection here.

Also, I thought her bag was a great choice. She said it’s the one she’s been carrying for about a month, but I liked the way it complemented the pattern of her dress.

Dr. Jennifer Hobbs is originally from Chicago but has been in Memphis for about two years.

We ran into her at the Brooks on a day when it was blistering cold to native Memphians, like hide-in-a-blanket-in-front-of-a-fire kind of weather, but to a native Chicagoan, it probably felt like, well, spring.

“I get excited when it gets cold because I can wear my boots,” she says.

I liked how she was rocking this lovely eggplant coat with a simple cotton scarf from Banana Republic. Purple isn’t an easy color to wear, but Jennifer is doing it with aplomb.

She says she needed a new winter jacket and recently ordered this one online in a winter coat clearance sale.

“I probably wouldn’t be able to wear it in Chicago right now, but it works fine here,” she says.

My friend and pilates partner, Jill-of-all-trades/freelance photographer Melissa Sweazy, always looks super cute. (When we work out, her socks even match her t-shirt.)

So it stands to reason that her already super-cute daughter Harlow is just a little muffin.

See what I mean?

Melissa says Harlow is outfitted (in these photos at least, I don’t know about her overall wardrobe) mostly in Old Navy, with boots from Target and an H&M hat.

As for the coat, Melissa notes that it would work well for full-grown women: “The plaid coat needs to be stocked in adult sizes or the next lady who compliments her on it may actually steal it off her little toddler body.”

CMI, the parent company of the Flyer and Style Sessions, isn’t quite known for its fashion.

It’s not its fault; journalists, with the exception of the Elsa Klenschs and the Anna Wintours of the world, have never been known for their sense of style.

The term “ink-stained wretch” comes to mind, and if you’re going to be ink-stained, you’re not going to want to wear anything that you don’t want ruined.

Luckily for Hannah Sayle, Memphis magazine’s and MBQ‘s newest addition, we’re not having to run the printing press ourselves anymore. (My clothes are better for it, but I do miss how it gave me great guns.)

In all seriousness, Hannah and I have bonded over a shared love of Rue La La, a website with limited engagement, designer sales, and Gilt Fuse, a website that sells clothes from emerging brands.

Here Hannah is wearing a Robert Rodriguez dress with a slip and sheer overlay, which I *think* she might have gotten from one of these sites. (I would call her and ask, but then we’d probably start talking about something else and this entry would never get posted.)

“I’m a big fan of A-line skirts because they draw attention to my waist,” she says. “I paired it with an old pair of high-heeled boots from Banana Republic — because even though high heels make me look like a giantess, I like the slimming effect. The necklace is a twisted copper ring from Urban Outfitters.”

Very good, Hannah. Now get back to work and stop reading the interwebs. The rest of you, feel free to stay and hang out a while.

Last week, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art held Wined Through the Galleries: An Artful Scavenger Hunt.

Armed with glasses of wine and a map of the museum, teams scoured the galleries to find the answers to questions such as “Flutter by these creatures with wings to find a princess who whistles and sings. What is her name?” and “Find another object in this gallery where the location of its birth is written on its face. Where was it born?”

There was no chance we were winning that ^ so Justin and I held a scavenger hunt of our own.

First find? Brooks staffer Elisabeth Callihan.

She said that many of the things she was wearing were gifts: the boots she got for Christmas and her dad gave her that wonderful scarf.

This made me think that maybe she doesn’t like to shop, so I asked her about it.

“I like to,” she said, “but my credit cards don’t like it.”

Yep, we hear that.

But speaking of shopping, I especially liked the black, wood bangle Callihan is wearing. It’s simple, but because of the color and the material, has a nice heft to it. Turns out she got it in the museum’s store, which is another fabulous find in itself.

Shooting in a museum has its challenges. My heels make a horrible racket on the floor, everyone is busy looking at the artwork, and the security guards seem to want to jump into every shot.

Oh, and you’re not allowed to use a flash.

I have to say, tho, Justin met the challenge head on, using the museum’s “natural” lighting to light the shots.

See what I mean? Of course, I think some of the credit also goes to Cameron Ogg, a college student home for winter break.

Ogg says she loves doing greys and blacks with a bright color, in this case, an eggplant purple cardigan with a grey shirt from Express and a dark jean.

“I wasn’t sure how dressy or how casual it would be, so I went with jeans but tried to dress it up,” she said.

Kat Morisy recently underwent wardrobe triage.

The Cornell student is studying Arabic and International Relations and, when we ran into her at the Brooks scavenger hunt, about to go live in Jordan for six months. So, what does one take when you go to Jordan?

“It’s a pretty conservative society,” she says. “All my skirts have to hit the knee.”

It’s also an international flight and one suitcase away. So Morisy and her mother had been going through her closet, making sure all the shirts she was bringing would match all the pants she was bringing, and trying to figure out all the different ways she could wear each article of clothing. There was even talk of taking pictures of each outfit so she could remember what they were.

(I have in my notes “figure out how to turn a dress into shorts” but I’m sure that’s not right. An interesting concept, perhaps, but more likely just another victim of my increasingly bad handwriting.)

The boots she’s wearing in this picture she actually got for her trip.

“They’re not really what I had in mind,” she says. “They’re not as high as I thought I was going to go.”

She’s paired them with leggings and a sweater she got last year but still wears all the time.

“It’s warm, but still cute at the same time.”

Sadly, though, she won’t be wearing it for the next six months: The sweater is staying in the States.

Ever since I saw cute little Lisa Williamson (founder of the Junkyard Memphis) wearing a dramatic necklace from Muse — similar to the ones below — at an event, I have been lusting after one. Sometimes they include ribbon, sometimes it’s brackets, but they’re always elaborate and eye-catching.

And then I found out they’re called bib necklaces. I get the reference, obvy, but I think the name might have ruined them for me. It’s just not a connotation I like. Now, every time I see one, I’m going to think BIB and that’s going to make me think BABY SPIT-UP.

(Then again, I do really like the pearl one in the middle, so if it were to somehow find it’s way to me, I might be able to muddle through.)

The only thing worse is if they called them dickey necklaces. (You know, those mock shirts that people sometimes wear under jackets or sweaters. You don’t? Lucky you. Want to change that? Click the link, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.)

By the way, the first necklace is from Fred Flare and costs about $10; the second is Amrita Singh and $100 through Gilt Fuse. The last is Ranjana Khan, and available at Bergdorf Goodman for about $600.