Category: Style Sessions

For fashion magazines, September is the golden goose. The fall fashion season is starting, the books are at their biggest, and the number of ad pages can be record-breaking.

I assume putting September together can be rather stressful, especially at a place like Vogue, run by the legendary Anna Wintour.

You may remember that Wintour was the basis for the demanding editor-in-chief in The Devil Wear Prada, which came out a few years ago and starred Meryl Streep and that cute little Anne Hathaway. But if you want to see the real-life workings of Vogue, your fashion bible is here in The September Issue.

The September Issue is a documentary that chronicles Wintour’s preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue. It weighed nearly five pounds and was the largest issue of the magazine ever published.

The September Issue opens Friday at Malco’s Ridgeway Four.

Former Memphian Cecily Briggs began designing jewelry about 10 years ago.

“I wanted to design a piece for my boyfriend,” she says. “He was a boy from Germantown so he was kind of conservative. He didn’t wear a lot of jewelry.”

She tried to make the necklace three times before getting it the way she wanted it. But, in the meantime, workers at the bead store she was frequenting told her she had an eye for jewelry and encouraged her to continue making it.

A quick wikipedia search about seersucker revels this: “The word came into English from Hindi, which originates from the Persian words ‘shir o shekar,’ meaning ‘milk and sugar,’ probably from the resemblance of its smooth and rough stripes to the smooth surface of milk and bumpy texture of sugar.”

I’m sorry, if I liked seersucker before, the etymology alone makes me love it.

Craig Cardwell bought this seersucker suit for his daughter’s wedding several years ago.

“I always wanted one,” he says of the suit. “This is Memphis. You wear cotton.”

His wife, Margaret, is also in cotton, with this cute shirtdress.

“I love plaid,” she says. “Some people might say it’s a throwback to preppy, but I was wearing it before it was preppy.”

Ann-Sofie Johansson’s mom loves Elvis. Which is how the two Swedes ended up walking around downtown Memphis on a rainy summer evening.

Now sometimes we (and of course here I mean “I”) see tourists and we think something along these lines: That is really unflattering, but I guess it’s comfortable and you’re a visitor to our city and you’re walking around and getting on buses and eating strange foods and you’re just trying to be prepared. So, okay.

But this needs no translation. Or rationalization. It’s lovely.

Johansson says she usually wears jeans and a sweater, but she and her mother were going to have dinner at Flight, so she decided to wear this white cotton dress and matching sandals.

I especially like the tie in the front.

Lena Davis-Brown’s husband likes to tell her that she overdresses.

“He thinks I should have on a t-shirt and shorts,” she says. “For me, this is dressing down.”

When we ran into her in Cooper-Young last month, she said she originally was wearing Ellen Tracy pants, a chocolate halter top, and heels to go to the Taste of Cooper-Young. Then her husband reminded her they’d be walking.

Which is how she ended up in this lovely gradient-shift Laundry maxi dress.

But we think she probably would have looked good either way.

Charming Charlie is opening its first Memphis location at the Avenue Carriage Crossing.

The retailer, founded in 2004, offers cute jewelry, scarves, and handbags (and a small amount of apparel) at what they call “guilt-free prices.” Seriously, what would be more charming than that?

Sample eye candy below.

Last week, Justin and I loaded into his shiny red ark and sought refuge from one of the many storms at Automatic Slim’s for Work It Wednesday.

(Seriously, if we had known it was going to be like this, we would have started a special subset of Style Sessions called “The Umbrella” and just had people with frizzy hair, high-waders, and rain boots hiding under umbrellas in the pictures. But we didn’t.)

So, there we were, feeling slightly a la drowned rat, and there was Toni Laurenzi, sitting at the bar, looking as fresh and carefree as a sunny, summer day.

“It wasn’t raining when I left,” she explained when I asked her about her smocked Charlotte Russe halter and dark wash blue jeans from Express.

She says she was looking for comfort when she got dressed: “I was going to get dressed up, but I had a lot of errands to do.”

It takes quite the outfit to work well for both running errands and going out for drinks. And this definitely works.

Chances are, if you’ve seen Kerry Crawford-Trisler, you’ve seen a very distinct accessory: the “I Love Memphis” sign she photographs people holding for the Convention and Visitors Bureau’s I Love Memphis blog.

For this picture, we convinced her to put the sign away so we could see her Banana Republic jean skirt, Frye boots, and cute blouse from Sachi.

But its her glasses that are her signature accessory. She has three pairs that she rotates wearing.

“I’ve been wearing cat-eye glasses since I was in high school,” she says. “I thought if i have to wear glasses, I should wear big glasses.”

How much do you love this White House/Black Market dress? The cut is really flattering, the print is interesting, and the belt and the pockets cleverly use a reverse of the dominant pattern. Presh, right?

For Maggie Haire, it was all about the heels.

“I’m a teacher by day, so I don’t wear heels,” she says. “At night, it’s kind of fun to live it up.”

Unfortunately, we hear through our spies that Maggie is sick right now. (Like we said, she’s a teacher. Are there any teachers who aren’t sick right now?)

Maggie, hope you feel better soon!