I have always wondered about your process for finding outfits. I have a hard time finding outfits online so I want to know the secret!
Okay, but if I tell you my secret, you've got to promise that you won't start a competing blog and make it better than mine and steal all of my readers, m'kay? ;)
For celebrity looks, I save all of the celeb photos in a folder, whether I've found them myself or gotten them as a request. Every day, when I sit down to blog, I go through the folder and decide which outfits I'm going to try to recreate. Sometimes I would get stuck on one and not be able to fully recreate it, but that doesn't much happen anymore.
For stylist/personal shopper posts, I tackle the requests based on the order in which they came in, and also when the event is. There are so many that I can't get to all of them, and if I get many of the same kind of request, I usually can't do them all. For example, I get an average of 4-6 requests a week from readers wondering what they should wear to a wedding. I figure that if I only fill one or two of those requests, the others can still take inspiration from the posts.
Once I decide on the challenge, I start looking for the items to blog about. And I have a secret weapon.
It's called Shopstyle.
It's basically a search engine that searches hundreds of stores for you. You can sort by price, size, color, brand, anything. For example, check out what I'd do if I was looking for a pair of red peep-toe pumps for under $100:
If I can't find what I want on Shopstyle, then I do a Google product search check some of my other favorite stores that aren't yet working with Shopstyle. I've linked to most of them here.
I hope that helps!
How do you balance your budget finds with more lasting quality?
Now that I think of it, I've got fairly rigid rules regarding what I'll splurge on and what I won't.
I will splurge on:
- Jeans
- Shoes
- Handbags
- Coats
- Cocktail Dresses
- Bathing Suits
I don't usually splurge on:
- Casual Dresses
- Casual Tops
- Shorts
- Underwear
- Costume Jewelry
Now, that's not to say that I always splurge on jeans, shoes, bags, etc. I wear my Old Navy jeans as often as I wear my J. Brands. But I rarely if ever splurge on the other items.
And my rule of thumb is that I'll be more willing to splurge on an item if it's timeless and classic. If it's a very trendy item that might not be in style six months from now, I won't want to spend a lot of dough on it.
That's it for this round of questions, but I'll be back to answer even more!
