Most women love fashion. This is not news, but it is in the news on a daily basis. It is hard to pick up a newspaper or a magazine without being aware of the draw of fashion and style. Personally, I love fashion and reading fashion magazines—almost as much as I love reading Veranda and Architectural Digest. I also know that many of my readers love fashion, and Best Friends at the Bar should serve all of your professional needs. So, I have been thinking of integrating a fashion component to the Best Friends at the Bar web site. That and some other fun twists on the professional woman experience will be waiting for you in 2013.
I cannot wait to get started, and I will have help from two of my favorite young women lawyers who know more than a little about the subject matter. In fact, if they did not have jobs to keep them busy, they should just stay home and dress me! They understand what you want and your fashion budgets, and they are very creative. They also understand that women of a certain age—like me—want to look stylish but age appropriate. They can address this from all angles, and that is what I like about their approach.
I was reminded of this exciting new twist for Best Friends at the Bar yesterday when I was curled up before the fire after dinner with the Style section of the Washington Post newspaper. (Yes, I am still reading hard copy of newspapers! I like the feel of turning the pages, snapping the pages taught and getting newsprint on my fingers. For me, that is what reading is all about. I refuse to be pulled over to Kindle and its competitors—not that there is anything wrong with them. It is a personal thing. Call me old-fashioned, but it is what I like.) However, I digress. Back to fashion and the professional woman……
The article in the Style section that caught my eye was “Power, yes. Suit, no.” It described the preferences of women news anchors for dresses rather than suits and the development of that preference over the last ten years. It featured well-known newswomen like Norah O’Donnell, Mika Brzezinski (who I have blogged about earlier), Diane Sawyer and Andrea Mitchell and their preferences for on-the-job dressing. For the full article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-colorful-evolution-of-newswomens-attire/2012/11/26/361e914e-2eb4-11e2-beb2-4b4cf5087636_story.html
I found this particularly interesting because the subject matter is similar to the debate about workplace style for women in the legal profession. Even though most women lawyers today do not choose sleeveless sheath dresses in bright colors and patterns for their everyday attire at the office, there certainly has been a shift—no pun intended—to more comfortable and less formal clothing in recent years. Gone is the need to wear a suit or a jacket to the office every day, although it is still my preference for important meetings and certainly in the courtroom.
Women typically like to be fashion forward, but, as the article describes, it has become more and more difficult to find professional attire. I have lamented this for years, especially recently when I have been in the market for professional-looking suits for speaking appearances. Most of my friends and family have heard me complain ad nauseum that designers are not designing for professional women of a “certain age.”
One of the on-line comments to the article also resonated with me. The writer opined that the reason the news anchors are donning sexier and more feminine attire has nothing to do with women finally having made it in the serious news world, as the article suggests, but more to do with the fact that the news hour has morphed into entertainment instead of hard news. Seems to me that there is something to that, but I can’t see that happening in our profession. Frankly, as devoted as I am to the law, it is hard for me to think of law practice as entertaining! So, we may just be stuck with this fashion dilemma for awhile. Time to do something about it.
Enter Best Friends at the Bar to the rescue. Stay tuned for the roll out next year. It is going to be fun and informative and very valuable for stretching your fashion dollar. Why shouldn’t girls have fun?????? Even if they are killer lawyers!
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