Remember the shopping list I prepared back in March? Curious if manifesting worked the odds in my favour? Let’s take a look.

Here are the things I had on my list

Granny boots – I didn’t find a pair yet, but as we move into spring and summer, this is becoming less of a priority item. It will probably move back to the top of the list again come fall.

Colourful tights (and socks) – my best friend read my post and gave me half a dozen pairs of (colourful) tights she doesn’t wear anymore. I also bought a few pairs while I was in Montreal, so I am now ALL SET.

Palazzo jeans – I have not bought a pair to replace the Gap ones I found a while back (which are ok but not perfect) but I did source a candidate (Levi’s). In fact, I was very tempted to buy them online brand new but I backed off in the end because I want to give secondhand another chance first. This remains fairly high on my priority list heading into summer.

Sunglasses – I did not buy a new pair … but I did find an old pair that I thought I had lost so I’m ahead. I consider this an item checked off my list (for now).

Pendleton blanket coat – I FOUND IT!!!! This was my biggest score this spring. I lucked into finding a beautiful vintage Pendleton coat in mint condition for a killer price ($100). I couldn’t be happier about it. This alone could also convince me that manifesting is a real thing, lol!

Club Monaco monogram sweatshirt – A few have popped up on Poshmark, none within the budget I want to spend. Still checking the thrifts every visit, and hoping I’ll get lucky.

Ralph Lauren knits and vintage pieces – I have not found a teddy bear sweater for a good price, but I did score an amazing vintage wool coat in a Pendleton-like pattern. Very happy with this, but I will continue to keep my eyes peeled for more vintage RL pieces.

Patterned co-ord set – this is one item that I didn’t find and I’m ready to remove from my list. It’s just not something that aligns with the direction of my current style.

Paco Rabanne-inspired silver disc skirt – for me, sequins are more of a winter thing, so this has dropped off my priority list for the time being.

And here are a few New Things I added to the list since March:

Black tiered maxi dress

I am cheating with this one because I already found it. It was something I’ve been wanting since last summer, but only recently found one that met my specifications. It’s ankle-length and voluminous, made of linen, and tiered. Perfect for my summer romantic boho outfits. I am very excited to add it to my summer dress rotation.

White maxi dress

I thrifted a white dress last year, but it wasn’t my perfect white summer dress; it was a compromise. As with the black version, I have some strict specifications: it has to be ankle-length and opaque/not see-through; it has to have volume and preferably tiers; and I would love a little bit of broderie anglaise. I have my eye on some options on Poshmark but I am not rushing this purchase. I can wear last year’s dress until I find the right one for the right price.

Denim maxi skirt

It’s not often I jump on super trendy things, but this trend is one of the rare ones that aligns with my personal style. I love slim-line maxi skirts with a slit! I was all ready to hop onto Poshmark … and then I remembered that at last year’s clothing swap a friend of mine gave me a vintage Gap skirt that checks all the boxes! It’s the OG version of this trend, from 2000. Last year, I wasn’t sure about it; I hadn’t worn denim skirts in a long time. So I put it aside, thinking I would put it back into the swap this year. Boy, am I glad I held on to it now! Seeing this type of skirt on my IG feed this year was the push I needed to stretch my comfort zone. So, long story short: this is another item that was on my list and is now (successfully) crossed off.

Vintage Coach and/or Paloma Picasso bag

I’m still kicking myself for selling the vintage 90s Coach bags I had bought back in 2010-2011; when I pivoted to designer bags a few years later, I thought I wouldn’t need them anymore. Wrong! I don’t use my designer bags much anymore, but I would love a small crossbody Coach in that gorgeous vintage leather. Of course, prices have gone through the roof; the Willis bag you could get for under $50 before, now goes for $200+. Sigh, let that be a lesson friends: hold on to your good vintage! I also have my eye on a specific Paloma Picasso bag on Poshmark and am waiting for it to drop down in price. I don’t really need more bags, so these are items I won’t buy unless I stumble on a great deal.

Madras jacket

Madras is basically plaid patchwork so you will not be surprised to see it on this list. Ralph Lauren does madras really well, but I will settle for anything with a good colour paletter regardless of brand.

Big Buckle Birkenstock

I have 3 pairs of Birkenstocks (LOVE them) so I don’t need need more, but I would like to hop on the “big buckle” trend if I get the chance. Unlikely but … come on, manifesting – do your magic!

Cowboy boots

I hesitate to add this to the list because I’m not 100% sure I’m ready to commit to cowboy boots. They would go with my prairie-vibing outfits but am I a cowboy-boot wearing person? I’ve never been to a single rodeo! (Nor do I plan to go) This will be a case of “if I see the right pair, I’ll decide”. I’ve kept my eyes open for a pair over the last few months, but the thrift gods haven’t delivered yet. This is not a top priority item, but a maybe-nice-to-have.

Details: bl^nk London top, Topshop pants, Emmanuel belt (all thrifted), J. Crew shoes (retail)

Thoughts: I can’t believe it took me so long to pair these pants and this blouse — they go so well! The pattern mixing makes the outfit feel like a higher-level effort, even though it’s just, well, 2 pieces. Red and blue is an energizing colour combo (it always pops) and I think this is a great shade of blue for it too because it doesn’t read too “primary colours”.

Details: H&M shirt (thrifted), Topshop dress (eBay), Zara shoes (retail), Copper Canoe Woman earrings (gift)

Thoughts: A white shirt is a classic pairing for this dress, but I chose a more unusual version this time. The collar gives it that Wednesday Adams vibe, and I think the boots underscore it. This dress still hits all the right notes for me; the use of the contrast polka dot pattern is such a clever way to maximize this unique pinafore design. I am still low-key looking for the reverse colour version of this dress — black polka dots on a white background. That’s how much I love it.

Details: Babaton turtleneck, Tahari shirt, Frye boots (all thrifted), Ralph Lauren coat (FB Marketplace), Ralph Lauren belt (Poshmark), Everlane pants (swap)

Thoughts: I haven’t used FB for the better part of a decade, so I always forget that Marketplace exists and is actually not a bad platform to find secondhand bargains. I was recently on there because we’re looking for a rug, but I decided to search for “Ralph Lauren” on a whim. And what do you know? I found this mint-condition, 90s wool blanket coat for a steal. It’s going for $300-500 on eBay, and I paid $100 — score! It’s a different colour palette and length from the Pendleton coat I recently found, so I feel like they won’t compete with each other too much. This is a women’s Medium but it has that boxy oversized fit so it’s nice for early spring layering.

Details: corset (Etsy), Rebel Sugar turtleneck (gift), Second Female cardigan, Laura Ashley skirt, Fluevog shoes (all thrifted)

Thoughts: I’m calling this “goth cottagecore” because why not. I wanted to pile on a bunch of florals and really lean into that Ren-Faire vibe, but I felt a bit exposed up top so I decided to add another layer. A white blouse seemed too … expected so I decided to choose outside the box and voila! I don’t know why these photos look like they were taken with a potato instead of an iPhone13, but enjoy this unintended throwback to the early days of my blog.

Details: Ralph Lauren sweater, Gap skirt, Woolrich vest, Stuart Weitzman shoes (all thrifted)

Thoughts: This outfit is all about the vest-skirt pairing, so I kept everything else simple and clean. In retrospect, I kinda wish I had broken up all the black with a chambray shirt. Oh well! There is always next time.

I came of age in the 90s, which was not a decade known for its body positivity, and I was a devout reader of women’s magazines during that time. Looking back, I think I was desperate for clues about the “correct” ways to perform my femininity; my mother wasn’t especially interested in fashion, makeup and other “girly” pursuits, and I had no sisters nor friends with whom I felt comfortable enough to share my lack of knowledge or ask for help. Magazines helped me figure out the key rituals of femininity and how to perform them convincingly enough to feel like I could blend in with my peers to an acceptable degree; but all that information came with a heaping side of internalized fatphobia and misogyny that took me years to unpack (still working on it).

Despite the amount of print that magazines in my youth devoted to picking apart women’s bodies, I came out of my teen years without any clear understanding of my own body. I just knew that it could always be thinner and taller. So if clothes sometimes didn’t fit well, or didn’t look on me like they did on other people or in magazines, it was because of that: I wasn’t thin enough or tall enough. The pursuit of the former took me down some scary paths, including an eating disorder I was lucky enough to overcome without long-term adverse effects. But even as I slowly inched my way towards body acceptance in my late twenties, I still had massive blind spots. It wasn’t until after I turned 30 that I was able to finally look at my body and really see it – see it in an objective, judgment-neutral way.

And realize that my weight and height were the least useful metrics for understanding my body and how to dress it. Also that bodies differ in myriad of ways which can explain why a dress might look amazing on one person and meh on another person (and have nothing to do with weight).

Hands-down the bigger game-changer was realizing that I have a long torso and short legs.

If you’re as old as me, you probably remember that bath scene in Pretty Woman where Julia Roberts tells Richard Gere that he’s got 34 inches of leg wrapped around him. Despite being only 1 inch shorter than Julia (I checked!), my inseam is 28.5 inches on a good day … so that gives you a sense of how much variability exists. Even if Julia and I were the same size, things are FOR SURE going to fit differently on her than me.

I feel like I “unlocked” the mystery of pants once I knew I had (comparatively) short legs. Being 5’7, I had never thought that I might actually benefit from petite sizing (which wasn’t even a thing when I was growing up) … and I do, massively. Petite length pants are my jam! Before I discovered petite sizing, I used to wear ankle crop (regular length) pants almost exclusively because I liked how they looked on me, without realizing that this was my “hack” for achieving the same result as petite-length pants.

Here is a good recent example of why petite-length pants work on me better than regular length:

These are the Banana Republic “Rivoli” pants I bought at the end of last year. I don’t have the sizing information for the model in the stock photo, so I can only hazard a guess at how tall she is, but I’m pretty sure she is wearing either the Regular or Tall size because most models do. You will notice she is wearing flat shoes and the pants graze the floor. Knowing what I know – and having read the reviews that mentioned that these pants have a lot of volume – I chose to buy the Petite version because I was pretty sure that getting the Regular would have required me to either hem the pants or wear high heels to avoid the ”pooling” of fabric at the bottom of my feet. These pants looks best, IMO, when they have a straight, unbroken line. You can see that the pants are as long on me (wearing a kitten heel) as they are on the model. If I hadn’t bought the Petite version, they wouldn’t have.

Knowledge of my short inseam helps in a variety of other ways. Take skirts. When I am looking at a stock photo, I know to make automatic adjustments regarding how a skirt (or dress) will fit on me, length-wise. If it’s mid-calf on the model, it will be nearly ankle length on me which is a bonus because I love maxis. But if it’s knee-length on the model, it will hit 2-3 inches below the knee on me – not a good spot based on the shape of my legs. In retrospect, I think one of the reasons why I quit wearing knee-length pencil skirts is that they rarely fit well – unless I could find petite-sizing, which only J. Crew seemed to offer at the time – and would often end up looking a bit shapeless. Here is a picture to illustrate how much difference a few inches can make:

My legs look the longest in the photo on the left, and my body looks most balanced (between torso and legs) in the middle photo. I love the outfit on the right, but it is not as “flattering” as the middle one in a traditional sense. I want to be clear that I am not saying one of these styles is better than the other because “flattering” is a personal choice not a mandate – sometimes I want to achieve a “flattering” look, sometimes it’s not a consideration at all. But being aware of how length impacts visual proportions means that I am in control and can decide how I want to look (and know how to achieve it).

The other half of the proportions equation is the long torso thing. And understanding the implications of that also helped me tremendously. For one thing, it helped me to understand (and make peace with) why the ultra-low rise jean trend of the early 2000s was so brutally unflattering to me. Let me put it in perspective: most high-waist jeans have a rise somewhere between 10-13 inches … but at 13 inches, the waistband just barely covers my belly button. My natural waist is another 2 inches higher than that. The waistband of low-rise jeans hit me at the wrong spot, digging into the soft flesh just above my hip bones – uncomfortable and not fun. Being able to buy medium- and high-rise jeans, starting in the mid-2010s, made a huge difference in my enjoyment of denim.

But the magic of high-waisted garments doesn’t end there because they also allow me to play with the visual proportions of my outfit – to make my bottom half look longer and more balanced if that’s my goal for a particular outfit. Here are some examples, with both pants and skirts:

I didn’t realize until I posted them here that both outfits on the right above feature the same crop top. And, funnily enough, crop tops were another revelation to me. Wearing them (usually paired with high waisted bottoms) allows me to showcase my waist AND create a long leg line visually, both of which are things I like. Ironically, I was afraid of crop tops for most of my adult life … another legacy of my magazine-reading youth.