Bridgette Raes

Raes grew up in Hasbrouck Heights tieks review, New Jersey and now lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband Frank Mazzola. She studied Fashion Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York and worked for several years as adesigner with clients including Wal-Mart, Barry Bricken and Talbots. Raes returned to FIT to train as an image consultant and, in September 2002, founded Bridgette Raes Style Group tieks review.

Raes is frequently featured as a fashion consultant in magazines, such as Real Simple, Woman's World and First For Women tieks review, as well as on AOL’s Stylelist.com, MSN and on iVillage. She has been an expert on Glamour Sizing for media outlets including The Boston Globe and Good Morning America. She has also had numerous television appearances on television, including on CNN and The Daily Buzz.

Bridgette Raes really is an inspiring entrepreneur tieks review, and I think this interview teaches valuable lessons. She went through the process of finding what she was meant to be doing with her life, and later opened and developed her business tieks review. She learned the importance of believing in herself, identifying the things she needed help with, getting help and learning how to sell the service she provides tieks review. I hope you enjoy reading and learning more about Bridgette and her business as I did interviewing her.

Background

Bridgette Raes tieks review embarked on a career in fashion design after obtaining her degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology tieks review. Despite the glamorous trappings of her career, from her participation in important events to trips to Europe, Bridgette wasn’t completely satisfied with her work. After a few years in the industry Bridgette realized she wanted more from life, and set out to find a way to combine her love for fashion and style with her interest in making a difference. She found what she was looking for in the field of personal style consultation. She recently went back to FIT to study image consulting, and in September 2002, after ten years as a fashion designer, founded Bridgette Raes Style Group.

The opportunity

Bridgette had learned from her years in fashion design that while most designers realize how challenging it can be for women to get dressed and determine their style  , they don’t do much about it. She no longer could overlook women’s cry for help to figure out their image and style. As Bridgette explains, “Our image and clothes are powerful communicator of who we are, what we want, our goals, how we can achieve them. This is something that shouldn’t be ignored.”

Her ten years of experience, along with subsequent training in image consultation at FIT, gave Bridgette the key to her achievements. Bridgette’s instructors at FIT were fashion industry professionals in the business for over 20 years and successful business owners themselves. By paying attention to what they had to say and at the same time taking in consideration her own personal experiences, Bridgette was able to create her own business concept and mission.

Bridgette Raes Style Group

The current crop of makeover shows featured on the airwaves right now, from series such as Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and Extreme Makeover to the makeover features on The Oprah Winfrey Show, are an indication of the public fascination with and interest in personal image development. During our interview, Bridgette mentioned people’s tendency to regress back to their previous image behavior following those makeovers, since there is no education and no long-term change in a makeover subject’s point of view.

In her own business, Bridgette helps her clients to establish lasting changes in their mindsets through a 5-step program she developed. Her program assesses a wide range of aspects of each client’s life and tastes, from her life and goals to her preferred colors. She helps her clients improve their wardrobe by guiding them through each step of wardrobe selection, from understanding what pieces do or do not work for her client to helping them shop. Bridgette also offers smaller programs as well as workshops. She has a roster of trusted professionals to whom she refer clients who need more help in areas such as makeup application, organization, and personal coaching.

The Business

Bridgette recalls that she was naïve as she first started out on her business; she believed the phone would start ringing without much effort. She knew she had a skill, but didn’t know how to market it. She later hired a business coach, who helped her gain more focus through creating a 5-year plan that includes specific goals of what she hopes to accomplish.

The business coaching, along with a few business classes she took at FIT, helped her to more effectively identify her client base and market her services. It opened her mind and changed her perspective on the business and how she presents herself. Building her business took time, and at first Bridgette continued to work part-time as a freelance designer while marketing and growing Bridgette Raes Style Group. But in May 2003 her business had expanded enough for her to work at it full-time, and today it continues to flourish.

Leopard Print Flats

Animal print is a clothing and fashion style in which the garment is made to resemble the pattern of the skin and fur of an animal such as a Leopard, Cheetah, Zebra, Tiger, Spotted Hyena, Striped Hyena

tieks review, African Wild Dog, Giraffe or monkey. Animal print is also used for handbags and footwear and even some jewelry tieks review.  A major difference between animal prints and fur clothing is that animal prints today very often use fake fur instead of animal coat.

Animal prints have long been a popular style for many reasons. For one, they are generally expensive and considered rather exotic; hence they are a symbol of wealth and status

tieks review. Throughout history, kings and other high people have used animal print rugs and such as a sign of status just as mounted animals are kept as trophies.  Animalprint became popular for women in the United States in the late 1960s during the Bohemian movement

esides a distinctive natural animal pattern on clothing, "animal prints" may also refer to art prints of animals, printed on canvas or paper. The art prints may replicate the same skin or fur pattern found on the animal, but a flat photographic representation printed on artistic media, such as for as wall decorations. The prints are not limited to just the animal's skin or fur pattern, but may be any part of the animal and still be called an animal print

Animal print applications extend beyond clothing and art prints and are commonly used for other decorations, including rugs, wallpaper, or painted surfaces. In addition, animal prints may be used in designs for race cars, airplanes, signage, building exteriors, or safety gear such as helmets the NFL team, Cincinnati Bengals, uses.

Transitional Fashion: Wear Now, Wear Later

Fashion is cyclical.  One of positives of this is, just when we get sick of wearing something like tieks review, it changes.  As we’re all getting ready to enter the last month of summer, raise your hand if you’re starting to get tired of the fun summer dresses that you were so excited about tieks review just a few months ago?  Of course, none of this is relevant if you live in a season-less climate, but, for those who do, in today’s wear to work post, I am going to show you how easy you can transitional your clothes from one season to the next tieks review.
Stores are already starting to showcase their new arrivals for fall.  I know, the last thing you want to think in the sweltering heat is cashmere and booties tieks review, I get it.  However, despite the fact that fashion still tends to run ahead of the actual seasons tieks review, and you can buy a winter coat in August (the mere thought of trying a wool coat on during a heatwave gives me hives), designers and brands know that most women want to immediately wear what they buy and most transitional fashion that is hitting the stores can be worn now and well into fall tieks review.   It’s all in how you wear the pieces now and then change them up in the upcoming cooler months that will help guarantee you will get the most from these buys.
Additionally, you don’t necessarily have to pack away your summer clothes the second Labor Day hits.  Depending on where you live, it will be many months before the frigid weather arrives and there will be plenty of time to get more mileage out of your warm weather pieces if you style them right.  In terms of transitional fashion, you don’t need a lot of new to get the most out of your wardrobe.

Fashion

Early Western travelers, whether to Persia, Turkey, India, or China, would frequently remark on the absence of change in fashion there, and observers from these other cultures commented on the unseemly pace of Western fashion, which many felt suggested an instability and a lack of order in Western culture tieks review. The Japanese Shogun's secretary boasted (not completely accurately) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China of rapidly changing fashions in Chinese clothing tieks review. Changes in costume often took place at times of economic or social change tieksreview, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval Caliphate, but then a long period without major changes would follow. In 8th-century Moorish Spain the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba unreliable source sophisticated clothing-styles based on seasonal and daily fashions from his native Baghdad, modified by his own inspiration tieks review. Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East.

The beginning in Europe of continual and increasingly rapid change in clothing styles can be fairly reliably dated. Historians, including James Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the start of Western fashion in clothing to the middle of the 14th century The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden drastic shortening and tightening of the male over-garment from calf-length to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied with stuffing in the chest to make it look bigger tieks review. This created the distinctive Western outline of a tailored top worn over leggings or trousers.

The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women and men's fashion, especially in the dressing and adorning of the hair, became equally complex. Art historians are therefore able to use fashion with confidence and precision to date images, often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation across the upper classes of Europe of what had previously been a very similar style of dressing and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national styles remained very different until a counter-movement in the 17th to 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from Ancien Régime France Though the rich usually led fashion, the increasing affluence of early modern Europe led to the bourgeoisie and even peasants following trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close for the elites – a factor that Fernand Braudel regards as one of the main motors of tieks review changing fashion.

Is Your Style in Crisis Mode?

It's so easy to get into a rut with your look. If you've gained weight or gone through a major life situation, or had the kid's schedules to deal with before your own, it can happen faster than you can say frumpy. People often think no one is looking at them, and it doesn't matter how they look. The common thinking seems to be that it's easier to throw on a big t-shirt and some jean shorts and flip flops and walk out the door, than to take the time to look pulled together tieks review.
Lack of attention to what you wear and how you put yourself together will age you faster than almost anything. On the other hand, a little attention to your style will take the years off and up the "hot" factor faster and less painfully than anything else available, if you address the key areas. Do you need to update your look? Let's find out tieks review.
• Does everything in your wardrobe match perfectly?
• Is extreme comfort the driving force in your look?
• Have you worn the same foundation for years?
• Do you still outline your lips with dark liner or your eyes with cobalt blue?
• Do you wear stockings with sandals or flesh colored pantyhose.
• Have you ever had your teeth whitened?
• Are your skirts too long, covering your great legs?
• Do you wear mostly black, white and beige or just black?
• Do you feel color and pattern are NOT for you?
• Do you hide your curves in shapeless clothing, or wear your clothes too big?
• Do you wear only flats and or man sandals?
• Do you have eyeglass frames from 5-10 years ago or longer?
As you can see there are many things that you may be unaware you're doing that need a little tweaking. So what to do if you recognize yourself on the list of tieks review? Or if you just know you need to do something but don't know where to start? Let me offer a few suggestions. Decide your highest priority first. Would it be your work attire, or your dating style or your casual off work look that is calling for the most attention? If it's everything then still just pick one focus at first. It's a process.
Once you decide where to start, you have to commit to revamping all the way. A few new outfits won't look right if your hair is still in a ponytail and a scrunchy. So get your most stylish friend to recommend the best hairstylist and colorist he or she knows, book a consultation and let them do what they do best. Read some style books, I like "How Not to Look Old, by Charla Krupp and Style Rx by Bridgette Raes. And there are plenty for men to choose from as well. I like Details for men, from the Magazine Details. These books are invaluable for their inspiration and ideas tieks review.
Finally, invite your friends to help you try on clothes in front of a full length mirror (tieks review) and move out anything that doesn't work well on you any longer. If you think this would be like the blind leading the blind, hire a personal stylist to guide you about

tieks revie

. If you find the right stylist for you, it will be right up there with the best investment you ever made in yourself. Because you can go from fair to fabulous right before your very own eyes, and look better than you ever thought you could, right now. Style rut? Not anymore!

What Are Ballerina Pumps?

Ballerina pumps are fundamentally inspired from the footwear worn by ballet dancers. They appear like ballet slippers - the round toe and the shape of the shoe itself. They are basically flat shoes made for women, which are considered a very good option from wearing high-heeled shoes tieks review.
For women who want to maintain their style while avoiding the discomfort brought by high heels will definitely love ballerina pumps.
Ballerina Pumps' Characteristics
These pumps are actually flat shoes that are made for outdoor use. This type of shoes have thicker soles than that of the usual footwear for ballet which have leather thin soles. These pumps' soles are made of rubber, though, and the rest is made from leather or canvas tieks review.
Pumps can be worn for casual and formal attires. The rounded sole is a nice fit for any woman; its enclosed comfortable fit provides a comfortable feeling in the feet. Many designs are adorable, yet casual in fashionable shades tieks review.
Choosing the Right Ballerina Pumps For You
You need not select just tieks reviewany ballerina shoes in a shoe store - just choose a pair that will suit your personality and style. There are plenty of things you have to think about when you are searching for the best pumps for your feet.
How Much Are They?
In buying shoes, you need to consider the cost and tieks review. Branded shoes mean lots of money, but that is because of the durability and reliability that come in them. Think about your branded sneakers, and how long it lasted. The same goes when buying ballerina pumps, too.
Many of these shoes are costly, but think of the comfort it will bring to your feet. Besides style, you also get the option to wear these pumps on formal occasions. They look good in casual outfits also.
When buying ballerina pumps, always consider the price, and WHY are they being sold at such price. But you also have to remember durability, comfort, and style tieks review - all rolled into one. Choose a pair that you feel would last for a long time, at least.
Choosing Pumps for Comfort
Of course, no woman would wear stilettos for life. No woman would walk barefoot when going out, either. Pumps are just right for any female, regardless of age and sex. Not only do they offer a huge breather from wearing high heels at the office, they also make your feet look cute, and simply adorable.
How Often Are You Going to Wear Them?
Just because pumps are cute and comfy, it does not mean you should wear them as you would with slippers at home. These shoes are costly too, mind you - and are specifically designed for women who want to look their best and staying comfortable at the same time.
Try matching them with your clothes - casual or formal. Be sure that these pumps will go just right with your best dress. Many of these pumps last long, but if you make a habit of using them everyday, the durability will wear out, naturally.
Review and Research About Them
Are ballerina pumps really for you? It won't hurt to browse the web and do a little window shopping about these cute pumps. Just remember to consider your needs before going to the shoe store to buy them.