Thanks Elle!

One of my favorite bloggers, Elle of Fast Food and Fast Fashion, helped me out by picking up this dress for me at Forever 21 after I expressed interest in hers (the closest F21 is at least a 20 mile drive, so I usually order from their website, but this dress was not on there). It arrived last week, and I wore it today for the first time. I have to give Elle 100% total credit for this outfit, since she wore basically the exact same thing yesterday. I don’t have an aqua/turquoise belt, so I went without, but otherwise it’s the same outfit.

Yes, this is me doing the ubiquitous Smart Phone Camera in the Mirror shot. I finally got a Smart Phone in December, but every time I try to use it to take outfit pics, they come out crappy. Now that Daylight Savings time is here, there is reasonable natural sunlight for taking photos after work. But hopefully, I won’t have to resort to Smart Phone pics because the husband finally broke down and bought a remote for his DSLR over the weekend. Ideally I will set up the camera on the tripod and take photos every day, or at least when I have good outfit. I also need to take photos of my recent sewing projects (3 dresses completed for my Spring wardrobe, plus a backlog of stuff from the fall that needs to be documented).

As for this dress – I fell in love with the Kate Spade polka dot Jillian dress from Spring 2011, but even if I could afford Kate Spade clothes, they would never fit.

Source: coolspotters.com via Kerry on Pinterest

I tried to find polka dot fabric that was similar to the Kate Spade dress, but never really came up with anything that was the right size and color polka dots or the right drape. I had given up on trying to sew my own version of the dress, when I saw Elle had blogged about her Forever 21 dress. I decided that it was worth spending the $24.80 for the dress instead of trying to recreate the Kate Spade version.

Here’s the stock photo from Forever 21:

Source: realitychicblog.com via Kerry on Pinterest

(You might notice that my photo links are from Pinterest. Yes, I am on there and feel free to follow me or whatever people do on Pinterest. I use it to collect images that inspire me for either putting together outfits or sewing new things).

Fortunately, the size Small from F21 fit reasonably well. The fabric is a lightweight polyester that feels like real silk, and the dress has a nice swingy flirty spring like feel to it. I did not have to hem it or take in the bodice, which I usually do with anything from Forever 21. My only complaint about this is that the waist seam is extremely high. Normally that is not a problem for me, but on this I feel like the dress hangs a bit awkwardly because the dress’s waist is sitting slightly higher than my waist. That seems strange, given that I am only 4’11″. Granted, I do have a “normal” length torso (not a petite length), so rarely do I have to worry about waist seams being too low on me. I can’t imagine how anyone over 5’2″ would manage to wear this dress unless she was literally all legs and no torso.

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