Social Study: Guys, Girls, and Style

Background: People often ask about my experience as a woman working in and designing menswear. I get a good amount of questions from guys asking my opinion about style, and of course the standard "Um, can you take a look at my shirt? I think I (insert a variety of damaging behavior from daytime fails and nighttime blunders)."

But at the end of the day, I wonder if guys in general  feel open to or are even seeking the opinion or approval from women in their sartorial experience.

Method: In this so very scientific study, I tweeted to the masses (and some more pointed folks* to balance out the group among style guys, married/commited guys, proudly non-commited guys, manly man guys, etc.) asking if women were a major influencer in their style decisions. This is just part of some of what you taught me:

Personal favorite response: "the right girl"

Conclusions: As it turns out, responses were pretty split down the middle. Some guys do it all for the ladies, while others just lean on your own personal style and attention of the female variety is a nice bonus. But a lot of agreement came around the idea of confidence being what women recognize, more so than any article of clothing. So is there some confidence soap you guys are scrubbing up with in the morning?

What do you think? Is it women, guy friends, blogs, or just your taste that influences how you leave the house? 

*People with protected tweets have names withheld to protect the innocent

Hair: A love story

Remember this? Click it, make it bigger, and bask in how flipping LONG my hair was then. Curly, at that.

The tutorial was a good one too, so go check that out again too. Side note: I made some ombre socks for fall to be worn with heels. Oh yes. I. Did. But I digress...

Or even remember the straight hair that sometimes showed up?

So if you are one of my favs because you follow my nonsense on twitter, you'll know my quite volatile ride to cutting off all of that curly glory you see above. At one point I was threatening to shave my head. Not quite Amber Rose,  but close enough.  People yelled at me. No, really.

This jacket is way cooler than it looks here

Then I finally did it! I cut my hair off 2 weeks ago, and haven't shot a look for The Co-Op since, so you all get the good pleasure of these cheesy phone pictures for now. 

Sans makeup...

I'll talk more in depth about the change in an upcoming post, but here are some pictures to pacify you (and to stop the harassing tweets about not sharing what it looks like. jerks.) I kid. Kind of.

Curly mohawk- image shamelessly stolen from a friend

There's been a bunch of looks- from Great Gatsby-esque to the curly mohawk. And a few other looks in between.

Side view.

My stylist told me this would be a great way to reinvent myself and have a new costume every day. She knows me all too well.