Taylor Swift Spotted Wedding Dress Shopping With Her BF

We all know Taylor Swift isn’t about rudely barging in on a white veil occasion, so should we be worried that she was just recently spotted wedding dress shopping? Don’t freak out Calvin Harris, Taylor is not already planning your future or anything. She was out and about doing her maid-of-honor duties with her BFF.

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Taylor’s childhood bestie Britany Mack is getting hitched. Taylor was given the top notch honor for Britt’s big day, so of course they went dress shopping together.

Taylor let us all in on the wedding news back in February by posting an Insta with a personalized note and photo from her friend, who called the singer her “sister.” We all know how T-Swift goes all out for her fans, so imagine how Brit’s going to get hooked up.

“I’ve never been a maid of honor before. This is my first time, and it’s really, really important to me because this is my best friend, who I’ve known since I was born. And she’s marrying someone I’ve known since I was 4,” Taylor told People in NYC Wednesday night at the Keds #1989STYLE event.

Tay went on, revealing that the she and her BFF decided to research wedding dress designs by Reem Acra “because that’s one of her (and my) favorite designers.”

“Reem does the most amazing bridal designs, and Britany and I were looking through Vogue, and she pointed to this one gown, and I was like, ‘I wonder if we could go to the showroom,'” she shared.

Taylor being the awesome person she is, worked her magic and pulled a few strings for her bestie. “Sure enough, it was the best day ever,” she added. “It was so amazing.”

Britany also bragged about their wedding fun on Instagram on Wednesday. She gave a shout-out to Taylor and posted a pic from her dream dress fitting.

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Sewing-kit ace who fixes fashions

Math teacher Carol Pitkewicz sees a common thread running through prom fashion over her decades at a Long Island high school. And she has that thread in her purse.

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For years, the soon-to-retire Pitkewicz has brought a travel-sized sewing kit to the Bayport-Blue Point High School prom to fix any, well, wardrobe malfunctions.

“Sometimes the dresses are very fitted, and the ladies are dancing and having a good time, and all of a sudden, a button will pop,” Pitkewicz, 62, told Newsday.

Sometimes, it’s more than a button: Pitkewicz recalls a student’s dress seam splitting, end to end, about a decade ago.

The student slipped the dress off in a restroom stall, and Pitkewicz sewed it back together with her tiny kit.

“She went back out there. It didn’t come apart for the rest of the night,” the teacher said.

Pitkewicz, who also serves as adviser to the school’s student council, is retiring at the end of the year. After a 23-year-career in the Bayport-Blue Point School District, she’s seen trends come and go at the prom, which students traditionally attend in their junior year. This year’s was Friday.

Beyond varying hemlines and skirt shapes, there was an era when boys favored powder blue formalwear, a time when top hats were popular and a series of changes in shoes.

But Pitkewicz’s advice to students is constant.

“Continue to work as hard as you work now,” she says, and “always keep a smile on your face.”

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The fashion blogger who makes $15,000 per Instagram post

The astonishing sum has been revealed by Danielle Bernstein, the US fashion blogger behind the We Wore What personal style-diary website. The 22-year-old explained to US Harper’s Bazaar how she makes money – big money – from Instagram.

When the interview was conducted she had 992,000 Instagram followers, meaning her ‘rate card’ for a single piece of sponsored content (one Instagram post) ranged from $5,000 to $15,000 (approx £3,000 to £9,500), depending on the terms of the deal. Since the interview she has hit 1 million followers, meaning she can now charge “a good amount more”. She’s coy about exactly what means number-wise but we can assume it’s north of the latter figure.

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Recent sponsored posts include numerous shots for a Lancôme foundation (all of which are tagged #ad) and something for Virgin Hotels, for which she posted a picture of herself with entrepreneur Richard Branson at the opening of his new hotel in Chicago.

“Last year was definitely my most profitable,” she says. “I hate talking about money, but let’s just say it’s more than I could have ever imagined as a 22 year old. I fully support myself, and it’s in the mid-six figures. I save, I invest, I’m trying to be smart about it all and learn as I go.”

Even if you’re not in the 900,000 to 1 million Instagram followers league the money is still good; bloggers with ‘just’ hundreds of thousands of followers can make anywhere from $500 to $5,000 (approx £320 to £3,000) a post.

But Bernstein is small fry compared to some celebrities; those with 6 million or more followers (think Cara Delevingne and Kendall Jenner, who have 12.8 million and 26.5 million followers respectively) can charge anything “from $20,000 to $100,000 (approx £13,000 to £64,000) a shot” for, say, a plug for Calvin Klein underwear, something which Jenner has done in the past.

But sponsored posts aren’t the only way fashion bloggers are raking it in via Instagram; many make huge sums by monetizing their posts via rewardStyle, a fashion technology company that, “collects commissions from retailers on behalf of bloggers whose pictures induce readers to buy baubles online.”

Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine and Song of Style’s Aimee Song are just two of the many high-profile bloggers that use it. The same Texas Monthly report revealed some make up to $80,000 (£50,000) a month by directing their followers to where to buy their outfits.

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A Tip For Taking Fashion Risks Because If You Want To Be Bolder With Your Style, You Should Just Do It

I don’t want to brag, but I’ve got me some style. I lean towards dresses that look like they could be made from vintage wallpaper, and I pick out pieces that look more like daydreams than clothes. I’ve learned how to take fashion risks. Colors like lilac and chartreuse make me want to break out in delighted claps, and all sorts of lengths and shapes are welcome when it comes to my wradrobe. I’ve been known to be confident in a dress that one (male, of course) coworker said looks like a blanket with arm holes, and I don’t bat an eye when I cross the street in a vintage pillbox hat and poppy red lips. I treat every morning dressing up the way a five-year-old girl might when she approaches her mom’s closet, already wearing messy pink lipstick and a strand of pearls: Like this is about to be some serious and exciting play time.

I’ve got nothing but awe for the beautiful stories clothes can help us tell, and I try to share that simple and open happiness by hopefully inspiring other people to follow suit. You know how you want to step up your game when you see a woman with an A-line dress and lilac lipstick sail past you? It makes you think, Hey, that looks like a lot of fun, and you go buy yourself those ridiculously fanciful earrings you kept telling yourself you couldn’t (shouldn’t) need, because why not?

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But the thing is, developing your sense of style isn’t just about picking out what colors to wrap yourself around that morning. It’s about starting to develop a braver sense of self. Every time you share with the world how you look in the inside, outside, well, you open yourself up. You become vulnerable. And it takes courage to decide that being open and true to who you are is more interesting than hiding.

So while I can doll out advice for days on how to mold trends into something you can work with, and arm you with fashion formulas and tried and true do’s and dont’s, the fact is you will never begin to start getting comfortable with the idea if you don’t just do it. So do it!

Want to take that first plunge into the world of madly printed dresses and look-at-me hues? Yeah you do, I know you do. But you feel too shy or too worried over all the admiring stares you’ll attract on the train to work? Yeah you are, I know you are. Because at one point I was, too. But the thing is, you have to do things that scare you. You have to scrunch up all that bravery and allow yourself the pleasure of feeling uncomfortable. Let yourself grow. It’s a messy, unbearable business but the cool thing is that you survive it. Every time.

So leave the house in that gingham dress. Hell, go all in and throw on some white gloves in traditional ladylike form. Put on those bell bottom pants you’ve been admiring all season. Show the world how hard you can rock a pair of overalls, curves and all. Whatever it is, just do it. You might feel weird. You might need to bring along a brown paper bag you could discreetly breathe into. But if you want to start growing in your style, you’ll need to do just that: Start growing.

And there’s no tip that can get you around step one: Take the first step and do it.

Because the beautiful thing is, if you can do this — if you can put on that dress and spend a whole day outside in its watermelon hues or its avant-garde baggy shape — who knows what else you can do? You’ll get a taste for courage. You’ll start feeling comfortable toeing across the lines of your comfort zone. You’ll start grabbing for other things — bigger wants and wonderfully intimidating dreams — because you saw that you could do it. It’s all connected. And it all begins with that one step.

And the best part: You’ll realize that even if you fail, even if — OK — you didn’t like the style after all, nothing happens. You move on, and you have the winning tally mark on your side that you took a chance on yourself and on your happiness.

And became a little better for it.

So go ahead, start developing a braver sense of self. Let yourself try something new and let yourself see how it feels to be in a spot that feels open and nervous. Because — maybe, just maybe — that same feeling will grow into something confident and natural.

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Fashion retailer Esprit warns of substantial full-year net loss

Fashion retailer Esprit Holdings says it expects to post a “substantial [net] loss” for the 12 months to June 30 due to huge asset write-offs, and it also expects to be in the red at the operating level due largely to weak sales in Europe and on the mainland.

While chief executive Jose Manuel Martinez told reporters on Monday that restructuring of its mainland operation has been completed and is “ready for the next [period of] growth,” the profit warning still represents a major disappointment to analysts.

In the nine months to December 31, Esprit derived 83.2 per cent of its sales from Europe and 16.2 per cent from Asia Pacific. Photo: Reuters

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Prior to the loss warning, the firm was projected to post a net profit of HK$96 million for the 12 months to June 30, according to the average estimate of 11 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

Net profit for the six months to December was HK$47 million, down from HK$95 million a year earlier, while operating profit plunged 85 per cent to HK$37 million and turnover dropped 16.3 per cent to HK$10.72 billion.

Sales for the three months to March 31 fell 25.5 per cent year on year, as the negative impact from an unusually warm European winter spilled over to early this year and big discounts had to be offered to clear stock.

“Many analysts did not expect a loss, especially at the operating level, even though some asset provisions were expected due to store closures,” said an analyst at an Asian brokerage who did not want to be identified. “Its mainland operation hadn’t been well ever since it was acquired.”

Esprit bought out its mainland joint-venture partner China Resources Enterprise’s stake for HK$3.88 billion in late 2009.

Esprit said in a filing to Hong Kong’s stock exchange on Monday that substantial sales declines stemming from store closures and inventory clearance meant it expects to book HK$2.5 billion to HK$2.7 billion in goodwill impairment for the mainland operation, a non-cash accounting loss it said will not affect its cash position.

It also expects to book HK$440 million to HK$470 million in asset provisions and impairments related to the closure of its directly managed stores.

Despite weakening mainland economic growth, Martinez said the company is poised for growth there after closing loss-making shops and a sharper focus on profits for the remaining stores, adding that sales of its spring collection have improved year on year in Asia and Europe.

The firm derived 83.2 per cent of its sales in the nine months to December 31 from Europe, and 16.2 per cent from the Asia-Pacific region.

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