Cheryl Shops

If I were younger and thinner and had better hair, I'd want to be a personal style blogger. Granted, I think most aspiring fashion bloggers nowadays want to be personal style bloggers, and with good reason: If successful, they tend to have very high-profile careers, with much cachet in the industry. (Well, as much cachet as one can hope to achieve as a blogger.) You can usually tell when a fashion blogger gets her big break; all of a sudden, her Zara and ASOS bags are replaced by Givenchy or Céline. I'm happy for her when this happens, but I also brace myself; sometimes this means then end of what made the blog so unique in the first place. It's easy to look fabulous in Acne and Phillip Lim; it's way more interesting to mix vintage, high, and low all together.



One of my favorite bloggers who's managed to stay true to her aesthetic is Sincerely Jules, and even though she is, yes, younger, thinner, and better-coiffed than I am, I find myself constantly buying things she models on her blog. (A tip: It is good karma to buy items directly from your favorite fashion blogs!) She has a great Southern-California laid-back vibe, but with a hint of glamour. I am currently obsessed with this post, in which she combined relatively simple elements—a sweatshirt, a denim jacket, sneakers, a tote—with a sparkly beaded miniskirt. I have a similar jacket, sweatshirt, and skirt; the Céline tote is a pipe dream (see, there it is!); but what I'm missing is a pair of gray high-top sneakers. Jules' are YSL; my budget is more DSW. So I think these Steve Madden Dougiee sneakers are a good alternative. With tiny gold studs, they're a little more blinged out than Jules' pair, but I think that will actually work nicely with the gold sequins in my skirt. I'm a little nervous to wear sneakers with a skirt—you know how I feel about my heels—but maybe I'll just have to practice that angled, off-kilter pose that all the bloggers do. The Céline tote may be for the top tier of fashion bloggers only, but everyone can pop a knee and look fabulous.