Cheryl Shops

Updated April 5, 2024.

It's that time again for the Sephora Savings Event, which seems to be creeping up earlier and earlier every year. And now that it's been a full year since I left Sephora and am no longer getting showered with new product on a regular basis, I've found I've become much more particular about what I spend my own money on. So instead of recommending a whole bunch of new stuff, I thought I'd focus on my all-time favorite products from Sephora. If you don't know what to buy during the event, hopefully this list will help! The sale started today with 20% off for Rouge members, and VIBs and Insiders get 15% and 10% off respectively starting Tuesday, 10/31. Plus all Sephora Collection is 30% off for the entire event, which runs through 11/6. Here are the products I'd recommend trying.

Hi, my name is Cheryl, and with my right sidebar as proof, I've been writing this blog for 20 years. Here's how it all began: Picture me, a 25-year-old living out her Carrie Bradshaw fantasies in early 2000s New York City and working in magazine publishing as a copy editor who'd rather be writing about fashion than proofreading stories about beer and football (I worked at a men's magazine). I knew people who had LiveJournal pages (remember those?), but then I heard about a platform called Blogger, so I decided to give it a try. I didn't quite know what I was doing at first—to save you the embarrassment (on my part) of having to read my cringey old writing, I'll provide a high-level recap—but after dabbling in commenting on other writers' work and doing TV recaps, I hit my stride listing all of the sample sales in NYC every week, as well as reporting on the ones I went to. I then expanded into shopping guides and halfway through 2006 (lol better late than never) I finally started incorporating photos. In September 2006, I was among the first group of bloggers ever given press passes to New York Fashion Week; I attended every subsequent season until I moved to San Francisco in 2013. I fostered relationships with PR agencies, got invited to all manner of events, and developed somewhat of a following. I started a partnership with The Find, a shopping search engine that was eventually acquired by Facebook. Internet shopping was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was spending hours every week compiling all of the sales, online and in person, and to be honest, I was getting a little burned out, both from the blog and from my day job and from the general battle that is living in New York City. A new social platform called Instagram started to take off. I took a new job in San Francisco, moved across the country, and pretty much blew up my life. When I wrote an ode to a pair of sweatpants, I knew that, after 10 years of blogging, I had lost the spark. I stopped blogging, and I didn't think I'd start again, until I realized I was about to turn 40 and had no idea how I was supposed to dress anymore. I went to Vegas, won big at the blackjack tables, drank far too many vodka-sodas, and decided to stage a comeback. Blogging had changed since I left—it was starting to be called influencing, and it was shifting heavily to video and social media—but I decided to confront my fears, put myself in front of the camera, and get more personal. That was 7 years ago, and now here we are. Being a wise Blogging Elder who's reached the introspective point of her career, I thought I'd share what I've learned in 20 years of blogging. 

I've been feeling a little introspective lately, for good reason: This month marks 20 years (!!!) of Cheryl Shops. I'm planning to go into more detail about this next week, but in the meantime, before I start to look forward, I thought I'd take another look back, this time at my favorite outfits of all time. An important thing to note: I started Cheryl Shops back in 2003 as a way of sharing things that I bought or wanted to buy, as well as sample sales and general thoughts on fashion; back then, this blog didn't have photos, and even so, I didn't start sharing photos of myself until 2017, when I decided to restart it after a three-year break. So while this blog has been around for 20 years, I've only been doing outfit photos for 7 of those years. Now that that's out of the way, I truly enjoyed my walk down memory lane, and I hope you do too. In no particular order, here are my top 10 outfits of all time. 

 It's a new season, and that always seems to bring talk of creating a capsule wardrobe. In theory, I think capsule wardrobes are an excellent idea; we all have way more clothes than we truly need, and there's something so efficient about being able to create a bunch of different outfits out of a handful of pieces. Back in the day, Lucky Magazine truly excelled at this, in an incredibly inspiring way. The reality, however, is when you ask people to commit to a limited number of items they tend to play it safe and go for more classic things. That's not necessarily bad—classics tend to be worth the investment in terms of quality and longevity—but too much tastefulness can be a little...boring. I've never been a maximalist, but I'm a firm believer that every wardrobe—even a capsule—needs a balance between statement pieces and basics. In fact, I have a few go-to statement pieces that are among the most-worn items in my entire closet. So while this post isn't a capsule wardrobe per se, I did want to gather my top 10 most worn items. Some are basic, some definitely not, and not everything goes together, but these are the best buys I've ever made.