Getting ready for Fall, part 2 | Take stock

After you got your closet organized, the second step in your Fall preparations should be to take stock of what you have. Probably the shop-your-closet motto comes to mind here. Indeed, rediscovering old items in your own closet (or in your mother's, friend's or sister's) can be as rewarding and exciting as shopping for new items.

Experts will recommend to assess what you have by taking pictures of your clothes, shoes, handbags, and accessories, and then organize them into a proper database that will help you decide how to put outfits together. Indeed, "closet organizers" software and apps abound (see, for instance Touch Closet). The idea in itself is a good one, and I have to confess that for a while I entertained the idea of doing it. Back in May, as our move for Europe was approaching and I started making lists of what to take along, I thought that it would have been the perfect moment. Yet I then faced the reality that compiling an organized database of my closet items was too hard and time-intensive compared to its possible uses. When getting dressed in the morning, I would never have the time to consult the database for guidance. Perhaps I could use it if planning outfits for special occasions, or to record what I wore on specific occasions, or if I would have the time to plan my daily outfits in advance. In sum, too many ifs. This solution may work well for you, though, so do no feel discouraged by my experience.

My quick-and-dirty way of taking stock of what I have at the beginning of each season is to compile a broad list of the number of items that I have in each of the following categories and sub-categories:

1. Tops (shirts, blouses, knits, jackets)
2. Bottoms (pants and skirts)
3. Jeans
4. Outerwear (trenches, short jackets, coats, puffer jackets)
5. Evening wear (dresses and separates)
6. Shoes (pumps and flats)
7. Boots
8. Handbags (totes, shoulder bags, clutches)

This broad categorization allows me to quickly detect any "imbalance". For instance: do I have too many tops compared to bottoms? Do I have too many heavy winter coats compared to transitional ones? I keep these lists so that, from one year to the other, it is even faster to update the categories that have changed.

Voila. In the next post, I will share my experience about how to make the best possible use of this list for planning your Fall wardrobe.

Getting ready for Fall, part 1 | Divide and conquer

Fall is the most important shopping season for the fashion industry. While insiders have already moved on to Spring 2012, magazines introduce women to Fall/Winter 2011 fashion with their thickest editions of the year (remember the documentary "The September Issue"?), and consumers reward the industry with big business during this period. As the fashionable mom does not escape the trend, this post launches our series on FW11 fashion with tips about how to get ready for Fall.

The fashionable mom's challenge as she gets ready for Fall is that this iconic moment coincides with going back to school for the little ones in her life. Before this moment, all her energies are mainly concentrated on assembling school packages and other related necessities. Summer wear is disoderly thrown back in her closet and once school starts, in the morning there is not too much time to think about what to wear and to look for it in case it is not immediately accessible.

My rule and my advice is thus to have clothes and accessories organized before the new academic year frenzy begins. Adding to this space with new purchases is something I generally do later, once everyone has gotten into the new year's routine and I have more time to breathe. (I will thus come back to this point in my next posts.)

The best moment to begin your preparations obviously depend on where you live and thus when Fall starts. If you are one of those lucky ones who enjoys a Southern climate and will not see Fall until January my advice will definitely come too early for you. Even I will actually have to make some adjustments this year, since Fall in Milan should be milder and last longer than what I am used to in Canada.

The key to my preparations is to divide and conquer. To do so, the organization of my closet space is extremely important. At home in Canada as in the apartment we will be staying this year in Milan, I have created three separate spaces in my closet:
1) a main space for in-season clothing, which includes drawers or shelves for knitwear, belts, and handbags;
2) a space for eveningwear and outerwear, including their corresponding accessories such as evening clutches and scarves hats and gloves;
3) a space to store out-of-season clothing and accessories, either on hangers or in boxes.

These spaces can co-exist in one closet, or can correspond to different areas in your house. The important thing is to make them readily identifiable. For instance, if you have one big closet, you can put out-of-season clothing inside garment bags and move them to one of the least accessible corners, while leaving the central area for items you daily wear. If you have separate spaces in your home, the latter should always be placed in the most accessible area -- where you could fish out items even with the lights off. You may notice I have not mentioned shoes. It is because I do not like to store them together with my clothes, because they may create unpleasant smells. I keep only evening shoes (in their original boxes) with my eveningwear, but everything else goes in a separate place. For instance, at home in Canada, I keep rain and winter boots in the mudroom -- but I will have to come up with creative solutions for our apartment in Milan.

Once all my in-season clothing is in the main area of my closet, I further divide it into tops, bottoms, jeans, dresses, and knitwear. (Experts will tell you to also color-code your items, from light to dark shades, but I seldom do it.) I also divide outerwear into light items (trenches, peacoats, leather jackets) and heavy items (winter coats and puffer jackets).

You're done! This strategy should allow you to glide through your closet and easily find what to wear in the morning!

Mr and Mrs Smith

A few days ago, my husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary. Since we were driving back from Belgium to Italy at around the same time, we decided to make a stop in France to celebrate in style.

As most of you surely know, staying at upscale hotels with kids maybe challenging, to say the least. In his quest for a child-friendly place, my husband stumbled upon a great resource, that I would highly recommend: Mr and Mrs Smith, a concierge service for boutique hotels all around the world. Their website allows users to filter hotels by different categories, including the one my husband was looking for: child-friendly. In addition, their website has great specials, one of which permitted us to book two nights at a wonderful French chateau that we would have otherwise not been able to afford. Finally, being used to reserve through anonymous travel websites, my husband found refreshing the possibility to speak with an informed and helpful agent, who did her best (and succeeded) to accommodate the needs of our family.

Even though our stay looked highly promising, we were obviously a bit nervous when we arrived at our destination, the Chateau de Bagnols in the Beaujolais region -- fearing it too good to be true. Yet reality exceeded our expectations. In our room, a child robe was waiting in the closet next to two adult ones, together with welcome snacks and drinks (wine for us, grape juice for my son). But it was the attitude of the staff and the other guests towards our little one that impressed us. At the pool, where we spent most of our time, floaters and toys were waiting and no one got upset because we were splashing around, certainly disturbing their peace and quiet. My son was encouraged to play and bike around the impeccable gardens. The chef always had snacks ready in the kitchen for him and happily accommodated his food requests.As much as we feared the final bill, we were once again pleasantly surprised. For instance, we had not been charged for my son's breakfast, even though he had always eaten pastries and enjoyed freshly made hot chocolate and juices.

Needless to say, I hope Mr and Mrs Smith have the same special next year... Meanwhile my husband and I have used their services again for our upcoming trip to Copenhagen!

Another unexpected find

Belgium is supposed to be hit by a heat wave starting tomorrow and I realized that, as usual, I made the mistake of not bringing enough t-shirts or any pair of shorts. My in-laws live in the Belgian countryside so that it is not too easy to remedy to this mistake with a quick shopping run to the nearby town. However, while looking for kids' shoes and rain boots, on our previous trip I have discovered Carmi, a mere 5-minutes ride away from my in-laws' house. Carmi is a Belgian department store specialized in footwear for the whole family, and on our last trip we had no problem in finding what we were looking for. We actually discovered the existence of a small playground, so that while my son was playing I had the chance to check out the rest of the store. I had been quite impressed by its eclectic mix of brands of clothing and handbags. For instance, the store had a wise selection of Michael by Michael Kors spring handbags in voluptuous colors as well as of Max Mara and Sportmax clothing line.

During my afternoon run to the grocery store, I thus stopped along the way at Carmi to see if I could find something to get me through the heat wave. Amidst a number of brands I did not know and some I prefer to forget about, my unexpected find was the line Paul by Paul Smith. I scored two beautiful cotton t-shirts with front floral silk panels, reasonably priced at 150$ each. I was just incredibly upset the store did not have my size of a tuxedo tweed jacket I adored. I also picked up an adorable school backpack for my son!

Once I got home, I was so intrigued that I looked online and I was excited to find out that you can shop the entire collection online as well, with worldwide delivery options. Now I know where to get the blazer...

100 visitors!

Today we have passed the important milestone of 100 visitors! Thank you for following and stay tuned for our Fall 2011 series!

Belgium's hidden treasure

I may have not yet found the fashionable Belgian moms, but today I certainly discovered one of Belgium's hidden treasures: the district parks. There is a total of seven in the country: two in the French-speaking part of the country (in Hélécine and Bois de Rêves) and four in the Flemish-speaking part (in Huizingen, Kessel-Lo, Halve Maan Diest, and Het Vinne Zoutleeuw).

Do not be fooled by the simple name. They are vast parks with original playing areas suited for kids of all ages. In some, like the one we went today in Kessel-Lo, there is even a pool and a lake. The park reminded a bit of the Centre de la nature in Laval, Quebec, close to where we live in Canada. We spent just the afternoon in Kessel-Lo, but we could have easily made it a day trip, including perhaps a lunch picnic.

You will not find Belgium's district parks mentioned in any tourist guide and even the locals may not be aware of them (my husband, who is Belgian and grew up in a nearby town, had never been there before today). But If you are in an area where there is one nearby, this is one of the best ways to spend one or more sunny days (if you are lucky with the weather -- this is rainy Belgium, after all) with your kids.

A needle in a haystack

Belgian women have many qualities, but I have to admit that I have seldom seen them shine for their fashion sense. This trip is no exception, and I was paying a lot of attention! But I am a scientist by profession, and I hate to generalize without hard-core evidence. So, today I decided to try to move beyond occasional observations and do a little research in a larger crowd. August 15 is a national holiday in Belgium (like Ferragosto in Italy), and there are lots of family-oriented events that one can attend.

We went to a medieval fair organized at the Castle of Horst. The fair was in its second and last day today. The two-days program included several fun activities for the whole family, from sword tournaments (with all participants rigorously in costumes) to fencing demonstrations and a short adventure course. I thought this was the perfect occasion to find the fashionable Belgian moms.  In fact, the place was so crowded that we had to wait almost an hour for our lunch, which gave me plenty of time for my project.

I was disappointed that I came empty-handed. The needle in the haystack was the mom of two whose pictured I sneaked from my table, and that you can see here. One may question her choice of footwear for this event (the fair was held in a muddy forest), but she gave me hope!

Obviously Belgian women have an essential disadvantage: the weather, which may change only four times on a good day (from cloud to rain to sun to more rain). This is the sam challenge I face when I come. According to my Belgian father-in-law, however, my observation still suffers of selection bias, because this area tends to be primarily rural. On my to-do list for the next trip is thus to scout more evidence in Antwerp, Brussels and Gent!

Ballerinas, mon amour

All right, today I caved in. While walking around Brussels, we stumbled upon a Geox store and I decided to buy a new pair of sneakers to give some rest to the one pair I have been wearing everyday since the end of July. When I stepped into the store though, there they were: a beautiful pair of taupe studded ballerinas. Not Jimmy Choos, Manolos, or any other designer pair I have stored in my closet since my foot got injured. "Just" a pair of Geox ballerinas, but I felt like an addict who had just been shown his favorite drug, the one she has not been able to have for so long. So I bought them. In my favor, I must say that they were really comfortable and did not bother my injured foot, who was actually hurting a bit after a long day of walking...

You are not alone

A new survey by Today.com and Parenting.com has been getting a lot of attention in the past few days. About 26,000 women were interviewed about their secrets and confessions and -- guess what? -- some surprising secrets and confessions came out, including that moms are overwhelmed, they medicate their kids more often than one would expect, they send their kids to school when they are sick, and they judge other moms about how they spoil or feed their kids.

I was curious to know more, so I went to check out their websites. I was quite disappointed though because there are no details as to who was interviewed (how old were the women interviewed?) and how representative this group is of the general "mom" category. In fact, I can guarantee you that if you'd repeat the survey in Italy, interviewed moms would tell you they are judgemental not as much about what other kids eat, but about what other mom's wear, most of all!

Driving through France with a preschooler

We have arrived in Belgium a couple of days ago and I would like to share with you a surprise and a disappointment of our drive through France.

We have found France more child-friendly that we had otherwise anticipated. This is particularly true of food options in restaurants, which always include healthy choices such as sole muniere or poulet de bresse, always accompanied by steamed vegetables and rice. The contrast with children's menus in North America (think hot dogs, hamburgers and fries) could not be more striking to us. At the restaurant on the Eiffel Tower, the children's menu was a three-course meal that included fresh mozzarella and tomatoes salad, pasta with pesto or steamed salmon, and a chocolate mousse shaped as the tower itself. And I am not talking about the super-fancy restaurant at the top (Le Jules Verne, where Tom Cruise proposed to Katie Holmes), but the "brasserie chic" on the first floor (the 58 Tour Eiffel), which has an easygoing atmosphere and very reasonable prices. We were also impressed that even the most touristy destinations would have activities for kids. For instance, at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower there was a drawing station with colorful tables, crayons and paper. At the Castle of Chantilly, the garden included different mazes for kids and a playground.

My personal disappointment was the visit to Louis Vuitton's store on the Champs Élysées. It is the brand's flagship store and one of the meccas of handbags' aficionados like me. This is not the only reason while I wanted to pay it a visit though. I went there also because I am trying to find a new tote to alternate to my "Never Full", which in the past five years has been my faithful and indestructible "mom's bag" and has gone gracefully from diaper bag to beach tote as well as everything in between. The problem is that the store on the Champs Elysées takes the concept of a circus to a whole new level. There are long lines to get in, and once you succeed there are so many people inside that it is impossible to look at, let alone shop for, anything even for a motivated customer like me.