notdressedaslamb.com

I honestly couldn’t be happier, because this year I was one of the judges for the fashion category, and I have now seen firsthand how judges go about choosing a winner and how scoring works. I know how that feels too as I was a UK Blog Awards finalist TWICE before I won on my third time trying, as well as having been a didn’t-win finalist in other awards events. Now that I’ve been both a winner AND a judge, I thought I’d share with you what I think makes an award-winning blog. During the initial stage when scoring all the nominees to determine the final eight, I came across blogs that weren’t fashion blogs at all but very obviously beauty, health, wedding, travel or even FOOD blogs (I’m not kidding! ).

I’m sure this can’t be an isolated problem: who else finds that once you’ve put on some skinny jeans and pulled up your chunky socks you’re just fighting with your wellies to see who wins the Calf-Wellington War? If I’ve tempted you to buy either a blue or a floral trench (or a blue floral trench), then you’ll also find some SS19 alternatives I’ve found. As the wellies are red and pink and the trench is a bright, pale blue I thought I should wear my tomato red Finery sweater, throw on indigo jeans (the JD Williams eco-made jeans*) and avoid yet MORE colour by taking my clear, LED umbrella. The other times I wore the trench coat as shown above: left is today’s post / top middle / top right / bottom middle / bottom right OTHER TRENCH COATS

It means that women (people! ) have the choice to wear whatever they damn well like, whether that’s wearing every single trend going and changing their look regularly, or sticking to the same classic look for years, or wearing avant-garde ‘out there’ styles, or going full-on leathers at age 70. The whole point of blogs originally was to show that we didn’t have to look the same as models in magazines and wear this season’s clothes Why are we not seeing all the women who present us with something that’s NOT cookie cutter, that’s NOT What’s basically happened is that we’ve come full circle, back to one type of “look” being promoted and pushed the whole time like it was in magazines.

So if you’re a fan of shirt dresses, slip dresses, classic yellow dresses, wrap dresses or gingham dresses then it’s your lucky day! The shirt dress is probably the one style dress I’d choose if I could only choose one dress forever and ever. If a shirt dress is my favourite style dress, then yellow is my favourite colour for a summer dress. But normally “wrap dress” makes me think of a bodycon style, with long tight sleeves and a knee-length, tight skirt… that style looks TERRIBLE on me, and it’s not my style at all (plus dare I say it