How much do you think all of the above items cost me? Four of the items, including the dress are from Banana Republic. One is from Ann Taylor and one from Gap. Take a guess and read on to find out if you’re right!

I recently read an article about liketwice.com and decided to give it a try. I love shopping at thrift, consignment and secondhand shops, and have been looking for an online option for some time. Most of the online secondhand stores I’ve looked at use the eBay model, with individuals selecting, posting and shipping their items.

This leads to wild inconsistency in the quality of the items, the clarity of the information provided, and the shipping process, not to mention a good number of awful pictures that make it difficult to make a decision. Although I love the thrill of thrifting in real life, I don’t enjoy digging through page upon page of junk online in search of the good stuff.

Enter liketwice.com. Twice works like Buffalo Exchange or Plato’s Closet – buyers at the company sift through items sent in by would-be sellers, and choose only certain name brand pieces in good condition. They take professional quality photos of everything, and post the details in a consistent format. Some items are new with tags, and all are heavily discounted.

So, here’s how much I paid…

I purchased all of the items in the image above for…$50.40. The original total came to $63, and came with free shipping as it was above $49. Before completing my checkout, I hopped over to one of my most favorite sites, Retail Me Not, and scored a 20% off discount code. The breakdown, clockwise from top: Banana Republic Green Tee, $7; Gap Tan Tee, $10; Ann Taylor “Yellow” Tee, $8; Banana Republic Black Bow Detail Tee, $10; Banana Republic Black and White Dress, $19; Banana Republic Black Pleated Tee, $9.

Two of the tees were new with tags, and five out of six of them are in like-new condition. The dress has a small stain that is visible if you really, really look for it. Also, the yellow tshirt I picked is totally not yellow. It’s green, which is fine except that I wanted two different colors. I kept it anyway.

So far, this has been my favorite online second hand shopping experience. Definitely recommend checking it out.

Do you shop secondhand online? What are your favorite sites?

Here it is: follow and tweet about the people and things that move you. Those that make you perk up, click, think, smile, stifle a cube-laugh, enter a google/wikipedia death spiral, or what have you.

This is how I built my massive list of 226 followers, and you can too. Seriously, this may not lead to gobs of followers but it could lead to real connections with great people and organizations.

Netrobe (free)

Netrobe is a true “closet management” app. The main feature is to add photos of your clothing, shoes, and accessories, sort them into categories you choose, and create outfits from them. The interface is very simple and straightforward, with big plus sign icons to add items, clearly labeled text areas to type additional details, and icons along the bottom that go to each major section of the app.

A Lookbook allows you to keep track of outfits you’ve worn, the Styleboard displays outfits you’ve put together from your closet, the main Netrobe screen houses photos of individual items you own, the Agenda allows you to assign items from your Styleboard to particular days, and Suitcase allows you to add items from your Netrobe.

Netrobe offers some photo editing to remove the backgrounds from your garment pictures – this will only work well for you if you use a solid, contrasting color background when you take your photos. That’s too time consuming for me so I just keep the backgrounds in.

I think it would be great if you could pick items from the Lookbook for the Agenda as well – I may want to wear an outfit that worked well for me in the past again. Also, I would like to add items from my Lookbook or Styleboard (complete outfits) to my Suitcase and have the individual Netrobe items automatically appear.

Cloth (free, paid version available)

Cloth is mainly an outfit of the day logging app. You can take pictures of what you’re wearing and place them in a series of preset categories, share, and add notes and tags. You can also view your friends’ outfit feeds. One review I read described Cloth as Instagram for fashion.

Cloth gamifies the app by offering all sorts of badges you can earn through certain actions – adding pictures, posting on Twitter, etc.

In a way I would like to be able to create my own categories, but from a developer perspective I can understand why those are preset, and the app does allow free-form tags to add more detail to pics.

A weather feature has recently been added, which pulls real time weather data from Wunderground and makes suggestions on what to wear. This is a very cool feature but is a paid upgrade.

Clothia (free)

Clothia has a beautiful full screen user interface on the iPad that took a few extra seconds to load for me the first time. It only works in landscape mode. The interface is a bit less intuitive than the other two – it’s not always 100% obvious how to get to the next step.

This app is a lot like Polyvore in app form. Once you get past the intro screens, you are presented with a screen full of user-created looks that are exactly like those you can create in Polyvore.

The difference here is that you can mix and match pictures you’ve taken of your own clothing with clothing in their retailer database and items you’ve clipped from the web. This would be a great addition to Netrobe. I like having the option to plan purchases around what I already have, and Clothia makes the process seamless by allowing in-app purchasing.

Clothia includes a blog of outfit photos along with a list of each item included in the looks – I think they’re missing an opportunity here by not allowing users to purchase directly from these images or lists. As it is currently, I have to copy/paste or type the item into a browser to purchase it, potentially forgetting about the app and foregoing affiliate revenue they could have generated.

This app has an online component which you can sign into after registering via the app. I’m not sure what the invitation form displayed on the website is for, since you would already have an account at this point. Also, it seems that you can only upload your own clothing items via the website which is odd. When I first signed into the website I saw the items I had added via the app, but the updates I made via the web interface have not appeared in the app.

Overall, Clothia is a robust, full featured and interesting app but although the interface is beautiful some of the features are buried and not intuitive. It’s buggy – saving looks sometimes didn’t work, clipped images from the web sometimes got distorted, and the virtual fitting room feature doesn’t work very well at least in Chrome. The website and app aren’t integrated tightly enough, which makes the experience of using both a bit clunky and disjointed. This is offered as a beta product so some issues are expected.

Feature Comparison Overview

	Netrobe	Cloth	Clothia
Share (social media / email)
Keep track of outfits I’ve worn
Create looks
Catalog items I own
Plan outfits for specific events/dates
Plan wardrobe for travel
Gamification (points, badges, etc)
Weather
Catalog items I want to buy
In-app purchasing
In-app blog
Web interface
Virtrual fitting room

As for me, I will probably use Netrobe most, followed by Clothia, simply because of the way the features fit my lifestyle. I like being able to create outfits with items I already own, plan what I’ll wear ahead of time, and the travel wardrobe planner is just genius. In the past, I’ve written down my outfits for each day on little slips of paper that I place between each outfit in my suitcase…perhaps a bit much for some but I’m a planner and that’s how I roll.

I may continue to use Cloth for testing purposes, but the features I am most interested in are already covered by Netrobe. The weather integration is an interesting addition, but not one I’m willing to pay for and it’s not enough to add it to my regular rotation.

Another note about Netrobe – I tweeted that I was checking out their app as well as Cloth’s, and they quickly engaged me in a conversation about how the app was working for me. Thumbs up for their attentiveness to their users on social media.

Have you tried any of these apps? Which is your favorite?

Ginger Rogers, featured in a 1941 editorial in a fab black and white swimsuit.

If you love retro swimsuits (I do), check out the selection here and here.

Amazing R2D2 makeup look {source}

Let’s forget for a moment the “real reason” there aren’t more women in tech, the rise of the brogrammer, and the fact that MEN invented the internet. Let’s focus on the people and organizations that are actively facilitating getting women in tech – through teaching, mentorship, and cash. Let’s stop retweeting the same articles about how bad things are for women in STEM, and start sharing solutions.

I’ll start.

Classes

• Girl Develop It teaches tech classes to women in five major cities in the US, as well as Ottawa and Sydney. The classes are affordable, accessible, and welcoming to absolute beginners.
• Black Girls Code is, you guessed it, an organization that holds workshops for girls of color ages 7-14 around the country. They are currently running a fundraiser on Indiegogo for their Summer Of Code program.
• Web Start Women offers classes for women in web design and development. They also hold project nights and other events. They started in Philly and Boston, and are now expanding to include online courses.
• Tech Girlz provides resources and events for girls and women. They also launched the first annual Women in Tech Summit this year, with great success.
• Girls Who Code holds an eight week training program for teenage girls from underserved communities in NYC.

Meetups and Networking 

• Girl Geek Dinners is a worldwide organization that holds regular events and…dinners…for women who are in technology or interested in the field.
• Women in Technology International is an organization that provides opportunities for women to gain access to professionals in the industry. They have an annual conference, as well as teleclasses, webinars and more.
• Women Who Code is a meetup for tech study groups in San Francisco.
• Women Who Tech holds an annual telesummit particularly for women in tech in the non-profit and political arenas.

Mentorship and Scholarships

• Chariot Solutions Scholars Program offers minority women mentorship and training in emerging technologies.
• Etsy is providing $5,000 grants to women who want to attend Hacker School but don’t have the financial means.
• The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship - $10k in the US – recognizes outstanding female students in technology.
• Girls in Tech provides mentorship, networking and seminars for college students, as well as panel discussions and events for women in technology.

I’m sure there is more going on that I’ve missed – if so please share in the comments.

Change is happening. Celebrate it, talk about it, share it, and get involved.

Update June 12 1:45pm:

• Etsy raised enough money to send 18 women to Hacker School in partnership with 37 Signals and Yammer. As Marc Hedlund wrote on their blog today, they “increased the Hacker Grant amount to $7,000 [per student], which means that the total amount given out was $126,000 — $28,000 from each 37Signals and Yammer, and $70,000 from Etsy.”
• TechGirlz is working to win $10,000 by being the top fundraiser on July 14th via their 10 for 10 campaign.
• Black Girls Code has raised $2,000+ toward their $18,000 goal for their Summer of Code program.

Update July 14, 2012 10:18pm:

• Black Girls Code met and exceeded their fundraising goal, raising a total of $21,451 for their Summer of Code Campaign, most of which will go toward a mobile computer lab!
• Tech Girlz didn’t win the $10,000, however they did raise $7,291 and are still accepting contributions.

More on Women In Tech from around the web:

• Women Heroes in Tech: The Best Kept Secrets of Silicon Valley
• Women Heroes in Tech: Where are the Technical Women?
• Offline Tech Classes: Girl and lady-friendly coding classes all over the country and world!
  

This photo was taken by my friend Stanley Morgan. Once in awhile, we get together and collaborate on a shoot. It was a good opportunity for me to pull out my shiny blue high-waisted American Apparel leggings and this pretty scarf that I don’t wear often enough IRL. See another photo from this set and more of Stanley’s work here.

I like this idea because I can easily move the pins around based on the length of the necklace, and I can see all of them at once! This makes it so much easier to choose what I want to wear. I also like to reminisce about each item and how I acquired it – most of it was given to me by my mom, sister, and sister in law, I scored a few items at thrift stores, and others I picked up when traveling in different states or countries. I made one of them. Can you guess which?

I got this plain jane corkboard from The Container Store, and used clear pushpins so they wouldn’t clash with the jewelry. The Container Store has these cool wooden push pins that I almost used, but I didn’t have enough to hang all of the necklaces. This organizer currently holds 28 necklaces – I have about 20 more so I might upgrade to a bigger board at some point.

A few other ideas I’d like to try:

• Paint the frame of the corkboard
• Put fabric over the cork portion
• Use ribbon or lace to hang the board on the wall

Have you ever made a DIY jewelry organizer, or wanted to? Would this idea work for your collection?

Bargue Drawing Course Plate I6

Yes, I’m still drawing feet. It’s frustrating for me because I’d rather be drawing cool stuff. However, the whole point of this process is to become a better draftswoman so that I’m better at drawing the cool stuff. It must be done; it’s a means to an end. I think I’m getting a bit better at shading though the subtleties in the first drawing on this plate were a bit much for me. It took me 1.5-2 hours.

I sketched out the second one way bigger than it should have been and then redid it – will get on to the next stage as soon as I can muster staring at the plates more. Then four more plates of feet…you’d think I’d work faster to get it over with, but instead I put it off. Somehow I don’t think this is a viable formula for obtaining the results I want.

Here’s something (I think is) cool that I drew one thousand years ago:

Digging through ye olde sketchbooks keeps me motivated.

In 1999, I decided it would be a good idea to design and create 40 garments in 30 days for a fashion show. Looking back on it, it was one of the most disastrous yet fulfilling things I’ve ever done creatively.

Considering my timeline, there wasn’t much time for fitting or adjustments. On the night of the show, zippers broke, seams ripped, and my nerves were shot. Thankfully, my friends, family, and models kept it together and everyone enjoyed the show. All of the garments were completed, at least, and most of them managed to look pretty good in their few minutes on stage. There were two parts to the show: a carnival inspired parade of Caribbean flag inspired garments, followed by each designer’s individual line.

For my line, I combined vintage fabrics with new fabrics to create a collection of beach wear. I did this partly out of necessity since I didn’t have the money to buy all new fabric, and partly out of my love for vintage patterns and polyester. So I went to the thrift store, bought skirts with cool patterns, and hacked them together with solids to create new looks. I love that restyling has become so popular lately. I would love to devote some time to it again.

Have you done any interesting restyling projects using vintage clothing or other items? Any big overzealous projects that you look back on with both horror and happiness? Share your story in the comments.