I’m sure I’m not the only woman interested in fashion who has worked in a conservative office environment.  Have any of you noticed the peculiar dearth of fashion guidance on the subject of what we can wear to to work? Certain websites and magazines who shall remain nameless (*cough*Lucky!*cough*) are continually proffering “office appropriate” outfits, but really?  Those outfits might be office appropriate if you’re 22 and work at a fashion magazine, but not so much if you work in an accounting office or at a Fortune 500 company.

That’s really a shame, because “conservative” does not have to mean boring.  Even those of us who know we shouldn’t be wearing 4″ peeptoe heels and bare shoulders in to the office have options. Now, if you’re an attorney and are going to court, you know perfectly well you need to wear a suit, and it probably needs to not have ruffles and certainly needs to not be pink.  I’m not talking about those kinds of situations.  Sometimes, yes, you need to be boring.  (Although for those situations, I recommend checking out Theory, J. Crew, or Banana Republic.  They offer suits with a cut much more modern than the average suit you’re likely to find in your local Macy’s or Filene’s.)  For the regular day in the office, on the other hand, the vast majority of us can get a little more interesting without crossing the line of appropriate business attire.  Yes, actual appropriate business attire, wearable by women over 25.

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Can someone tell me how to steal him?

On Tuesday, this irresistible baby and his or her sibling (the cubs haven’t been sexed yet) were born at the National Zoo’s Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal, Virginia.  It’s great to see because clouded leopards, which are endangered, have been very difficult to breed in captivity and are facing habitat loss and the full parade of problems in the wild.  The parents, Jao Chu and Hannibal, were obtained from Thailand and are unrelated to any clouded leopards in zoos in the United States, making those cubs especially valuable from a genetic standpoint.

The best part?  The cubs won’t be on exhibit at the main zoo in DC, at least for the time being, but video of the cubs being bottle fed (why is this not my job?) and other cuddly animal porn is available here.  Dare we hope for a baby leopard cam?

Psychedelic rain boots from Kamik!

Yes, I admit it, I have spring fever.  I have spring jacketed, I have spring coated, I have spring umbrella’d, and yet I still have more energy and enthusiasm for spring weather paraphrenalia.  You can expect to stop hearing me enthusing about spring when the temperature tops eighty for the first time.  (I also love summer.)  Right now, though, I’m still wallowing in spring weather, and what’s better for wallowing in spring weather than rain boots?  And being as I’m the most suggestible person on the planet, Betsy’s comment in my umbrella post about how cute they’d look with rain boots was too much for me.  I don’t actually own rain boots, but the idea of going out and keeping my feet dry is oddly appealing.

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As Lily mentioned yesterday, I’ve been playing with Biore’s new Skin Preservation line for “in between skin,” as all of the Femmeinistes fall comfortably within the “in between” years.  Lily is the science maven when it comes to beauty (don’t ask me unless there’s an animal involved), but I am an expert on the technical subjects of “nice feeling” and “nice smelling,” and being as I’m several years older than she is, I’m plenty picky about product effectiveness.  Here’s my deeply technical review.

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The new Biore Skin Preservation Skincare Collection

It’s no secret that our skin starts to show signs of change around the age of 25 – both biological (loss of collagen, resulting in declining barrier function) and environmental (those damn free radicals) causes contribute to this general loss of vitality, resilience and radiance.  Yet, the skin still hasn’t begun to show the wrinkles and folds that mark older skin (generally, that seen on women over the age of 40).

There are 21 million women between the ages of 25 and 39 who are not only too old for salicylic acid-based teen skincare lines, they’re too young for the anti-aging products that crowd store shelves.

Enter Biore, with the new Biore Skin Preservation Skincare Collection (pictured above).  This line is the first to cater directly to transitional skin, and is designed to not only preserve the skin’s youth (including its strength and radiance), but to noticeably improve the first signs of aging (including dryness, texture and ton, as well as reducing the look of fine lines).

The details on how this is achieved after the jump …

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It’s Friday, it’s sunny, it’s spring, and our brains have shut off for the week. What you really want to do right now is look at pictures of animals wearing wigs.

Make sure not to miss the rabbit with Nellie Olson ringlets.

There is some amazing stuff floating around out there on the internets.  I happened to stumble upon this last night,  and I couldn’t wait to share it.

Someone (no one seems to know who/where this originated from) has retold The Aeneid as a series of Facebook status updates:

My inner-geek is delighted. Click here to see the full image.

Money quote from John McCain’s speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday:

Over 50 million people voted for me and Sarah Palin—mostly for Sarah Palin.

That’s a huge slice of humble pie there for the Senator.

Source: Washington Independent

Following up on my post of yesterday on mislabeling of seafood, I have a small offering of seafood trivia. You may be aware that “Chilean sea bass” is not in fact a sea bass but rather an unrelated fish that rejoices in the euphonious name “Patagonian toothfish.”  (This was in fact Taco’s first comment to me on the subject.)  But did you know that America’s favorite piscine cause celebre isn’t the only fish that’s been renamed to make it acceptable to consumers?  The fish you know as orange roughy, for example, used to be known as “slimehead.”  Makes you want a fillet, doesn’t it?   The fish now sold as spotted sunfish once introduced itself to fishermen as stumpknocker.  Torbay sole used to be known as witch.  (I’m not at all sure I don’t like witch better, actually.)   Spiny dogfish is now sold as “rock salmon.” Peekytoe crab (adorable name!), a fashionable item on menus these days, used to be called rock crab, and were at one time discarded as trash crabs.

Why have all these species been renamed?  Well, the marketing aspect is obvious — there’s no way the commercial fishing industry could have created a viable market for a fish that they had to call “slimehead.”  I’m open-minded about what I eat, but even I would be reluctant to buy myself a nice piece of slimehead. The slightly less obvious reason, however, is the increasing demand for seafood and the inability of the existing fisheries to keep up with it.  As more and more people start eating seafood (and especially as fisheries crash through overfishing), it becomes more and more important from a commercial standpoint to exploit previously marginal species.  Who knows what we’ll be eating next?

Food for thought.  So to speak.

So, ladies, I could use some input. My kick-around jeans, a pair of Pamela straight-leg jeans in a medium-dark blue from Chip and Pepper, are on the verge of death. Although the little bit of stretch in them makes them super-comfortable to wear (love them), it also makes them prone to wearing through a lot faster than my other jeans. Normally, I’d just replace with another pair of Chip and Pepper, but my attempts to get another similar pair have to date been unavailing. I have no idea what the state of the industry really is, but Chip and Pepper’s website really makes me wonder if they’re having business trouble of the going-out-of-business variety. The last time I tried to buy new jeans, I was informed a week after placing an order that my size was not in fact available, and they seem to have been running a 50% off sale more or less continuously since November or December. My size seems to be continuously gone in the cuts that interest me, and I got no response on a question about restocking. I give up.

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