Molly Bloom knows style

Learning the hows and whys of fashion design made me a picky consumer. Cut corners have spotlights on them and even when I buy something basic it has to be made well. I see women every day who have fashion sense but their cheaply made clothes betray them. Are Americans losing their eye for detail or our interest in such things? Quantity is trumping quality.

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster touches on this. Americans are OK with a hanging thread on a new item; British clip the thread; Japanese return it to the store. Why did we come to expect and accept shoddy workmanship? I’ll be writing more about the book when I finish it.

I love polka dots and big prints and minidresses but there is no way I would pay $325 for a dress so simple to construct yet the pattern is unmatched. Just check out the back view. Ugh. Outrageous.

Demand better, dear readers, or I fear we’ll live in mismatched sweats soon. As The Smiths asked, “How soon is now?”

Cut it out. Seriously. This supposed swimsuit doesn’t even look good on the model. This combination of porno Xanadu and weight lifter is not working. There is sexy and there is tacky and then there is wrong.

There is an epidemic in this country, a style virus that has affected so many women. It’s making them wear cropped pants.

Cropped pants make you look bigger around the middle. They visually shorten your legs and create a neon arrow to your problem areas. Apple-shaped women and pear-shaped women are equally vexxed by the cropped pant. If you’re hevy around the middle, showing off your trim ankles only accentuates your girth and shows how thin you could be were it not for that gut. Cropped pants also emphasize the hips because of the shorter-leg phenomenon.

I don’t understand how cropped pants became the “easier” alternative to regular pants. They don’t pull themselves up. The four inches of fabric that’s missing doesn’t make them any cheaper. They’re not dressy, as in “Let me take off these shorts and put on something nicer so we can go to the Olive Garden.” No, cropped pants are the girlfriend who says you look good in hopes that she looks better standing next to your dowdy shape. Cropped pants are a bitch.

You should get up from your computer right now and march to your closet with a pair of scissors. Slice a leg on each pair so you absolutely can’t wear them again, not even during laundry crisis. If you’d rather donate the pants, swear on a stack of romance paperbacks that the pants will stay in the Goodwill bag.

So long 1990s cropped pants. So long.

Dear readers, it’s time to retire the tank top. And I don’t know what to say about these things. Tank tops are just too casual for everyday wear — perhaps “intimate” is the right word. Best to stick with tank tops as loungewear or layer.

Topless sandals simulate walking barefoot while protecting your feet. Topless sandals stick to the bottom of your feet, but leave no residue on your feet when you take them off.

Topless sandles are wrong.

Don’t we all think it’s time to say “toodle-ooo” to cargo pants? They’ve been around for a long time. Too long. When I saw silk cargo pants in L.A. a few years ago, I thought we were really at the end of that rope (or pocket, whatever). But retailers persist in adding them to new collections.

I can grant cargo pants exceptions to people on safari, in the wilderness or on fishing expeditions. Perhaps they have cargo for those pockets. Cellphones, iPods, Blackberries and other citified accoutrements don’t count. Consider a bag. The overloaded pockets thing is so 1999.

When there are TV show flashbacks to the late 1990s and ’00s, characters will be wearing cargo pants. Cargo pants are the bell-bottoms of our time, longer lived than parachute pants but just as emblematic. I’ve seen enough.

To be blunt, I’m a top-heavy kind of girl. Not fat or hippy or pear-shaped, I am busty. I need something on the bottom to balance out all that top action. Boot-cut or wide-legged pants are great options, as are A-line skirts.

Regardless of body type, I am a very stylish girl. I like to keep up with the times. I was dubious of skinny jeans as soon as they started creeping their way into boutiques. Audrey Hepburn’s skinny black bohemian pants made an adorable outfit, just not one meant for me. But there she was, smiling and looking so perky with the ponytail and the black turtleneck and those skinny straight-legged pants. I wear a fierce ponytail and look quite shapely in a turtleneck sweater. I had to try the pants.

And I looked like Peg Bundy. There was no way around it, the skinny pants made my chest look even bigger. Maybe moon boots would balance out the torpedoes, but that’s a look no one wants to see.

There is one thing a busty 5′3″ lady wears well: curves. Hussah!

There’s something going on I don’t understand: vests are back.

Vests belong under a suit. They should be part of a tailored men’s suit, and that suit should include the wearing of the jacket over the vest. I love a man in a well-made suit. Saville Row, you get a pass on the vests.

I thought vests were gone. The ’80s drove what I hoped was the final nail into the vest coffin. The worst offenders were the oversized, tailor-inspired vests. Such vests were added on to an outfit to suggest a certain kickiness. This look screamed, “Look at me in my funky vest! I am the coolest seventh-grader around!” This device was used instead of solid scriptwriting by TV producers who wanted to over explain how sassy sitcom characters really were.

And then there are sweater vests. How I loathe the sweater vest.

The preppies rocked the sweater vest, and that was almost OK. The pairing of an argyle vest with a starched Brooks Brothers shirt and pleated pants was an ’80s uppercrust staple. I could deal, if only because the entire ensemble said, “I am not trying to be fashionable, I am trying to be traditional.” I got it.

But sweater vests? Now? Now that we have form-fitting jeans and adorable skirts? Now that the most coveted attribute is rock-hard abs? It is counterintuitive to what’s going on in popular culture, and maybe if no one buys them they will go away.

There are many reasons to hate the sweater vest. Busty women should not even look at a sweater vest for fear of top-heaviness. If you’re thin, a sweater vest adds back the paunch that you work so hard to keep off. If you’re heavy, a sweater vest adds more bulk. This is a bad idea unless you plan on wearing it with a too-short shirt in an attempt to point out your thin wrists.

I cannot even talk about the baggy sweater vest/large belt/leggings combo I saw in a catalog. First I was mad and then I was sad, what with all the prospective sweater vests on the horizon. I’m trying to understand, and I can’t.

There are vests that could possibly be acceptable to wear without a shirt underneath. But if you can go sleeveless, it’s too warm for a sweater. And that is not practical, and I hate not practical (unless it is in the shoe department, and then I urge moderation).

Will the right vest change my mind? Is there even such a thing as the right vest? I think not.