Autumn always seems to fan my love for tweed, and this week I had fun browsing tweed-inspired pinboards by pinners like Vesper Fawkes, Elena, Poupe’e Pornpakamethee and Cathryn Davis.

The Guardian reports that the UK has seen a rise in popularity of Harris tweed and wool products in general, with eight new mills opening in the past ten years. Companies that produced early estate tweeds are now also adapting their approach to changing fashion tastes, and are starting to bring out “lighter tweeds, brigher colours and wilder designs”.

Prada, meanwhile, has created a “felted tweed“, “which reinterprets classic seasonal knits like herringbone and bouclé into a distinctive ‘rough’ but refined texture”. The material is being used to craft tweedy blazers, swingy coats and retro-luxe handbags.

Fab Links from Our Members

MaryK was fascinated by this Slate article about the rise and fall of the coolness of one-strapping backpacks.

We recently linked to an article about “Fabulous Fashionistas”, a British documentary featuring six inspirational women whose average age is 80. Now Caro is pleased to report that the documentary is available to watch on youtube. Forty-five minutes well spent!

While on the subject of aging fashionistas, Vildy thought this essay in The Guardian, in which Anne Karpf poses that “ageless seems to have become a euphemism for age” was spot on.

Lisa is starting to think about holiday parties and liked the recap of makeup and hair pairings here.

We’ve had several discussions lately about how we look affects others’ perceptions of us. Deb found this Into The Gloss video very interesting because it discusses how it affects our perception of ourselves.

Angie enjoyed reading Sally’s post on Consumer Expectations versus Market Reality, in which she summarizes common complaints about our wardrobe needs, and how the market place cannot deliver all of them. The Venn diagram illustrates the trade-offs pretty well.

After some of the conversations on the forum about shopping, budgets and shopping your closet, La Belle Demimondaine found this article to be an inspirational breath of fresh air. Erin also linked to a forum discussion that gave La Belle a new perspective: “It helps just to be conscious of your shopping and what you’re buying. Not paying attention yields a closet full of duplicates… But no one needs 10 of anything, and lots of people have that in their closets. So thinking about what you’re doing helps stop all of that.”