Footwear brands “Seychelles” and “Jump” have my attention because the styles are sweet, playful, retro, and pretty comfortable. I recently posted about the Seychelles Veronica T-strap pump as a Fab Find.

So far in my experience these ranges are by no means 8 to 10-hour city shoes for my walking lifestyle, but I’ll entertain the flat and low heeled styles of both brands for shorter walking time spans, like 3-hour client meetings, or for  evenings out when I don’t do much walking.

The leather is pretty soft and the foot bed is fine once you’ve added a cushioning insole. You could probably add an orthotic and have certain parts of the shoe stretched if need be. Remember that I have fussy feet and sensitive skin that is annoyingly blister prone, which makes my bar very high on the comfort scale. So these footwear brands might suit your needs down to the ground if you have less fussy feet, or sit behind a desk for most of the day.

If you’re prepared to pay extra and enjoy an immaculately crafted shoe, then I still highly recommend the more expensive Portuguese Fidji brand if their styles are too your liking. But for relative comfort and quality at a lower price, Jump and Seychelles are interesting and I’ll be keeping an eye on their ranges.

I’ve had all of these except the two on the right on myself or my clients, and you can read more about them in the YLF store.

Ladies with full bust lines can absolutely wear necklaces. In fact, large statement necklaces can effectively draw attention away from the bust line, a handy trick to have at your disposal if that’s your goal.

As always, the devil is in the details. It’s about choosing the right combination of necklace and neckline. Here are three options that usually work well:

1. Lower neckline, higher necklace: Wearing necklaces, or layers of necklaces, with lower necklines like V’s, scoops, sweetheart, open shirt collars and cowls is hands down the best combination for a larger bust. Position a fairly chunky set of beads (single or multi-strand), or a necklace with a chunky pendant, so that it hangs lower down on the chest but no further than the start of your cleavage. You’ll find that sweet spot between one and half to four inches down from the bottom of the front base of the neck. Wearing the necklace lower down as opposed to right up against the base of the neck elongates your long lean line and is generally flattering.
2. Higher neckline, lower necklace: Sometimes wearing a slightly higher neckline like a boat neck requires a longer necklace because a necklace positioned at your “sweet spot” can catch the edge of the boat neck in an annoying way. So the solution is to go a little longer, with a long  chunky necklace that ends just above the peak of the bust line. But not too long that the necklace dangles over the peak of the breast, or hooks onto one of them. Those are looks you’ll want to avoid.
3. Soft, long Y-chain necklace: It isn’t a flop proof solution like the two guidelines above, but a soft long Y-chain can lie comfortably flat between the breasts when you wear either a low or higher neckline. This style of chain ends up collapsing against the bust  instead of dangling or hooking.

Also, some well endowed ladies can wear necklaces, or layers of necklaces, right up against the base of the neck if they’re long necked and dainty shouldered. But this more an exception than a general guideline.

If you have further suggestions on how to wear necklaces when you’re well endowed, let’s hear them.

I won’t go very far. So bye-bye to many beautifully fashionable and trendy pairs of shoes.

At worst, I’ll wear a pair of two-hour shoes that I call “sitting shoes”. That means I can comfortably walk for two hours in the shoes before I need to tear them off my feet. But the two hours can be spread over a longer timeframe if there’s lots of sitting in-between. Typically, occasion, party and evening shoes fall into this category if we take the car or public transport to our destination.

But aside from a few pairs of “sitting shoes”, I have zero tolerance for shoe discomfort because my lifestyle is about walking. My job is active and I’m out with clients for hours on end. I wouldn’t be able to do my job and feel good about it with foot pain. Plus, I’d feel less confident and less stylish hobbling around in uncomfortable shoes.

Not all my walking shoes need to be the 8 to 12 hour variety. Some of the time I’m only out and about for 3 or 4 hours, which means that I can entertain shoes that are a slightly less comfortable. This gives me a little more style variety.

I do like beautiful shoes though, and if I didn’t walk around during the day as much as I do, I’d probably have more pairs of impractical “sitting shoes”.

How much pain will you endure in order to wear a beautiful pair of shoes? Be honest!

If you’re a bag lady like I am, and  have many handbags, you’ll need to find an effective way of storing them. First prize is keeping them in a place where they are easily accessible with the rest of your clothes. I have two such places that work well in our closet space:

• Hanging behind the door of our wardrobe on a handbag rack
• Resting on the shelves of our wardrobe above the hanging area

The handbag rack works really well because I don’t disturb the organization of the rest of the bags when I remove one from it’s position. The shelving works well up until the point that I remove a handbag and the rest fall over. I stuff resting handbags to keep their shape, but the clutches in particular still fall over because they rely on the the other handbags for support.

So I’m going to create permanent support for the bags that I store on shelves. I have my eye on the shelf dividers below with the idea that a compartment holds one to three handbags depending on the size and shape. I’ll let you know how the experiment goes.

If you lack cupboard space, you can store handbags in transparent boxes and stack the boxes. The only nuisance is that they’re not as easily accessible as when they’re on a shelf ready to grab. Have you found an effective way to store your handbags? I’m always intrigued by clever and attractive storage ideas.