Borrowed from the boys, but make it fashion.  Blending feminine and masculine elements to create a balanced look.

I’m a huge fan of oxfords.  I love them in a heel format or as flats.  Whatever the heel height, I find them so fun and interesting.  They give that unexpected delight to casual looks and work beautifully when mixed with feminine details.  Creating a soft-yet-sharp menswear with a feminine spin, I paired my love of oxfords with voluminous ruffles and anchored the look with classic denim.

Finding great oxfords can be a little challenging.  I actually bought mine pre-loved, because this particular style and color-way is no longer available.  Below are a few of my favorite oxford styles.  Some are from pre-loved vintage sites at a great discounted price (mainly because those styles are no longer in season) while others are classic designs that can be easily mixed into your current shoe collection.

Whether oxfords are on your radar or not, I hope this styling gives you some ideas as to what to wear with oxfords and brogues.  You’re going to see these shoes a lot more, so hopefully I can share more oxford styling and options.  Have a wonderful week and thank you so much for reading!

– OUTFIT –

JACKET | Facetasm (old, more options: ASOS ruffle blazer, Ming Wang cascading ruffle blazer)
JEANS | Madewell denim (highly rated and classic!), Express denim (under $50 and highly rated!)
BAG | Chanel stitched flap bag
SHOES | Gucci (old, more options: Vince Camuto oxfords, W Concept kitten heels oxfords, and more above!)

The post Styling with Ruffles and Oxfords appeared first on Wendy's Lookbook.

The story coming out of the 63rd Grammy Awards is about women. It’s the narrative that makes the Recording Academy and their choices look positive. I heard a morning show host exclaim, “What a night for the ladies!” One of the most popular Grammy recap headlines: “Who Run The Grammys? Women.” Of course, it’s a play on a Beyoncé song and also, presumably, a nod to Beyoncé becoming the winningest woman in Grammy history with 28 wins, tying legendary producer Quincy Jones and putting her 3 wins behind late conductor Georg Solti who has 31. The two biggest awards of the night, however, went to two white women: Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, respectively. 

The morning after the Grammys, the 93rd Academy Award nominations were announced and again, the results were immediately touted as a win for women. For the first time, two women are nominated in the Best Director category. Viola Davis earned her fourth nomination for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, making her the most nominated Black woman in Oscar history (in contrast, Meryl Streep has 21 noms). But, like most achievements awarded to Black women by notedly racist white institutions, these “historic” moments come with a caveat. These supposed victories for Black women who are now getting their due — from the same governing bodies that have historically overlooked and disrespected them — are more about the Grammys and the Oscars patting themselves on the back for “diversity” than they are about honoring Beyoncé or Viola Davis. It’s more about good publicity than it is about rightfully rewarding Black women — because if it were, Beyoncé would be a multiple Album of the Year winner, Megan Thee Stallion would have won Record of the Year, and Regina King would be a Best Director nominee. 

There were a few particularly cringey moments at the Grammys (which was an overall tightly produced and surprisingly entertaining show) but the one that stands out is when host Trevor Noah stopped Beyoncé and Megan Thee Stallion as they were walking off stage after accepting the Grammy for Best Rap Song. Standing beneath them, Noah triumphantly announced that Beyoncé had made Grammys history with the win. Beyoncé, who declined performing at the show and was rumored to be skipping the broadcast altogether, looked like she cared more about getting back to her little working lunch with her husband than the trivial milestone.

Sure, maybe Beyoncé was just uncomfortable because Virgos don’t like surprises, maybe she showed up just to support Megan Thee Stallion and didn’t want the attention, or maybe I’m projecting my disdain for the Recording Academy, which has yet to give Queen Bey its highest honor (AOTY), but it’s no secret that this awards show has not given her the accolades she deserves. How can someone be the most winning artist in a show’s history and be shut out of all of its major categories? Of Beyoncé’s 28 Grammy wins, only five of them have been  outside the R&B or “urban” groupings that Black artists are continually relegated to. And two of those wins are in the Music Video categories. Does the Recording Academy not understand that Beyoncé is a historic winner despite their efforts, not because of them? 

The same can be said about Viola Davis. She is the most nominated Black Actress in Hollywood history and yet, in a viral clip of Davis at a Women In The World conference I’m sure you’ve seen, Davis explains that even though she’s hailed as the “Black Meryl Streep,” she’s not paid what she’s worth or offered the roles she’s worth. She definitely doesn’t have Streep’s hardware. She’s only won one Supporting Actress Oscar. Halle Berry is still the first and only Black woman to win in the Best Actress category. That was 20 years ago. In the non-acting categories, only two Black women have ever won Oscars: Hannah Beachler for production design and Ruth E. Carter for costume design. Once again, when we pull back to examine the most coveted “best of the best” awards, Black women are barely represented if at all. A recognition for Regina King for Best Director for One Night In Miami could have changed that fact this year, but they decided that one woman of color in the category (Chloe Zhao for Nomadland) was enough progress for one year. 

Davis “making history” at this year’s Oscars isn’t a win for women, and certainly not for Black women. And even though there are other big banner moments for diversity in the nominations (the most Asian actors nominated, the first Pakistani actor nominated, and the first time two Asian-led films are up for Best Picture), celebrating these superficial accolades without critique does a disservice to the structural issues that are still entrenched in these organizations — and those issues are the worse for Black women. 

These organizations — the Recording Academy and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — do not deserve to be exalted for the exceptions they made in the past 24 hours. Especially when those exceptions are lauded as progress, rather than simply, the facts. Beyoncé and Viola Davis are two of the greatest artists in their respective fields, the GOATs in my personal opinion, and they are still underappreciated by these white institutions that use their wins or nominations for clout (the Grammys conveniently televised Beyoncé’s solo Best R&B Performance win for Black Parade when most of the rest of the “urban” categories were relegated to the pre-show) without actually leveling the playing field or making any real structural changes. It’s why every year we question the relevance of these shows, or why there’s an inevitable thread about divesting from these institutions because “representation won’t save us.” It won’t, and in a perfect world, we could burn both organizations down and say f-ck your table, we’re building our own! but it’s not a perfect world. The tables are still very much assigned, and the seating charts are labelled by the same gatekeepers who greenlight projects and hand out record deals. Demanding equity in the field in which you work does not mean you are succumbing to seeking validation from your oppressor. It just means that along with attempting to dismantle every aspect of white supremacy, we’re pushing for the representation and recognition owed to Black artists. Representation is just one step on the long ladder of liberation.

Neither Beyoncé, nor Megan Thee Stallion, Viola Davis or Regina King need these awards, but if the governing bodies are going to aggrandize themselves in the name of faux feminism and ride on the PR high of celebrating “history-making women,” they should examine their own histories of exclusion. The Grammys shouldn’t need Billie Eilish and her white guilt to awkwardly point out how messed up it is that “Savage” didn’t win, and the Academy should know better than to boast about nominating Viola Thee Davis for only two more awards in her entire career than Scarlett Johannson got in one year, or for nominating Mank over literally anything, but especially One Night In Miami. 

As Beyonce proved last night by showing up late to collect her awards and casually making history, if these awards shows don’t wake up, they are rightfully going to get exactly what they’re giving us – absolutely nothing.

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Ever since Julianne Hough ventured away from her signature platinum-blonde hair color, there’s been no stopping the experimentation. She’s gone short, temporarily pink, then back to her natural borderline-brunette shade. But now, she’s throwing hair extensions into the mix.

This weekend, celebrity hairstylist Riawna Capri — who’s also responsible for giving Hilary Duff her cotton-candy blue hair — shared a photo of Hough with waist-length dirty-blonde hair extensions. “After 14 years together, we did it again,” Capri captioned her Sunday Instagram post. “Another color and style @juleshough has never had before,” she added, calling the dirty-blonde tone “naturally nude.”

Hough is seen rocking full, wavy hair that starts with her dirty-blonde root shade, gradually fading to a warm, golden tone towards the ends, making the look both ombré and sunkissed. 

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A post shared by Riawna Capri | Hairstylist (@riawna)

Capri followed up by asking her followers whether they were obsessed with the darker bronde hair-color trend happening right now, crediting the past year’s quarantine for the reemergence of the darker shade of rooted blonde. The pro’s trend radar is right on the money: Darker roots and the return to one’s natural hair color is definitely a reality of the fewer salon visits we’ve made during the pandemic.

For the better part of a year, Hough has been sporting her natural hair color and a simple long bob, so these long, lighter mermaid extensions are definitely a big change. Whether she brought them out for a day or two or intends to keep them clipped in for a while, the statement hairstyle is definitely giving us peak flower-child vibes for spring.

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After over three decades of maintaining his innocence, death row inmate Pervis Payne is moving closer to receiving an execution date — despite activist-collected evidence that could prove his innocence. Payne was arrested and charged with murder for killing a woman and her 2-year-old child in Millington, Tennessee. But Payne maintains that he wasn’t even there for the murder.

In 1987, Payne was living with his parents and siblings. According to his statement at the time, he was waiting for girlfriend, Bobbie Thomas, at her Millington apartment when he stumbled upon the homicide of her neighbor, Charisse Christopher, and her two-year-old daughter Lacie Jo. Both were found stabbed to death, while Christopher’s three-year-old son Nicholas survived. Payne, who has an intellectual disability, was later convicted of the murders in February 1988 and put on death row.

But over the past 33 years, he has stood by his original statement: He wasn’t the one who killed Christopher and her child. Now, activist organizations are rallying behind him to prove his innocence and have him released from death row.

Over the course of his sentence, Payne’s legal team has hit several roadblocks while seeking clemency — despite evidence that, at the very least, creates ample reasonable doubt. For one, the DNA on the murder weapon at the crime scene was never tested until September of 2020, so there’s no proof of Payne coming in contact with the murder weapon before he was convicted and put on death row. According to the Innocence Project, Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich allegedly blocked any DNA testing from occurring on evidence found at the crime scene until last late last year.

When the test was finally conducted, it revealed that an unknown man’s DNA was found on the murder weapon. Still, the additional DNA wasn’t enough to commute Payne’s sentence and was considered too degraded to charge another suspect with the homicides, with Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan stating that “Nothing exonerated Pervis Payne. Nothing.” Skahan later dismissed any additional testing on the DNA discovered.

“The Court concludes the results are not favorable to Mr. Payne,” Skahan wrote in a released statement on January 25. “The Petitioner argues the absence of his DNA from several of the items tested supports his trial testimony, but Mr. Payne’s DNA is not entirely absent from the apartment,” highlighting that his DNA was found on a washcloth in Christopher’s bathroom.

But Payne’s case is anything from clear-cut, and activists are continuing to point out that a lot of this has to do with him being a Black man accused of murdering a white woman in the ’80s. When Payne was initially scheduled to be executed on December 3, 2020, which was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, it provided a renewed opportunity to prove his innocence. In recent weeks, as his new execution date approaches, social media users have rallied behind Payne, with the hashtags #PervisPayne and #JusticeForPervisPayne, calling for the courts to revisit the specifics of the case, including possible bias from the prosecution. Many — including the Innocence Project — continue to argue that prosecutors and arresting officers must be investigated for explicit anti-Blackness and the use of racial stereotypes used during his trial.

Activist Martin Luther King III penned an op-ed in the Tennessean pleading with Gov. Lee to grant Payne clemency and detailing the racial bias associated with Payne’s arrest and trial.

“The prosecutor casted Payne as a hypersexual Black man looking for a white woman to assault, going so far as to refer to her ‘white skin.’ This racist trope echoed powerfully before a jury in a county where large numbers of Black men were lynched for perceived affronts to white women,” King wrote earlier this month.

“He was a young Black man accused of murdering a white woman in Shelby County,  a county with a long history of racial violence and biased criminal justice and where my father was murdered by a white supremacist.”

Payne’s reprieve expires on April 9, 2021. There is currently a change.org petition circulating to take him off death row.

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According to recent paparazzi photos, Emma Watson is now sporting a choppy, shoulder-length bob. The actress was spotted grabbing lunch in Beverly Hills with her boyfriend, Leo Robinton, on March 10. It’s unclear exactly when Watson chopped her hair short, as this is one of the few times she’s been seen out during the pandemic, but the caramel-toned bob is a marked difference from the last time we saw her when she still had her hair grown out well past her shoulders at the premiere for Little Women.

Whenever the actress last saw a pair of scissors, this springtime debut is definitely the shortest we’ve seen her hair in years. Still, this blunt, above-the-shoulder bob is hardly the shortest hairstyle Watson has rocked: Who could forget her iconic pixie cut from 2010? In fact, Watson has said she would keep her hair shorter in general if it weren’t for her acting career.

“I have to [cut my hair] for roles,” Watson told Glamour back in 2012. “But if I had it my way, I would have just kept it short forever. Of course, men like long hair. There’s no two ways about it. The majority of the boys around me were like, ‘Why did you do that? That’s such an error.’ And I was like, ‘Well, honestly, I don’t really care what you think!’ I’ve never felt so confident as I did with short hair.”

Whether this new hairstyle is for an upcoming role or not is unclear, especially considering reports emerged recently that she planned to give up acting altogether after 20 years in the business. In late February, the Daily Mail ran a story claiming that Watson’s agent said her career had become “dormant.” But not so fast: “Emma’s social media accounts are dormant but her career isn’t,” Watson’s manager, Jason Weinberg, told Entertainment Weekly.

While the actress’s fans may be hoping the new bob haircut is, in fact, for an upcoming role, there’s always a chance she just cut it short and added some highlights because she felt like changing things up coming out of quarantine.

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