Baroque Barbie.

Hey there, I’m Sydney and this is my blog where I write about all things fashion based on my own experiences, opinions, & helpful suggestions but I do it all with a personal twist. Introductions are the absolute worst, aren’t they? But still very necessary so I’ll try to keep it brief while still telling you just who I am. Please don’t stalk me, though.

In addition to being a writer, self taught graphic artist, and web designer, I am a botanical photographer who enjoys taking photos in my garden of my flowers. Before this, landscape architecture and floriculture have been my most recent projects but admittedly there have been many. I have a vast rose collection and a particular love of magnolias that stem from my time growing up in the south before my family moved back north. My vibe is basically baroque barbie with a southern twist.

Other things I’ve done include freelance web design, coding, social media management & consulting, light commercial photography, and small business marketing based on my own social media research. Future aspirations include fashion, obviously. I also adore interior design—anything design based really—and have been working to transform my living space into a pastel rococo paradise with treasures I find at local antique shops. If pop art rococo wasn’t a thing before, it is now!

I’ve always strived to be a polymath—someone good at many different things rather than having a particular specialty which has made my life a little difficult but very interesting. I’m a libra and if I had to pick just one thing, I think I’d combust. Among my other interests are art, history, literature, and intellectual pursuits but I promise I’m not boring, just a true renaissance woman.

I am a mother to four rescue cats; Luna, Lana, Lili, and Lucy—collectively referred to as the Couture Cats or simply, the girls. Luna and Lana, the twins, came first followed by little Lili and lastly, Lucy Peach. They run my life, honestly. They’ll probably run this blog one day too. Just wait.

The love of fashion I carry in my heart is inherited and my ancestral connection to it is undeniable. I’m from a family of immigrants who came to America from Italy—the stiletto shaped country of style—and left behind everything that they knew for the American dream. Without fashion, I don’t know how we would’ve survived.

My paternal great grand mother, Lucille, supported her nine children as a fashion designer and seamstress in between husbands after the sudden death of my great grand father at a young age. Despite the odds against her of being not only a woman at the turn of the century, but from a family new to American soil, she found success dressing high society and rumored first ladies. Over thirty years after her death, she’s still an inspiration. Each and every piece of baroque that I wear is for her and la famiglia.

The Italian side of my family has stayed true to their roots and lived very fashionable lives. I don’t remember it but apparently my grandfather made sport out of roasting my father for wearing sneakers and Nona Lucille wouldn’t let anyone come to her dinner table in denim. Though they’re no longer with us and those of us left have somewhat relaxed, I still embrace their motto of dressing well regardless of your circumstance. Whether you have everything or nothing, you dress well.

Another inspiration for this blog is my maternal grandmother, Pamela, who came all the way from Plymouth, England to marry my grandfather, a United States naval officer she’d fallen in love with during the war when he was stationed in her town. Like Nona Lucille, Pamela brought a tailored European mindset of fashion to the states with her and instilled it in my mother, who raised me to never leave the house without jewelry because if I do, I’m not fully dressed.

Pamela made clothing for all five of her girls because she and my grandfather couldn’t afford to buy things from department stores until much later into their marriage. She may not have been a seamstress like Nona Lucille but she might as well have been with that many daughters. It was a labor of love but also a labor of style. My mother often tells stories about how she got made fun of in school for what she was wearing because my grandmother had made it for her based on the trends back home and how even though she was a fisherman’s daughter, she knew high fashion. Most of her jewelry was costume but she wore it like it was couture.

My mother is the biggest style icon that I know but she’s humble about it. As long as I’ve known her, she’s looked glamorous and some of my earliest memories are of sitting in her closet staring up at all the clothes she had—particularly the houndstooth. She was the houndstooth queen of the 90’s. Like most daughters, I wanted to be as elegant as her one day.

Through her life, she’s had health struggles and weight fluctuations like every woman experiences and it has tested her ability to not only feel confident but also style herself, she has remained unfalteringly fabulous. I know myself how difficult it can be when your body changes and over night nothing fits. It doesn’t matter whether it’s suddenly too big or too small—it doesn’t fit.

Now you have to learn your new body because everything is different and nothing looks the same. All those things you’d spent years collecting suddenly mean nothing. It’s scary and it’s laborious but she makes it work and she makes it look easy. I know that everyone who sees her gets closet envy at least once and it has been one of my greatest honors that she lets me style her and do her shopping. She is a hard act to follow—successful and stylish.

It’s to these extraordinary women before me and the ones I know will come after me that I dedicate this blog. Through my own life experiences and that of my family, I have been able to peer into the windows of many different worlds and the one thing that connected them all was style and one’s own sense of self—their identity.

Trends may come and go but who you are is forever. Sure you can change your identity at a superficial level but the bones you wear today will be the same ones you wear tomorrow. At least we can dress them up though, right?