Anna Scholz Blog

Alice Dogruyol is in the June issue of Essentials magazine sporting Anna’s cotton jersey striped wrap dress in style. She’s wearing the dress in a photo which accompanies a charming story about how her mother and her best friend’s mother are also best friends.

Alice herself is a very talented writer who has covered Anna’s designs for the Daily Mail and more recently on her own fabulous blog, stylistplus.co.uk. She also works as head of PR and Communications for the luxury spa brand OCCO.

An upcoming issue of Turkish Vogue will also feature Alice’s writing, including a mention of Anna. We’ll keep you posted about that piece (it may require some translation).

The daughter of a Turkish father and an Irish mother, Alice spent her childhood all over the world. Her rich and varied experiences have influenced her “carpe diem” attitude toward life and her sense of adventure.

“My motto in life,” says Alice, “is ‘if you don’t ask you don’t get and if you don’t try you will never know,’ so I always ask and I always try and let the laws of the universe to do the rest.”

We definitely look forward to seeing what the universe has planned for Alice!

As you may have noticed, we recently updated our web shop to include a Shop By Size feature. Now you can tick your size and see all available styles in that size in either the new collection or the sale section.

This feature came about as a result of customer feedback on what would make your online shopping experience with Anna Scholz even better.

We’re always open to customer suggestions and comments, so feel free to send us an e-mail at info@annascholz.com or leave a comment on our blog with your ideas!

Anna and our sales manager, Darren, had a blast hosting a special shopping day at the Emma Plus shop in Brighton last Saturday. The store offered a number of new styles to customers as well as nibbles and good conversation. Lots of women came — some sporting cool vintage Anna Scholz designs — and tried on tons of clothes.

Here are some photos of the event which include the shop owner, Emma, and her staff, stylish guests, Anna selecting a prize winner and Pickles, the shop mascot!

Thanks to everyone for a wonderful time!

Anna’s gearing up for her visit this Saturday, May 7 to the Emma Plus shop in Brighton for a special in-store event. For this one day, the shop will be featuring a number of styles from Anna’s  Spring-Summer 2011 collection that aren’t usually available at the store.

Anna herself will be there from 2-5 pm to meet and mingle and offer expert fashion advice. There also will be a special prize drawing for £250 worth of Anna Scholz clothing.

You must pre-register for the drawing, so please visit the Emma Plus forum/blog to register and for detailed information about directions and parking on the day.

We’ve all bought that item of clothing that we couldn’t quite afford or was a bit of a stretch for the image of ourselves that we usually present. It is our prerogative as women to take fashion risks and to treat ourselves to the latest looks.

But imagine a time when stepping out of the house in the wrong garment for your station in life could –quite literally –bring down the fashion police.

In Elizabethan England, extensive Sumptuary Laws were put in place banning “excess of apparel and the superfluity of unnecessary foreign wares.”  Such “great abuses” of fashion threatened to “so manifest a decay of the wealth of the realm and to the ruin of a multitude of serviceable young men and gentlemen and of many good families.”

The laws purported to protect family fortunes and to curb extravagant spending of money that could be put to better use within the country, such as acquiring horses. But the laws also served to keep commoners from attempting to look like nobility and to keep everyone easily identifiable. The idea was that if you couldn’t tell a farmer from a count at a glance, the very fabric of society was weakened.

Clauses within the Sumptuary Laws (outlined here circa 1574) go into great detail as to what men and women of different social strata could and couldn’t wear.

For example, no one below the degree of vicountess or baroness or similar rank could wear “cloth of gold, silver, tinseled satin, silk, or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver or pearl, saving silk mixed with gold or silver in linings of cowls, partlets, and sleeves.” But the laws expanded to include “wives of barons and knights of the order” for the wearing of “velvet, tufted taffeta, satin, or gold or silver in any cloak or safeguard.”

For both men and women, the laws also stipulated which servants could wear which items of clothing as would be appropriate for their stations in relation to nobility. As a result, “caps, hats, hatbands, capbands, garters, or boothose trimmed with gold or silver or pearl; silk netherstocks; enameled chains, buttons, aglets” were allowable by nobility as well as “the gentlemen attending upon the Queen’s person in her highness’s Privy chamber or in the office of cupbearer, carver, sewer [server], esquire for the body, gentlemen ushers, or esquires of the stable.”

There was one small note of mercy in all this though, as the laws allowed, “that her majesty’s meaning is not, by this order, to forbid in any person the wearing of silk buttons, the facing of coats, cloaks, hats and caps, for comeliness only, with taffeta, velvet, or other silk, as is commonly used.”

So, the next time you go out on a limb with your outfit, think of what those poor Elizabethan women would have given to walk in your Manolos.