Anna Scholz Blog

The flagship annascholz shop in Berlin got a nice mention in the Berlin edition of Shop Magazine.

Click here to read more about Berlin Fashion Week and numerous lovely stores throughout the city.

California-based denim designer Jessica Svoboda is loved by women worldwide for her amazing jeans for the curvier figure. She and Anna Scholz have collaborated on jeans designs in the past, and she runs her own popular website, svobodastyle.com.

Here she gives us the skinny on the woman behind the perfect plus-size jeans.

What is your favourite part of your body?

My brain

What superpower would you like to possess?

I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but I really wish I was a whiz at math.  Does that count?

Jessica Oscars : favourite male actor / favourite female actress?

To be honest, I am tired talking about actors & actresses.  There are amazing men and women doing things we never get to hear about – men and women who are creating, thinking, and making advances far more important to the world and its future than entertaining the masses. But we don’t have the pleasure of being exposed to or inspired by these men and women, because the press is too busy covering the latest celebrity divorce, breakdown, etc.  I think it is time they focus on the real life stories, real people, and not just regurgitate the stars’ press releases.

Which living person do you most admire and why?

Oprah.  I think “why” is self-explanatory.

Where will you be in 5 years?

I’d love to say that I have a 5-year plan; but 5 years ago I couldn’t have planned where I was going to be today, and I don’t think I should put a limit on what the next 5 years will bring.

Who is your favourite designer?

Probably you! It is very hard for me to choose a designer outside the plus-size realm, because it is all I get to really experience.

What is your favourite movie?

Dances with Wolves

What is your favourite restaurant?

This is a hard one, there are so many. Urth Café in West Hollywood – I frequent it often enough.

What is your favourite song?

I love indie music. I tend to prefer smooth female voices or solo male guitarists. Right now, I am listening to: “I’m Gone” by Sumter Pendergrast and “Star Fucker” by Ninja Betty and the Nunchix (a group headed by my friend Natalie Ferraro).

What trait do you most dislike/ like about yourself?

These two go hand and hand.  What I dislike about myself is that I am a slight procrastinator.  The thing I most like about myself is that once I have committed, I am able to pull off, in short time, what others could never with a ton of planning.

What has been your greatest achievement?

I would hope I haven’t achieved it, yet.

What is your greatest fear?

Most fears are irrational, but death (of yourself or your loved ones) can only be delayed (not eliminated entirely) – so why fear it, right?

What makes you sad?

A person with without hope, dreams or a life to truly call their own.  i.e., children sold into slavery, women married off to old men when they hit puberty.

Heels or flats?

Heels on everyone else. Flats on me.  Is that fair to say?  Visually, I love the concept of heels, but there came a point in my early 30s when I could no longer stand to wear heels.  In fact, I simply refuse.

Black or white?

Shades of ivory, grey and brown – in clothing, and in life – because it is in these colors where everything is possible and nothing is absolute.

What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

That no one is ever defined by or limited to our past.  In this global, digital world, absolutely anything can happen.  You can reinvent yourself or be obsolete in less than 3 months.

How would you like to be remembered?

An imperfect person with perfect intentions.

How do you relax?

A $125 aroma therapy scrub massage from my favorite Korean Spa!

What has been your biggest disappointment? Your happiest moment?

It is a funny thing.  I don’t really remember the lows or highs.  To be honest, I can’t think of one – either way.

Have you ever said ‘I love you’ and not meant it?

No. It may be that I say “I love you” often and to many people, but love is something I give away pretty freely – so, in that very moment, if even only for a fleeing second, my love is true; it’s mine to give and I am giving it to the person with whom I am offering those three words.

What is your guiltiest pleasure?

The freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

Where would you like to be right now?

I guess where I am.

What do you appreciate most in your friends?

Intense intelligence. Brutal honesty.  The ability to share and listen openly, in a non-judgmental way. Loyalty. Affection.

What is your idea of happiness?

A quiet evening on the patio of my parents’ lakefront home in Minnesota.  Great food, wine and conversation surrounded by the sunset, my parents, my husband, my siblings and the ones we love.  Absolute bliss are the nights when dinner is followed by songs and s’mores around a beach bonfire.

If not yourself who would you like to be?

I would love to be someone brilliant like Bill Gates. Someone influential like Oprah.  I also think I would have found being Condoleezza Rice or Hillary Clinton (during their time as the Secretary of State) pretty damn interesting.

Lindsay wore Anna’s digital jersey pleat dress to a wedding in South Africa. “Got lots of compliments and felt great!” she wrote.

Lindsay has won a £100 shopping voucher for use on www.annascholz.com!

Customers: we invite you to submit your photos now for the April photo contest. Send us snaps of you in your favourite Anna Scholz looks for publication on our blog, and you’ll be entered to win a £100 online shopping voucher. Whether you’re out on the town or just hanging out, we’d love to see how you lend your personal flavour to Anna’s clothes.

Just e-mail your photo to info@annascholz.com

We’re loving the brand new publication SLiINK magazine, which caters to fashionable women sized 14 and up. The premiere issue’s cover features Anna’s hot coral crepe jersey one-shouldered dress. A number of other pieces from Anna’s Spring-Summer 2011 collection are also styled nicely throughout the magazine.

“SLiNK is a forward thinking plus size magazine that offers the same aspirational elements of the main glossies” says Editor-in-Chief, Rivkie Baum. “I became aware that lots of plus size women didn’t even pay attention to trends,” Baum adds, “as there was no media format that showed it to them in an obtainable yet aspirational format.”

There are some wicked fashion spreads in SLiNK, showcasing high-end, web and high street clothing for all budgets…and LOTS of fabulous styles from Anna. Brands included in the magazine must run up to at least a size 22.

Readers also will enjoy the article written by Anna about the process of designing a collection. Beauty and home decorating tips, recipes and film and book reviews also keep the pages up-to-date and informative.

Check out SLiNK and tell us what you THiNK!

Vogue.com recently invited body language expert Lillian Glass, Ph.D. to interpret the way the models held their bags in a number of runway shows from Fall 2011.

While what happens on the catwalk is usually a far cry from daily reality, it is still fun to dissect what statements the designers and stylists are making with the placement of accessories, as every detail in a fashion show is most certainly calculated.

“They’re holding those bags like they’re holding a puppy!” Glass remarked of the runway images from Prada’s Fall 2011 catwalk show. Glass speculates that the models are cradling their bags close because “bags are no longer just an accessory—they are a vital part of our lives!” They hold everything from a lipstick to a wallet to an iPad. They hold all aspects of our lives.

Alternatively, to me, the gesture of snuggling the bag shows that the woman sees her Prada bag as something precious and pet-like. It’s a plush little friend, rather than a bag you sling over your shoulder or hold aloofly down at your side. It also signifies ownership and closeness with luxury.

At Marc Jacobs’s Louis Vuitton show, models held the coveted structured purses in hands that were cuffed behind their backs. Glass thinks this pose represents safety and security, not being careless with your possessions. She also thinks that despite this gesture of nervousness, “hands in back show an extreme amount of confidence and security. [...] It also shows a lot of self-confidence and self-assuredness. When you place your arms in back of you, as opposed to placing them in front, it says you have nothing to hide. Also, it lets the bag stands on its own, without distracting from the entire outfit.”

I think this gesture is also a saucy way of poking fun at fashion obsession.  The pose could be saying, “I’m a prisoner of fashion. I’m a victim.” Or it could be saying, “No matter what happens, I’ll have my fabulous little handbag with me. Even in the wake of disaster, I have my priorities.”

The models at Celine carried their bags from underneath like a sack of groceries, not even using the handles. Glass says, “What I am picking up from this is that in this day and age, women are carrying around a lot more things. It’s like a virtual office in their purses, and the handles make things feels heavier, so this new way of holding the purse may be more practical and less cumbersome.”

To me, this particular gesture seems mostly about the need to come up with some new spin on bag-holding. But it could also be about breaking the rules, about being in a casual relationship with luxury, or about creating interesting, complementary angles with the clean lines of the clothes themselves.

What are your thoughts on what these bag-holding gestures mean? Do you have any other thoughts on the meanings behind certain ways of holding bags? Or is it all just a sack of sugar?

Scott Schuman who helms the widely read fashion blog, The Sartorialist, recently came under fire for describing another blogger as “curvy.”

Schuman wrote of fellow fashion blogger, Angelica Ardasheva, “I loved that she’s a bigger, curvier girl than most of the other bloggers who you see in the press and tend to represent the genre.” He added, “The subtle thing she achieves so successfully in these two looks is to complement the sturdy but beautiful shape of her legs with an equally strong shoe.”

The entry prompted over a thousand responses. Some readers were offended:

Your patronising comments on her style, calling her ‘bigger’, ‘curvier’ and back handed compliment on her dress sense just serve to further alienate readers who are not a sample size, which I would assume is the larger portion of your audience.

Other readers had no issue:

i am a woman with a very similar body type, if not more curvy, and find it hard it exhausting how badly everyone is taking your comments. i don’t see what you said as offensive, if anything i think the fact that you said you loved it is being overlooked. it must be hard to comment on a woman’s body type at all with all of us feeling constant personal evaluation.

Schuman himself rebutted:

A number of the commenters are upset by the word “curvy.” They feel I should have used the word “normal.” However, normal is relative. There is a young lady on my team who is 5′0″, and another who is 5′9″. Which would be “normal”? [...] Remember, curvy is a body shape, not a weight. To be honest, you can’t really see in these photographs most of the curves – chest, stomach, hip – this woman has.

What do you think about what Schuman said? Offensive, or just off-the-cuff?

Read  Schuman’s original post on The Sartorialist

Read other articles about the conversation Schuman’s comment started at The Huffington Post or Jezebel

The last two days of Emma’s Anna Scholz Week on her blog, Oh, The Places You’ll Go built to a fine curvaceous crescendo.

We’ve loved seeing the different ways Emma has styled Anna’s clothes this past week. It’s always interesting and informative to read her thoughts about what makes the garments work for her figure and what to wear them with.

For her finale, she featured Anna’s double silk pleat shift dress in the eye-popping zoomorphic parrot print from the White Label collection. And she sported the black lace cropped jacket and the check print jersey plait strap dress, both from the Black Label collection.

Emma describes the parrot print silk pleat shift dress as having a kind of glow in the sunshine. “It radiates a vibrancy and energy of colour that literally made me keep looking down at my body and going, WOW. … This is a shape, that feels MADE FOR MY BODY. It caters to my breast, pulls in for a high waist and then flows from the hip. If you are new to Anna Scholz and want to jump straight in the deep end for style and class – this is the way to go!”

“You can wear this lace cropped jacket done up or undone,” Emma continues. “You could wear it over dresses or over a plain little cami – like I have. … The tailoring on this jacket is completely spot on and the detail in the lace is really delightful. … If you want coverage, want to feel feminine and need a piece that can transition between both class and sexiness…THIS is the item.”