I can't believe it's almost Christmas and we're almost done with our quarterly subjects, which include (as always) tons of work deliveries and presentations for December 21st-22nd. After that, I'll be mostly at home for the coming exam period and working on some nice architecture contests we've been looking after. But, as Christmas always is, the season includes uncountable relative meetings, dinners, casual meet-ups with old friends around cups of tea and biscuits and so on. That means having a bunch of easy and quick outfit fixes for every event the holidays might come up with.

A nice idea is to take out of your closet all your mid length, mid sleeve dresses in warm tones or with subtle details and pair them with your best opaque, thick tights or leggings and medium heels. Then, get wrapped in your warmest scarf and coat and you're done to rock this Christmas! I did so in this grey, A-line dress from Lightinthebox which arrived just at the perfect time to assemble my Christmas outfits for casual events or evenings strolling through the streets of Valencia. This dress is the perfect match for the holidays, and for less than 30$, which is a real deal!

It's made of an elastic grey cotton, it ends a little bit above the knee, has a side zipper, is cut at the waist with a ribbon to adjust to your back and a lovely V-neck. It runs true to size, but I must say I was a bit scared of if I could wear it successfully or not as I ordered an XL as these kind of dresses usually run pretty small. But, if you follow the size charts at the Lightinthebox site as I did, I'm pretty sure you won't face any problem. As you can see, I succeeded at the sizing and it fits nicely.

The quality of the dress is also great. It has no lining, but I don't think there's need of it, as the grey fabric is thick enough and nothing can be shown through it. All the hems and final touches have been sewn carefully, as no thread has gone rogue in the way of wearing the dress. As said: a real deal to wear this coming Christmas season, and a dress you'll get tons of compliments with!

The whole shipping process was also very easy and quick. The dress came in about 2 weeks since I ordered it, and arrived to Valencia during one of the stormiest weeks I've ever lived. Thankfully, we've been having an exceptional warm weather for the past two or three days, which allowed me to wear the dress for a family lunch and to an event at the Architecture School without even carrying my coat with me. Not even a light blazer. Seriously. Valencian weather is the craziest thing.

Designing your own clothing may look like a really difficult thing when you have zero sewing skills. But it actually isn't. As you already might know, I'm a design enthusiast, and I do design a lot of things. I'm always drawing, creating, even doing my own prototypes of circle skirts, jewelry, etc. But one thing I'm unable to do is sewing. I'm a total dummy on sewing, and I will always fail sewing my own dresses and a bit more complicated than circle skirts designs. But I still wanted to create and wear my designs... And then light came: Why not hiring a seamstress who I could take the fabric I wanted to, explain my idea to her and who could give me some advise on how would be the best way on getting my new, unique piece to be made?

At first I thought it would be one of the most difficult tasks to do in this world. A seamstress? It would be absolutely impossible to find one, and also a very expensive thing. But anything beyond it! At least in Valencia (and I presume, most medium-sized cities and towns on this world) there're plenty of both professional and amateur seamstresses who do not only sew dresses and blouses, but will also help you fixing an unexpected hole on your favorite jeans, will shorten your pants' or party dresses hems. Finding María José was pretty easy just doing some research on the Internet and asking friends and relatives, and her workshop is just a few bus stops near home. We brought to her a few fabrics (this red Toile de Jouy fabric is actually from this fabric haul I did a long, long time ago...) and just explained to her with words and a few drawings what we had in mind for our brand new, unique clothing designs. 

Apart from this super cute, vintage inspired A-line pleated Toile de Jouy dress, she also sewn a felted winter skirt which I hope I can show as soon as I start shooting winter outfits!

Have you ever brought something to a seamstress to be fixed? Do you also design clothing but do not sew them?

It's usually difficult for me to find the right pieces to add some fun to a serious outfit. As I usually like to wear a wide variety of plain colors and then put all my accesories in black or similar neutral colors, sometimes it gets bored to match the outfit like that.

It also gets difficult if you want to put on a cute dress that day, but its skirt goes below your knees, you feel like you must wear high heels but your feet hurt... In that case, this Clarks snake heels I bought last sales are the best option: high, chic and amazingly comfortable! The heel looks like a mirror, and the pattern on them is just awesome.

I added the curious/strange touch with this crochet necklace. Believe me: crochet, although it doesn't look like! I bought it some years ago on a local jewelry store, and never used it before because I didn't know what to match it with... And the dress comes from Williamsbourg Vintage, one of my favourite vintage shops in Madrid (remember this post or this post?)! Bought the last time I travelled there this Winter.

So, I already came back to classes and give homework, and drawing like a crazy thing. I'm having some exams very, very soon, so I won't be able to post as much as I did on Christmas holidays. However, I took hundreds of pictures during those days, and I still have many outfits and exciting ideas to show you (I'm thinking about doing a sort of ''round up'' of bloggers showing their style, and featuring them here. What do you think?). I'll be posting and writing about them when my exam weeks finish.

OK. A brief description of the outfit and so on. As you know, I ''discovered'' Karen Millen's designs not long ago just because some items caught my attention because they were on sale. Some of those items were  the sparkling bag and this B&W dress, which seemed to be too small/classy/I don't really know. I really liked it at first sight, and I was a very lucky girl trying it out and checking that it really suited (seems made for girls with a small waist, but the skirt's shape doesn't attract attention to hips. Perfect!).

I also think the details are delicate and very polished: the straps and round neck with that bow/twisted piece, the belt, the lining and seams... Definitely: that kind of bargain you're always proud to have found.

I've had a rest time this last week. As I have already started training, and soon I'll be with my classes, I felt I needed to chill a little bit so now I can do my best. That's why I didn't post, I'm sorry. Also, I wasn't very sure about posting this pictures we took last night on a dinner. I wasn't able to take my DSLR camera, and it was dark, so the quality of the pictures is horrible. I've been editing them, and this is what I could save, but you can see they're not the usual quality.

I wish I could have taken better pictures to show you this awesome Carolina Herrera sandals I found last day. They were an absolute bargain. Last days of sales are absolutely crazy, and you can find this kind of things if you look hard. These sandals are just perfect. They aren't very high heeled, and I love their simple design: two brown stripes with those buckles on them. They're made of leather, and are very comfortable and don't hurt my feet. Maybe they will replace my Zara brown platform sandals (you can see them HERE) because they're starting to break.

The golden dress is vintage. It was bought in my trip to Mallorca last year and it was the first time I wore it. I love its shape, and the color is very special for me because it's weird to find this kind of dresses. The fabric it's made of it's very heavy, and falls all over the skirt. Just amazing. I've been finding more vintage treasures lately, you'll see. We had dinner at a restaurant called Pizza Roma. We've been going to that restaurant since I was a child because there're plenty of different kinds of pizza (I'm an expert!) and more Italian food. Their salads are huge and absolutely delicious!

I was wearing:

Carolina Herrera sandals
Vintage gold dress
Primark bracelets
Zara gold clutch
Bijou Brigitte stone necklace

BCBG Max Azria dress. In white with black touches it's finally here. I think it's one of the second hand/thrift findings I'm most proud of. Found in Madrid's Williamsbourg Vintage store (which I talked to you about here) it was (I must say it) too cheap to be real. When I arrived home, discovered the tag and search its name on Google, I couldn't believe it.

It looks like an extremely elegant dress (it reminds me the one Serena Van Der Woodsen wears on the white party episode). And it is. So, I couldn't wear it in other time than going on a relaxed dinner with my family there in Oropesa, but I couldn't wait to wear it (the dress was still hanging on the closet for almost a month!). It was a quite nice evening to shot some pictures of it, and have fun with makeup, so I did.