Project Beltway offers a look at why there's no particular D.C. style

I finally had a chance today to catch up with some of my favorite blogs and was so excited when I came across all this great fodder on Project Beltway!

In response to some comments about Bush's Croc incident, Rachel had some pretty interesting incite into D.C. fashion and its influences.

DC is a town pretty much consumed with running the country, not with discussing breakthrough design or celebrating the trendsetting/unconventionally dressed. ... What I find most heartening and interesting part of doing this blog is observing the sheer fact that people’s attitudes about fashion are changing. ...

... I find it truly inspiring whenever I stumble across someone in town with a look far from the K or M Street-beaten path, and it happens more than you’d think. ... It’s just one of those weird repressed-fashion-lover problems to uniquely specific to DC, and it’s at once annoying and totally interesting if you really like Washington. ...

... I think Washington is a town full of style-starved closet fashionistas: The high-powered Republican staffer who has his proscribed khaki-and-oxford costume but reads The Sartorialist and dabbles in vintage on the weekends….the Georgetown-darling partygirl who wears pretty dresses to parties but dreams of pulling off Kate Moss’s rumply, effortless chic or of channeling even a smidge of Dita Von Teese’s dramatic pinup-girl-come-to-life-aesthetic. ...

To read the entire posting (without all of the ellipses...), click here...

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Also, check out Rachel's comments in a Hill story earlier this week about the scary "fashions" of summer interns (the story wasn't so great, but it was redeemed by these terrific and eloquent quotes):

Naïveté can be troublesome. “Interns across the city face a sartorial conundrum when they land, in all of their flip-flopped glory, on the steps of the U.S. Capitol,” said Rachel Cothran, who writes a fashion blog, www.projectbeltway.com . “It makes sense that these young women haven’t yet stocked their closets with weeks’ worth of professional and stylish clothes; however, there is no excuse for showing up to work in too-tight poly-blend black pants. This is Longworth, not Lotus.” ...

... Cothran, the fashion blogger, added, “Interns always tend to look either too casual, too slutty, or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, too old. Some words of advice: Structured jackets and what my mom likes to call ‘little sweaters’ are your best friends.”

To read the entire article, click here...

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And finally, it a wonderful interview with Mariessa Terrell and Christine Brooks Cropper, who together recently created the WDC Fashion Council and who I have met and they are fantastic women:

PROJECT BELTWAY: Is Washington a fashionable city?

WDC FASHION COUNCIL GALS: WDC is growing to be a fashionable city. We have all of the ingrediants, strong economy, diverse populace, strong real estate market and a interesting mix of local fashion retail that is expanding every day. Even Capital Hill is changing! Take a stroll around the Rayburn building and see for yourself!

To read that, click here...