Cheryl Shops

The first pricey jar of skin cream I ever bought was Crème de la Mer. It did not deliver the Rich Girl Skin I was hoping for, but that hasn't stopped me from trying every fancy potion that has come along since. So far, the closest thing I've found to a magical elixir is Vintner's Daughter, but it's not quite mind-blowing enough to convince me to keep paying $185 every month or two. I've been reading the most rapturous reviews in years, however, for Augustinus Bader The Rich Cream, so when a bottle showed up on my doorstep, I couldn't wait to try it. Here's my honest, unfiltered review.

I read a recent theory that we're conditioned as children to "love" summer because of the three-month break we get from school; in actuality, it's hot and miserable, so what is there really to love? For one, I enjoy that it's still light after 8pm. But more importantly, summer is dress season. I tend to wear one nearly every day—nothing is easier, more comfortable (and breathable), or cuter in warm weather—and I always scoop up several new ones at the start of the season, because, hey, my name is Cheryl Shops. So on that note, here are my favorite dresses for summer 2021.

It had only been a few months since we last took a weekend trip to Santa Barbara, but after the stress of the last month (we're ok, really!), not to mention the ridiculously cold and windy spring weather we've been having, Sean & I decided that we were in need of a long weekend of rest and relaxation. Our goal: to lounge by a pool, bask in the sunshine, and maybe roll out to a winery or nice dinner (or a few). With that in mind, we were lucky enough to snag a last-minute hotel reservation in Calistoga, which is one of our favorite little towns in Napa County. Here's where we went and what we did over Memorial Day weekend.

Whoa, how is it June already?! This year is flying by, which I guess is a good thing—I feel like every day, week, and month, we get closer to normal life again. Case in point: We stayed in a hotel for the first time in over a year last weekend. We spent the long weekend in Calistoga, which is a town in northern Napa County—I'll share more details about that trip in next week's post—and aside from a few moments of mask-wearing, hand-sanitizing, and wavier-signing, it felt pretty much like a normal getaway. It also finally feels like summer, at least in Napa, so finally the weather is cooperating with my strong desire to wear a sundress. I've been on a dress binge lately, and while I love everything I've bought so far this year (don't worry, they'll all be making an appearance here soon enough), this Ganni dress is my favorite. Here's how I wore it in wine country.

Time is something that I feel I've completely lost sense of in the last year, when days bled into weeks into months into yikes, it's nearly a year and a half into this pandemic. So I probably shouldn't be surprised that it's already Memorial Day, but somehow I am. (Maybe because we've had an unusually cool spring here in San Francisco?) Time to start living in the present: I'm fully vaccinated, ready to get out in the world again, and thus need to start wearing real clothes again. Let's make up for lost time with a little Memorial Day sale shopping, shall we? The jeans I'm wearing in this photo are 30% off; keep reading for deets.

Back in the golden days of blogging, I used to follow all of my favorites via Google Reader, an RSS feed. As it does with many of its (presumably money-losing) free products, Google shut down Reader in 2013. And as long as there've been RSS feeds, I've relied on Feedburner, another free Google product, to publish mine. The good news is that Feedburner is not (yet) going away entirely—if you follow this blog on a traditional RSS feeder like Feedly or on Bloglovin, you can still continue to do so. But, if you subscribe to my posts via email, sadly, that service will be going away in July. 

When it comes to French luxury houses, Louis Vuitton and Chanel tend to have the best name recognition and while I wouldn't turn down a bag from either, my favorite has always been Hermès. What I love about Hermès is that for almost 200 years, they've stayed true to their artisanal roots, and unlike their competitors, Hermès still manufactures the majority of its products in France. Of course, Hermès is more expensive than Chanel or Louis Vuitton, especially when it comes to handbags; the Birkin is their most famous, but the Constance—a bag so exclusive, you are only allowed to purchase it if you've already bought another Hermès handbag—is my favorite. So while I'm still a few years away from that milestone, I've been establishing myself as a customer for when the time comes. Jewelry is a great place to start (my first purchase was a Clic-H bracelet in Bordeaux in 2016), as are shoes, and both have the distinction of being designed by accessory mastermind Pierre Hardy. If you follow any influencers on Instagram, chances are you've seen the flat Oran sandal, but as someone who prefers a little heel, I think the Oasis is the way to go. Here's my honest and unfiltered opinion of the Hermès Oasis sandal. 

Well, dear readers, it's been a week. I'm not at liberty to discuss exactly what happened or why, but thankfully I am healthy and safe, as are my loved ones, and that's the most important thing. This post almost didn't happen, but by one of many miracles this week, it did, and I'm glad, because I really like this outfit. I realize that it's nearly identical to this one from a few years ago—even down to the accessories—but hey, I like what I like. And since I'm all about listening to my inner lizard brain these days, here's what it told me to wear. 

As I mentioned last month, I'm making some changes around here and featuring more things I've actually bought. In this particular case, I thought I'd share some of my favorite things that would make great Mother's Day gifts. So considering Mother's Day is less than two weeks away (early this year, yikes!), let's dive in. Step into my living room, and pardon the clutter...

I subscribe to a lot—I mean, a lotttt—of email lists. Much of it is for competitive research (I'm an editorial director at a major retailer by day), but really, a lot of it is just because I like to shop. After all, my name is Cheryl Shops! Opening hundreds of emails a day does have its benefits, and one of my favorites is the bounty of happy birthday promo codes I receive every March. If you time it right, you can really score a good deal, which is what happened with this sweater I bought from Madewell. I was kind of on the fence about it—was I too late to the tie-dye trend?—but my indecision had a price, and that was an extra 25% off sale. So while I got a very good deal on a pretty cute sweater, I got something I wasn't even expecting, which was pure joy. I can't quite explain it, but this sweater makes me feel hopeful and alive and also peaceful. If spring 2021 were a sweater, this would be it. Let's unpack that, shall we? 

April can be kind of a weird month, but one of the highlights for me is always the Sephora Spring Savings event for their Beauty Insiders. If you're in the Rouge tier, you get 20% off your order (and you've already had a head start); starting today, VIBs get 15% off, and regular old Beauty Insiders get 10% off—still nothing to sneeze at. The event runs through the 19th and what's really noteworthy in my opinion is that Sephora has added a bunch of new brands that I'm really excited about. So here are 10 of my favorite products right now—read on for details. 

 When I do a Cheryl's Greatest Hits post, I generally go for 7 ways to wear something, but I love my white jeans so much—and feature them so often here—that I've decided to go for 10 solid outfit ideas (I even had to edit some out). The key piece here is obviously a good pair of white jeans, and my all-around favorite is the power slim straight from Old Navy, which I'm wearing in most of these photos. It's a fit that sadly does not come in white at the moment, but as an alternative, I'd highly recommend the best-selling OG Straight—it's basically the same fit minus the hidden shaping pockets. I love that the denim is thick enough to not be see-through but stretchy enough to be comfy, and I think the straight-leg cut is super flattering. Plus, the price is totally reasonable. Here are all the ways I've styled mine. 

I know I've made quite a production in my last several outfit posts about how I'm trying to move beyond the whole Dress Like a French Woman™ thing, so I don't want to seem totally hypocritical in sharing an outfit that's completely designed around the pair of Chanel ballet flats I bought myself for my birthday. But it is, and I'm happy with how it came out, so sit back and enjoy as I attempt to rationalize my irrational choices. For one, this is actually a very lizard-brain outfit because it has 1) leopard print, 2) camel, 3) the cashmere maxi cardigan I pretty much live in, and, most importantly, 4) the shoes I've been obsessed with since I was a child. I finally, at the ripe old age of 43, decided to buy a pair, and I love them so much, they may be dictating how I dress for the rest of the season (or at least the entire month of April). Here's how it all came together. 

In case you were wondering, the editor is me! Hi, dear readers. I feel compelled to warn you that this is going to be a somewhat introspective and very personal post, but hopefully one that you'll appreciate. I know what you're probably thinking and no, I am not going to stop writing this blog, at least not anytime remotely soon. I feel just as inspired as ever, and restarting Cheryl Shops nearly five (!!!) years ago has given me a wonderful creative outlet that I wouldn't give up for the world. Not to mention, I've met a bunch of friends both IRL and on the Internet, and I love the support I receive from my fellow bloggers, Pinners, and Instagrammers (sorry not sorry, I'm not going to use the I-word). The past year has been the strangest one of my life thus far, and I don't think I would have made it through without you. It has also given me a lot of time to think about where it—and my life—is going, and to become very conscious of how I'm spending my time and energy. So I'm going to make a few changes around here. 

As I've mentioned recently, I've been in what feels like a year-long wardrobe rut but maybe that's just been a year-long global pandemic. Either way, I decided I needed some new Instagram inspiration and on the recommendation of an IG friend, I started following @frisky-gatos. She's a thirtysomething nurse in Minneapolis, and she dresses with a quirky yet very strong sense of personal style. Her theory is that you should listen to your most primal "lizard brain" and buy the things you absolutely WANT to wear. It seems very simple and even obvious, but I've found over the years that I've always been chasing some ideal of how I should be dressing—in my very specific case, like a "French woman." Faced with a very black-white-and-gray closet that all of a sudden feels very sad to me, I've come to the conclusion that "dressing like a French woman" is boring, and that such stark neutrals are not actually very flattering against my fortysomething skin. So this post marks a turning point for me. I'm going to start dressing for me—for real this time.

As I wrote the title of this post, I thought, "Hopefully it will be the last birthday I'll ever have so spend in quarantine." Granted, as far as quarantine goes, it was a pretty glamorous one. In case you missed it, we spent a weekend in Santa Barbara to celebrate my birthday, and it was so nice to get out of our apartment and have a change of scenery. The weather was pretty much perfect, Santa Barbara is a gorgeous place, and I felt very grateful to be able to take a road trip there, safely. We also did a bit of celebrating (e.g. wine tasting) before we took these photos, so let me preface this post by saying that I look a little more, er, relaxed than usual. Then again, maybe it's just because I love my outfit so much ;) 

My birthday is in early March, and exactly a year ago, we spent it in Paris and London. Since that trip—which now feels like a million lifetimes ago—we took a road trip to Big Sur and Yosemite last summer but haven't traveled at all since then. So not only were we both going stir-crazy in our apartment, we were really just wanting a change of scenery for a few days. Luckily, restrictions in California are starting to loosen, so Sean surprised me with a weekend trip to Santa Barbara. It's a town I'd visited a few times for a day trip, but I'd never spent a lot of quality time there. After two full days and three nights, I now understand why Harry and Meghan landed in nearby Montecito. Here's what we did on our long weekend trip to Santa Barbara.

I know everyone has been wearing hoodies for the last year, and while I've resisted them for the most part, I had a revelation a few weeks ago. I was out walking Zuni when it started to lightly rain, and I happened to have been wearing my Cuddl Duds hooded tee; I didn't have a hat, but I pulled the hood over my head and saved my freshly washed hair from frizzing out. Considering I've lived for more than 7 years in a city that's frequently cloaked in drippy fog, it's kind of amazing that it took me this long to realize the practical applications of a hoodie. But now that I have, I've gone a little hoodie-happy. This is the first of several new hoodies I've purchased, so apologies in advance for the barrage of hoodie-themed posts coming up. Up first is this Isabel Marant hoodie, which I am completely obsessed with right now. Here's how I've been wearing it. 

There's been a lot of Gen Z. vs. Millennial beef lately, especially concerning skinny jeans. I'm not sure where or how it all started (maybe TikTok?) but I must say, I found it kind of amusing. I'm a Gen Xer who's always preferred slim or straight-leg jeans (I do own one true skinny pair in black), as well as a firm believer that you should wear whatever you feel good in, so if you're a millennial who loves skinny jeans, then by all means, you should continue to wear them and not listen to a generation that eats Tide Pods and wants to be Internet-famous for a living. Ahem. So, my skinny-jeans-wearing readers, this post is for you. It features none other than international style icon and accomplished lawyer Amal Clooney (otherwise known as Mrs. George Clooney) and it's this month's most-pinned look from my Outfit ideas for ageless style Pinterest board. Let's do it.