Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Faux Bow

I wear a lot of belts and I often wear them at the waist or even around my ribcage. If the belt isn’t fairly small, I’m left with excess strap flapping about. In the past, I’ve secured the excess using doublestick tape, paperclips, binder clips, or the clip on my work badge. If you are wearing a belt with a prong-less buckle, a chic way to deal with the excess length is to pull it back through to form a faux bow.

1. Place the belt at the desired point on your waist and pull the strap through the buckle.

2. Hold the strap taut by grasping it halfway along its length and begin to rethread the end of the strap through the buckle. (Keeping the strap taut will improve with practice.)

3. Leave the loop of strap outside of the buckle. This forms one half of the “bow.”

4. Continue threading the end of the strap through buckle.

5. Adjust the free end and the loop to be about the same size and smooth the “knot” framed by the buckle.

The result is more bow-like when the strap is wider than the buckle (as is the case here), so that the strap flares on either side. Although it isn’t as pretty, you can still use this trick with belts that have equally sized buckles and straps (like my newly swapped gold belt.)

(I learned this trick by studying the way a mannequin was styled at Charlotte Russe.)

14 comments:

Always In Style said...

Excellent tip!

Meg said...

Wow, I wish I had seen this last year. I saw a belt like this on a mannequin in a store and loved the look. However, I couldn't figure out how it was done -- and no one working at the store could figure it out either.

Anonymous said...

Excellent! Thanks for the tip; I encounter this problem too.

xo

Sabina

Sheila said...

That is a *very* cool trick!

Alexandra said...

What a neat trick! I've wanted to buy several soft wide belts like that but they were always too long and I didn't know what to do with the extra length. Now I know. Thank you!

Anonymous said...

Cool trick! I also wanted to tell you that you inspired me to post on wardrobe_remix. Thanks!

monique said...

amazing tip...thank you for this! i can't wait to try it myself!

Anonymous said...

Wow, I totally love that look! So cute and sassy. I wonder if it would be as effective with a belt that has a rounded end, as opposed to the diagonal-cut end on your kick-ass belt here ... I'll have to do some experimenting.

Sheryl W said...

this is great! i love this! thanks!

Des said...

Neat trick. Thanks!

FB @ FabulouslyBroke.com said...

VERY cool trick

I'm linking to this in my next round of link love

Paula Gardner said...

Oh, my gosh, how cute does that belt look! Excess length is never a problem for me, but all of my beautiful daughters will benefit from this excellent tip.

Anonymous said...

Thanks!!! This is a prime reason i don't wear some belts.

Elena said...

Another issue I was recently struggling with:) I am already in love with your blog!