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Slips

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Courtesy Emma Nylon Nostalgia  I was chatting to a female friend of mine recently and the subject of slips came up. She had seen me in one of mine and remarked how good it looked, she then revealed she had never worn a full slip, but had worn a half slip at school. The lady is in her late forties, so missed out on wearing slips when she was young and has never thought to try one since.  So what is so special about a slip? well firstly you need to understand the real purpose of a slip, although they look fabulous and many would say sexy, the point of a slip is to provide an independent layer between the lingerie, or foundation garments and the outer layer, the dress. Being independent, by that I mean not attached to the dress, it allows the dress to move freely from the lingerie, almost like a lubricating layer. As a result the dress flows more freely, hangs better and is often more comfortable to wear.  For dresses that are sheer or very thin fabric a slip can provide a layer to avoid
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Emotion - Why can't men cry?

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 An incident occurred a little while ago that caused me to cry. I will not go into the intimate details, but suffice it to say that the release of emotion caused me to cry in a way I have not done since way back in my pre-teen years..... Which is a very long time ago.  The crying was the result of a massive release of emotion caused by seeming unconnected events that caused me to fear for the health of two very special people. I cry more now than I have done for years, I do get much more emotional since I have allowed my feminine side blossom. However it has never been like this. It hasn't always been this way, before accepting myself, I would very rarely cry, and then only because it was a tragic loss, and only in private. What was that? Well research has shown that men cry 60% less than women, crying is often seen as a weakness or embarrassing, especially for the male. We cry three types of tears: Firstly 'Basal' which are the tears that coat your eyes all day and help pr
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A Day Out With Jen

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 A couple of weeks ago I had a day out with a very close female friend. I had known my lady friend Jen for a couple of years, it is a complicated story about how we met which I will not go into here, but we always intended to have a girly day out, but it was difficult for us to find a time that suited both of us. However we finally managed to get a date organised and we met up at my hotel. Jen had always complimented me on my makeup and when we arranged the date she had said she would like me to perform my magic on her. Make no mistake I am not an expert in the application of makeup, but I agreed to do it with the caveat that if she didn't like it I would remove it and she would do her usual day makeup.   This was quite a big thing for me, I've never been a with a woman that a wants me to do her makeup so it was quite a challenge. As we were doing day makeup it was actually quite minimal and not too difficult to apply, although it is obviously very different when working on som
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Self Respect

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 You would think this is something very simple and something everyone has....... But during my  life, having respect for my true self has been difficult if not impossible. I have spent most of my life trying to be something I wasn't instead of doing my best to be something I really am. Anyone, like me who was born to this crossdressing life will have had a very difficult time growing up. These days it is easier as the society of today is much more forgiving than the one I grew up in despite some of the current moves to restrict trans people. My life has constantly evolved during the time I have been on earth, it still is, but for many years it evolved in the wrong direction as I tried, and failed miserably, to be the person society deemed I should be. There was no hand book, no instruction manual, no support and no help, there was just negativity. What ever I did, seemed to be wrong, I was constantly being told how to live my life, how to conform. I was seen by some to be weak and 
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Atmospheric Photos

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   The best photographs tell a story, unless you are extremely lucky you will have to invest time and effort to create the perfect picture. Firstly you have to decide what story you want to tell, if it is a bride on her wedding day it is fairly easy to photograph her outside the church or signing the register, however if you are using a photo to illustrate a story, obviously the photo has to have a direct connection with the narrative. To do that the connection with the story has to be obvious, but you also have to get it in context, for example the first photo below it not only had to have the connection with the story but also fit into the time frame. A modern electric sewing machine would have been out of place so everything needed to be in period.  When you are trying to create a 'period' photograph you firstly have to do your research, the items in the image have to be correct, if you go for a period 'look' then you can be a little more relaxed but overall the phot
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Dressing your age

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 Every so often on various forums the subject of 'Dressing Your Age' or dressing in age appropriate clothing comes up, to be greeted with various comments from different points of view. First of all what are we talking about here? The subject often gets confused with inappropriate clothing as a result when, people respond to a post on a forum they are quite often talking about slightly different subjects. Dealing with inappropriate clothing first, to my mind this would be wearing clothes that are not right for the situation you are in, clothes that clearly do not suit you or exposing more of your body than is decent. The problem with many crossdressers, as Helen Boyd pointed out in her book (My Husband Betty) is that many dress in a way that they, as men, would like women to dress.  If I think back to my youth, a very long time ago, when people (men and women) got to a certain age and their style of clothing remained the same from then on. Part of this was the cost of clothing
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Fast Fashion

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Make do and mend  We hear a lot about fast fashion and and how cheap low quality clothing is sold to consumers and has a relatively short life before being thrown away.  However my experience is that it is not always cheap clothing that falls into this category, often perfectly good (better quality) clothing becomes discarded because it is no longer 'on trend'. This, I believe is the real problem. I come from a generation where clothing was expensive and money was short so any item of clothing had to last and would be used until it was no longer possible to wear it as it had worn out. Items of clothing would be passed down from older to younger members of the family in order to extend the useful life of the garment. There was never any consideration of fashion or what might be 'on trend'.  This way of thinking was influenced by the rationing of clothes from 1939 until 1949, an subsequent years of austerity where money was tight and clothing relatively expensive. Disposi
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The Bra

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I f there is one item of clothing that shouts female, it is the bra. As a crossdresser, as soon as you put on a bra your body is transformed from the flat chested male to something more feminine. But I feel there is more to a bra than just changing a persons shape, it is an intimate item of clothing, delicately made, yet performing a vital function in  terms of support and also the  contouring of the visible outline of the female form.  To the uninitiated  bra is just a bra, but there are a large  number of different types available, here in the UK Marks & Spencer (M&S) a major retailer, advertises at least ten different basic types add to that wired, unwired, padded, non padded and pocketed and it is easy to see why they have over 680 different bras for sale on their website.  Bra's in various forms have been around for a very long time, the bra as we know it started to come into use around the time of end of the first world war. In the 1920's Marks & Spencer start
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Suspenders

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  Suspenders (garter belts to our American readers) are an enduring item that continues in popularity and seems to be particularly popular in the crossdressing community. As I understand it, suspenders, as we now know them, began coming into popular use in the 1940's and continued right into the 1960's. Their everyday used declined in the 60's as a result of tights (pantyhose) becoming more popular and generally easily available from the likes of Woolworths, Marks & Spencer and British Home Stores. But despite that and the general decline in the wearing of hosiery they still have a big following. I will be honest and say I generally go for tights, just because they are simpler to put on and wear. However for special occasions I will use stockings and suspenders as they just make me feel fabulous! I would say that if you are going to wear stockings buy genuine vintage stockings, they fit better and have a feel that modern stockings do not. However not everyone is in favo
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Becoming Andrea

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  A couple of years ago, before the lockdown here in the UK, I was going out on a regular basis to a well known Trans friendly club, we always had a great time but I wanted more, I wanted to move away from the T-Girl / trans scene more toward mainstream venues. Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the T-girl scene, but I felt it wasn't really for me. Then the pandemic struck and we couldn't go out anyway, after the first lockdown there was a few months of reprieve before we were plunged back into another lockdown. During that short 'window' we managed to get out three times, as the clubs were shut we used mainstream bars and restaurants and had a brilliant time. It opened my eyes to what was possible out in the 'real' world. After the second lockdown we managed to get out again visiting a restaurant we had not been to for nine months. We were greeted like long lost friends, the reception we had demonstrated to me that the 'real world' was w
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