Hello my beloved readership,

another summer it-piece is the pleated skirt – light and long. Check out here how to wear it and make it the key-element of your summer-look.

Yesterday I turned 31. On occasion to that I would like to talk about life in your 30s, 20s in a retrospective and an outlook.

I considered my 30th birthday which I already talked about here the best birthday of my life (so far). Whether I traveled? No. I mean, we had booked a trip to Munich. But we cancelled that for the job I started on my 30th birthday – this also is not what you would imagine for a perfect birthday, to work. Have I had an unforgettable experience? Not if cooking coached by Cornelia Poletto (read about it here) and being recognized by Birgit Sarrap (you can read about it here) can be taken as standard. Did I receive a breath-taking gift? I am always happy about the gifts that my husband always put a lot of thoughts, heart and effort in. So then it had to be the company I was in during my birthday! I wished…! But this was rather an experience I had during the baptism of our daughter at the beginning on the last year. Talking about the last year, you got to figure out it was one of the hardest years I had with the passing of my grandmother who was like a mother for me and other psychological and emotional traumatic experiences all of them following almost one after the other.

But here it is: always being happy about… that is the point. I was generally happy (even if I turned sick right after my birthday-weekend). For the first time in my life I felt like I had everything without feeling like I was missing something right in front of me and throughout this whole year I felt like this. Even if the year was tough and nearly like most terrible year I could imagine because the hardships left their scars the impact you feel is much stronger:

I got married in my early 20s and had our children in my mid-twenties while I was still studying. At these times I was still studying and had not actually really entered any real full-time corporate work-life. But I achieved a master’s degree the latter at best grade, with two little children. I experienced hardships I never thought I would ever become a part of. Why at all? Why would they? Why should I? Why me? Between serving tradition and structures to the point to please everyone at the cost of destroying what I had built up and wondering where I am actually standing and what for I actually am I have been fighting my way through to find my place.

Now at 30 I feel like I am running out of time so I make it about time. While I keep reading that women I have been admiring so much start to find themselves at their 40s or even 50s. Should I be relieved now thinking that luckily I would have almost a decade more to go? No, trust me, it scares me even more. I mean, I admire how strong-willed, motivated, reasonable and much more women are at 40 which gives me a good outlook but still I consider 40 too late. I do not want to sound ungrateful for a wonderful husband and our two wonderful children but I do not want to run out of any more time, especially when people in their late 30s tell me what a difference this few little distance of age makes.

And something else that makes an impact are the experiences, especially the bad ones. You learn to grow over them and change your mind for good. Retrospectively I can somehow only shake my head about my 20s. You are young, you are supposed to be free and fit but you lack the experience and self-confidence resulting from this. Now expressing it this way I start to pity my 20s and all the other gone 20s as well who might have looked fabulous from the outside but whose brokenness you now feel inside. It is a child’s play with quite a way to go. The prouder I am at my 30s now. I cannot tell if it is the age but I have fulfilled much more of my dreams even those I did not think of in one year than in 29 passed years. That is simply incredible! I am not saying that the mission is accomplished but it can only be better from here on.

“The hotter it is the more style as well as weather-experts suggest you to wear light and wide clothes.”

Pleated Skirt: Summer-Style Element

The hotter it is the more style as well as weather-experts suggest you to wear light and wide clothes. The radical heat in German metropolises that has developed over the last years has risen alerts and nationwide warnings as well as advises to protect yourself from the weather. In this case clothes also matter to maintain a good health. Such a heat which you are not used to makes shops turn up the air-condition into ice-age-degrees. In combination of you entering such shops with air-conditions being in full swings or subway-stations with draught all sweated the summer-flu would be guaranteed. And what could be worse than being tied to the bed while you should be supposed to go out and jump into the water? In order not to sweat and protect yourself from the heat citizens of hot countries perfectly show how to do it: long and light clothes. A long light skirt such as the pleated skirt in a natural brown shade as well as artful glitter creates a perfect it-piece.

My Look in Details

• Shirt by Orsay
• Skirt by Comma,
• Loafers by GUESS
• Watch by Tamaris
• Earrings by Orsay
• Lipstick by NYX Professional Make-Up

Love, Johanna