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Personal Style Pop Culture

Upgrade Your Downtime: Pretty Spring Pajamas and Loungewear

Don’t know about you, but we’re ready to wake from this long winter’s nap and spring-ify our lives. While we’re keeping the comfort, we’re just looking to extend our loungewear and sleepwear wardrobes with new spring prints and colors.

There’s fresh inspiration popping up everywhere we look: sherbet shades and surprisingly moody darks. Punchy prints and chic solids. Long-sleeves and joggers or flirty camisoles and short-shorts. Timeless silhouettes and eye-opening trends. Taken together, you’ve pretty much got your new 24/7 wardrobe for the season.

So take a good stretch, and wake up feeling sunnier and more refreshed than you have in months. Welcome to spring.

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Personal Style

The 7 Best Plus-Size Bras and Styles

We hear it from women of every age, size and body type: Sometimes, finding the right bras for your life can be hard. Our mission at Bare Necessities is to help you get it right and make it easy.

This week, we’ve brought together the 7 essential categories, as well as our picks for the best plus-size bras, that meet your every wardrobe need, dress you for any occasion and support your curves–all at the same time.

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Behind the Seams Power Figures

Liza Bennett is the Brains Behind Bare Necessities

We’ve met our fair share of Power Figures here on Bare it All, from fashion designers to physicians, novelists to entrepreneurs. To kick off the year, we realized we didn’t need to look any further than our own backyard, to a woman who knows the business of fashion better than pretty much anyone. Who has built her career from the front door to the top floor. Who gets things handled all day, every day without breaking a sweat.

Torching every stereotype about female bosses, Liza Bennett is what you want in a leader: kind, likeable, unflappable under pressure, an ally in the corner office who wants everyone to succeed–and to be happy and have a life while they’re at it.

Liza has spent the past 15 years at Bare Necessities, ascending from the brand’s second-ever buyer to the Vice President of E-Commerce, seeing things through when we were a private company, then under Walmart and, now, under international intimate apparel corporation Delta Galil.

We picked Liza’s brain to find out what she’s learned about finding your calling, forming a team you can count on and trusting your gut…in and out of the office.

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Personal Style Pop Culture

The Look of Love: Valentine’s Day Lingerie

Most holidays are a major production involving lots of people, planning and prepping. Not Valentine’s Day. It’s meant to be an intimate, low-key affair that doesn’t require a whole lot more than a card written from the heart. Even going “all out” doesn’t really take much effort: maybe you add fresh flowers, a dinner reservation or—this year’s version of getting all dressed up—lingerie and sleepwear.

Bare Necessities is here to help with that last bit. Our buyers have put together the greatest Valentine’s Day gift guide, full of our top-rated, prettiest and most enticing intimates ranging from mild to wild, that will ensure you’ve got Valentine’s Day 2021 handled.

“To thine own self, be true” starts with what you’re wearing. So finish bingewatching Bridgerton and set your own bodice-ripping tone by letting your body do the talking in some Valentine’s Day lingerie…

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Life with the Girls

Nobody’s Mother

Mara Reinstein has become many things in her 40ish years—a writer, film critic, satellite radio host, world traveler, friend, auntie—but one thing she never longed to be called was “mom.” Hear what it’s like to choose to defy the greatest enduring expectation of women in this month’s “Life with the Girls.” 

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Mara on a stoop of her own

I plopped down at the cozy corner booth expecting a long-awaited catch-up dinner with a former coworker. I didn’t realize it would be an intervention with a side of bread.

“You really need to freeze your eggs, Mara,” Leslie instructed me while the menus were still on the table. “It’s for your own good. By the time you realize you want to be a mother, it will be too late.”

Leslie had been struggling with fertility issues, so I know she had the best intentions. That’s why I listened and nodded politely and deftly attempted to change the subject. I just didn’t have the heart to reply with the thought that instantly formed in my brain: “Look, I know I’m only 36, but that’s not happening. I’d rather spend all that money on my next trip to Europe.”

Now that I’m in my mid-40s, I can say it proudly and hopefully without judgment from others: Motherhood is not for me.

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Behind the Seams Personal Style

The Best Sports Bras for Every Body in 2021

On some level, everyone wants to get fit and stay healthy—maybe never more than right now.

That’s why, at the top of 2021, we’re ready with our list of the most incredible sports bras that will be with you every step along the way to hitting your gym goals. Whether you’re an ultra marathoner, a newbie or anywhere in between, Bare Necessities has got the most supportive bras you’ll ever find that fit your body and your workout.

All you have to do is meet your match….

How to Choose the Best Sports Bra for You

Categories
Personal Style Pop Culture

New Year, New Trends

This week reminds us that it’s not really out with the old so much as in with the new, and you can keep all that “new year, new you” nonsense.

Apart from our deepest hopes for 2021—good health, more face-to-face time with family and friends—we’re just fine with who we are. Because we’re only human, however, we do appreciate having something a little different to look forward to. And if a vacation or even a night out is still asking too much, then at least we can browse new pajamas.

Our Bare Necessities buyers are looking forward to newness in bras, swim, sleep and activewear—so  maybe you are, too. Happy New Year, new trends!

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Personal Style

Semi-Annual Holiday Sale: Time to Stock Up

Two for you, one for me: When the holiday sales are too good to pass up, how can you not? Especially when it comes to bras and undies, which wear-and-tear faster than most other closet staples, it would be a mistake not to use this time to stockpile things you know you love and are going to need in the year ahead.

Luckily, this end-of-the-year lull is the one of the best times to replenish your seen-better-days Hanky Panky pairs, amass enough sports bras to slay those 2021 workout goals and start fresh with everyday essential bras and undies. From sleepwear to swimwear to sexy lingerie, it’s all marked way down to make room for the new, and it’s a great opportunity to take full advantage.

In other words, it’s time for the Semi-Annual Sale, baby—start your engine and read on for the inside track on the best deals at Bare Necessities.

Categories
Power Figures

Author Arianna Davis is Living Boldly Like Frida Kahlo

At 33, Arianna Davis has figured out a few things about going fearlessly in the direction of her dreams. That’s what happens when Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King take you under their wings, as they did her.

Now the digital director of OprahMag.com, Arianna has just published her first book, What Would Frida Do? A Guide to Living Boldly inspired by the life and work of the free-spirited artist Frida Kahlo.

Arianna gave Bare it All the inside scoop on what she’s learned about going one’s own way, both from researching her heroine and from doing just that herself.

Categories
Life with the Girls

On Ice

When she was dealing with her father’s death and her own dependency problems, becoming a mother felt increasingly out of reach for Abbe Wright. But she wasn’t about to let today’s pain get in the way of tomorrow’s plans. In this month’s “Life with the Girls,” find out how Abbe froze time for her future.line

Abbe is sober now and in a relationship

I awoke to the sound of my biological clock thudding in my ears sometime in my mid-thirties. I became aware of its steady, anxiety-inducing drumbeat slowly, groggily, as if coming out of a coma—at first, I could barely sense it and then, all of a sudden, its syncopation was all-consuming. While I hadn’t been in an actual coma, I had certainly missed a large chunk of my life.

My dad was diagnosed with cancer when I was 26. At the time, I was living in Manhattan, working at my dream job, dating a man who wasn’t entirely right for me, and partying—spending most nights mixing alcohol with a cocktail of uppers and downers, eager to achieve that perfect night-out balance of not getting too drunk, while also not remembering the morning after. I’d envisioned this big life for myself, and here I was living it—having achieved it through a blend of blind ambition and dumb luck, fueled by youthful energy and lots of booze.

But when my dad got sick, everything changed. His illness gripped him quickly and, almost immediately, it was Capital-B Bad. For four years, he was in and out of the hospital, eager to try things like a bone marrow transplant, which, while promising to extend his life, nearly killed him in the process. He achieved remission a few times, but it always came back.

I was no longer living that carefree life. I would work all week, barely able to focus, then take the 6:32 PM train to Philadelphia on Friday nights. My weekends went from day drinking with friends to sitting beside my dad’s hospital bed, encouraging him to eat something, anything. Watching a parent die slowly feels like your own death by a thousand paper cuts. You’re constantly worried that the conversation you just had will be the last, that he’ll be gone before you see him again. The fear and anxiety wrap around your throat; it’s hard to remember what life felt like before you were choked by it.

Categories
Personal Style Relationships

Layers for Lounging: Stay Home, Stay Warm With the Best Sleepwear for Winter 2020

December is never not about bundling up, but that goes triple for this year. We’re prepared to show 2020 the door by chilling at home the rest of the month. Literally all we need is Netflix, wine and takeout.

With winter starting, now’s the time to layer on a throw blanket, light a fire (or turn on your light therapy), spike the tea, and dress accordingly. Especially if winter isn’t your favorite season, it’s surprisingly happy-making to dip into your pajama drawer and emerge with something velvet or flannel or chenille. Low temps and low moods don’t stand a chance against Bare Necessities sleepwear buyer Krista Molinaro’s warm and fuzzy day-to-night picks.

When the trends collide with incredible textures like these, the result is a do-nothing wardrobe to get excited about…even if you and the UPS delivery person are the only ones who see it.

Categories
Personal Style Pop Culture

The Ultimate Holiday Gift Guide

Welcome to the most wonderful, stressful time of the year: that go, go, go crunch between Thanksgiving and the holidays. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that there’s something to be said for dialing back the drama and focusing entirely on the ones who matter most.

That’s where this post comes into play.

Our buyers at Bare Necessities compiled the ultimate holiday gift guide so that you can divvy up your entire list of loved ones by key category: excellent pajamas for nighttime, cozy stay-home staples, for day small yet mighty stocking stuffers, and everybody’s all-time favorite, Uggs.

This way, you can spoil your recipients and incur fewer deadline-induced panic attacks than any year in recent memory. Cheers to that!