Changes Coming for Fashion Belle

Fashion Belle - Modest Clothing

This website was started in summer of 2010 as a foundation for publishing the author's own line of sewing patterns for women. However, the site itself took so much time to develop and maintain that the goal of pattern publishing kept getting pushed farther into the future. Then life and job changes including an interstate move have dramatically reduced the number of hours available for the author to devote to the editorial sections of this site. Trying to decide what to change going forward is a challenge, since the modest clothing reviews and other resource sections of this site have been so popular! New companies and blogs are emerging all the time and old ones are going away. Staying on top of all those changes for a non-profit directory service requires a lot of time, but it does seem to be appreciated among readers. The most difficult section to stay current with has been the blog section, so it is likely that this section may be going away in future versions of this site.

Another problem going forward related to focusing on modesty as a component of style is the ground swell of opposition to groups, mostly religious ones, that promote what some women view to be inconsistent standards of modesty or standards that are purported to be based on the Bible but are in fact extra-biblical interpretations of some verses. Yes, the Bible does teach modesty in dress! However, the application of those teachings is open to variation. The debate is tiresome, and while the beautiful, technically correct patterns that are in line to be published here eventually will be modest to a degree, it is tiresome to worry about whether one group or another judges the designs to fit in with standards "worthy" of the label of modest. No firm decision has been made currently, but it is possible that future versions of this site may shift somewhat away from modesty as a focus into simply letting the designs speak for themselves.

This site really is more about sewing, fabric and patternmaking than anything else, and it is part of the plan to veer more toward those topics in the future. Hopefully by summer 2016 you'll see these changes in place with the upgrade of the entire site to the new, Drupal 8 platform.