14-Day Makeover Challenge: Fashion

Week 1: What’s better than getting a wardrobe makeover? Not much if you ask us. It's like an exhilarating day shopping with your own personal stylist. So when our social media specialist, Nicole, said she was ready to punch up her wardrobe with colorful, new styles, we got right to work and asked for her three main goals.

1. Leave her all-black comfort zone for colorful pieces
2. Be more adventurous with cuts and styles
3. Update her work wardrobe, taking it from Florida-beach to New York-chic

To start, Nicole told us what she likes (A-line dresses, heels, and patterns) and what she doesn't (florals, skirts, and purses) and showed us some inspiration for her new look with magazine tear-outs. We then invited celebrity stylist and accessories designer Ariela Suster, founder of the Sequence Collection, to our Soho office for an afternoon of mixing, matching, and styling.

With a rack full of spring clothes from ideeli and a few of Nicole's favorite pieces from her own closet, Ariela put together three new looks.

Casual Summer Friday
Nicole’s own worn (but loved) jeans are the base of this casual-sophisticated look. A blouse with a bright, graphic print adds color, while a black blazer creates a streamlined polish. To step it up, Ariela chooses a pair of wedges that not only add a pop of blue, echoing Nicole's printed top, but also some welcome height to Nicole's 5'3" frame.

Presentation Perfect
A sunny yellow, A-line dress takes Nicole's look (and color) up a notch. Paired with the same versatile black blazer and wedges, Nicole’s ready for business. She looks summery, professional, and feminine.

Right on Time
This classic coat in crimson has it all: the sophisticated silhouette you’d expect of a trench and a modern pop of color Nicole wants. So whether she’s strutting down the street or walking into work, this coat makes a chic statement.

Check back tomorrow for a Q&A (plus some great styling tips) with Ariela Suster — and next Wednesday 4/18 to see how Nicole’s doing, one week in, as she incorporates a new piece into her look every day of the challenge. Want to learn more about the ideeli 14-Day Makeover Challenge? Click here.

You can also follow our 14-Day Makeover Challenge for hair and healthy eating.

Hair Makeover: Meet the Experts

There's nothing quite like just-from-the-salon hair. It's light and shiny, and it smells so good! But sooner or later, you have to wash and style it on your own, which — if you're like us — is when all good hair intentions comes to an end. But now we’ve got professional help!

Yesterday we launched our 14-Day Makeover Challenge for hair and introduced you to Jessica, an ideeli employee who turned her dark-blond locks into head-turning coppery red waves, thanks to two experts at the Ted Gibson salon in NYC. We sat down with Jessica's colorist and stylist, Ronny and Jill, not only to learn how to get our own dream cut and color, but also to get a few styling tips for after the post-salon glow washes out. First up, Ronny tells us how to get the best hair color — and keep it.

Ronny's Coloring Tips
Q: What’s the best way to go about picking a new hair color?
A. Keep your natural hair color in mind and look at how far this new shade is from that. Then think about the level of maintenance you're willing to commit to, and if you have gray or not (as that means more trips to the salon for touch-ups). The further you get away from your natural color, the more upkeep you’ll have.

Q: What should you never do when coloring hair?
A. Never color it at home. There are so many things that can easily go wrong. Box colors tend to be a shade (or two) darker than the actual dye is. If you must color your hair at home, only do your roots.

Q: What's special about Iona, the hair-color line you used for Jessica's makeover?
A. It's by L'Oreal, and it's the first hair-color line that doesn’t have ammonia in it — you can barely smell it! Iona doesn't open up the hair cuticles as much as ammonia-based dyes, so your hair won’t fade as easily.

Q: What hair color trend is not going anywhere anytime soon?
A. Ombré. I thought it was trend, but it's so easy to maintain, because it's darker on the top and lighter on the bottom.

Jill's Styling Tips
Q: How do you get the haircut you want when you go to a salon? Are photos really useful?
A. It's all about what the client wants to feel. When people describe what they’re looking for, what they're really telling me is how they want to feel afterward. As for photos, celebrity references are wonderful. Even if you have a different hair texture, I can tell what you're feeling — there's is no way to misinterpret what you want!

Q: What are good ways to get that just-from-the-salon feel at home?
A. A new haircut is all about sleekness, scent, and feel, so anything you can do to play up one of these three things will help. Use pomade and piece your hair out. That’s like a foolproof way to get texture — you can scrunch it out.

Q: You cut Jessica's hair shorter in the back and longer in the front — what does that do?
A. Narrower faces should always get more layers, while wider ones should have less (especially around the face). If you do have a wider face, longer, more-angled layers are better.

Q: What's a common misconception about styling products?
A. That a flat iron will fry your hair. Yes, it will if you don't protect it! Use any kind of styling product — a cream, smoothing serum, or a heat-protecting spray. They work as a lubricant or sheath, safeguarding your hair from the iron's extreme heat.

Learn more about our 14-Day Makeover Challenge and our healthy-eating makeover. Check back next Wednesday (4/11) to see how Jessica is maintaining her shiny new locks.

14-Day Makeover Challenge: Healthy Eating

Week Two: One week down, one to go! When we left off with Kirsten last week, she was armed with newfound nutrition knowledge and on her way to the grocery store to stock up on fresh produce. Now she's at the halfway point of our 14-Day Makeover Series: What's working? What's not? Did she survive the food cleanse? Let’s see...

After meeting with Keri Glassman, founder of Nutritious Life, last week Kirsten started a three-day, whole-food cleanse from Glassman's Slim Calm Sexy Diet. It meant lots of vegetables, just a little bit of fruit, and absolutely no processed foods. How'd Kirsten fare? Day one, she fought off coffee cravings, but by day two she was surprised by how high her energy level was — sans caffeine. After day three, she was sold on Glassman's cleanse. Here's what she had to say:

"It was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. I was eating constantly, was hardly ever hungry, and my energy increased. Coming off of the cleanse, I incorporated new healthy foods in addition to sticking to some semblance of the way I’d been eating—since I liked how I felt so much."

Kirsten's been off the cleanse for five days. She's still eating very healthy, but sticking to her new routine is getting tougher. What’s the hardest part? Resisting takeout at work when co-workers pull out delivery menus. Limiting coffee to a single cup per day, minus the Splenda (she bid all artificial sweeteners adieu). And maintaining her willpower during nights out with friends when she made her one ‐ and only — slip.

Despite the abundance of temptations, there've been several refreshing discoveries. Kirsten's thrilled by what a cheap snack fresh fruit makes and is quickly becoming a smoothie addict with her new CuisineArt blender — score your own, plus more of her favorites, next Tuesday (4/10) during our Inside ideeli Makeover sale. Meanwhile, recipes from Glassman's Slim Calm Sexy Diet are now staples in Kirsten's diet (two egg whites mixed with one whole egg in the morning, cucumber with rice vinegar in the afternoon). And one of her favorite new recipes is Slim Slaw — a mix of cabbage, almonds, rice vinegar, and dijon mustard — which is easy to make, thanks to her new salad chopper.

Tune in next Wednesday to see how far Kirsten's come in two weeks with the final post of our healthy-eating challenge. Learn more about our 14-Day Makeover Series, and check out our latest challenge — hair — where one ideeli employee got a bold, new cut and color at a top NYC salon.

14-Day Makeover Challenge: Hair

Week 1: The haircut and color is always the real reveal in a makeover. Good ones brighten the face and balance its shape, allowing all the best features to stand out. Ready to tame her mane, our member specialist, Jessica, put her three main goals into writing:

1. Find the perfect cut, color, and style for her face shape, hair type, and personality
2. Get her hair as healthy as possible
3. Experiment with ways to wear her new style (and, hopefully, find a few foolproof 'dos to stand up to the summer humidity)

To help Jessica jump-start her new look, we hooked her up with a visit to the NYC salon of beloved celebrity stylist Ted Gibson, where two of his expert stylists set out to transform her long, fine locks into voluminous, red waves.

Jessica arrived at the salon with a folder full of inspiration — from photos of Jennifer Aniston's beachy waves to magazine tear-outs of Christina Hendricks's fiery red locks. Within minutes, expert colorist Ronny deemed Aniston's sun-kissed color too safe. (It is a makeover, after all!) A few pep talks later, and Jessica is on board for trying a coppery red shade. But she'll keep the length fairly long, because — makeover or not — it's best, says her stylist Jill, to stick to one major change at a time.

With the cut and color finished, Jessica and her duo of stylists dove right in to the next challenge, which was: what do I do with my hair now? They experimented with new styles — up, down, curled, and straightened — so that Jessica now has an arsenal of go-to hair tricks to turn to during her morning dash. And to help with the transformation, we’ve supplied her with some of ideeli's best-selling hair products and tools, which she'll test-drive and tell us all about over the next two weeks.

Check back tomorrow for a Q&A with Ted Gibson colorist Ronny and stylist Jill — and next Wednesday 4/ 11 to see how Jessica’s doing, one week into her hair challenge. Want to learn more about the ideeli 14-Day Makeover Challenge? Click here.

You can also follow our 14-Day Makeover Challenge: Healthy Eating. Click here.

Healthy Eating: Meet the Expert

Changing a habit is hard work, especially when it comes to eating well. That’s why we enlisted nutrition expert Keri Glassman — founder and president of New York-based Nutritious Life and author of Slim Calm Sexy Diet, The O2 Diet, and The Snack Factor Diet — to give our 14-day Makeover Challenge participant, Kirsten, all the ingredients she needs to reach her goals. (Click here, to learn more about Kirsten.)

We sat down with Glassman to talk about jump-starting our own nutrition makeovers. Here’s what we learned.

Q: You talk a lot about reaching a “calm place” with food, what does that mean?
A. Calming down in regards to your relationship with food will ultimately cause you to decrease overall stress and eliminate excess weight. It’s what I call ‘eating empowered,’ and it’s all about knowing ‘I can have that’ and getting away from ‘I can’t have that.’

Q: You describe your method as a “whole person” approach. Since “whole” is a word that’s thrown around a lot in the world of nutrition, how do you define it?
A. I always say: ‘whole with a [capital] W!’ This is because I approach nutrition by looking at a person’s WHOLE life. If someone is crazy stressed, not sleeping, or has no order in her kitchen, it can be nearly impossible to implement even the best nutrition plan.

Q: A big part of your program is adhering to what you call “the 8 pillars of nutrition” — what are they?
A. It’s not just about diet; it’s about getting adequate hydration, exercise, managing stress, getting sufficient sleep, pampering yourself, being aware of ‘your’ world, and even having a healthy sex life. You don't have to be conquering all of these pillars all of the time, but you should be focusing on as many as you can. It will not only make you feel better, but it will also help you stay consistent with your overall healthy lifestyle and lose weight for the long haul.

Q: How should people prepare before they change their eating habits?
A. For many people, I start with switching up the way they hydrate (taking out soda, upping water intake, adding in green tea). Then we set up an exercise routine and figure out one thing daily that they can do for themselves to help decrease stress and provide happiness.

Q: If a person can only make one change, what’s the best place to start?
A. The biggest initial change I like to see is the elimination of added sugars and artificial sweeteners and upping the intake of veggies (especially greens at lunch and dinner). These sweeteners alter your perception of food, making it very difficult to decrease sweet cravings.