Product Description

It's the real thing. It's about getting your life together. It's about looking damn fine. It's about man handling. It's about the casa question. About solitude. About stain removal. Whether you're a young woman just out of school and starting a career or a harriedly successful thirty-something, if you're still wasting time looking for stockings that match or struggling to keep on top of credit card bills, you need help. And not a glossy monthly's unattainable idea of help, but the stuff that works--the nuts and bolts.

Anna Johnson's Three Black Skirts is the book that delivers. In a voice that's knowing, smart, hip and funny--and with the author's own retro illustrations to match--Ms. Johnson cuts right to the core of the chaos that passes for life today and shows how to find order, balance, fulfillment. She covers it all: health, dating, career moves, finances, entertaining, body image, sex, and, of course, the indispensability of owning three black skirts. She offers the twenty basics for money management, and three keys for shopaholics to gain control over their passion. A workshop to build better food habits. Ten ways to get to sleep. Dress codes to the major cities. A Schmoozer's Guide to Compliments. Principles of Modern Courtship. And everything in between, from an extensive stain removal chart to eleven ideas for reawakening your spiritual life.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #336238 in Books
• Published on: 2000-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

From the Back Cover
Balance, Strength, Well-Being and a Killer Wardrobe

FEATURING:

THE MAXIMS OF CHIC

16 MONEY RULES

GRACE UNDER PRESSURE ENTERTAINING

MOOK MANAGEMENT

LOVE THE 15 MYTHS

BODY IMAGE BOOSTERS

MEDITATION, YOGA, RETREATS, AND FINDING THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Itís about solitude. Itís about stain removal. Itís about beauty, and what to do when feeling blue. Itís about attitude and atomizers, stock funds and stockings that match. Itís about life your life and how to get it together.

In a smart, funny, and refreshingly down to earth survival guide, Anna Johnson covers it all: health, dating money, career moves, style, sex, nutrition, responsibility, home dEcor, body image, friendship. And, of course, the indispensability of owning three black skirts one to seduce, one to succeed, one to slob out in. What else is there?

AUTHORBIO: Anna Johnson has written for Elle, Vanity Fair, Vogue UK and Australia, Conde Nast Traveler, and Marie Claire Lifestyle. Sheís a correspondent for Foxtelís program By Design. Born in London, she currently divides her time between New York City and Sydney, Australia.

About the Author
Anna Johnson started her career at nineteen as a journalist with Stiletto magazine. She writes for Vogue Australia, Vogue UK, Condé Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair, and Elle. Currently she's dividing her time between Sydney and New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION

Self-help books tell you how to live. I can't do that. I've got a diet built on raw watercress, strawberry ice cream, oolong tea, and

Chinese noodle-bar soups of ambiguous stock. I don't own three black skirts, only two. I can't drive a car. By the time this book is published, I will buy an ironing board, stop using a blue straw beach

bag as an attachª case, and finally cut my credit card in two. Let me be the first to admit that we teach what we need to learn. I wrote

this book not because I'm spiffingly together and pregnant with worldly wisdom, but because I want to be more relaxed, organized, and

socially useful. Actually, I just want to get to yoga once a week and remember to floss.

The nagging feeling of always being a little behind becomes a life state. It's often the petty details that clog the wheels of your chariot: a broken sandal strap, an old debt you can't shift, a receipt you can't find the night before filing your taxes, the belief that you look hideous in jeans, or a forgotten birthday. Gradually little glitches start to sculpt your world and, more insidiously still, your delicate sense of self.

When your life is messy it's easy to feel that the hand of

destiny is shuffling you to the back of the class, doomed to the dunce's corner with the pencil suckers and the self-tattooed delinquents. And the frenzied pace of the way we live does nothing

to allay our own (perceived) inadequacies. How does any woman get ahead when the stakes are so high? Beating beneath the skin of our

lives is an unwritten, but very blatant, timetable. It is a timetable for study, for work, for shopping, for saving and planning and love

and babies and gym and e-mails and housework and loans and eye-wrinkle creams and relatives and divorce and patching up and affairs and vitamin supplements and car registration and Christmas

dinners and all the damn rest. Given what's expected of us, life starts to feel like a succession of high jumps with new aspirations slapped down in front of us before we've cleared the first.

As a result, most of us are just coping, barely scraping by with enough time to commune with ourselves let alone make a deep connection with other people. No wonder we "forget" to have kids or

learn a language or join an organization we admire; we also "forget" to take pride in small victories or take proper stock of our milestones or even just to breathe. Hopefully this

book can help you regain a sense of balance and give you the strength nd spark to repair and replenish the parts of your life that are so often overlooked-your spirit, your self-esteem, your secret life and

hidden talents, your dreams, your financial independence, your creative soul.

Given a limited time frame and very limited experience in some areas (I'm not a mother, a runner, or much of a saver), I've done my best

to address some basic life skills and employed several "experts" on

the subjects I wasn't fit to tackle. My role models were girlfriends with guts. Kristyna, who would rather hand-cement a driveway than

watch daytime TV. Emma, who taught herself how to replace a car engine, in heels. Kate, who drove across the United States alone (without a radio!). Karen, who commutes two hours a day to teach the

kids of immigrant families. Tina, who sings her sons to sleep with a ukelele. Jessica, who donated the royalties from her bestseller to a charity she loves. Margaret, who thinks nothing of organizing major

environmental rallies at age seventy plus. I'm moved by women who approach life with that rare mix of independent thought, constructive

action, common sense, and madness. The spirit that

animates this outlook is more a matter of discipline than magic. It takes a lot of willpower to make changes to your life, to stick to a

goal and be true to your ideals. Sometimes it even feels a little boring. I know, because I'm a lazy dreamer. This book was born,

essentially, out of sloth. Inertia drove me to act. An inability to stick to a relaxation program, manage money, or even keep simple

promises led to incredible frustration. To escape from the valley of the flakes I found simple answers to complex life problems. I stopped saying yes when I meant no, I tried to get up earlier, I established

routines, and, even if I broke them, I attempted to make every day count-be it shifting debt or shaking my rump.

Living with a flaming sense of purpose doesn't apply to everything, of course. Hair, bosses, and love remain unpredictable. Especially love. Applying a five-year plan to relationships or trying to force romance like a bulb out of hard earth is a waste of precious energy. And there's so much misinformation out there when it comes to relationships. Most of it is thinly disguised propaganda urging women to be decorative, toe the line, and marry (rich). Most of it tells us to put our passion and

sacred fire into looking happier, younger, and dumber than we are to attract the love who will make us whole. Sheesh! That's precisely the

reason why marriage and weddings have been omitted from this book. I hate to burst the bubble, but the aim of getting order into your life isn't to snare a husband. The aim is to be fulfilled and focused, to

be enough in your own right, and to learn when to get out of your own way in order to get on with it. If this book can rouse you to sew on

a loose button, paint your kitchen violet, open a savings account, call up a long-lost friend, help start a community garden, or even

just clean your room-I'll be happy.

Customer Reviews

Good book
Fun book with lots of advice and information for women. There are tips about decorating you home, makeup, and romance, plus other topics. Great read!

Couldn't live without it!
This book is a must have for every girl over 18. Best advice, great ideas and definitely the road book to life for us!

So Much More
This little book is so much more than a how-to-dress manual. Style is about so much more than clothing. I knew when I read through the Acknowledgements section in the preface for this book that it was different - how could it not be when the author is thankful to Thich Nhat Hanh, Leonard Cohen, and Tom Waits among others?

I found so much inspiration to gently, effectively love myself right now in this book's first chapter that I could hardly put it down, but had to. It seemed as if each paragraph contained the author's weighty philosophy of treating yourself with respect in the way you eat, exercise, dress, love, and carry yourself through each day. I had to digest it all slowly and with savor. I could hardly wait to purchase copies for various friends and relatives! Chapters include the topics of Well-Being, Style, Life Skills, Career, Mood Management, Emotional Rescue, Spirit, and Giving Back. As an over fifty year old woman, I wish I could have gotten hold of this book while I was in high school. It could've saved me a LOT of time, effort, and grief. As of today, I find it refreshingly candid, full of humor and great tips for getting the most out of life and how to avoid common mistakes in self perception, finances, buying clothing, living with dignity, and seeing the humor in some of our situations instead of taking ourselves so seriously. It has a feminist slant, believe it or not, in wanting each of us to appreciate who we are and value ourselves as pearls beyond price. Another book I really appreciated reading for the fun of it and some great tips was The Bombshell Manual of Style by Laren Stoner.