Fashion's Night Out in Georgetown

Two patterned pretties: Mona Lavinia and Waverly of Pich & Roor

Last Thursday I checked out Fashion's Night Out in Georgetown and it was pretty darn cool. I ran into a few new friends, ate several mini cupcakes (thank you DC Scout and CUSP!), drank free bubbly, and sweated my way through the Brightest Young Things takeover of Dean and Deluca, but the most exciting moment of the evening (for me) was discovering a new label to add to my made in the USA collection:
Milly!

I've always loved their dresses, so of course I was super happy to see "made in USA" on the tags of each Milly dress I found in CUSP. Please ignore the shoes-- due to FNO, there were major dressing room lines, so I just wore what I had on instead of hunting and waiting to try on black ankle boots, for example, or a black spike heel.

But back to Milly. It's official: I am in LOVE with this dress for fall and winter.  I'm a big fan of sheath silhouettes, and an even bigger fan of badassical touches like black leather to toughen up a dress. I'm also a sucker for anything that looks even remotely sci-fi, so this dress is a slam dunk for me. It's available online from CUSP right now-- for $395 it can be yours.

Last but certainly not least: the FNO outfit. A big thank you to Refinery29 for including me in their "Album of Awesome: So-Rad Party Pics from Fashion's Night Out."  I wore a dress purchased used from Secondi, and added an even fairer element by borrowing a few necklaces from a friend. You can't get much more eco-friendly than borrowing, ladies. The rest of my jewelry you've seen many times before:

• Green bracelet made of sustainable mango tree wood by Mango Tree (purchased from CUSP)
• Woven bracelet made from fallen palm fronds before my eyes in Kauai, similar available from 10,000 Villages
• The braided gold-painted bracelet is handmade from copper wire and was purchased in NYC from a street vendor near Washington Square Park.
• The jacket and shoes are not the fairest of the fair, so we won't discuss from whence they came, but that jacket is key for fall-- when in doubt, throw on a waxed canvas jacket and boom, fall transition.

If you attended FNO somewhere else in the big ole' USA, I hope you had fun, too, and I hope you asked your favorite designers: "Do you manufacture any of your pieces in the USA or use fair trade labor?" Just asking makes a difference, I promise. The more times they hear that kind of question from a customer, the more they will want to be able to say "yes!"