Suzi Grgurich is a wardrobe stylist living in Los Angeles. Suzi has worked for Miss Sixty, Style Network, E! Entertainment, People Style Watch, and The Hollywood Reporter. Suzi was the stylist behind Verily’s June/July Swimwear spread and Verily’s teaser issue. 

Q: What was it like working with Verily Magazine on two of our style feature photo shoots?

A: Amazing! I love making women feel great and Verily celebrates women and their lives with a positivity that few magazines have yet to accomplish. The women who are featured in Verily are beautiful on the inside and out, and the clothes radiate that glow!

Q: How did you get started in styling?

A: I got my start in styling at a sports agency. I represented the NBA, styling for the players and their wives. When I graduated from the Fashion Institute, I broke out on my own and began a personal shopping business and making contacts in LA as I went along. Somehow it all fell into place, and today I still work with some of my amazing personal styling clients.

Q:Who or what has been the most influential in your styling work?

A: My mom had a major influence on my style. I didn’t realize this until a few years ago, but she has amazing style and taste! We don’t live in the same city, but we end up buying half of the same things! I also love the direction that Jenna Lyons has taken JCrew and the aesthetic from the 70′s. I love mixing patterns and fashions, and enjoy bringing that free-spirit in my work. Fashion should always be playful and fun, you should look at a photoshoot and want to take part in it– living it and having fun with the idea of it.

Q: What are some tips for developing personal style?

A: Confidence in yourself is the first step. After embracing your body and unique look, I think personal style becomes second nature. I always encourage women to find things that make them feel confident! If you love a trend, work it– but if it isn’t right for you, move on. Developing personal style can take years, and I think it changes as we age or enter different stages of life.

Q: What is one essential thing every woman should know when it comes to style?

A: Dress for your body! Get to know what styles flatter your unique silhouette and what styles complement the features you love about yourself! Once you find these great cuts, you can always bring a trend of the moment into your wardrobe through accessories.

Q: What summer looks are you excited to rock this season?

I am so excited to wear sorbet and pastel color leathers. I just picked up a great peach leather top that is just beautiful. Also, I love the look of the shorts suit, especially in prints. Rocking the prints is a must!

Left: refinery29/Right: Rachel Roy S/S 2013

Photo by Shannon Lee Miller

Photo by Andrea Rose

Whether you are on a date, sitting across the table at a job interview, or a rubbing elbows with a stranger at a corporate fundraiser, your table manners speak volumes about your social skills and confidence level. When you are nervous it shows.

Here is the least you should know when it comes to sharing a meal:

1. At a business meal, men and women are responsible for seating themselves. On a date, as a polite courtesy, the man helps the woman with her chair, but at a business meal, men and women are gender neutral and each person seats themselves.

2. Watch your host. Before jumping into the bread basket or sweetening your iced tea, wait for the host of the table to lead the way. Generally, he or she will pick up the napkin and place it on his or her lap. Incidentally, once you place your napkin on your lap it won’t see the table again until the end of the meal when it is placed back on the table before departing.

3. Which is my water glass? An easy way to remember what goes where is B-M-W. Your Bread plate is always on the left, your Meal will be in the middle, and your Water glass will be on the right side of the place setting.

4. Order smart. Stay away from messy foods like spaghetti, corn on the cob, ribs, pizza, and hard to eat or hold items. Cherry tomatoes will always spray the person sitting next to you – skip it when eating your salad.

5. Your cell phone should not be visible anywhere at the table. If you want to blow the job interview, show up holding your cell phone. If you want to discourage your date, do the same. Your full attention should be on the person sitting across from you, rather than an incoming call or text message. It’s just too tempting to ignore the ring or buzz of your smart phone so a better option is to turn it completely off.

6. Never leave a spoon in the soup bowl. Between bites, place your spoon on the plate, behind and beneath the soup bowl. Spoon the soup away from your body before bringing the soup to your mouth.

7. Cut only one piece of food at a time, pace yourself and put your utensils down between bites. Use the proper form of “Resting” and “Finished”. It doesn’t matter if your server doesn’t recognize the Rest/Finish signal, you will appear more composed and your plate won’t look as if it has been bulldozed with stray cutlery.

8. Sneeze and cough into your left shoulder. Never use your napkin as a tissue, and sneezing into the crook of your arm is reserved for school children. Turn your head left and use your left hand to shield your mouth when you cough or sneeze at the table. If you must blow your nose, excuse yourself and take care of the issue away from your table guests.

9. Salt and pepper travel together. Bread, salt, pepper, butter and other food items are passed to the right, counterclockwise.

This information is just the very basics and the more knowledge you gain the more power and control you will show when it comes to looking and feeling your best at the table.

Bon appetit!

(infographic source: Stock Xchng )

( title photo by Steffen Sinzinger )
Diane Gottsman is a national etiquette and modern manners expert and the owner of The Protocol School of Texas.

Photo by Shannon Lee Miller

America has recently been graced with a visit from the very embodiment of cheer and goodwill. Our visitor’s rosy cheeks are accompanied by a jovial disposition, he has a special affection for children all over the world, and sends woman into a frenzy. No, our guest is not Santa Claus–I’m talking about His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of Wales (but the girls just call him Harry).

Prince Harry’s visit has been a spectacle of international goodwill. Harry has done everything from shake hands with our politicians to play baseball with our children.  But I am worried that he may have gotten the wrong impression of American women. It seems like very woman he locks eyes with has a panic attack or breaks down in tears. We don’t drop what we are doing and break into tears or intense ogling when confronted with every man with a British accent–just princes.

Like most American women, I grew up on a steady intake of fairy tales and a sometimes over-active imagination. I could sit and daydream for hours about the prince who would sweep me off my feet and save me from the drudgery of my ordinary life. With my Prince Charming, there would never be a dull moment. I would be kidnapped daily, saved by my Prince, and returned to the castle before dinner.

So I can relate to the women who gaze into Prince Harry’s beady blue eyes, in search of the man from her dreams. But other than the title — and maybe the part about living in a castle–how many of the qualities that make up our fairytale daydreams can actually be found?

We know Prince Harry enlisted in the British army and fought in Afghanistan; Apparently he enjoys playing billiards, in the nude, and rugby with his clothes on; he seems to have displayed some diligence in raising money for an orphanage in Lesotho. But really, I can’t say I know much more than that. Still, women persistently fill in the gaps in their royal fantasies and then wish it into a living reality.

Perhaps my heart has gone all stale and crunchy from too many years of princely deprivation, but this “royal bad boy with a heart of gold” shtick just doesn’t do it for me.  After all, it was never really my Prince Charming’s public conduct that attracted me; it was the way he conducted himself towards me that melted my heart.

Prince Harry is not the only man who gets this royal treatment in America. How often do we find ourselves swooning over the suspiciously white smiles of Hollywood men? The only interaction we have with these actors, are when they are in movies–being paid to be someone they are not. Yet, we hang their posters in our rooms and tell ourselves that their roles are reality.

The truth is, the prince from our daydreams was everything we could have hoped for in a man, and we knew this because we made him up in our own heads. But no matter what story we build for Prince Harry, or Ryan Gosling for that matter, we can’t turn him into our Prince Charming –and its probably not healthy to start planning our royal wedding.

Let’s forget the crown and go back to searching for what was actually attractive about our fairytale princes: a man of virtue who knows and loves us. No crown or royal lineage perhaps, but well worth waiting for.

(Photo byAndrea Rose) 

Verily‘s June/July issue features a 10 page one-piece swimwear spread – and before you dread viewing overly tan women lounging around in uncomfortable positions and even more uncomfortable suits – hold that thought!  You won’t catch those tired images in Verily.  We thought you might appreciate something different, something real, and had a blast shattering those old bikini-bodied stereotypes.

Think fun, relaxed, and beautiful; the way every woman wants to feel when she slips on a suit and hits the nearest body of water. Kassidy and Melissa, two plus-sized models (yes, plus!) from Natural Model Management in LA, embodied that very feeling for a care-free day at Venice Beach. Working with the likes of Suzi Grgurich, Trever Hoehne, Amy Clarke and Heidi Marie Garrett  - it took an incredibly talented dream team to make this unconventional shoot even possible.

Intentionally unconventional. We purposefully wanted to have healthy women in truly flattering swimwear that didn’t distract from who they are as women.

We can’t wait for you to see what lies inside the new Verily swimsuit spread – be sure to let us know what you think when you’re pool-side this summer keeping cool, care-free, and beautiful!

We have to say, J.Crew really impressed us this year with their line of one-piece swimwear, as the majority of suits we featured in the spread are them!  The vintage floral pattern up top is classic, and bright red and neon yellow number is on sale – score!

Photo by Tina Sosna

Photo by Shannon Lee Miller

Modern women are sister soldiers in a war against our weight, regardless of where the needle falls when we’re on that miniature stage we call the scale. When the battleground is our hips/bottoms/bellies/thighs, we know the drill. The mantra of “eat less, move more” is a Pavlovian response we recite on command when asked our battle plan. It’s not brain surgery.

But what if the brain is the battleground? What if our hips/bottoms/bellies/thighs are only excessive in the mirror of our mind? And what if that mirror talks back, and what if we can’t get it to shut up?

My mirror is broken, metaphorically speaking; my eyes cannot be trusted to tell me the truth. I live in a house of mirrors, never sure which reflection is accurate. I enter fitting rooms with the same jeans in five sizes because I cannot estimate what size I wear. I am forever engaged in a silent battle in my head over whether or not to lift the fork to my mouth, and when I do, I taste only shame.

Anorexia has been with me for most of my life. It was the mean monster in my mind that convinced me I was fat when I was three. It was the tyrannical voice in my head hissing insults throughout the already-awkward years of adolescence, calling me fat, clumsy, and inadequate. And it was the bully in my brain that turned on me as a teenager and forbade me to eat.

The disease has been a crutch, a companion, a coping mechanism, an excuse, a speed bump, a deceptive lover, an attractive abuser. It’s made part of my life a roller coaster ride of hospitals and treatment centers and sober living homes, the total of which adds up to several hundred thousand dollars in treatment costs. It has strained my friendships, derailed my career path, harmed my body, bruised my soul.

I’ve spent years both on the wagon and off. I’ve been sick, hospitalized, better, almost well, sick again, in treatment, better, etc. I’ve befriended amazing women—and a few young men— who share my struggle. I’ve loved them, fought with them, watched some of them get better, get well, get married, have children. I’ve watched others get sick, get sicker still, and die.

I myself have tried very hard to die over the course of my life, all the while believing I was trying to live. I’ve flirted with death like some young girls flirt with older men on the Internet, never aware how real the danger. If we lived under a system of justice wherein we got what we deserved, I would’ve died years ago. But, thanks to a merciful God and a body too hearty and stubborn to die, I’m here.

I had a hunch as a teen that I’d check out early, maybe by my mid-twenties, and leave others standing around shaking their heads and saying, “Such a shame.” It’s a heady, self-serving fantasy, really.

But it didn’t come true. I always seemed to get better in the nick of time, before my heart stopped or I stroked out or I swallowed every pill I had. Someone always spoke up or butted in or stormed out, bringing me to my senses—or at least to the dinner table. And I’m glad I made it here; it’s a pretty decent place to be, if not always comfortable. Because, while anorexia is never far behind me, a funny thing has happened over the years: I’ve fallen out of love with it.

Things have happened that have helped to screw my head on a little tighter. I am a mom. I am, for all intents and purposes, an adult. I have a house, a kid, a career. I have responsibilities, among them to advise others not to go where I went – and to warn those already there not to drop anchor.

And so long as I have life, I’ll gratefully devote it to that task.

(photo by Shannon Lee Miller)

Jena Morrow’s debut book, Hollow, chronicles her nearly three-decade-long battle with eating and body image issues. In addition to being a writer, speaker, and activist for eating disorder awareness and prevention, Jena works as the Alumnae Coordinator at Timberline Knolls in Lemont, IL, a premiere residential treatment center for women and girls battling eating disorders, substance abuse, mood disorders, self-injury, and PTSD.