Pass it on, ladies.

Please allow me a brief digression from fashion critique for this public service announcement. Ladies, it is of the utmost importance, so please pay attention.

Two Thursdays ago, while on a first date at the Ritz in Georgetown, a couch-ful of ladies had my waiter deliver to me a note and a second Kir Royale after my companion excused himself from the table to take not his first, not his second but his third non-emergency 10+ minute phone call in the space of an hour.

The first hour, mind you.

The note read, "He doesn't deserve you. Leave now. We speak from experience."

He didn't. I didn't. And they did.

Tonight, while enjoying the 75-degree breeze, the onion loaf and a single cut of black-and-blue filet on the Morton's downtown terrace, R and I had the displeasure of sitting next to a young couple, the male half of which spent the better part of the evening booring into his bluetooth earpiece, save for the three minutes he tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of a guy on the opposite side of ConnAve who he was convinced was a former frat brother at Tulane. After his "NATHAN! Yo, dude, NATHAN! Up here! UP HERE!" episode, it got to the point where we weren't even annoyed when he guffawed about how much "frickin' Chivas Regal" he had left over from last weekend's dinner party, we were just stunned his much more attractive, much more polite (she kept shooting everyone in their vicinity "I'm so sorry" glances) companion was still sitting in her seat, calmly nursing her glass of Cab Sauv and doing her best to look occupied with her text logs.

"I'm going to have to pass the note forward," I thought to myself, "I just have to."

And so on our way out, I gave our waiter the proper instructions and handed him a note neatly cursived with those same 10 words.

Ladies, don't put up with it. Don't let your fellow DC sisters put up with it, either. Pass it on.

Cinderella shoes are never okay

I don't care if Svetlana at the Watergate Salon & Spa pedicured and paraffin-ed your feet 10 minutes ago, it is never okay to introduce see-through shoes to any situation outside of "fantasy night Thursdays."

And yes, frizzy-haired woman in the floral explosion slithering vulgarly out of your equally vulgar candy apple red SLK convertible with matching interior this morning outside of the 1140 ConnAve parking garage, if it wasn't made clear to you when you bought those at the Deja Vu gift shop, that rule extends to the office.

In all fairness, I know what she was thinking, and she did have her style-conscious cap on when she decided to wear her plastic slides. She was clearly looking for a muted shoe to offset the multi-patterned, painfully clashing color vomit on her skirt and blouse, but unfortunately, all she ended up doing was dig herself deeper and deeper into trailer-park-stripper-who-won-the-lottery-and-bought-herself-a-'spensive-car territory.

I've seen all the "What's hip for Spring 2007" features in InStyle, People, even my beloved Marie Claire -- I know translucent and transparent accessories - including shoes - are supposedly very "in" this season, but I just can't bring myself to accept the chunky lucite bangles and see-through tote bag looks. In all honesty, I think indulging in this trend even a little bit makes a woman look adolescent, and we all know that aside from wicked fast metabolisms, grades that don't count and not yet having to deal with men who treat you like discarded property, there is very little about the 10-13 year old experience worth re-living.

Okay, fine, I only wrote that because I know I'm supposed to think that way. Frankly, I loved middle school and still get nostalgic when I think about all the potentially life-ruining taunts my friends and I doled out to the less fortunate who crossed our already body-conscious, boy-crazy paths. Heavens no, I don't mean financially less fortunate, that would be cruel, I just mean those who were, in our opinions, lacking in the areas of physical beauty, athletic prowess and academic achievement. You know, the small stuff.

But anyway, back to the woman with the Cinderella slippers.

My first piece of advice would be to march her slight self up to Betsy Fisher and shed either the top or bottom and let Anne help her select a solid counterpart in a sophisticated cut from Twinkle by Wenlan, Trina Turk or DVF in a muted color. And "muted," by the way, does not mean those lime green cropped trousers she got from Calypso for last year's cruise. As for shoes, on a day like today, I would recommend being as playful as possible while still respecting the boundaries of professional dress-code. My two non-negotiable rules when it comes to work shoes are (1) there can be at most a two-toe exposure and (2) there can be only one showpiece quality (i.e. color, silhouette, heel-height) per shoe.

As for her "hair," judging from the tremendous amount of damage I saw even without my glasses, I think girlfriend should walk a block down L Street to the Men's Grooming Lounge, get her Britney on and just start over.

It's been a while since I've done a post like this. Feels good to reconnect with my bread-and-butter issue of on-the-street style critique.