About A Welcome Guest

“Beauty is everywhere a welcome guest.” – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Ready-to-wear or not, two sisters are taking on the newest fashions–some more wearable than others. One sister is practical, the other whimsical, and together they get you behind the scenes of international fashion, backstage with top models and into the cutting room with the hottest designers. It’s time to decide what you want in your closet and what you should leave on the rack.

About The Founders


Caitlin Andrews Caitlin has been publishing her writing since 2002, when she took up marathon running after her home in the Cayman Islands was destroyed by a hurricane. Her first column was for a newspaper, detailing that poorly-thought-out venture.In 2006, after developing a jewelry line and performing in her first opera in Rome, Caitlin moved to Italy to study as an opera singer, all the while writing monthly articles for an American magazine, describing her adventures as an American opera singer in Florence. In 2011 Caitlin was made Associate Fashion Editor of The Yak magazine in Asia. Now, together with her sister, a fellow beautiphile and musician, Caitlin launches A Welcome Guest, because there is an art to being a leading lady, and step one is looking the part. John Keats said that beauty is truth and truth beauty, and Caitlin is sure that truth, unlike daily life, requires long flowing dresses, diamonds and very cold Bombay Sapphire martinis.x Restrictive clothing overwhelms her with the urge to run in circles while waving her arms and doing deep knee bends. The idea of wearing tight trousers and a button down silk shirt makes her sweat, but accessories… ah yes… necklaces, rings, hats, wigs, bags, piercings, watches and bracelets are like chocolate sauce: they go with everything and you can never have too much. She is embarrassingly attracted to anything that sparkles, and she thinks it’s very important that beauty remain a noun. She wishes she could strike “beautiful” from the English language, because beauty wasn’t born a modifier. Beauty doesn’t describe or label. It just is.	Elizabeth Andrews Elizabeth graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after which she worked for a non-profit organization, then the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), and later a pharmaceutical company—the best part of which was wearing pencil skirts and four-inch pumps.Having a stronger opinion about fashion than pharmaceuticals, she started A Welcome Guest to search for what is beautiful in the world and present it through your computer screen. She thinks music is one of the ultimate beauties, as is the ocean, and her closet is a testament to that, with a disproportionate amount of space devoted to concert-black attire and bikinis. Elizabeth has been playing violin since the age of 3, when the privilege of rehearsing in her mother’s high heels was the only perk that persuaded her to practice. But when she became a professional musician in high school, she discovered that playing for weddings, funerals and parties could easily fund her online shopping habit, so she hereby apologizes to her mother for all the whining. She is also a PADI scuba diving instructor and overall water-sports enthusiast, having grown up in coastal North Carolina with friends who thought it odd she enjoyed spending time reading fashion blogs, “window-shopping” online and wandering, penniless, through designer boutiques. There has always been a large emphasis on fashion in Elizabeth’s life, and by the time she was 4, her independent sense of style was already in full bloom. Try as they might, no one could persuade her to wear anything apart from a single pair of very faded Beauty and the Beast leggings. It had been love at first sight. Bright purple and fabulous, she wore those Disney stretch pants home from the store, and after six months of everyday wear, (her mother actually had to wash them each night as Elizabeth slept) they were a rather gray-ish pink. Regardless, they were the only things Elizabeth would wear—even to church. A few years later, all grown up and in elementary school, she exchanged the cartoon leggings for a red and black polka dotted dress and pair of black patent leather shoes, not caring a lick that it wasn’t a P.E.-appropriate outfit. She bloodied her knees during the shuttle run after tripping over those gorgeous shoes, but Elizabeth still received presidential markings in the fitness test, and more importantly, she looked fabulous doing it. You see, Elizabeth thinks being fashionable isn’t about conforming to the world’s definition of beauty, but about enjoying how you look and feel. If you’re committed to your style, it doesn’t matter if it’s a pair of Beauty and the Beast leggings with worn-out knees or an off-the-runway Rodarte frock. If what you wear makes you walk with your head held a little higher – that’s fashionable.

Caitlin Andrews

Caitlin has been publishing her writing since 2002, when she took up marathon running after her home in the Cayman Islands was destroyed by a hurricane. Her first column was for a newspaper, detailing that poorly-thought-out venture.In 2006, after developing a jewelry line and performing in her first opera in Rome, Caitlin moved to Italy to study as an opera singer, all the while writing monthly articles for an American magazine, describing her adventures as an American opera singer in Florence.

In 2011 Caitlin was made Associate Fashion Editor of The Yak magazine in Asia.

Now, together with her sister, a fellow beautiphile and musician, Caitlin launches A Welcome Guest, because there is an art to being a leading lady, and step one is looking the part.

John Keats said that beauty is truth and truth beauty, and Caitlin is sure that truth, unlike daily life, requires long flowing dresses, diamonds and very cold Bombay Sapphire martinis.x

Restrictive clothing overwhelms her with the urge to run in circles while waving her arms and doing deep knee bends. The idea of wearing tight trousers and a button down silk shirt makes her sweat, but accessories… ah yes… necklaces, rings, hats, wigs, bags, piercings, watches and bracelets are like chocolate sauce: they go with everything and you can never have too much.

She is embarrassingly attracted to anything that sparkles, and she thinks it’s very important that beauty remain a noun. She wishes she could strike “beautiful” from the English language, because beauty wasn’t born a modifier. Beauty doesn’t describe or label. It just is.

Elizabeth Andrews

Elizabeth graduated from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, after which she worked for a non-profit organization, then the Professional Association of Diving Instructors (PADI), and later a pharmaceutical company—the best part of which was wearing pencil skirts and four-inch pumps.Having a stronger opinion about fashion than pharmaceuticals, she started A Welcome Guest to search for what is beautiful in the world and present it through your computer screen.

She thinks music is one of the ultimate beauties, as is the ocean, and her closet is a testament to that, with a disproportionate amount of space devoted to concert-black attire and bikinis.

Elizabeth has been playing violin since the age of 3, when the privilege of rehearsing in her mother’s high heels was the only perk that persuaded her to practice. But when she became a professional musician in high school, she discovered that playing for weddings, funerals and parties could easily fund her online shopping habit, so she hereby apologizes to her mother for all the whining.

She is also a PADI scuba diving instructor and overall water-sports enthusiast, having grown up in coastal North Carolina with friends who thought it odd she enjoyed spending time reading fashion blogs, “window-shopping” online and wandering, penniless, through designer boutiques.

There has always been a large emphasis on fashion in Elizabeth’s life, and by the time she was 4, her independent sense of style was already in full bloom. Try as they might, no one could persuade her to wear anything apart from a single pair of very faded Beauty and the Beast leggings.

It had been love at first sight. Bright purple and fabulous, she wore those Disney stretch pants home from the store, and after six months of everyday wear, (her mother actually had to wash them each night as Elizabeth slept) they were a rather gray-ish pink. Regardless, they were the only things Elizabeth would wear—even to church.

A few years later, all grown up and in elementary school, she exchanged the cartoon leggings for a red and black polka dotted dress and pair of black patent leather shoes, not caring a lick that it wasn’t a P.E.-appropriate outfit. She bloodied her knees during the shuttle run after tripping over those gorgeous shoes, but Elizabeth still received presidential markings in the fitness test, and more importantly, she looked fabulous doing it.

You see, Elizabeth thinks being fashionable isn’t about conforming to the world’s definition of beauty, but about enjoying how you look and feel. If you’re committed to your style, it doesn’t matter if it’s a pair of Beauty and the Beast leggings with worn-out knees or an off-the-runway Rodarte frock. If what you wear makes you walk with your head held a little higher – that’s fashionable.