Where mermaids sing

I must admit, I depend on new clothes for inspiration. I've been blogging up a storm all summer because I had so many new outfits to work my way through, but now that I've cleared my backlog and run out of DIYs, I'm less excited about posting my OOTD's.

Today's outfit finally got me out of my slump! I've had both of the major elements – the flowy, sequin-dotted aqua top and the asymmetrical-hem green skirt – for years, and the skirt, at least, I've worn the dickens out of. Yet as long as these two garments have been sharing closet space, I've never once noticed how cool they would look together. The similar flowy drapes, the similar green colors... they were made for each other!

But when I tried them together, I found their respective lengths made me look dumpy. It was then that I had my most brilliant idea. In all the years that I've owned this shirt, it has never occurred to me to find out how it would look if I let out the gathers at each side. So I tried it. As it turns out, the shirt is remarkably long when its sides aren't bunched up, and if I bunch up just one side, I get a nice long asymmetrical hem.

The magic of angled hems

Lately, I have been all about asymmetrical hems. They make any shirt a little more distinctive...rather like the half-tuck, but less overdone. I've also found that bunching up one side of the hem but not the other is a great way to turn an overly short and tight minidress into a top for a slightly more casual look.

In today's outfit, the asymmetrical hem mirrors the hem on the skirt (score 1 for repeating elements!) and helps diminish the body-shortening effect of wearing a long shirt with a midi skirt. Of course, the sky-high platform heels don't hurt either.

The shoes are also green, so I've got a nice monochrome thing going on. The watery dye pattern on the shirt and the colors reminded me of a still, algae-filled inlet where mermaids sit on barnacled rocks at night and sing. But I didn't feel like calling out my theme quite so obviously as to wear my mermaid necklace, so I went with a pair of silver earrings which feature, if you only look closely, seahorses!

Since water was the name of the game, I put my hair in a herringbone braid (some people call it a fishtail braid). You'll have to pardon my disheveled appearance—I wasn't able to take a photo until the end of the day when time and the sequins on my shirt had pulled most of the hair out of it).