Black Olive

Here's a color combination I don't think I've ever tried before: olive green and black.

I'm glad I was able to inject some novelty into my outfit somehow, because overall, today was a sad day for an Unfashionista—drab, grey, rainy, and ... not even 70 degrees! In August! What is this world coming to? These last few days of August have all been unseasonably cool, and today's weather just takes the cake.

But I digress. Novelty. I was talking about novelty.

The olive sweater is by no means novel; I think I've had it for around a year or maybe even two, but I hardly ever wear it, because it's so boxy and baggy; it generally has the effect of making me look like a huge hulking blob. I kept it out this summer when I put most of my cool-weather clothes away, because I thought I might like it better paired with shorts. I never got around to wearing it that way, but when I looked at today's bleak forecast, I realized it was time. Since I don't wear shorts at work (except that one time), I decided I'd wear it with a short skirt instead, which amounts to basically the same thing, but is for some reason more office-appropriate.

It was just my luck that I had recently purchased a new pair of olive green shoes that would coordinate perfectly with my olive drab cardigan. What's the difference between olive green and olive drab? Well, as with most color words, it is frequently up to the person who uses them, but in my book, olive drab is just a desaturated (i.e. grayish) version of olive green. The shoes just barely squeak by as "green" instead of "drab."

Once I had decided on what to wear, the next step was to make it all actually wearable! As is common in my fashion life, what started out as simply assembling an ensemble morphed into a sewing extravaganza. First I decided I could fix the boxy-and-baggy problem of the sweater by giving it a more tailored shape. So under my sewing machine it went. I freehanded a couple of generous curves into the side seams, and ended up with a slightly more fitted version of the original. I took before and after pictures, but the difference is so subtle even I can't see it. Oh well, at least I feel better about wearing this sweater!

Second, the black-and-beige lace top needed some refinement. It was originally a too-short dress, which I wore once as a dress and regretted all evening, then started wearing with the bottom folded under as a top. Finally I decided to make the change permanent and cut it to shirt length sometime over last winter. It has a slippery beige liner and a tight lace outer layer, and I found after a couple of wears that the liner would always start peeking out the bottom as the outer layer rode up. So my final alteration to this top, made last night, was to tack the two layers together at the side seams, to hopefully prevent any further wardrobe malfunctions.

My final additions to the ensemble were a pair of earrings—a brighter green than olive, I'm counting on them to add sparkle and lightness to the somewhat dreary look—and a headband.

 
In case you didn't notice in my last post, I changed up my haircut again—to my shortest bob yet!—and that means it's time for me to start experimenting with new ways to decorate my hair. I found that with my last hairstyle, which I started blunt-cutting myself around March of last year, the most flattering look was to just leave it alone (though occasionally I had some luck with spiral curls, that never happened unless I had an event to attend and a lot of time on my hands in the preceding hours). But now that it's shorter, rounder, and just plain different, it may lend itself better to ornamentation...and dare I say... a new dye job?