The winter switch, in more ways than one

A funny thing happened this year to my fashion sense.

I made a rapid about-face from being absolutely smitten with knee-high boots, to being bored stiff with them and buying almost nothing but ankle boots.

And boy, did I ever buy the ankle boots! Over the summer and the first few weeks of fall, I stocked up on every kind of ankle boot you could imagine. I got so many new ankle boots that I literally ran out of space for them in my closet, and their boxes are piled high all over the top of my standalone wardrobes as well. (They will take up less space once I remove them from their boxes, but I have this thing where I must keep my new shoes in their original box until the first day I wear them. They feel more special that way!)

New boots as of October 9. I've since worn two of them and acquired two more.

Why this sudden infatuation with ankle boots? Well, in addition to tiring of knee-high boots, I've also tired (actually, grown sick to death!) of skinny jeans. Now, as I write this, I'm wearing a brand-new pair of skinny jeans, so I can't say they're banished by any stretch...but ever since I learned to embrace my preference for form-fitting shirts last spring, I realized that skinny jeans just aren't a logical part of my aesthetic.

I've said it before, but I can't seem to find it so I'll say it again, If you're wearing loose clothes on the bottom, try to pair them with something tighter on top so you don't look too shapeless. If you're wearing tighter clothes on the bottom, try to pair them with something looser on top so you don't look too exposed.

I can't really get away with wearing my beloved tight tops over skinny jeans (and I never liked them anyway!), so my solution is to wear more wide-legged pants. As I mentioned a few months ago, I'd successfully invested in some really outsized palazzo pants, but since they didn't get along well with my desk chair, I've accepted that straight-leg pants of the less dramatic variety are good enough. So over the past several months, I took every opportunity I could to add loose-fitting pants to my collection.

All of this pants-shopping has officially turned 2017 into the Year of the Pants for me. The new wider pants alone account for 7 of my total collection, and then you have to add in all the wide-leg pants I bought in the spring (four to my reckoning, if you don't count the butterfly ones I already ruined). And then there are still new skinny jeans as well, because, even though I'm tired of them, they still have their uses—and colorful skinny jeans especially (my favorite kind!) are undergoing a massive selloff in the secondhand market, so I just can't resist buying them when the price is so cheap.

 

But what does all this chatter about pants have to do with ankle boots? Well, unlike knee-high boots, ankle boots fit under your wider pant legs without adding a strange amount of bulk or an unnecessary level of insulation, but they also work equally well with skinny jeans. Ankle boots are thus the logical solution to all of my footwear needs, whether I decide to rock the retro 90's look (I'm bringing cargos back!!), or stick with the tried, true, and 2010's-approved skinny jean. Notice I still eschew the "mom jean" that is slowly simmering down from its brief moment a couple years ago.

So here I am, buying 13 pairs of new boots and 11 pairs of pants, along with the requisite complement of new shirts and dresses.

 

This is a Winter Switch that goes above and beyond my usual, as I traded in not just one season's clothes for another, but I also traded up to an entirely different personal style!