Fashionably late for Valentine's Day

Not being much of a fashion blogger any more, when I do wear an outfit so nice that someone else volunteers to take a picture of it—well, I'm not sure quite what to do!

And that's why this post about my Valentine's Day Dress of 2023 is only making it out into the world four days after Valentine's Day. But it made it! And that's what counts!

I've had this dress since well before Valentine's Day of last year. I optimistically bought it in early fall, thinking I could wear it on a second or third date (too revealing for a first date!) with someone special. Or maybe even on Valentine's Day! Well, if you don't recall, Valentine's Day last year was a total disaster, definitely unworthy of a sexy dress, but I never lost hope! 

A year later, I finally got to wear it on a so-many-I've-lost-counth date with someone special! That's my boyfriend (official as of sometime last spring)! He is so special, that he appreciated my efforts enough to – without even being asked (without my even considering asking because I'd basically given up on self-promotional photography in any form) – offer to take pictures of my outfit!

How could I refuse? And once said pictures were in my possession, how could I refuse to share them in the one place where self-promotional photos go? No, not Instagram—that's for my dog. I shared them in my old, neglected but still beloved, fashion blog!

And now on to the outfit. Beyond its backstory, the dress is relatively simple for the Unfashionista. When I got it last year, rib-knit dresses and chest cutouts were having a moment. Admittedly, at that point they were on the downswing of their moment, and time is not kind to any trend, but I feel the silhouette of this dress is basically timeless. The dark maroon color is a subtler take on the vibrant reds and pinks I favor on V-Day.

So to punch things up, I got out the fuzzy heeled booties I made in 2020 and probably haven't worn since then. And probably won't wear again—so look out, eBay! They're coming your way!

And that was that! An entire outfit in two pieces. With the vibrant red hair that has been my signature color for almost a year now, I was a picture in romantic monochrome. I also wore tiny heart-shaped earrings, but who would have noticed that? 

Partying like it's 1999

 

A funny thing happened in the last month of 2019: I became obsessed with the fashion of the 90's.

It all started with a  "trance classics" dance party that I attended shortly before Christmas. Now, the heyday of trance music occurred in the late 90's and early 2000's, so I felt like the perfect outfit for an all-old-school trance party would be something from around that era.

I looked to online stills from Buffy the Vampire Slayer as my inspiration, and eventually came up with a cute combo of cami + straight skirt + knee-high boots + butterfly necklace. It combined several distinctive looks of the turn of the millennium, in a conservative sort of way—the trance classics party was only on the top floor of a club that was otherwise just doing business as usual, so I didn't feel like going for the obnoxiously retro raver look. Sadly, I didn't even get a chance to take off my coat before we left, and definitely didn't get a picture.

Un-sadly, I had another chance to pull off a 90's ensemble just a couple weeks later, when a friend invited me to a 90's dance party! Also very fortunately, 2 days before the party, a different friend unloaded a huge collection of secondhand clothes on me, including a quintessentially 90's plaid skirt.

It made the perfect centerpiece to my Clueless-inspired outfit. I wore a cropped cardigan on top and over-the-knee socks on the bottom. You can't do 90's without a choker, so I wore my pink one with the dangling pearl, and pearl earrings. I thought it a very prim and proper, Cher Horowitz-approved jewelry selection.

I even put two barrettes in the side of my hair and tried to curl it under in the best approximation of "The Rachel" I can wheedle out of my very straight, blunt-cut locks.

This time, I finally made the effort to get a photo before even leaving the house!

Success! — but in planning for the parties, I came up with another retro outfit, evoking the early aughties, that I simply can't wait to wear. Now that it's 2020, it's officially time to start being sentimental about the first decade of the millennium. 2000's parties, here I come!

Classic Blue

In keeping with recent tradition, I once again wore an outfit highlighting Pantone's Color of the Year for the first day of the new year (and decade—what an occasion!).

This year's color is a boring one if I do say so myself: "Classic Blue." If ever a color that's not beige, brown, black, or white could be considered a neutral, Classic Blue would be it—the color of denim, corporate logos, Powerpoint backgrounds, and everything else that's dependable and unexciting.

For a first outfit of the year, I guess unexciting is acceptable—especially considering that my New Year's Eve was a wild night spent in a smashing all-silver getup that filled my quotient for thrilling clothes for many days to come. The night, which didn't end for me until after 4 AM, was, in fact, so thrilling that I forgot to take a picture of my outfit, so you'll never see the metallic masterpiece that I assembled.

Instead, content yourself with this perfectly pedestrian Pantone creation. Every single garment I'm wearing is some shade of blue, although I think the most "classic" of the hues is probably the center of the embroidered flowers on my jeans, which can be seen a lot better in this photo from 2 years ago, when they were also the centerpiece of an all-blue outfit.

I guess one good thing about Classic Blue, its complete lack of novelty notwithstanding, is that you can assemble an entire outfit in shades of it, and no one will even notice that's what you're doing!

Coordinating my hair to my clothes

For the next phase in my hair color evolution, I wanted the aqua from my previous color to blend into a pure blue. But when I'm dyeing my hair, I never know quite what I'll get. As it happened, by the time I re-dyed it, the blue-green had faded to a straight-up green; meanwhile the fresh blue dye turned out more purple. Green-to-purple wasn't at all my intent, but it ended up looking totally rad (it is, after all, one of my favorite color combinations!), and is probably my most popular dye job yet (as measured by the number of unsolicited compliments it's received).

One nice thing about this quasi-purple hair color is that it still looks blue in the right lighting and next to the right clothes. The color is open to interpretation. So for today's outfit, it is unequivocally blue!

After all, it has to match my clothes, which are blue to the extreme—the blue jeans that I gussied up with a blue embroidery patch last year, and a long blue flowing split-sleeve top that I've had for quite a while but never blogged.

The outfit is my usual monochrome modus operandi, but the hair makes it special.

It sure was a windy day!

The modded knotted vest

You might have heard it before, but I have a special love for open-front vests. They're so useful—both for covering up bare shoulders in the summer, and breaking up large expanses of fabric in the winter. Over the past couple years, I've been making a concerted effort to expand my collection of vests to encompass a wider range of colors, so I can have a vest to suit any outfit!

One color vest I recently acquired is this, in faded magenta.

I appreciated the color, but not the fit. I prefer a more traditional up-and-down look to my vests, and didn't like the way the front panels curved to the back and bulged back there like a sack. So I fixed it!

I detached the front panels almost the entire length, and then reattached them so they hung straight down! 

Sounds simple, but it took me a number of tries to get the alignment right. At left is one of many try-ons in the mirror.

I didn't need to finish any of the raw edges, since the knit didn't look like it was planning to fray any time soon, but I felt the front panels would look more refined if I sewed the open parts shut again, so I turned them inside out, ran a seam along what would be the back and bottom edge of each, and then flipped it right-side-out and finished the remaining few stitches by hand.

I thought about shortening the front panels, but I like the long draped look in front, even if it makes the back look paltry by comparison.

This way, the panels can hang down, or they can be knotted at the front, which creates a cute effect!

I decided to make the vest the focus of today's outfit—a veritable study in magentas. I have the lilac blouse, the reddish vest over top, the burgundy boots and matching earrings...and then black pants to prevent color overload!

Hello, High-Low

Today was Friday Funday, and that means I was duty-bound to come up with a work outfit that's a little more casual and a lot more playful than what I wear the rest of the week. Of all Fridays, today it was especially important to not fail in this endeavor, because my boyfriend and I were going to happy hour directly after work, and I wanted to impress his friends with my totally laid-back-but-uniquely-chic fashion sense! No big deal, right?

I lie! It's a very big deal! So big that I took a few hours off this morning so I could come up with the perfect work-to-drinks outfit (well, also so I could catch up on sleep, buy myself a little me-time in the midst of a very hectic few days, and pick up some furniture I was unable to pick up last night because of the aforementioned hectic-ness). Those few hours of relative relaxation produced not only a splendid monochromatic ensemble, but also a fine trip down Memory Lane, and a couple of tips & tricks to boot!

Our first stop on Memory Lane takes us back to 2012, courtesy of the skirt, which is a classic specimen of the high-low trend that really hit full steam that year. You might recall, my initial opinion of this type of skirt was unfavorable, but a lot can change in 6 years! For one thing, I decided there was no point in calling them "hi-lo" skirts when there were two perfectly good English words to serve the same purpose. But, more importantly, once I got over my weird idea that high-low skirts make your knees look ugly, I grew to accept and embrace the trend pretty quickly. Good for me, because now that the fashion cycle has run its course, it is possible to buy high-low skirts for next to nothing (I got this one for 1.80$)! That's not to say that they are completely out-of-date yet; you can still find new ones in stores, but they much more often tend to be wrapped, ruffled, asymmetric, or generally more complex than this humble mullet skirt.

Let's now consider the color scheme of today's outfit, which takes us a little further down Memory Lane to February 2015, when I wore basically the same colors for "My Future Valentine," again with a burgundy skirt on the bottom and pastel pink on the top. What has changed? The season of course, but also the length of the skirt. That day in 2015 was, I think, the very last time I wore a skirt that skimpy to the office. I remember feeling very uncomfortable and deciding, once and for all, that I would set a minimum length for all my future skirts.

I feel like I should be able to bend over as far as I want without accidentally showing my undies, so that became my new, and still current, rule for skirt lengths. This is where high-low skirts come in very handy—they enable one to wear a (partial) short skirt (generally more flattering and less dowdy) while simultaneously being able to bend over to my heart's content without revealing anything! This burgundy one is the first high-low skirt I've acquired (though not the first high-low dress), but I foresee them playing a much bigger role in my life as they saturate the secondhand market!

So we've visited 2012, we've stopped off in 2015, what's next? How about 2016, where the legacy of my shoes began? You see, in 2016, I acquired a pair of pink glitter jelly sandals that simply set my heart on fire! I wore them once or twice that year, but the following summer, I took them out of storage to find they had developed a terrible stink. I washed them in every kind of chemical imaginable, but I couldn't get the odor out. Eventually, I washed them in ammonia, which not only failed to get out the odor, but also turned the plastic cloudy and ugly, so finally I gave up. I replaced them with these: slightly inferior, but still pink and glittery, flat jelly sandals.

Since we're traveling forward in time, I might mention that the first time I wore the shirt in this outfit was last summer, but it's not that important. What is important is how I styled the shirt. 

To get it to look good with the skirt, I had to give it the old quarter-tuck. 

"The old what?" you say. That's right, I've never mentioned it in my blog before, but it's an indispensable technique for making a single shirt do double-duty. As it has become one of my most tried-and-true styling techniques (and, as this has already become an irredeemably verbose blog post!) I might as well finally get around to explaining how to use it.

The half- and quarter-tuck

The half-tuck is a simple way to wear your shirt so it's tucked in in the front and loose in the back. There are so many reasons why you might want to try half-tucking your shirt!

1. It raises your shirt's hemline, thus showing more of your pants, thus adding apparent length to your legs.
2. It simultaneously allows you to keep a sleek waistline by avoiding the side-pooch that comes with tucking your shirt in at the sides.
3. It helps prevent your pants from being seen through your shirt, as would be the case if you wear a too-thin shirt on the outside of your pants (that's why I tucked the shirt in this outfit)
4. It can help define your waist, which might be hidden when leaving a baggy shirt completely untucked
5. It keeps the bulk of your shirt outside of your pants, thus avoiding any interior bunching, lumps, and bumps, that would come from having a shirt completely tucked.

The half-tuck's edgier sibling is the quarter-tuck, which is basically tucking in only one side of the front of your shirt, usually resulting in an asymmetrical angle to the hemline. I find the quarter-tuck works well on shirts (such as this pink one) that already have some asymmetrical details.

Fashionistas have been wearing their shirts this way for ages—I first tried the half-tuck myself in 2015— but now, as I understand, it has been thrown into the mainstream by being dubbed the "French tuck" on a popular Netflix show. I just call it the half-tuck because I have never watched Queer Eye and don't intend to adopt a new terminology just because someone on that show allegedly uses it.

So now that I have reached the absolute present in my journey through fashion history (and I mean absolute—the word "French tuck" just exploded in the media within the past week!), it is time to bid you adieu. I hope that you have enjoyed this rambling discourse on what was, is, and will be, as well as my undoubtedly valuable instructions on how to wear your clothes...but in case you have not, I hope you at least enjoy this cute picture of a dog!

Get the red out

When I bought this red sleeveless sweater dress on Swap.com, I thought, "Oh, this will be a nice dress for layering in the winter and wearing straight in the summer! It's basically a solid muted color, so it should go with a lot of stuff. I'm so excited!"

When I started actually trying to wear it, my tune completely changed. The just-below-the-knee length was not conducive to keeping me warm. The roomy fit and flared skirt were not conducive to making me look slim. It looked horrible with every single sweater I tried, meaning I'd been completely wrong about its layering potential.

The only topper that looked good over it was this red blazer, which thanks to its smaller size and tailored shape, served a little curve to my otherwise shapeless torso.

When wearing a flared skirt, balance your proportions by defining your waist.

The only problem with the blazer was, it was a different – and I wasn't sure entirely complementary – shade of red!

Monochrome dressing is tricky. Go with completely identical colors from head to toe and you end up looking like you're in your pajamas or a costume. Go with colors that are almost the same but vary too much in temperature, and the whole look is disjointed.

I worried that the pure crisp crimson of the blazer would not work with the muted brick red of the dress. But, after some thought (and facing a lack of any other fun fashion ideas), I decided that, when combined with my red rose shoes, the addition of the third shade of red plus the analogous pinks and whites helped the competing hues look like part of a team.

Three red pieces were enough for me, so for a finishing touch, I added some weathered silver earrings with pearl centers and not a trace of red! If anyone's nitpicking the overall color balance in this outfit, the white of the pearl ties to the white in the shoes, while the black and silver details tie to the black button on the blazer.

Another color conundrum, satisfactorily solved!

Embroidered bootcuts

Shortly after I put embroidery patches on my combat boots, the second of my three floral embroidery patches found a new home on a pair of jeans.

Unlike the first one, I specifically recall that I'd ordered the blue-on-blue patch to cover up some unsightly stains on a different pair of boots. I had thought to spruce them up and sell them, but the colors never really looked great together, so instead, I just left them undecorated, and still sold them! This meant I had a lovely blue embroidery patch with nothing to do.

I also had a pair of regular old bootcut jeans that I didn't much care for. The wash was a dingy greyish blue, and the waistband was annoyingly low. Nevertheless, I decided to keep them for crafting experiments. Originally, I'd planned to paint them, but seeing as that ambitious project never got off the ground after several months, I set the bar lower and decided to use them for quick-and-easy iron-on embroidery!

Really, that was all there was to it. I ironed the patch on! Easiest DIY ever!

For their first (and, let's face it, probably only) wear, I paired them with all blue. Blue sweater over blue camisole, blue earrings (not seen in picture because I decided to be subtle for once), and of course, my periwinkle hair!

Bluer Velvet

My blue velvet dress is one of the oldest things in my wardrobe (not necessarily by actual age, but the thing I've had the longest) that I still wear in public. It was out of style even when I got it (which might be how I was able to score it new with tags for just five dollars, if I remember correctly), and by the beginning of last winter, I was getting ready to send it out to pasture when the velvet trend struck. So I kept it around, but honestly, I can't remember if I wore it at all that winter.

This year, fortunately, velvet is still going strong...and I happen to have recently acquired a pair of blue, crushed velvet, thigh-high boots!

When this outfit idea occurred to me, I thought long and hard about whether I really had the guts to wear a blue velvet dress over blue velvet boots. That's a lot of blue velvet. It might be overkill. But then I decided overkill is what the Unfashionista does best!

I wore the velvet dress and the velvet boots! I briefly contemplated also wearing big blue earrings, but I decided enough was enough. Since my clothing was kind of bizarre, I'd just go conservative with the jewelry. I put on a classy silver necklace, courtesy of my boyfriend (he's pretty much the only reason I have any jewelry at all that's not outlandish!) and some subtle silver drop earrings.

The more I looked at the getup, the more I liked it. It has a lot of things going for it. The monochrome look is always polished—something about the outfit reminds me vaguely of a suit, the epitome of class! The modest dress and the completely obscured legs make for a weirdly anachronistic vibe, but velvet and especially velvet boots are both styles of the moment, so it's got a contemporary appeal. Although I'm not sure I'll look back on this outfit a few years from now without regret, today at least, I'm wearing it with pride!

Last-Minute Mrs. Peacock

 
One of the best things about Halloween season is it usually provides plenty of opportunities for an Unfashionista to dress in costume. I have been planning various Halloween costumes since mid-September (and ideating them for years!) but a group costume as characters from Clue never crossed my mind...until around 10am on Friday. I was one of three people going to a murder-themed event that evening, and with only 10 hours until the doors opened, I suddenly realized that we could all dress as characters from the game!

My friend took Miss Scarlet, I assigned my boyfriend Mrs. White (since he already has a French maid costume), and I took Mrs. Peacock. (See what they wore in our Photobooth pics!)

I did a little research so I could make my costume as authentic as possible, and found that there are many variations of the game Clue as well as a couple of movie adaptations, and several less-than-consistent descriptions of the characters.

But here is what I was able to glean about Mrs. Peacock from various sources. She is a wealthy widow; some sources say she has had many husbands who all met their untimely demise. In one of the descriptions I read, her character raises birds. Her appearance evolved over several versions of the game, back and forth between elderly and stuffy and young(er) and stylish, but she almost always dresses in blue and wears a hat (naturally I went with the young and stylish variation!).

This is the picture that I used
as inspiration for my costume

I was thrilled with what I learned about my character, because I have a wealth of blues and greens in my wardrobe, never miss an opportunity to dress like I'm rich, and also happen to really appreciate birds. Since Mrs. Peacock usually seems to be wearing some sort of ostentatious hat in almost all of her forms, I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to make myself a fascinator! In case you weren't up on wealthy-woman headwear, a fascinator is basically a hat, but instead of covering the whole head, it only covers part of it, and it usually has lots of frills and feathers and things sticking out of it. Fascinators are commonly seen on the Royal Family and at horse races.

How I was going to make a fascinator, I really didn't know...but I guessed I was going to find out! As it turned out, I did find out, and it actually worked out well. But the process was so long and involved, that I think it is worthy of another post all its own. So let's leave the talk of fascinators for a while, and get back to the rest of the details of the outfit.

Obviously, you can't be Mrs. Peacock without wearing blue. As it so happens, I have a blue satin dress that I've been saving (in an admirable display of patience, if I do say so myself) since I last wore it in 2014 (I wanted to give it one more chance and wear it with a particular pair of shoes...but now that it's had its second wear, it's off to eBay for this dress!).

Since we were traveling on Metro and likely to be walking around in a museum all evening (and who knows where the night might take us afterwards), I decided to wear flat shoes even though they hindered the glam quotient slightly. As long as they were blue, that's what really mattered!

The finishing touch was a pair of peacock feather earrings and some blue and green eye makeup.

But the real star of this outfit was definitely the fascinator. Stay tuned for the full story on how I learned to make a fascinator in under 2 hours!

Perfectly Practical

 

Remember that outfit—the one that was dark and melodramatic and which I almost wore to work but decided it was inappropriate? I was able to work it into my life successfully less than a week later—today!

The fun thing about this outfit is it takes two different garments with a mandala print and a grey-on-grey color scheme, and joins them together! That's really all you need to know about this look, but if you're interested in stories, I can tell you tales about how every garment got to where it is now!

The top is an oldie but goodie, having been a part of my wardrobe since I apparently thought military fatigues would be a good thing to wear to the office. The top was originally a baggy, flowy affair, which might work for some occasions but certainly didn't look great over this skirt, and since I knew I was going to wear them together, I took some time to take in the sides and make it more fitted. Easy fix!

Before

After

The skirt is actually a skort (it has built-in shorts underneath), which, combined with its stretchy, synthetic fabric, makes it quite the athletic piece of apparel. My boyfriend got it for me at Costco, and I originally thought it would be a nice casual-and-comfortable-but-nice-looking piece that I could wear for traveling or for low-intensity activity. What I neglected to realize at that time was that I never engage in the kind of activity that's low-intensity enough to wear a skirt (even a skort) but high-intensity enough to warrant the kind of fit and fabric that this skirt has. As you know, I've never preferred to go around in public in my workout clothes unless absolutely necessary (despite the popularity of athleisure), so the skirt sat in no-man's land at the back of my gym clothing drawer for most of the summer. Finally, I decided today would be a good day. I planned to be out most of the morning running errands (one of which I would travel to by bike, and one of which would involve loading stuff into a vehicle), so a somewhat cute, but still practical outfit seemed like a good choice.

In the morning, I wore sneakers, but in the afternoon, I just couldn't resist any more and broke out my furry pool slides, which I've been jonesing to wear ever since I learned they were trendy in the spring. They might be a little too black to really look perfect with all the greys, but they're furry sandals! Sporty looking skirt and top, combined with the "fashion" version of locker room shoes? That seems good enough for an Unfashionista to wear to brunch!

The ocean in the sky

I tried on a lot of outfits in preparation for yesterday. It was no big occasion; I just needed a spiffy outfit to give my mood a lift. I actually had many successes in this process (not always a given when planning outfits), but ultimately, the one that spoke to me was the one you now see! The teal vest is no stranger to my wardrobe; I've been wearing it loyally since 2014 and have apparently owned it since 2012, but with stats like that (took me two years to wear it for the first time!?), it's not surprising that I haven't worn it in a while. 

Yesterday was the day to break that streak! On a whim, I tried it on with something else that I haven't worn in a while—a blue-striped tank dress that was part of the 3-for-10$ deal that gave me my Flowers for Drupalcon dress. It was a match! The two garments' shades of teal and blue complemented each other well.

The lines of the vest lent themselves to a long necklace, and I had the perfect one: A light blue waist-length necklace dangling with abundant silver seashell charms. To go along with it, I wore some bohemian sandals with cork wedge platforms and straw-and-canvas straps.

With my aquamarine clothes and aquatic animal necklace, I looked like I was on my way to a beach. The weather, on the other hand, was anything but beachy—overcast all day, developing into heavy rain in the afternoon. I had dressed for a day near the water; the water obliged and came to me!

Selfie with a storm drain. The stormdrops are already making their mark on the ground.

Gray Day

 

I usually don't wear a whole lot of grey because I think it's boring (I also usually don't spell it "gray," but I wrote it thusly in the title so that it more closely resembled the "day" that followed it. Thank you for your understanding.), but I have accumulated a lot of new grey items this summer, so I decided to try a monochrome look in the most boring of colors! I like monochrome, so that should make it interesting, right!?

I started with a new (to me) charcoal grey cowl-neck tank top which has actually seen quite a lot of use. My best attempts at removing the pills were only mildly successful, but I decided fuzzy and fluffy are a good look on a grey knit—they add depth! For the bottom, I wore a grey pencil skirt which I've had for quite a while. I don't wear it often, but it comes in handy when I do! Over the top of it all, a grey vest which I just got at the thrift store for 2 dollars. I love vests for their versatility, but one usage of them that I haven't mentioned is how nicely they pull together two different-colored solid pieces. 

Use an open-front vest to bridge the distance between a top and a bottom that don't otherwise match. The lines of the vest will visually connect the two pieces, making them seem more closely related, especially if the vest shares a color with either of them.

I didn't really need a vest to unite two slightly different shades of grey, but I had this grey vest lying around, and I might as well use it for something! Besides, in a monochromatic outfit, the more shades, the merrier!

Just as rose gold is the metallic version of salmon, so silver is the metallic version of grey (well, there's also pewter). What an opportunity to wear this new pair of silver pointed-toe flats, which I got for what I feel was a great bargain at $9.96 on eBay! I used to think pointed toes were unflattering and made my feet look like long implements of war. Well, I still do, but they're trendy now. In addition to making my feet look like spear heads, the ankle straps also make my legs look short and squat, especially when combined with the length of the pencil skirt, but sometimes we must make aesthetic sacrifices in order to adhere to our theme.

I also wore silver earrings. The end.

Daffodils

 
I wasn't planning on blogging this (extremely simple, quintessentially corporate) outfit until, near the end of the day, it occurred to me that it would look undeniably charming on a backdrop of bright spring flowers.

Although the weather threw the plant kingdom a curveball this spring (warming up to summery levels and tempting the spring flowers to peep from their winter sanctuaries a little early, then blasting them with snow and ice) at least a few daffodils have managed to retain their regal aspect.

I found a garden in the back of a church that was just perfect for a vernal photo shoot, where I posed with my brilliant yellow dress and matching high heels, sporting a classy but flashy necklace.

That's about all I have to say about today's look. It's the flowers that are the real stars of the show!

I say the flowers are the stars of the show, but....

Fade to lavender

With Thrift Store Formals and Winery Excursions galore, I've been on an outfit roll!

But with the arrival of my first day of work after the long weekend, I felt my momentum "roll" to a stop. Dressing for work is, by nature, much less exciting. I needed to inject some interest into my work clothes!

I decided to take advantage of the 50+ degree forecast yesterday and wear something that doesn't cover my legs (Gasp! What an adventure!), and that ended up being my trusty purple pleather pencil skirt (almost as much fun to say as it is to wear)!

I'd previously tested the skirt out with a slightly lighter purple shirt, so I went that route and tried to decide on shoes. I was tempted to go with still more purple, but enough is enough after all—besides, my purple boots only go up to mid-calf, and it wasn't as warm as all that!

It occurred to me that with a dark purple skirt and a light purple shirt, I had sort of a gradient going, so it might be cool if I went even darker on my legs. Black boots were the answer! The now-3-level gradient inspired me to find something even lighter purple to wear above my shirt, and my scarf collection did not disappoint. To top it all off (in a  literal sense this time!) I found a pair of pastel purple heart earrings, which actually look completely clear in some light.

So my overall outfit goes black, dark purple, medium purple, light purple, extremely light purple! I'm a walking gradient, only slightly marred by the hair, which remains tenaciously green in spite of having last been dyed over 2 months ago. That's enough, hair. It's time to move on.

W is for Winter White

After doing Fall Florals for F-Day, it was only natural for me to do Winter Whites for W-Day.

What makes winter whites different from regular old whites? Though you'd be hard-pressed to find "winter white" defined in the dictionary, there is a pretty strong consensus among the people who use the term that "winter white" refers to a color that's simply off-white. I like to include very light greys in my definition of winter white, but if you consult Pantone, the foremost authority on colors, you'll see they have given it to a very far-off-white shade of ecru.

Really, though, any white you wear in winter has to be winter white! And if you wear it with furry boots, it's as wintry as it gets! These boots are the last of my three Black Friday shoe purchases, and I waited with extreme impatience for W-Day so I could finally wear them. There's little I love so much as a furry boot in winter!

The boots really do fit the definition of "winter white," but the pants are just your average, everyday, pure white (and miraculously so, since I've worn them enough times that I'd expect them to have a stain or two by now).

The tank top is a nice creamy Pantone-approved winter white, and the cardigan, is, again, a "normal" white. I wore a white lace bracelet, and, to further support my "winter" theme, a pair of snowflake earrings.

O is for Over-the-knee

Today's outfit is all about the boots. Big, tall, in-your-face, over-the-knee boots. I've had a thing for over-the-knee socks and boots for a couple years now. But this year, I decided to make a concerted effort to acquire a solid collection.

There are the black ones that I've had for so many years, they've developed holes in the toes (I've worn them slouched for my blog before, but never in all their thigh-high glory); the brown ones I sang the praises of last fall; another brown pair given to me by a friend (tricky to wear, because you can't bend your legs in them, but I vow you'll see them some day!); the black fur-lined ones (which really aren't thigh-high, though sometimes I unfold the top and try to pretend they are); and now, finally, these beauties.

 

 

There's so much to love about these boots. The metal studs remind me of my "rockstar boots," which I loved but which wore out a few years ago. The price was only $6.99 at the thrift store, minus at least a 25% discount, making them an unbelievable bargain.

And finally, they are the tallest boots I've ever had! I was planning to wear over-the-knee socks under my boots, so O-day would not be a one-garment wonder, but the boots were so tall, they completely disguised my socks.

O is for "Oh, well."

I paired the boots with dark clothing and simple pewter earrings so that nothing would overshadow the shoes. After reviewing a few of my photos, I realized the "zipper baby" was none too flattering, so I unzipped the extra-long cardigan for a few more shots. Which way do you think it looked better?

 

B is for Black

 

For today's outfit, I had just 3 requirements: 1) I'd been wearing skirts and dresses all week, so it had to include pants, 2) it had to use flat shoes (I have this new personal policy of trying to wear flat or low heeled shoes at least two days out of five when I'm at work) and 3) it had to start with the letter B.

I had thought up lots of fashion-related terms for B: Blue (did yesterday), Brogues (don't have), Bold and Bright (cop-outs)...but finally gravitated towards the three neutral color-words: Beige, Brown, and Black. Black is definitely what I have the most of, and it produces the most striking effect when it's the only color you're wearing.

Normally, mostly black clothing casts a literally figurative black shadow on my soul, but when framed as a challenge like: "How many black pieces can I work into one outfit?" it becomes a game!

Let's count:

1. Black skinny trousers
2. Black riding boots
3. Black short-sleeved sweater (short sleeves in November again! But this time it got up to 71 degrees outside, so it was well worth it)
4. Black long vest
5. Black sparkly headband
6. 3 black bangles (Does each bangle count as one item? I should have worn the full set of 8!)
7. Black seismograph ring

I could have done better if I hadn't left the house without putting on my earrings, which would have been – guess! – black.

 

A is for Argyle

 

No sooner had I realized that I was sick to death of my autumn wardrobe, than I immediately also realized what would help cheer me up: a fashion challenge! Even if I've worn all my transitional garments a hundred times, they'll still feel fresh and fun when they represent a theme! Compression Sock Chic notwithstanding (it doesn't count because it was forced upon me), I haven't issued myself a fashion challenge since 2014, when I attempted to channel 5 countries in 5 days...and failed because one of the days I was sick!

I've been toying for months with the idea of theming a series of outfits around the letters of the alphabet, and now, with nothing to lose except a case of the doldrums, I'm going to go for it! For 26 days, I'll be wearing an outfit that strongly features something beginning with a different letter each day. I may not post every day, and I may postpone a day (life happens, and sometimes funky knee socks have to take a backseat to more practical concerns) but I hereby vow to get through every letter before I quit!

The inaugural outfit of this challenge is built around a pair of blue argyle knee socks. Speaking of challenge, these socks are quite difficult to coordinate. I honestly can't recall if I've ever worn them since the first time I posted an outfit with them nearly 5 years ago—which also happened to be during my first ever published fashion challenge—Unfashion a Day! This might be the last time I wear them, since they're starting to sprout an unmanageable number of loose threads. 

I almost wore them with the same blue shirt I wore them with last time, but it was just too long to look good with the long blue skirt I wanted to pair it with. I gave up on the long blue skirt, switched to a short aqua skirt, found that the hue no longer worked with the original blue shirt, and switched to this blue sweater. A short skirt and short sleeves sound like a terrible choice in November, but I did it for fashion! Fortunately I have a space heater in my office!

When all was said and done, I had a completely tonal outfit in shades of blue and blue-green. Apparently A is also for Aqua!

The Life Aqua

 

You might have noticed, I get a little sartorially excited when we have unseasonably warm weather, and this, the third week in October, has been a true blessing from Mother Nature, with temperatures not less than 80 degrees for the last 3 days! Now, I made my fall wardrobe switch October first on the dot, which left me with precious little summer clothing to sustain me through this warm spell, but somehow I managed.

My favorite outfit of the week was this one, a study in blue and blue-green. I have so much aqua in my wardrobe that I once decided to wear it every day for a week. I haven't tried anything like that again (nowadays I actively avoid wearing the same main color two days in a row), but aqua's still the color of choice when I want to go for a tonal look.

The sweater is yet another of the baggy sheer top layers I'm obsessing over this year (there's another one which I wore last week but didn't have much to say about). In the past with this sweater, I've tried to do a little contrast between the underlayer and the top layer, but this time, I decided matchy-matchy was the way to go.

With the aqua tops, I wore my teal pumps (shout-out to these workhorses, which I've had for 4 years without them showing any signs of dying, and which remain my most comfortable pair of heels!).

To further celebrate the warm weather, I decided to wear cropped pants. I've really been enjoying the fact that cropped flares are so trendy this year. While all my crops are so old they're from a time when they were referred to as "capri pants," they bear a striking similarity to the new ones—enough that I'm wearing the dickens out of them while I still can. I had several options, but in the end I felt the dark blue denim ones looked the most polished, so on they went!

I like a good monochrome (or monochrome + blue jeans) look as much as anyone, but I felt like I wanted to spice things up a bit and wear some non-blue jewelry. Butterflies ended up being the name of the game. 

 

 

I put on a now-ancient butterfly bracelet and some newer butterfly earrings. Sadly, I lost one of the earrings on my bike ride home (this is one good reason why I never spend more than 2 dollars on a piece of jewelry), so it looks like this will be the first and last time they feature in my blog. Bon voyage, beautiful butterflies!