Popping daisies

A year and a half after I first started, I'm still making a concerted effort to bring more orange into my wardrobe. It's been slow going, especially when it comes to shoes. I finally found a pair of suitable orange sandals at the thrift store over the summer, and with great effort, these "sienna"-colored boots at JustFab. Sienna, as it turns out, is less orange in person than one might imagine by looking at it on a website, and I found that it didn't go well with most of the outfits I tried.

But finally I discovered a shirt that complemented rather than clashed with the boots.

It's a very cheerful sweater with orange and yellow daisies reminiscent of 60's pop art. The orange of the petals is subdued (almost, dare I say, a salmon hue?) but it works as a slightly more pastel variant of the color of the boots.

Since I was already channeling the 60's, I decided to wear my oversized yellow earrings which remind me a little of mod fashion.

 

Frumpiness fix

At the beginning of the day that I wore it (I'm a little behind in posting, so that was not today!) this outfit was one of my ordinary old work outfits that are so unremarkable, I never give them a moment's second thought. Even if the colors are bright and fun, the individual elements have been worn enough times that they no longer excite me. The one new part of this outfit was the pink cardigan, which is a fairly recent acquisition. Unfortunately, the long-line cardigan combined with the calf-length skirt to create a total appearance that was shapeless and dowdy. High-heeled shoes usually help make a midi skirt more flattering, but the chunky heel on these ones might have hurt more than helped.

I wasn't going to blog this outfit at all, except that midway through the day, I discovered a styling trick that improved its appearance so greatly, I had to share it!

Looking at my blocky shape in the mirror, with the cardigan billowing out around me like an extra 20 pounds of flesh, I suddenly realized that I'd look more streamlined if I just defined my waist. I tied the dangling front parts of the cardigan around my midsection, and the improvement was instant! Suddenly I felt proud of my appearance again!

Tie baggy clothes around your waist to create a knotted belt and a more streamlined silhouette! 

Spring for the Solstice

I love dressing in spring colors out of season! It's one simple way to boost my mood, even when the weather is depressingly wintry and cold as an icebox outside.

Today's outfit, which just happens to coincide with the winter solstice, is a study in springtimey motifs.

I started with a pale green shirt that I got months ago and haven't worn yet. I tried it on last week and was absolutely horrified by how short, tight, and low-cut it was. How it passed my initial review when I first got it, I had no idea, but it was way past the return period now, and I was going to have to make it work. After giving it some thought, I realized I could raise the modesty factor by layering a camisole underneath it, which made the neckline a little more appropriate for work. It's still tight, but with all the wrinkles of several layers of fabric filling it out, it looks less like a skin suit. I like the way the camisole peeps out at both the bottom and the top, adding more pops of springtime hues.

For the bottom half of my outfit, I chose a midi prairie skirt bursting with pastel colors and floral shapes.

Navy being the darkest color in the skirt, and me wanting to exercise at least a modicum of restraint, I decided to go with navy blue for my shoes. I considered wearing a new pair of slouch boots, but ultimately decided that the boots looked too bulky when combined with the skirt, so I went for a more streamlined look with some (also new!) pointy-toe pumps.

To round out the look, I couldn't not wear a ridiculously vernal butterfly jewelry set!

It might be the first day of winter, but that's not stopping me from celebrating in springtime style!

Asymmetry Serendipity

The heat is broken in my office – again! – and it is totally the wrong weather for a sheer blouse, but I don't care! I've been so bored of my clothes since it got cold this fall (even all my new boots failed to cheer me up), that I'll brave the cold without (much) complaint, just for the opportunity to wear something new and exciting.

New and exciting is, today, a sheer brown blouse with pink, yellow, and teal paisley accents, and just a hint of metallic thread. This top is probably my favorite of my recent acquisitions from Swap.com (get a discount on your first purchase by using my referral link!), which included the (Millennial!) pink pants I'm wearing as well.

I basically picked out the pants because they went well with the colors in the top, but as soon as I put them on, I discovered another benefit: the lace accent on the right hip was positioned just so to peek out from below the higher side of the shirt's asymmetrical hemline. The pants only have the lace on one side, so how fortunate was it that both asymmetrical pieces happened to be asymmetrical in just the right way? That's what I call a lopsided win!

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!

I heart this outfit

Remember those green heart earrings that I was just crazy about way back in 2012? I still have them, and I still love them just as much.

A few weeks ago, when I was at the thrift store checkout line, taking advantage of a 40%-off-boots-and-dresses sale, my eye fell on a tangled necklace dangling off the end cap. I was astonished and overjoyed to see that it had the same green glass beads with gold flecks that featured prominently in my beloved earrings. I had just stumbled across a gem that could turn my favorite accent piece into half of a matched set! And, just like its counterpart 5 years ago, the necklace was only two dollars! I cannot begin to express how much this serendipitous find delighted me—even at full price, it was the best deal I got at the thrift store that day! 

What's even better, I happen to have recently (sort of) acquired a dress that could make my matched set into a matched triad! It's adorably designed with green and brown elongated hearts scattered across it in whorls. It is both earth-toned and heart-themed, which are not two things that are often found together. When I saw it on eBay, I snapped it up, but was disappointed to find it too large for me.

That was over a year ago (April 2016). I couldn't wear it that spring, I left it in storage all summer, and finally in the fall, I set out to resize it. It took the better part of the winter for me to figure out how to cut and re-fit all the layers together neatly. But it was worth the effort, because now it gets to make its blog debut as part of a ridiculously thematic three-piece set!

I wore all the hearty goodness with my brown overknee boots, slouched down a bit for that requisite gap at the bottom of the skirt.

Double Duty Necklace

After a 6-month hiatus, I reinstated my Rocksbox membership last month (Would you like a free month? Use code valeriehbff11) and hit the jackpot with my Perry Street Ciara statement necklace.  Quite unlike most of my statement necklaces (which trend to the candy colored and cheesy in theme), this one was dark and refined. I loved the smoky colors, which seemed to perfectly complement a lot of the clothes in my wardrobe. So much so that I actually used it for two outfits before reluctantly returning it to Rocksbox.

It's been a while since I've been truly excited about one of my outfits (that were not a costume, at least), but both of these, I am.

 

For the first one, I wore my beloved purple pleather pencil skirt, a dark purple camisole, my long flowing black vest, and a new pair of boots. 

This outfit brought me so much joy! I love that I was able to finally wear some of my new shoes. I love that I was able to wear my pinstriped camisole, which I'd given up on and was trying to sell—it's always a delight to find a new way of wearing something you thought you were bored with. I love even more that the choice of camisole was totally a fluke. I was an inch away from wearing my lavender camisole when I discovered it had a grease stain front and center, which is the only reason for my last-minute reconsideration. I love the combination of winter wear (boots) and summer wear (no sleeves). I frankly just love wearing no sleeves (a welcome rarity in November!). I was lucky that the day that I wore it (last Friday) got up to 77 degrees!

 

The next outfit had to be much more covered-up, since I wore it on a rainy Tuesday with a high of only 49. For that outfit, I wore a maroon sleeveless tunic, leggings, a long black cardigan, and burgundy boots. I loved the way the boots resembled the color of the camisole but didn't quite match it. I loved the flowing hemlines of the tunic and cardigan, and how they interacted with each other.

All in all, for the two days that I wore this necklace, I felt like a million bucks. It was certainly worth the 19 dollars a month.