Let's
just jump right in and answer that burning question that I'm sure you
were all wondering about: what do you wear with neon yellow hair?
The answer is simple—a neon yellow sweater!
The
question of why I have neon yellow hair and a neon yellow sweater is a
little more complicated to answer. If you don't already know, I'm not a big fan of fluorescent colors,
so to be featuring them in both my hair and my clothing is more than a
little out of character for me. But it can all be explained—I promise.
In
November, I made a Swap.com order that included what I thought was a
green sweater. In the photo, it looked to be a muted poison green—rather
along the lines of my long-retired witchy skirt, or a slightly darker hue than my springtimey polo shirt.
I was wrong. It was a saturated, eye-popping, neon chartreuse, almost
more yellow than green. My first instinct was to return it, but
everything else about the sweater was perfect, and sometimes I just
don't want to abuse the return policy lest they take it away from me. So
I kept the sweater and vowed to get at least a few uses from it before
listing it on eBay.
Now
to explain the hair. While my hair has been cycling between blonde and
pastel shades of purple and pink for over a year now, I have been
steering clear of intense color since I dyed it dark green
in 2016. At this point in my life, subtlety (or at least, subtlety by
Unfashionista standards!) seems like the right approach. After several
months rocking the pale coral color, the next phase in the evolution of
my coiffure was to be a light orange-yellow gradient. I usually buy
cheap-beauty-supply-shop hair color, but because I had a very specific
yellow tone in mind, I splurged on a jar of Manic Panic. I diluted it
1:1 with white conditioner, then added in some water to help the mixture
go farther. I washed it off just a few minutes after I was done putting
it on, thinking that so short a dye time, combined with all the
dilution, would reduce the color's intensity to equal the faded orange
hue left at my hair's tips. Again, I was wrong. After rinsing, my hair
came out just as described on the bottle: electric banana.
Well,
this was not what I intended! But after years of cutting and dyeing my
own hair, I'm used to disappointing myself. What I get is very rarely
what I planned...but what I've noticed is that no matter how much I hate
what I've done to my hair, someone else is guaranteed to love it! So I
run with it. I re-dyed the bottom half a darker orange so that the
yellow wouldn't be totally overpowering, and strutted my stuff. Sure
enough, I got a compliment on the new color within a day.
The
thing with neon is, it is made to be noticed. To do your neon hair
justice, you really have to coordinate it to your outfit much more
intentionally than you can get away with when your hair color is pastel.
One way to accomplish this is to wear it with all black, all white, or
both, so that the hair is clearly the focal point of the outfit. That's
what I did on my first day with neon hair. But by the second day, my
need for colored clothes was clawing to get out! The only remaining
solution was...more neon!
Fortunately,
the aforementioned overly bright sweater was almost the exact same
color as my hair. Problem solved, with surprisingly little effort!
Saturated colors go best with other saturated colors or "pure" neutrals – white or black. So I turned to black for my pants and shoes.
The
shoes are another thing that's out of character for me. I prefer a more
refined look on my feet even when the rest of my outfit is casual, so I
rarely wear athletic shoes outside the gym, and almost never
at work. But everyone needs a pair of basic black sneakers (for airport
shoes, if nothing else!), so I got these Reeboks on Black Friday. Of
course, I couldn't settle for truly basic black (I'm not an animal!), so these have a shiny finish and faceted texture just to keep things interesting.
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