Color
I have been off-and-on reading a biography of Shakespeare by Bill Bryson, who is an incredibly well-researched and hilarious writer of memoir and non-fiction (it's $6.99 for Kindle--go get it and make your friends think you're wicked smart). One of the coolest takeaways I have gotten from this particular work is that 16th and 17th century trend setters prided themselves on wearing as much black clothing as possible, the theory being that it took more dye to make clothes black, thus rendering them more expensive. If you were middle class, your clothes might be dark greyish and if you were really a dreg, you'd be clad in white (albeit, likely filthy white). I put all of that hifalutin knowledge into practice after I read about it and immediately started wearing lots and lots of black. This was easy to do from a wardrobing standpoint, but quite a challenge when you live in a house where every soft surface is covered in a cloud of dog hair.But I digress.
Color is hot this year and, as the anecdote above states, I am not wholly in a position to be a color warrior, so my options here are pretty limited. I have, however, pulled together a couple of combos that show off a bit more color than I have in the past:
So, this will be my week's worth of back-to-school outfits. Keeping in mind that I teach fifth and sixth grade and will have outdoor duties this week (we are slated to have temps in the teens if we're lucky), I think it's decently stylish. Better yet? No yoga pants! Everything is from my recent Old Navy trip except the necklace and scarves, which I've had for ages, and the peach shrug, which is pureJill by J. Jill. Baubles, tights, and accessory make-up (eyes, cheeks, nails) are also a place to add color pretty easily, so I'll make sure to dabble there as well.
Brows
This one scares me... I had Brooke Shields-quality brows in high school but then totaled them in my 20s trying to get an arch that would render me permanently skeptical. They are in rehab right now and I try not to mess with them, especially since a co-worker recently told me that she always thinks of me when she thinks of nice eyebrows. Hmm. Also, I wear pretty sizable eyeglasses so my brows kind of take a back seat to the rest of my face. After having some patchy spots filled in by my fabulous Jeopardy! make-up artist Sandy, I thought I might try to add body to my brows at home. I snagged some Maybelline Brow Drama at CVS over the weekend and have been paying around with it. The thing with darkening or adding girth to your brows, at least in my case, is that they become all I see when I look in a mirror. Indeed when I was on FaceTime with my mom a few nights ago, after I had done a play-around application of the stuff, she noticed right away. My husband on the other hand had no clue. (Or, if he did, he didn't say anything. I will accept both reactions.) I wonder if you can tell in the picture (above) which is before and which is after?Other trends I encountered that would be pret-a-porter in my existing closet are toppers and trenches, overskirts (aka, skirt layering, aprons, peplums...), striped tops (think: French stereotypes), polo shirts, and "roomy" denim (well, hopefully!).
I spent time this weekend merchandising my dressing room to get at all of this good stuff. Our house was partitioned and added to in such a slapdash way that there are two tiny, fairly useless rooms upstairs; they could be bedrooms if you did nothing else but lie on a bed in them. I transformed one into a dressing room and the cat has claimed the other as his Fortress of Solitude (a window looks directly onto the driveway, front yard, and porch). My closet is organized by item (outerwear, shirts, skirts, dresses) and within each clothing category, items are colorblocked. This lets me combine outfits pretty easily (although I hate shops that are set up this way). Pants, leggings, and layering skirts are in a dresser and undergarments are in baskets. This all makes for pretty easy grab-and-go routines in the morning as well as at laundry put-away time.
My accessories needed a bit more play and a great rule of thumb was shared with me recently by my mom, who heard it from an insanely style-conscious mutual friend. It seems like a fashion basic and is painfully easy to do, but it defies everything about how I have been dressing for the past five years: don't wear the same shoes or earrings or use the same bag twice in a row. We fall into ruts. Clothes become uniforms. If I am going to jazz up everything and put more spring in my style step, I have to do it across the board. Quite frankly, even my accessories, as delightful and varied as they are, had become uniform-ized: silver hoops, jade ring, grey scarf. This kind of ritualized drabness is the work of totalitarian regimes in some countries! To that end, I resurrected the 80s-era earring rack, basket organized the heck out of my scarves, tights, and legwarmers, and set up a better system for my bags. I also separated out my summer shoes to make more room on my shoe shelf for pairs I can wear in the winter months. As I said, boots with everything might as well be yoga pants and we're not getting tangled up in that web again.
I'd love to hear the trends you hope to try and how you plan to break out of style ruts of your own!
