Hot today. I've swiped my husband's cheapie StraightTalk phone, which takes surprisingly good photos, so here's some momentary relief from the laptop webcam. Team basic –– I've left in the penny/hair-tie arrangement from yesterday, but it's too sultry out for any creative layering. I just keep wearing my blue EVA Birks, because they're comfortable, and because the tonal effect feels easy on my eye.
I'm awaiting my Aldi order at the moment, fiddling with a fiction project, and cooling off in the shadowy kitchen. Kids should be on their way back from the beach, ending our empty-nest experiment for the time being, anyway. (I am HAPPY about this, personally).
Yesterday I combed through my closet and sweater bin, considering . . . you guessed it . . . fall outfits . . . because nothing cools you off like trying on sweaters. I did pull a brown crocheted Talbots cardigan back out of the outbox –– having put it there because I wasn't sure how much brown I really want to wear. Brown and this shade of blue make a pretty combination, and do "fallify" the dress, which is going to be important, I suppose, since I'll be wearing this dress far beyond the end of summer. Long about October, I'm not going to want to feel like the last rose, even though boots-and-tights weather will still be a good month away. I'll need some effects of some kind to carry me through the change of seasons in the same dress.
Here is that cardigan, shown sometime last fall with my long-wearing linen sheath jumper/dress, which will remain in my wardrobe long after this 100-days' challenge is done. I've had it and worn it for fifteen years; not going to let it go now.
This brown Talbots cardigan is a nice cardigan. Again, I had really been considering whether I wanted to keep wearing dark browns. I'm still not sure whether that's among my better colors, though it's not as clearly unflattering as black. I do have brown in my natural coloring –– my hair is brown, obviously. My eyebrows are a darker brown. The lighting in this photo doesn't really show things very accurately –– it's been very hard to get true color representation in my bathroom, which unfortunately is where the only full-length mirror in the house is. But here's another shot of the same cardigan, a headshot this time, with no filter at all –– and you know, it's honestly not bad.
This is one reason why I think it's probably only limitedly helpful to have yourself "color-typed" according to any one system, whether it's seasons or something like Dressing Your Truth where you're more like an energy type (which I think is kind of woo-woo, though a lot about DYT's free mini-course was useful to me, as far as it went). Those systems can point you in the right direction, and explain to you why you might feel consistently blah in a color, fabric, or shape you keep trying to wear. The idea of a color, particularly, that is universally, objectively versatile and flattering, is just manifestly untrue. If you need permission not to wear that color when it isn't flattering you, then a color-typing system might serve you well by granting you that permission. But if you've received some kind of color or style diagnosis, and you find you need permission to think outside that box, then here that is. You are a human being, uniquely and wonderfully made. You are not a Soft Summer, or a Type 3, or any other category. You're you.
There's really no substitute for actually paying attention to yourself: how you look in a color, how it makes you feel, but also what colors you actually are. I suppose what this really means is that there's no substitute for trusting your own judgment – though most of us have received so many undermining messages in our lifetimes that trusting our judgment about our appearance has become insanely difficult. And there are those people in our lives who will tell us to buy the dress already, because it's cute, without considering for one minute that "cute" on one person is not at all the same thing as cute on everybody. But if we pay attention to things like our skin tone, our eyes, our hair, our brows, the level of contrast in the colors that make us up, then it seems to me that we have a reliable, objective guide to help us, at least when it comes to color. Knowing what our colors are, as in what colors we actually are, can at least help us rule out things that don't work with those colors.
That same anxiety and uncertainty and unclarity are also why I find taking pictures so helpful. I get tired of it, mind you. It starts to feel a little too stuck-in-my-own-head. But having a daily record, like being shown myself through an impartial eye, both helps me in the moment and helps me later, when I revisit earlier outfits. Sometimes things I didn't like on the day look better in hindsight than I thought they did. Mood does alter our perception of virtually everything in our reality, and keeping a record can help you look back with clearer vision than you might have had on a given day. Sometimes I think, What on earth was I thinking? Really? I left the house like that? But sometimes, when I didn't like myself that day, in hindsight I realize all over again that actually, I looked pretty. Sometimes I just need the general reminder. It is okay to be beautiful; it is okay to need to be reminded that you're beautiful; it is okay to remind yourself of that fact. The more you can process it, hold onto it, and rest in it, the more you can see the beauty in other people to. All that's another way of saying that if you're going to love your neighbor as yourself, it's a good idea not to hate yourself. Whatever helps you not hate yourself on any level: that is a good thing to do.
Anyway, I did rescue out this brown cardigan. I had two dark-brown cardigans –– this one plus a waist-tied Loft one –– but I think I'll keep this one, which has consistently gotten compliments, and let the other one go. One dark-brown cardigan will pull its weight; I'm not sure two dark-brown cardigans really would.
All of which leads me to consider seasonal colors, as in colors that we wear in certain seasons, and associate with those seasons. For me, blue is bound to be an all-season color, because I look good in it. There's not a time of year when I wouldn't wear it. At the same time, I don't look good in a lot of what we tend to think of as fall colors: your mustard yellows, your burnt oranges, your warm reds. Some of those, as it happens, play nicely with blue, and it's worth considering, when I do consider thrifting again, keeping an eye out for accessories in those kinds of colors that wouldn't necessarily sit next to my face, but would suggest the season. If this lighter blue reads as a summer color, then pairing it with some darker tones –– that still harmonize with it –– would be a way to carry it into the next season. The dark brown will do that.
I also have a number of gray cardigans, and I have gray and navy Snag tights on their way, in addition to the tights already in my drawer, and leggings. I've thought about ordering some mustard-yellow ones as well, because that sounds fun with either clogs or my gray-green Docs or my camel tall boots. Combining this blue with darker colors, some judiciously chosen warmer or more intense colors, plus heavier textures and layers will help carry Camellia from one season to the next, making her shade of blue a color that works for whatever season we're in. Meanwhile, she's wool. She's supposed to be warm as well as cool. So whether or not my color scheme "reads" as autumnal, I can readily transition into a cooler season with this same dress.
The question remains, though, of how it will feel to me. I have an easier time envisioning winter ensembles with Camellia than I do fall ones. Grays with this blue, cool lavenders and orchids . . . in short, you can do cool sorbet shades for winter, to go with thin sunshine, frost, or the sixty-five-degree Christmas Day we so often experience here in North Carolina. But somehow those shades don't say falling leaves or bonfire. I hope I can work things out so that I won't feel out-of-sorts as the seasons change –– which they do very gradually in this part of the world. You tend to be in the mood for a season far sooner than you actually need to dress for it.
Meanwhile, counting my reward dresses before they hatch and all, but I am thinking that I will want a charcoal-gray dress, probably a Sierra, for my reward dress –– though I'd go for a washed-navy just as readily. If they made Sierra in marine blue, that would really scratch all my itches, but they don't seem to be doing that, at least not this year. Crossing my fingers that good options will be available when I'm ready. It is tempting to snap up another dress now, while so many are available to order and not sold out, but I really can't afford to –– that $130 price tag is an effective deterrent –– and that seems a little out of line with what I set out to do with this experiment. The point was not to acquire more. The point was to replace worn items, judiciously and with fewer items, which were to be worn harder and longer than those items I am moving out of my closet. It wasn't just to have a bunch of wool clothes, all right now.
That's the problem with minimalism, or even sustainablism, seen as a movement or a virtue in and of itself. Somehow it always seems to entail getting rid of all the wrong stuff and buying all the right stuff, which yes, might put some dollars in the bank accounts of entirely worthy people, but is still wasteful. To reassess issues and values in your life is a worthy endeavor: your relationship with yourself, with your clothes, with your appearance, with your spending habits, with all the various ways you might be filling holes in your life with things that don't in fact fill those holes. At the end of the day, our souls are made to long for God, but our desires and appetites are frequently disordered, which is what lies behind so many of our life patterns. We might eat because we're hungry for God, but don't know it. We might spend money because we desire God, but have mistaken material goods for His ultimate good. That doesn't mean that eating is bad or that buying material things is bad. But it is good to know why we do what we do, to the greatest extent possible. Then when we go to do it again, we know what we're doing, and can exercise a clearer sense of judgment about whether or not to do it.
Also: doing something because it's fun is a perfectly valid reason. Everything in life doesn't have to be morally burdened all the time. My number-one reason for doing this hundred-days challenge was that I thought it would be fun.
That digression aside, I am thinking I'll want a gray Sierra if I can get one:
*I find the swing shape versatile and wearable, day in and day out.
*I think a sleeveless dress will serve me better year-round than a dress with sleeves would, because I can layer it in cold weather, then wear it as it comes in hot.
*I look good in charcoal gray, and its color-combination options both overlap with the blue of my Camellia and include some possibilities that don't work as well with this blue.
*I like the idea of a heavier fabric, and not just for the winter. I do plan to hike in Camellia, but I'm a little more worried about the delicacy of the fabric and the potential for staining this lighter color.
*If I'm going to have a no-buy year next year (the purpose of which really is to teach myself to rest in gratitude for what I have), then I want any dress I acquire to work hard and hold up to a lot of wear for a lot of occasions. I will have other dresses –– am keeping the linen sheath pictured above, plus my linen Easter dress from this year, plus my navy knit sheath dress from the Walmart clearance rack. Hanging onto my navy Talbots fit-and-flare, though it's starting to show its age and heavy wear, having been worn pretty thoroughly before I acquired it . . .
Really, I plan to keep most of what is currently in my closet, because the last thing I want is to eliminate something, then get into next year and realize I need it. I have a number of dresses that do continue to work hard for me. I have . . . pants. We'll see how I feel about them in the fall. I have skirts. I have leggings to wear with dresses. I have t-shirts and button shirts to layer with dresses and pants. I have cardigans. I have jackets. I have tights on order. I plan to buy another pair of investment shoes for year-round wear (i.e., clogs). While the 100-day challenge is illuminating, in the sense that it teaches me how much I can do with one basic item of clothing, my idea really isn't just to wear this one item of clothing and nothing else, but to cycle it more thoroughly into what I already have, wear, and like wearing, all year.
But I have a feeling I've probably said all this already. Meanwhile, I know I've said it before, but I do so love blue.