Tuesday, July 20. Today: Camellia worn as a tank top, with thrifted sage-green twill skirt, very old blue shrug cardigan, and EVA Birks, because it's rainy.
Still the grainy terrible webcam photos, sorry. But I am happy with the combination here. Muted blues and soft, washed, grayed greens have been making me happy this summer, and here the lapis blue dress I chose plays right into that favorite combination. The wool is thin and fine enough not to create bulk under the skirt – it's basically like wearing a slip.
The fabric blouses and drapes nicely. And again, I always think these colors play well together. After having the air conditioning on all night, it's a little damp and chilly in my dorm studio this morning, so I'm grateful for the cardigan, but I can easily go without and still look nice. Skirt's a little wrinkled, but that's just because it's been lived in already. My day is as usual: up around 6:30 to make coffee, get dressed, and sit down to write. I realize now, two hours later, that I forgot to say Morning Prayer, so I'll do that in just a minute. I've revised a couple of scenes in the novel – was thinking about these revisions as I fell asleep last night, but refused to let myself get up and start working at them right then, because I'd slept so poorly the night before. Last night was better, and fortunately I remembered when I got up what it was I had wanted to do. After Morning Prayer, I'll keep on with revisions until 10:30, when it's time to knock off for Mass. Then back at it again . . . I keep marveling at how much it's possible to get done, when writing a novel is all you have to do.
Feeling very tressiful in all this humidity. Back to work.
LUNCH BREAK NOTES:
Periodically, because I signed up for them, I receive style-tip emails from Australian stylist and designer Nat Tucker. I ran across her on Instagram and liked her common-sense approach to style and her eye for color, so I did her little free online Make It Look Easy course. As I've said here before, this is a taster for a full-on style course called Boss of Your Wardrobe, which I doubt I'll ever do, but as a chronically fashion-challenged person, I have found the free course, her color-combinations e-book, and the periodic emails all quite helpful.
Today's email was talking about capsule wardrobes and why they tend not to work for everyone. Here's a little snippet:
Over the years of trying to build a capsule wardrobe for myself and my clients, I've learned that there are a few reasons why a capsule wardrobe doesn't work for everyone.
1) capsule wardrobes sound simple, but they can get complicated — usually, you’ll need a capsule wardrobe for different seasons, for work and play, etc.
2) the wardrobe colours that you choose should work best on your skin tone. Remember, some colour types crave colour!
I've talked about this idea myself fairly often on this blog: that our typical "capsule-wardrobe" concept turns on wearing a lot of black and white. Or gray and white. Or possibly brown and white. In other words, the conventional idea of the capsule wardrobe assumes a mix-and-match selection of what we tend to think of as neutrals.
What I think about all this is:
*all of those "neutrals" are actually colors
*even white is a color, and comes in different shades
*any one of those colors looks good on some people, but no one color, even a "neutral," suits everyone
*wearing colors that consistently don't look good on you seems really counterintuitive on every possible level –– a capsule is a good idea, but not if you end up with a bunch of clothes you don't like to wear
*any color that looks good on you can effectively function as a neutral
*any color that looks good on you can, in combination with colors that harmonize with it, form the basis of a capsule wardrobe you actually want to wear.
Now, in case it isn't obvious, I'm not a stylist. I do not delude myself that what I'm wearing today is going to turn any heads. But I like it. The colors feel good to me. I take pleasure in them and in how they complement my coloring and my personality. Blue with sage green, plus a touch of dusty pink, is just delicious to me. Although this ensemble isn't necessarily stylish, as in here she comes just a-walkin down the street, it does hit all the points on my personal checklist, presented here in no particular order of importance:
*comfortable
*feminine but not too girly
*natural
*understated
*soft/graceful
*body-honoring
*easy to move in/allowing for freedom of movement
*appropriate for the day's demands and contexts
In short, given that my calendar today is free of any formal, professional, public events, I'm appropriately dressed for anything I might need to do. I have been to Mass in this outfit. I can sit at my table and write my novel in this outfit. I can go for a walk in this outfit, assuming it ever stops raining. I can go to the store in this outfit if I need to. There's nothing I have to do or want to do today for which the clothes I'm wearing don't work. Even if I were called on to, say, give a speech unexpectedly, for some reason I can't quite imagine right now, I'd feel okay. I know I'm wearing good colors and am reasonably "together," even if my outfit isn't particularly trendy.
I have begun to learn to feel a lot better in my clothes, the more I've paid attention to things I sort of already knew: chiefly, what color looks best on me. I look and feel better in blue than in any other color – and in particular shades of blue. There's such a thing as a too-bright blue for my coloring and personality. But I have a good handle on the range of blues that feel right, and thanks to Brilliant Colour Combinations and ongoing inspiration from these periodic emails, I've worked out a pretty fair range of colors that both go with blue and flatter coloring that looks good in the blues that suit me.
So it's really not that a capsule wardrobe is limiting or boring. It's that a capsule wardrobe in colors that aren't you will not make you happy. It's also the case that a capsule wardrobe –– consisting of versatile pieces that you both will actually wear because you feel good in them and can dress up or down with accessories and shoes to meet a wide range of occasions –– can serve you really well.
That's one of the reasons why I bought my Wool& dress. A number of my most-worn dresses and other pieces are nearing the end of their useful lives. It made sense to me to replace them with one flexible, wearable, long-lasting item, rather than trying to replace them 1:1. The blue of this dress suits me, makes me feel consistently pretty, and goes with virtually the entire remainder of my wardrobe. In short, it's the perfect capsule core item. I wear blue so much, as a basis for my outfits, that it really is essentially a neutral for me. I bought this dress because not only did I think I'd enjoy wearing it by itself, as it comes, but I could also envision making a hundred days' worth of outfits, combining it with things I already own.
More about determining what colors work for you. I find that my sense of colors doesn't always line up with hers, but the basic idea of paying attention to your own coloring ––– your eyes, your hair, your lips, your skin –– and to the level of contrast in your coloring (mine is low-to-medium, definitely not high or sharp) means that you literally have a reliable color guide in yourself. Further, having a good idea of what colors work in combination with your own colors helps you to coordinate and create coherent but interesting outfits. This is true even when, like mine today, your outfit is pretty basic.
I have taught myself, incidentally, not to apply words like boring or plain to my coloring and features, or my personality either, for that matter. I am just a gentle, lower-contrast person. My face isn't all interesting angles. It's a soft oval. I don't have stark, arresting features, but muted, subtle ones. I don't turn heads when I enter a room, but then I'd probably die of self-consciousness if I did. I'm okay with subtlety and understatement, and with being the kind of person you have to decide to pay attention to, maybe. I think there are things about me that would reward that attention. This is one way to learn to be comfortable in your own skin.
Finally: One of Nat Tucker's key outfit principles is not repeating your outfit color in your shoe color. It's a pretty simple principle to follow, and it makes perfect sense: being too matchy is kind of boring, but also, a repeated color tends to draw your eye. If your shoe repeats a color in your outfit too closely, then an observer doesn't know where to look –– paradoxically, the effect of your composition is fragmented, not unified.
Now, I have sort of broken that principle today – though my EVA Birks in truth aren't exactly the same shade of blue as anything else in my outfit, so maybe I haven't broken the rule too much. I was going for a very tonal blue-on-blue-on-green thing anyway. I guess, again, you could think of blue as my neutral here, the basis of the outfit, with green (and the pink of my belt) as my soft pops of color.
But also: it's wet. I brought exactly one pair of waterproof shoes, and the EVA Birks are they. Sometimes practicalities trump principles, at least when it comes to clothes. You can be a style relativist; the moral stakes are not exactly high. But it is worth pointing out, because even an extremely basic outfit like the one I'm wearing today would be made more interesting by a contrasting shoe. I simply have chosen not to bother.
Yes, yes, I am still writing a novel. Think of this as a palate cleanser.