A new week!
I've opted to wear Camellia with a knotted top today, so that again she's more of a skirt. My husband, whom I haven't seen in a week, likes this top, so I thought it would be a nice touch for my homecoming today from my fiction-writing residency. These last two weeks have been massively productive, if often exhausting. I can't remember when I've worked so hard, and so concentratedly, on one thing. It's been wonderful, but I am ready to be home again, with a more or less finished novel in hand.
A closer look at this combination. Layering navy on what Wool& calls lapis, though really it's kind of a slaty-ish, dusty-ish blue. In Nat Tucker's Brilliant Colour Combinations, which remains for me a go-to resource in putting outfits together, this shade seems to fall somewhere between cornflower blue and what she just calls blue. Of course, sometimes I just ignore her recommendations. Navy with this shade of blue it is, so there.
As always, I like the option of creating a waist with this dress. As a pear-shaped person who has gained a good bit of midsection weight this year, I like empire/higher waistlines, which give me some flow over the areas where I need it, as a matter of comfort if nothing else. Wearing the dress loose obviously gives me that room, and I like it in its original swing shape. But I also like being able to create a different shape –– that versatility (as I might have said before) is one reason why I opted for a swing dress over one of their fit-and-flare styles.
So far I've worn Camellia:
*as she comes
*with cardigans of various lengths
*under a skirt, as a top
*with tops knotted over
What I haven't done yet, but plan to try:
*wearing a tee underneath, so Camellia is a jumper
*wearing Camellia with leggings (too hot right now, really)
*wearing Camellia as a tunic over skinny jeans (again, too hot)
*wearing Camellia as a knotted top
*wearing Camellia in a REALLY dressy situation; we have a wedding to go to in early August, and I'm debating what to wear for that evening . . . might very well be Camellia, if I can work out shoes and accessories to dress her up to an appropriate level.
I also like that as we move into the autumn – which of course in North Carolina is still pretty hot through the end of October – I can winterize this dress. I plan to wear it with tights as the weather starts to cool down, with a cardigan over or a long-sleeved shirt under, and with boots. I'm a big believer in the year-round dress, and I can see wearing Camellia in the snow, just as readily as I'm wearing her now in the heat and humidity of late July.
Sometime I'll sit down and hash out just how many different outfits I can make by combining items in my wardrobe with Camellia. I did do that with my proposed capsule wardrobe for this 2-week residency (15 items gave me AT LEAST 30 different outfits, and I probably could have kept coming up with combinations). Of course, a week in, I just started wearing Camellia instead, though I have combined her with pieces I'd included in that capsule.
The top I'm wearing today is a thrifted item – a Liz Claiborne tank. It's not natural fibers, at least not entirely, but I liked the pattern. As I said, my husband really likes this top. He was a bit dubious about my embarking on this challenge – more because he worried that I was binding my free will in some way than because he thought he'd get bored seeing me in the same outfit all the time – but I think seeing that I won't NOT be wearing things he likes will ease his mind some. It does ease mine, I will admit, because I like all those things, too. There are a few items I own that I can't see ever wearing with this dress – a jumpsuit, for example. I mean, never say never, but I'm not seeing it right now. Still, as it stands, my closet contains more pieces that could potentially work with this dress than can't, and that's fun to think about. As I told him on the front end, it's the creativity of this challenge that appeals to me – it seems restrictive only in the way that the sonnet form, for example, is restrictive.
But speaking of writing, I need to polish off revisions and send them in before my very last editorial meeting of this two-week program. It's been real, but I am ready for the next phase.