A friend texted me today to say that she keeps feeling like getting in the car and going somewhere, but that where she really wants to go is fall.
And I hear that. I feel the same way. This time of year, invariably, as people go back to school and the season makes noises about changing –– but doesn't –– all I want is to put on some fall clothes and . . . do something, I don't know what. Bob for apples? Stand by a bonfire? Not sweat?
I am, as should be obvious to anyone who might be reading this blog, embarked on the Wool& Hundred-Day Dress Challenge. In fact, in nine more days I'll be at the halfway mark. I'll probably be finished with the challenge by the time the weather here in the North Carolina Piedmont starts to cool off to any significant degree. But I don't plan to stop wearing my dress, simply because the challenge is over. In fact, part of why I was attracted to the challenge was that I wanted to see just how simply I could dress, and just how much daily wear I could get out of a single core piece. It's how I want to live, really, not just how I want to jump through some kind of hoop. And I like my dress a lot. I bought it with the intention of wearing it fairly constantly, all through the year.
Now that my kids have left for college and I have some time on my hands, I thought I'd do a little more experimenting with outfit creation. Mind you, I have been doing this day to day. I have, to date, a forty-one-day record of outfits I have made with my Camellia dress. But I thought it might be fun to try some cooler-weather looks, to have an idea of what I'll want to reach for when that blessed day, cool enough for cardigans, tights and boots, shall come.
Actually, what I thought I'd do is start with a cardigan. I was already wearing my dress, of course. I pulled out my under-bed bin and selected a cardigan at random: this silver-gray vintage-looking beaded number. It was a thrift find, and I've had it for at least five years now. It's not actually vintage, but an Express piece, silk and cashmere with some nylon and spandex to help it hold its shape. It's a really pretty cardigan, and I've worn it a lot in the years I've had it.
Gray is a good neutral for me; my eye color is grayed, and my skin has a pink undertone, so this light gray shows up my coloring pretty nicely, especially when paired with one of my other good colors, like this lapis blue. I hadn't put these two items together before, but I really like the colors together. They create a nice level of soft contrast that's comfortable to my eye.
Here I am wearing just the dress and cardigan with the Birkenstocks I was also wearing today. This outfit is a reasonable option for this part of the season, when I might be going into an air-conditioned store or restaurant. It would be good for an evening out a month from now, when it's still sandal weather, but starting to cool off.
I like this: just simple and casual, but not too schlumpy. It's a very me kind of look. I love little cardigans, and I love simple little dresses.
Continuing along the spectrum of this part of the season, I'm basically changing out shoes to see what difference that makes, without altering anything else about the ensemble.
Here's the outfit with my little Crocs Mary Janes:
A tiny bit dressier, or appropriate for a slightly cooler day when sandals seem too bare.
Here it is with Converse, which I always want to love, but don't always love.
I mean, eh. I hang onto these shoes, and I do wear them sometimes, but they just don't ever quite . . . do whatever it is that Converse do for lots of people. I've outboxed them and taken them back a million times. And sometimes I like them. I'm not sure that this moment pictured here represents one of those times.
Here, for a change of pace, is a dressier look, with heels. As heels go, these are actually kind of casual, but as I don't wear heels often, they always seem to (I'm looking for a word other than elevate) an outfit.
I found these shoes at Goodwill last spring, and I have worn them a lot. They do nice things for my legs, and make this whole outfit instantly a little dressier. Note that I haven't changed anything else. The power of shoes to transform the whole feel of what you're wearing is not to be underestimated, though I too often do underestimate it.
NOW let's get into some cooler-weather iterations of this outfit. I have ordered, to date, six pairs of Snag tights*; four of them I ordered at the start of the summer and received a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I'd pull them out and try them. It will be three months before I can really wear them, but be prepared, amirite?
Here's my pair of Snag "Rainy Day" tights –– a kind of gray marl –– with the dress and cardigan and my Doc Martens, which more or less live on my feet all winter.
Gosh, I like this. Instantly Camellia shifts from a really summery dress to something quite different. I like the interplay of the colors, which harmonize but don't ever repeat**: the light gray, the darker gray, the gray-green, then the muted note of blue. I like how all these colors strike a similar note, but nothing is matchy. I could add a scarf, but I kind of like the simplicity of the neckline with a minimal necklace.
I tried switching out the Docs for these tall camel boots I bought last fall and liked that combination as well:
The tan boots add a nice note of contrast to the otherwise muted color scheme.
Next I tried the same combinations, but with a pair of burgundy Snag tights.
Here's that combo with the Docs:
I like this a lot, too. In fact, it's a close call, but I think I like the dress-cardi-tights-Docs ensemble even better with the pop of burgundy than I did with the gray tights.
And finally, with the camel boots:
I think I prefer the gray with the camel. I also have navy and a more solid "slate" pair of Snags, which I didn't bother trying today, but either of those would pair really well with this outfit and these boots. I also have a pair of older dark-brown boots which might wear well with the burgundy tights.
Anyway, with one cardigan and this dress, I've made eight different outfits, simply by changing what I wore on my legs and feet. To these basic templates I can add scarves, other necklaces, belts, and different hair (though a loose ponytail is always a good default for me).
I'll keep up this series as I can, pulling cardigans from my bin and trying them with different combinations. A lot of it will be a lot of the same, since I don't actually have that many of anything –– but as you see, you can get strikingly different effects via small tweaks, so it will be interesting to see what I like and don't like. Maybe what I'll do next time is pick one tights/boots combo and cycle all my cardigans and sweaters through with it. That might be easier than climbing in and out of different tights and shoes, now that I think of it.
This exercise should also help me decide what else I might outbox with the change of seasons. I just took my last outbox load to the thrift store yesterday, so although I don't want to be hasty in purging things, I do really want to winnow down my wardrobe to elements I like and will wear with confidence.
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*This feels maybe a little excessive to me. Still, I haven't bought tights in a long time, and if I'm going to be wearing a dress a lot in cold weather, it makes sense to have some choices for covering my legs. ALSO, there's the reality that I'm not buying a lot of core clothing pieces. I have this one dress, which covers a lot of bases. Once I have my challenge dress, that'll be twice as many bases covered. I am thinking that I will give myself a third Wool& dress for my birthday, maybe instead of another pair of shoes, so that I can rotate those three dresses all year long, with various accessories depending on the season and the occasion. All of this is trying to fill in gaps so that I can institute a no-buy-clothing year for 2022, which will only be successful if I have filled those gaps and can honestly tell myself I don't need anything else for any reason. In other words, I want to create conditions under which a no-buy year would be actually sustainable.
NB: The prospect of a no-buy year could trigger a kind of scarcity response in me, proactively. I have to be careful about that. I don't want to buy ALL THE THINGS now, just because I won't be buying them later. The point really is to lay the foundation for a working wardrobe that doesn't require me to buy more stuff, and to move myself out of the habit of shopping, by which I really mean mostly thrift shopping, as a recreational activity.
**One of Nat Tucker's style principles which I've taken to heart is the idea that the elements of your outfit should go together, as in good, harmonious, interesting color combinations, without actually repeating (unless you are going for a color-blocking or monotonal look), and that your shoes especially should not match a color from the rest of your outfit. You can decide how high- or low-contrast you want the outfit to be. Some of that will be a function of the natural level of contrast in your own coloring; some will be a function of your personality and your mood. I mostly like to wear fairly low-contrast, calming outfits, but sometimes a surprising pop of color is fun. And even when I'm being relatively muted, I still like for there to be some subtle interest in what I'm wearing.