Today I thought I'd profile what I tend to think of as my Advent/Lent dress, because it's purple. Here I am wearing it, in fact, in one of those seasons last year (last Advent, because those are my old glasses), with a soft-grape cardigan, charcoal leggings and my Doc Martens.
Here it is again, in much the same time frame, with a gray cardigan, purple leggings, and camel boots:
I love this dress, and I don't wear it nearly enough, even in the purple seasons. I got it about two years ago at the Good Neighbor Shop down the street, a remarkable thrift store with a fifty-cent rack that can be to die for, and two chatty ladies who have been there ever since we've lived in this house. As it happens, I didn't buy this dress off the fifty-cent rack, but I did buy it for about $3. As I was checking out, the chatty lady at the register said, "Honey, that's a real good brand. I got some bras from them one time . . ." She proceeded to tell me how many years she had worn those bras; I've put the figure out of my mind. I had never heard of this brand ––
–– but for $3, this is a very nice dress. It's soft and comfortable and has some lovely ruched detailing in the bodice and waist.
It dresses up or down nicely, and I have worn it to more than one funeral. It's also the only patterned dress I own.
The one problem is that the neckline is very low, so I always wear it with a camisole, in white or gray. Gray seems less obtrusive, so usually I wear gray.
I'm not going to repeat the combinations shown above in shopping my closet for outfits involving this dress, but thought I'd pull out some options I haven't tried before (either because I didn't have a given item last year, or because I hadn't really thought before of putting certain things together).
Here's the dress as it comes, paired with gray Snag merino tights and my secondhand Birkenstock Madeiras:
I also really love these Madeiras, by the way. I love Birkenstocks generally, but what I like about these is that they make such good transitional-weather shoes: something that's not quite a sandal, but also not a boot. And I like their first-grade-shoes kind of aesthetic, especially with tights and a dress, though I also look forward to trying them with various trousers once I'm not quite so thoroughly committed to dress-wearing. Anyway.
So for a series of comfy everyday outfits, here's that basic combo with my new-to-me duster-length off-white cardigan:
And with the thrifted off-white pullover I wore a couple of Sundays ago with my Camellia:
I really like the subtle pattern-clash here. I'd have to see how the lines of this outfit look on my body, but I could see this as a combination I reach for a lot.
Trying this thrifted shrug thing, but I suspect there may be too much going on in the bodice and waist for this really to work that well:
Next I tried some slightly more dressed-up looks, with blazers. Still thinking about green with purple, I put together the dress with this moss-green corduroy blazer I got on ThredUp last year:
I don't know that this knocks me over, but it could work. It certainly doesn't not work, and the structure of the blazer, which is very fitted, could work well with the more flowing, free-form dress.
Here's another blazer, which I did score off the fifty-cent rack:
I'd been looking for a long-line blazer, and I love this color. This could definitely be a church-in-Advent ensemble, though I would probably wear boots.
And then there's my less-structured soft thrifted cardigan-blazer, for an in-between look with some more subtle pattern-clashing:
I'd also seen that mustard-yellow can go with dark purple/eggplant, so I thought I'd try tights in that color:
And, I mean, maybe? I don't hate it as much as I'd thought I would. I've always thought of this dress as a kind of grayscale, with which I wore more gray, so the idea of a pop of warm bright color is a little . . . out of my personal box, but also sort of fun to contemplate. I have some sage-green Snag tights on order, and I feel fairly sure that I'd wear those with this dress, so that's some more variety to anticipate.
In many ways this dress has felt less versatile to me than just about any other piece in my current wardrobe. It's interesting, then, to consider how many outfits I can actually make with it, even if I'm not wearing it hiking, or as a top over jeans, or under other dresses, or many of the kinds of things I've done with my Camellia. I also think that people would notice if I wore this dress too many days in a row, even if they're not generally taking stock of what I wear. But it's okay if I can't do all those things with every dress I own. My goal with this particular dress is to wear it more, because I do actually like it. As I have purged a lot of purple items from my wardrobe this year, because they'd either worn out or ceased to fit me, I hope I'm going to reach for this dress –– if not on an everyday basis, at least once or twice a week, especially during the purple liturgical seasons. And while I've overlooked it as an inclusion in a travel capsule wardrobe, I really should reconsider that. It would travel like a champ.
I didn't think about scarves for any of these outfits, but of course I do have scarves. Stay tuned, I guess, to see what I actually end up wearing.