Saturday morning kitchen table: girly at work, everybody else still asleep. I'm savoring some coffee and quiet, playing Wordle, psyching myself up to walk with Dora. Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon, after itemizing my proposed beach capsule wardrobe, I started trying on hats. I really should wear a hat more often. So says my dermatologist, for one. I don't like wearing hats, but maybe I should try to make more of a habit of it. For your entertainment, here are the three hats I currently own:
1. Ancient-ish straw hat I bought at the beach, probably in 2011. It used to have a band and is pretty misshapen at this point, but it's still kind of a good hat.
2. Vivaciously colored straw hat, also bought at the beach some years ago, when I'd forgotten to bring Hat #1:
Also kind of misshapen, and I'm never sure how I feel about it, but at least at the beach, I do wear it.
3. Sun hat I bought for hiking last year, which has a hole to put my ponytail through.
Not a Fashion Hat. Guaranteed to add ten years' worth of eccentricity to your age.
Hat #1 as part of an ensemble last year, and again, as an experiment, yesterday:
I tend to flip up the brim so I can see. This is a little cuter than Hat #3 as part of An Outfit, though I like the #3 color:
I can never decide what I think of Hat #2 outside the beach context:
Funnily enough, I hated all these pictures when I took them yesterday. Today they all seem not so bad to me. That's why it's good to take pictures --- they give you a chance to let an idea marinate, and your eyes to adjust.
Anyway, I am wearing, currently, the exact same outfit as yesterday, minus (currently) any hat. Also minus my necklace, because I managed to catch the chain on the dog crate and break it. This was my last chain --- all the others have broken, and it broke in the middle, so isn't readily fixable unless I take it to a jeweler, which I'm not sure is worth it. Anyway, I ordered myself a new, sturdier-looking chain, because I feel naked without my medal. I hadn't even though to include jewelry in my no-buy, because I don't buy jewelry often at all. And I did make a provision for anything that got ruined and needed replacing. So now I've done that. I might have gone to the thrift store to find a replacement, because that's where all my chains have come from, but in the end I was afraid that if I set foot in a thrift store I'd see other things . . . online ordering it was.
Perhaps I shall put on a hat before I venture forth into the morning.
PS: Just received notice that my Maggie dress is "out for delivery!" It's officially set to arrive tomorrow, but it's actually in my town today, before 9 a.m. So maaaaaybe? Maaaaaaaaaaaaybe?
PPS: Walked the dog for an hour. Wore the pink hat with my ponytail through the hole. Was glad of the strap, because there was a little breeze. Did not care how dorky I looked.
Also, a timely post from Litany, a Catholic fashion-design firm. While I get the feeling that I am not their demographic, like at ALL --- in fact, as much as I like their ideas, their actual clothing looks overhwelmingly frivolous and unwearable --- I can find something to take away from a meditation on what other things you might wear, besides red, to celebrate Pentecost.
PPPS:
SHE'S HERE.
My initial review:
I tried her on and experimented a little before taking my bath. Here's the basic fit, in a medium long:
I probably could have worn a small. On the other hand, the shoulder seams hit right at the end of my shoulders, and the sleeves don't seem really too big. They're not snug, but definitely not like oversized-t-shirt sleeves. The sweep and drape seem about right: possibly a tad generous, but I was afraid a small in this fabric wouldn't drape well behind. I don't think I want to size down, though I might try throwing her in the dryer the first time I wash her. I did that with my long Sierra, which snugged her up just a little, which is really all I would want.
I need to compare photos of my medium Camellia and this medium dress side-by-side. To my eye, the Maggie seems like more fabric, but then I have dried Camellia in the dryer at least once, so that might account for a slimmer fit.
I do like the length. It hits right below my knee, at a flattering midi length. I could wear boots with this dress and still have some leg visible, which is ideal. It also belts really well, which is something I was hoping for:
I might wear it like this more often than I wear it loose --- we'll see. It does a great fit-and-flare, still hitting right at the knee. I have so many above-the-knee dresses that this was important to me, this time around: to have a dress in a versatile slightly-longer length. While I'm not all about the uber-modesty, as I hope I've made abundantly clear, this is a look I'm comfortable wearing to church, without much further embellishment. It's got sleeves; it's a length nobody could object to. I could walk into a cathedral in Italy and not get fussed at by little old ladies with shawls. It's good to have at least one go-to dress that fills that bill.
Another belted look:
With the scarf I wore the other night (just grabbing things I'd taken off and tossed onto the drying rack here):
This, with my tan sandals, could be my Pentecost church outfit, though I might opt to wear my kimono instead. Or I might decide the kimono is a little OTT. I wore it last Pentecost (can't seem to find a photo now), and that's definitely how I felt.
Possible conference ensemble:
Amazing how that so-very-cheap cardigan dresses up anything it touches. Instant polish. I love the marl with the marine-blue of the dress, too. This blue is less vibrant than I had been expecting --- in a lot of people's photos it looks like a dark royal blue, but it is more navy than that. Still, it's beautiful, and I will wear the heck out of it, with everything.
Another possible cardigan look:
My overall assessment so far:
*I think I could shrink her a tiny bit, but in the main, I'm happy with the fit. It's okay on its own, but lends itself to lots of variations with belts. I could do the coin trick, too and still have a midi-length dress. I think I'd rather put her in the dryer than actually size down.
*Maybe it's the long length, but this is not as casual a dress as many people say it is. It's not like a basic t-shirt dress. For one thing, the fabric is much prettier, silkier, sheenier, and more special than the average t-shirt dress. I could absolutely see dressing this up for a wedding. Some slightly-more-glam jewelry, the longline cardigan, heels . . . this could pull off "cocktail," for example (really, anyone who didn't think so could just bite me --- you cannot go wrong with simple lines). It feels potentially dressier than my Camellia, which I did wear to an evening wedding during my challenge last summer.
*On the other hand, I'd wear it happily with Birkenstocks just to schlep around. It's not strictly a dressy dress, any more than it's a casual one.
*It will be great with the red Mary Janes whose arrival I now anxiously await.
*The sleeves mean it will wear through the seasons well. My sleeveless Sierra does that already, of course, but one thing I learned about my Camellia is that the wider armholes make it harder to cover with cardigans. The dark color will feel good in the winter, too, just as much as in the summer.
*I'm now pretty anxious for my new silver chain to arrive, too, because this open neckline needs a necklace! I can't find my blue beads, either, which is worrying me . . .
*I will baby this dress a little more than I do the other two, because I need her to last and look really good for a long time. That doesn't mean I won't wear her a lot this summer! But I will probably not knock around in her quite so much as I do my Camellia.
Anyway, I am happy with her. I was a little anxious about the sizing and length, but on the whole, I think this is going to work well for me. I am glad I opted for this dress over a dress with an elastic waist, this time around: an unstructured dress gives me more choices and versatility, and I can adjust where the waist sits as I find flattering.
Meanwhile, I've been noticing how much my Camellia has faded in the eleven months I've had her:
The colors are a little grayed in this photo, but you can see how much darker the dress is on the inside than on the outside. This is not a complaint. I have worn this dress heavily, and I've worn her often outdoors in the sun. This just feels like a natural process in the life of the fabric, neither a bug nor a feature, but a fact . . . but while still loving its sheeny softness and beauty, I do remark the aging process.
Anyway, time to get some work done while Dora is still asleep in her crate!