June! The month of the Sacred Heart! And sumer is icumen in.
While I drink my first cup of coffee and try to wake up enough to play Wordle before walking the dog, I thought I'd do a quick recap of favorite May outfits. It occurred to me last night that this would be a fun thing to do at the start of each new month: look back at particular winners from the past month.
On the fly:
May 1. The month started off with a favorite, though I haven't repeated it: thrifted grape Pact cotton sheath dress, with thrifted duck-egg-blue cotton collarless shirt tied over it and my old tan fake Birkenstocks. This was a Sunday Mass look, and I adored the colors.
I wore my little secondhand blue bamboo swing dress a lot in May. Mostly I wore it with Xero sandals for walking, but it felt more dressed up here, on May 3, with the same tan fake Birks.
Hard to believe that a month ago we were still having some cooler days. I got one or two wearings out of the secondhand long-sleeved version of the blue bamboo swing dress, as here, on May 5, with my secondhand striped bamboo/cotton leggings, which I always love, and thrifted Birk Floridas.
Here's another Sunday Mass look I liked, from May 8: thrifted rayon floral maxi skirt, secondhand Woolx blue tee, thrifted green J. Crew cotton cardigan, and again, the tan sandals. That bead necklace always dresses up any outfit. I love the fluidity of the skirt, and I love all these colors together. I don't wear maxi-length skirts and dresses nearly as much as I used to, but sometimes the swish and flow of a long skirt is exactly what I want.
There was a big chunk of time when I didn't take pictures, because I was on the road fetching home the college kids, but I was wearing Camellia or Sierra pretty much literally the entire trip.
Wore shorts once, on May 19: my lone pair, these thrifted sage-green Gap shorts, with thrifted Indian tunic and Birkenstocks. I loved this look, though I think I should have worn my hair up with it.
May 20: my one long-trousers wearing of the entire month. These are thrifted royal-blue Gloria Vanderbilt jeans I'd rescued from the outbox, with thrifted chambray tencel blouse and the tan sandals yet again.
May 22: another Sunday Mass look, featuring thrifted vintage 90s Liz Claiborne linen maxi dress with thrifted braided belt, longline cardigan, and the tan sandals. I felt like a 1930s garden party, which is what I used to love about dresses like this the first time they came around, in the heyday of British series like Jeeves and Wooster, Campion, and Poirot. Just waiting to fill up my croquet card.
I wore my Sierra a LOT, as I always do. Here, on May 23, she made an outing with the tan sandals, which make an outfit by offering a pop of contrast, especially with gray.
I also wore my purple bamboo swing dress a good bit, but liked it here, on May 28, with the Xero sandals and a seafoam bamboo headband.
May 29, another Sunday Mass look: my Wool& Camellia with longline cardigan and gray Mary Janes.
So, a Top Ten for May. Now the new month is here, the appliance guys are huddled in the laundry room with the washing machine, and the dog is awake and ready to rip them apart, so I guess I had better get ready to walk her.
POST-WALK:
Well, between the applicance guys at home and the garbage trucks and mowers out in force on the streets and along the greenway, we did a lot of dodging of stressors, but managed a good hour's walk before it got too hot.
Thus far today I'm repeating what is becoming a pattern: I slept in my purple bamboo dress, then got up, put on clean underthings, tied back my hair, and went out.
No jewelry yet, and I plan to bathe and wash my hair in a while, but this is the current look. I pulled out my old (5 years this summer, if I haven't totally lost track) EVA Birkenstock Arizonas, which have gotten a lot of wear for digging in the garden. I love them for the same reason I love my Xero Colorados: I can wear them anywhere and they're comfortable; I can get them wet and they don't mind. Being more open, these are a lot more breathable than the Xeros, which is my only complaint about those shoes. I thought the rich dark blue would be nice with the purple, too.
This really is my version of what Elyse Holladay calls a "nothing outfit." It's what I put on because I need something on my body. I haven't made any effort here: didn't comb my hair, didn't put on jewelry, etc. BUT even in this state, when I've basically just rolled out to walk the dog, I think this outfit goes the "nothing outfit" one better, or maybe even more than one.
*This dress is actually cute as well as comfortable.
*The fabric is one I actively enjoy for its softness, movement, and performance.
*I like the colors, and I gave at least a moment's flicking thought to how they'd go together.
*While a swing dress is admittedly kind of shapeless, it does move in such a way that my body itself isn't completely obscured. This isn't the same thing as wearing a muumuu, and wouldn't be even if it were long. Also, it does show my legs to great advantage, which I like. It has a graceful neckline and sleeves. You really don't have to be accentuating every line of your body to be playing it up in flattering ways.
*When I put it on to sleep last night, I was considering what lay ahead. Sleep, obviously, was the first thing. I wanted to be comfortable, cool, and unimpeded by my sleepwear. Then I knew I'd be wearing the same thing for at least part of the following day, which would be hot and involve dog-walking, as well as time inside working, but nothing requiring me really to dress up.
In fact, I really do not own, at this point, a "nothing outfit." Mind you, I do have jeans. I don't wear them often, but I have them. I have some basic t-shirts that if I put them with the jeans would do nothing for me. But really, I don't even consider doing that. The fact that I own elements that could potentially create a "nothing outfit" really doesn't doom me to wear that outfit. Just knowing that is empowering. I've paid attention to how blah I feel in a t-shirt and jeans --- so I don't do it. Ever. Not without some modification like a big shirt over the top, or a longline cardigan, and even then, I do it only extremely sparingly. When I do it, I try to make sure the potential "nothing outfit" is in fact something.
While I drink my post-walk coffee, I wanted to think some about the second half of Elyse's latest post on how to make an outfit. You'll want to read it for yourself, but here are some talking points:
*Aesthetic consistency or contrast. This could be shapes: an unstructured dress with either a soft cardigan or a tailored blazer. It could be colors, either tonal layering of the same color or finding opposites on the color wheel. It could be mood: the floral garden-party skirt with either some sort of period Mary Jane low heels OR the Doc Martens or Birkenstocks.
*The Rule of Thirds. This is about "fashion as architecture," and the fact that an unbalanced ratio is more pleasing to the eye than an absolutely balanced one. Nat Tucker talks about the "fridge effect" --- here she is also talking about this rule of thirds. This explains why my jeans with a t-shirt outfit looks boxy, or even my jeans/t-shirt/waist-length cardigan combo. Anything that draws a single dividing line at your waist, so that your body has a top half and a bottom half is not going to look as good as a composition that sets the line higher or lower, or breaks it up. This rule helps me articulate why, although I do sometimes wear my shapeless jumpsuit as it comes, I tend to add a belt if I want to look nicer, or a longline cardigan to break up dividing lines. It also, funnily enough, explains why I hated the elastic waistband that came with that jumpsuit, and why I took it out. It hit right at my waist, giving my body a 1:1 proportion, top and bottom, and just looked boxy and unflattering. In the case of what I'm wearing right now, I think these little swing dresses work because they do give me a long leg, especially when I wear them with more open sandals (though they're short enough that I can get away with a sneaker like my Oswegos, or my more closed Colorado sandals).
As a side note, I miss these Croc sandals so much. I wore them extensively for three years, then they broke, and they've been discontinued, so there's not a replacement to be had. My husband adored them and keeps asking me when I'm going to get some more. If I ran across them in my size, I would totally break my no-buy to get them. Anyway, they gave my legs and feet a marvelous long line and looked great with virtually everything, and I miss them.
*Notes about fit, tightness, etc. Good points about how both too-tightness, especially in the wrong places (jeans that strain across your hips, sleeves that squeeze your upper arm), and too-looseness can make you look larger than you are. On the whole, I know I err more on the too-loose side, especially in dresses, because I adore the swing dress as a staple! But I think the key is that you do have some fit --- you can accommodate more volume in the skirt if the dress isn't swimming on you in the bodice. I love how my Sierra fits, for example. I often think it's more flattering than the fit of my Camellia on its own. I mean, angle does matter, too,when you're taking pictures! But the Sierra hits just the right balance of structure and unstructure on its own, I think, and the place where the fit gets looser is just right on my frame. I still like the Camellia a lot, and find her comfortable and versatile, but I sometimes think she does better with some kind of vertical line over the top. I'm not sure whether this is a matter of small vs. medium (the Sierra is a small long, the Camellia is a medium regular --- the Maggie I have on order is a medium long, and I'm a little anxious about how it's going to fit), or just the drape of the fabric, or what. Again, I like both and wear both all the time. (Edited to add: and see below. I think I take back everything I just said about Camellia, because she feels really flattering today.) But it's helpful to me to consider what constitutes a good fit, and why something might make me feel better or worse when I put it on.
*Appropriateness for the context. This is more about being overdressed or underdressed, more about your comfort level with either blending in or standing out --- depending on how you stand out, of course. If you're wearing a swing dress and Doc Martens at a formal evening wedding, yeah, you're going to stand out, and maybe you like being in-your-face at a formal occasion. I pretty much do not like that. I'm a blender. I don't want to look exactly like everybody else, but I don't want to be so out of step with the vibe that I can't stop noticing myself.
And now I'm going to go wash my hair and decide whether I keep on the purple bamboo dress or change into something else for the rest of the day.
LATER:
For once, post-bath, I didn't decide to keep on the same dress I got up in and wore to walk the dog. Though the purple dress smells fine, it's still a tad sweaty after being outside, and I opted to let it air on the drying rack instead of putting it back on when I got out of the bath.
Instead I chose Camellia, and I thought I'd consider some of the principles above in making an outfit with her. Here she is, first of all, just as she comes:
From this angle, the same angle from which I've taken a lot of my favorite Sierra photos, you can see the swing a little better. There's honestly a lot I love about this dress even in her most Team Basic appearance. I like the graceful neckline with its narrower shoulders. I like the gradual sweep of the A-line, which is so much more flattering and comfortable to me, as a pear shape, than a straight sheath dress. It's loose without completely obscuring the fact that I do have a waist. It makes for a nice 2/3:1/3 top-to-bottom proportion, with a nice view of my legs that's not too much for church. I love the color, which is really good for my skin tone and eyes. I love the silky merino knit and the way the dress performs in heat or cold. So . . . even as Team Basic, with minimal exertion of effort, this still isn't a "nothing outfit."
Here it is from a less-optimal angle:
Still pretty good, I think. I did keep my EVA Birks for this outfit, partly because there they were (I did wash them, because they'd still had a nice glaze of garden dirt), because while they too are blue, they're not the same blue as the dress. I get a tonal effect without being too matchy, which would have been boring but also distracting: when you repeat the same color in different parts of an outfit, the beholder's eye doesn't know where to focus. Overall, as it comes, I would wear this outfit anywhere: grocery store, poolside, even a party. A straw hat would be cute if I wanted to add one more item of interest, but even as it is, I would not be inappropriately dressed for any casual occasion.
One more view:
The turban really makes the outfit, don't you think? But even here, where you can see that my stomach isn't flat and that I'm not exactly lacking some rear baggage, the dress shape is still flattering. I don't think I could have sized down without some pulling across the rear, which would have made the dress seem not to fit at all, and would have made me feel bigger, not smaller. I can wear a small in the Sierra, because it does have a wider swing, but not in these slightly more slim-cut styles. Again, even though the dress is unstructured, it doesn't make me look as though I have no waist. It doesn't swallow me up. And again, if I were going to a party, I might add a fun hat, but that would be all I'd really need.
I had been thinking, however, about adding a belt for more definition, so I tried that as well. I went for my thrifted braided belt, because it's real leather and I like it. I could alternatively have worn a thin white belt, a thinnish dusty-pink belt, or a thin braided silver belt, all of which would have worked. But I like the realness of this one, and I reach for it more than any of the others:
I often like empire-waist dresses, I think because they give me a better proportion, in terms of the Rule of Thirds, than waistlines that sit at what at least used to be my natural waist --- my natural waist is higher than it used to be, anyway, thanks to weight gain. I might have cinched this belt a little tighter and worn it higher on my torso for more of an empire-waist effect, but I didn't. I wanted more bodice than that. Still, the belt sits a fraction higher than the precise half-way mark on my torso, which I think is effective. Though my skirt hits above my knees, there's still a lot more skirt in this outfit than bodice. It's not a 1:1 ratio. Meanwhile, I like the definition that the belt provides, the way it creates a little more of a fit-and-flare look.
Edited to add: Reaching for the braided leather belt more than any of the others does not mean that I should get rid of the others. Yes, I have a favorite. It's my favorite for all kinds of reasons, not least that it's real leather (and I got it for two bucks at Texas Thrift back in January when I took the kids back to college). Yes, I wear it more than any of the others. Even so, sometimes it's not what I want or need. Sometimes I need a dressier belt (enter white, pink, silver, depending on what else I'm wearing). Sometimes I feel like a thinner belt. Sometimes I feel like a higher contrast. In actual fact, I have a reason for each of the belts I own. This one is still my favorite.
Here's the dress/belt combo again, at the less-optimal angle:
Still pretty good, I think. I don't think it's better than the unbelted version above, but I like it equally --- just two different looks, both from the same dress, which is satisfying.
And from the side:
Again, I think it's flattering. It's not necessarily more flattering than the photo above, but it's definitely a nice, if quite different, look. Again, I could really wear this in any casual setting. Add a cute hat, and I'm ready for a party or to look particularly sharp at the farmer's market. Add a cardigan, and I can take this look to Mass or to teach a class, not that I'm teaching anything anywhere just now, but I could, maybe especially with a quick change of shoe, depending on the context and vibe.
On the whole, I'm happy with what I'm wearing. It certainly suits me today. I'll be comfortable and ready for just about anything. I could very well repeat it for the lunch date I have on tomorrow with a Twitter friend, a woman who turns out to live just up the road and whom I'm looking forward to chatting with on the patio at the pizza place just off the square.
Meanwhile, I need to call back a friend who's just buzzed me, so I'll tie this off. I hope all the outfit-making stuff above is helpful to somebody besides me, but it has really helped me today.