It's this kind of day out. Late yesterday a big wind blew through, quite chilly --- walking the dog I wore two coats, layered, with both hoods up --- but clean sweeping. Now everything's bright and cool and clear.
And it's Sunday. I've washed my hair and cleansed my form, as is fitting on the Lord's Day, and shall soon enter into his presence. I shall try to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with my God. I shall render my puny thanks for all his goodness to me.
But first I have to get dressed.
Wearing:
*Wool& Camellia dress (M), redyed royal blue by me, bought July 2021
*Secondhand Not Perfect Linen Leila dress (M/L), in Chocolate Brown, altered by me to raise the neckline, bought December 2023
*V. old thrifted Eddie Bauer cotton cardigan, on Lenten repeat
*Snag merino tights in Red Velvet
*Secondhand Birkenstock Papillio shoes, bought September 2023
I forget, between wears, how much I like this dress. I had intended to dye it, because I didn't think the brown would work well for me, but so far I haven't bothered, because I like the brown. It's muted and un-orange enough to work with my pink-toned skin --- while I think the categories of "warm" and "cool" colors are profoundly unhelpful (because we bring all these associations to colors that have nothing to do with their actual tonal quality, and that confuses things to a stupid degree), I think that identifying whether your skin is basically pink, or orange/apricot, or blue-toned, is massively helpful and really the key to everything. Secondarily, there's your level of contrast, which indicates how far you can tolerate bright, intense colors.
Anyway, I think it would be a waste of time for me to try to parse how "warm" or not this brown is. On the one hand, we think of browns as intrinsically "warm," because we associate brown with fallish things --- leaves and so on --- and therefore with coziness, which signals warmth to us. But this brown is actually not very orange, as in autumn leaves, at all. It looks great with pink, which is the big signal. An orangey brown --- a camel or a rust --- would clash with pink. But the reason I got my pink wool cardigan out of the sale box to begin was to wear it with this dress, which it complemented beautifully. Ergo, it complements my skin, which is definitely not orange-toned or apricot.
Granted, the blues I'm wearing also help. Blue always helps. Meanwhile, this purple cardigan feels pretty pink-based to me, as opposed to the purple of my big linen shirt, or of my Wisteria Willow dress. Both those items are a far bluer purple than this cardigan. My wool blazer cardigan, meanwhile, is a darker, heavier, redder plum purple, which is probably not as good for me as these lighter colors, but it's okay (you can see the contrast in purples here).
Here meanwhile is another shot of this brown dress, with the pink cardigan. Even without my blue glasses on, to give me a shot of the exact right color, the brown of the dress works with the soft pink sweater (very much a pink-pink, not a peach or a salmon) and with my skin.
The brown also picks up the ashy brown of my hair.
I think this color would also work wonderfully on my redhaired daughter --- her coloring is completely different from mine. But it's gratifying to realize that I can wear it. I don't like feeling that I "don't" or "can't" wear colors. Mind you, there are colors I just don't like --- orange, for example, or mustard yellow. Good thing I don't like wearing them, because I really think they don't like me. But I do like this brown with its soft muted earthiness and am happy to wear it as a year-round neutral.
Time to take the dog out before we leave for Mass.