A little half-moon on the wane to start the day. It's beautiful and bright out, with a projected high of 83F. I'm having my coffee now and waking up, nerving myself for a long day. In about 90 minutes I'll leave here to drive to Belmont to pick up my carpool (so far one person) --- parking at the church where the ordination takes place is by pass only, and the choir was issued a limited number, so we're all teaming up to drive. We're supposed to be there at 10 to warm up and rehearse with instruments. Then a lunch break and the ordination Mass at 1. I anticipate being home around 5-ish.
Some weeks back I broke my own no-dresses-2024 purchasing rule to buy an Eileen Fisher linen dress. It's a very nice dress, of a sort that I would want anyway, but I bought it for two reasons: 1) the price was absolutely right, especially for a dress from a nice label, and 2) it was black.
As anybody who has bothered to read this blog knows by now, I really don't wear black very much. It's just too stark and harsh and high-contrast to be flattering to my coloring. BUT occasionally I need to wear black, for choir occasions and for funerals. I have had a black ensemble that works okay: a bamboo dress/tunic top over a pencil skirt. It looks all right, but is warm --- I was dying of heat at my aunt's funeral last October, for example. So I thought that if I could find a nice black linen dress inexpensively, I'd buy it for occasions such as these.
Technically, today and tomorrow, I don't need to wear black. We're in choir lofts, unseen during the Masses we're singing, and the stipulation is for church dress. But heck. I have this black dress and cardigan. They are certainly correct for an occasion such as this. So I'm wearing them, at least today (tomorrow I think I'll wear navy).
Wearing:
*Secondhand Eileen Fisher A-line black linen dress (S), bought April 2024
*Thrifted Crocs sandals handed on by the Texasgirl
So this is the base outfit. It's a nice dress in a cut I really like. If it weren't black, I'd wear it all the time. You can see how serviceable it is as a black dress, though: a simple, graceful line in a length that makes it easy to wear year-round. I could add my dark graphite Birkenstock boots in the winter, and they would blend seamlessly. Or I can wear these minimal sandals in summer. I should probably find some kind of black shoe to wear for actual concert dress, though I could probably get away with these sandals for the Eucharistic Congress at the end of August. OR my Xero Jessie gray/white sandals, which are what I wore with my black ensemble last year.
With the cardigan I also bought for this purpose, because although I do very bare sandals in church, I do not do bare shoulders in church:
*Secondhand Loft linen-silk-blend cardigan.
This cardigan is lovely, and again, if I needed a black outfit for the winter, all I'd do is add my dark boots and be done with it. But I should stay fairly cool today in the same clothes.
Again, I don't love black. It does not make me shine.
But on this occasion, I'm not the one who's supposed to shine. I'm just supposed to blend in and sing, and that I am happy to do.