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[ Top row, from left: February 2012 / November 2011 / July 2011 // Second row, from left: November 2010 / January 2011 / February 2011 // Third row, from left: December 2010 / April 2011 / February 2011 ]
If I had had my act together today, I’d have (a) actually picked out a pair of green pants instead of continuing to endlessly search for the perfect one, (b) worn said pants and made it long enough into the day without getting baby spit-up on them to take photos, and (c) actually edited and posted said photos amid a blur of deadlines and an allergies-without-medicine induced haze. Because you all know part (a) was by far the least realistic of the required elements, I bring you…this recap of some of my favorite ways to wear green and green-ish through the ages, settings, seasons and stages of being not-yet-pregnant, barely-pregnant, hugely-pregnant and thankfully-not-pregnant-anymore.
*and I would love, love, love your suggestions on green pants. I tried those adorable tiny babypants from Target, but the pants-kryptonite of my waist-to-just-above-the-knee ratio proved their undoing (terrible pun intended). Have a wonderful Tuesday!
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- Black and Red Faux-Wrap Dress: Express, circa 1999
- Red Cardigan: Vintage Michael Kors, mommed
- Black Tights: HUE
- Black Croc Wedges: Stuart Weitzman via Bloomingdale’s
- Necklace: gifted
I didn’t plan it this way, but this outfit is doing the time warp in a serious way, blending a dress I got in eleventh grade with the first ever pair of “grown up shoes” I got when I had a job that could pay for food, heat and rent at the same time with a sweater that was the first of many workhorse items I’ve inherited from my mother. It’s one of the great—and continually surprising—things about clothes: I’m willing to bet every item in your closet has a story, and they come together in often-hilarious ways that reveal things about us. For example: if this outfit could talk, it would say, “yup! Still kind of into red. And still here. Really. If I were a person, I could have had a bat mitzvah by now, and I’m still in your closet.”
Setting aside for a moment the absurd age of this charming fire hazard of a garment aside (seriously, folks, the biblical prohibition on poly blends is there for a reason!), this last red-out look is another red-on-black combination. Instead of red on white and black, though, it’s red on wine and black, giving this red topper a slightly different kind of emphasis. And instead of using a neutral base to mute or calm a bright colored accent piece, here, I’m doubling down on the brightness, using the interplay between the sweater and the dress to downplay the slightly goofy pattern and make the bright sweater pop even more. It’s not a strategy for the faint of heart, but I liked the way it worked out here, making an outfit whose demure silhouette says “I know how to play by the rules” into something much more special.
Remixing a beloved and boldly-patterned dress can be a trick, no matter how versatile the piece originally seems. Drawn as I am to these items, after a few iterations, I often feel like I’ve run smack into the wall of cardigan-and-blazer rotation and am fresh out of new things to do. But it’s in the ability of these kinds of pieces to function both as blank canvases and as one-and-done standbys that their real value lies; as I was trying to get out the door this morning, knowing that I could combine this dress and a pair of black tights and end up having something to wear, no matter what else I did, gave me that little extra oomph to try something new, and end up wearing a 13-year-old dress in a way I’d never tried before. Partying, I suppose, like it was 1999.
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- Patterned Shirtdress: Target
- Red Jacket/Sweater: Cabi, gift from MIL
- Black Tights: HUE
- Black Croc Wedges: Stuart Weitzman via Bloomingdales
- Necklace: gifted
- Earrings: Old Navy
In the spirit of the season (and, okay, it also might be my favorite color!), I’m featuring a series of red-inspired and red-inclusive outfits this week, with hues from wine to tomato to magenta and back again. For yesterday’s “Everybody Everywear” challenge, I paired bright pink and maroon. Today, I’ve gone for perhaps a more classic combination, the stuff of cute firehouse Dalmatians and newspaper jokes: black and white and red all over.
As promised, I’ve been remixing this shirtdress, which I love for its slightly swishy swirly shape and fun, pop-art-like pattern (for some reason I seem to be collecting Target dresses that invite art-history allusions. I must miss the chics!). It’s continued to impress with its versatility, and with its surprisingly wearable shape: though I can count the number of actually-well-fitting button-ups I’ve had since puberty on one hand, the dress fits well and comfortably, with no awkward gaping or need for crazy fashion-tape experiments. I think it will work well in the spring with bare legs and fun shoes, but I like the slightly modish feel of black tights into black shoes.
This version pairs it with one of the more misunderstood pieces in my closet: this red quasi-blazer cardigan my MIL gave me a few years back. It’s the kind of piece that should be a standout in my closet: it’s my favorite shade of slightly-bluer tomato red, the collar has an interesting shape, it has a built-in belt…yet I’ve struggled to find good ways to wear it. I think that may come from one too many attempts to remix it with pants, since this version seems much more promising. It’s yet another reminder to be mindful of proportions in context: sometimes it’s not the piece itself, but what you pair it with.
Have you had a piece that you’d struggled to style for a long time that just clicked when worn a different way?
However you marked (or didn’t mark!) the occasion, I hope you all had a wonderful, affirming, love-filled February 14th. I’d give you all a big hug of thanks for all your inspiration and insight, but my arms don’t reach that far!
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One last thought: I’d be so honored and thankful if you’d take a minute to vote for me in the Circle of Moms’ search for the Top 25 Fashion and Beauty bloggers! You can click here to vote (or the button in the sidebar), once per day until February 28, 2012. (No registration required).
- Necklace: Swapped
- Black Tights: HUE
- Tweed Sweater (again!): Ralph Lauren, mommed
- Black Jersey Dress (again!): Ann Taylor
- Boots (again!): Born “Mallory,” gift from husband D.
- Black Nursing Tank: Bravado Designs via Figure8Maternity.com
I’m breaking several style-blogger rules at once here, using such oft-remixed elements, but I’m hoping it ends up being more “positive testament to unexpected wardrobe versatility” than “wow, could you wear a different sweater?” In my defense, these photos were not taken on consecutive days (sorry: performativity alert! Where’d that pesky fourth wall go?). On the other hand, it’s hard to blame yourself for wearing things you love in different ways: this dress is a constant standby, this boxier-than-usual sweater has been an unexpected postpartum superhero, and the necklace is precisely the right shape to keep baby m. intrigued without a huge risk of her accidentally choking me whilst expressing her enthusiasm for it. (Who said getting dressed with a small child wasn’t exciting?)
But there’s a broader point, lurking behind this meta-remix of an outfit, and it’s one worth reminding myself of: even my old-favorite-ist of old favorites still offers new possibilities. And in a way, that’s both challenging and comforting.
And well-timed. Although I’m not doing anything as organized as a 30-for-30, I am taking a little break from shopping this month. Time and budget are part of the reason, but not all of it. I’m hoping a little time consciously resisting the desire to acquire will give me a little mental clarity and re-energize my creative muscles a bit.
When you’re surrounded by fashion inspiration (thanks, bloggy friends!), and when your body is in a state of flux (not such robust thanks, pregnancy), it’s easy to convince yourself that things that are really “wants” are needs. More times than I’d like to admit, I’ve looked at something and thought, “if I just had…” I’d never need to shop again! My wardrobe would be complete! But it’s like the myth of the last big score (okay, okay, we’ve been watching to much White Collar): the house always wins. And that’s fine! It’s the great thing about fashion, the idea that there are interesting things out there waiting to be discovered and to be used as raw materials for creative styling. But it does mean that the idea of wardrobe completionism (or its more insidious cousin, wardrobe-completionism-as-sense-of-self-completionism) is pretty unhelpful.
The much-ballyhooed piece in this weekend’s WSJ about the superiority of French parenting referenced the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, where young children were offered two marshmallows if they would wait, in the presence of a single marshmallow, for fifteen minutes. While I’m not a small child with a desperate urge for a sugar high of painful proportions, I have been feeling my own sense of fragmented distractability lately, a strange desire to be constantly adding new things and doing new things. Not shopping isn’t really the solution to this broader problem of needing to be able to sit still and focus on just. one. thing. in a more effective manner, it’s a piece of the puzzle, somehow. I’m hoping that the discipline of the exercise will give me a little breath of fresh air, though, a sense that for a few weeks, nothing new will be jammed into the sometimes-hopelessly-overfull of my days, that I’ll learn to say “that can wait,” or “I don’t need to.” Or at least, I’m crossing my fingers that that will be the case.
Have you ever taken a hiatus from shopping? Just for clothes or for other things? Did you find it clarifying?
Like what you just read? You can subscribe to Narrowly Tailored via RSS or bloglovin’, or follow me on Twitter to be the first to know what I’m up to. Note: Google Friend Connect will be discontinued in early March, so please shift your subscriptions to RSS or Bloglovin’ before the end of February!
One last thought: I’d be so honored and thankful if you’d take a minute to vote for me in the Circle of Moms’ search for the Top 25 Fashion and Beauty bloggers! You can click here to vote (or the button in the sidebar), once per day until February 28, 2012. (No registration required).
- Navy Cords: J.Crew, skinnied and hemmed
- Brown Metallic Loafers: Naturalizer via DSW
- Long Black Cardigan: Halogen via Nordstrom’s, gift from Mom
- Black Nursing Tank: Bravado Designs via Figure8Maternity
- Chevron Dolman Tee: Old Navy
- Earrings: Old Navy
- Off-White Scarf/Wrap: comme des garcons, mommed
This outfit was born of an online shopping disaster.
I tend to be a long-searcher. I do a lot of online shopping (and a lot of returning), and when I do shop at a bricks and mortar store, it’s usually a place with an online catalog I’ve perused extensively before walking in. And it usually pays off: it takes a while, but I often end up finding just the right version, and it limits buyer’s remorse over the thing I end up actually keeping.
Every now and then, though, I fail catastrophically. Usually it happens when, under the aegis of stepping outside my comfort zone, I become somewhat entranced by a look that just isn’t me, one that doesn’t work for my proportions or the lifestyle I’m actually living. (Nota bene: while I absolutely abhor the phrase “you just shouldn’t wear that” because of an alleged mismatch between garment and body type, I don’t believe there’s harm in thinking, “hmmm. I don’t feel quite as fabulous in this as I do in other things.”) In these cases, the problem isn’t that I didn’t find the right one, it’s usually that I was barking up the wrong tree to begin with.
[Images via ShopStyle.com; Amazon.com; Zappos.com]
Case in point: the past few weeks, where I’ve been feeling a strange infatuation with a kind of quasi rock-and-roll-ish aesthetic of colored skinnies and motorcycle boots and drapey, woven tops, for reasons largely passing understanding. After looking at more pairs of mid-calf and ankle boots than I’d like to admit, I ordered the pair pictured above, which were (and still are) on super sale at Nordstrom’s and eagerly anticipated their arrival. And as I probably should have known, they were a complete disaster. Not that they’re not fabulous boots (which they are), they just aren’t fabulous boots for me. They looked all wrong, they didn’t go with anything in my closet, they belonged to a universe which is, I’m sure, a very nice place, but not the place I’m living in. The blazer and draped top above (dreamed about but not purchased) are in similar veins. While I fantasize about the colorblocking (and in my favorite combination of colors), I couldn’t ever really get away with wearing it to work, and it probably wouldn’t ge enough use in my at-home and at-school lives to justify the expense (though it’s still in the “maybe someday on eBay” list). The top is gorgeous, but not really the right silhouette for me, and besides: it belongs on someone who both isn’t getting spit up on 50 times a day and can get away with wearing 1″ owl print (a woman I’d like to meet, for sure).
The fact that some kinds of things are less “me” than others is fine, and it doesn’t make any of the things that aren’t “me” any less beautiful or even make me like them any less. They often make great recommendations to my mother for things she might like, even, since she’s admittedly more adventurous and less likely to get spit up on. Recognizing what works well for me is part of what makes personal style, well, personal, and that’s important, too.
So, slightly defeated and already looking for my fourth outfit of the day (thanks, little m.!), I rummaged in my closet with fairly low expectations. Clothed, looking like enough of an adult to take m. to the pediatrician (oh, the shots! and the screaming!), warm enough, reasonably efficient breastfeeding access, and if I didn’t match, at least looking like I didn’t match on purpose. And while the resulting look is a little bit girl-of-alt-summit/all-things-at-once, (a) that doesn’t really matter and (b) by the end of the day, I ended up really liking it. It was responsive to my inner drive to try something new (which is what brought on the shopping disaster in the first place), it worked with my body and with what’s actually in my closet. It sparked my creativity without the psychic, financial or temporal toll that the desire to acquire can sometimes take, and that was worth something, too. And probably I get some bonus points for putting together an outfit that combines comme des garcons and Old Navy.
As an aside, when my mom handed this wrap down to me, I remember saying, “are you sure? I already have an off-white wrap,” to which she said, “yes, but you don’t have this one.”
As usual, she was right.
How do you balance trying new things, genres, trends and styles with the need to fit your shopping habits into your financial, temporal and psychic budget? Are you a long-searcher or an impulse buyer? Have you ever tried a trend or an aesthetic that turned out to just not work for you at all?
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- Patterned Shirtdress: (Accidental!) Target
- Teal Cardigan: Caslon via Nordstrom’s, gift from Mom
- Black Tights: HUE
- Brown Riding Bots: Franco Sarto via Zappos
- Belt: Forever21
- Earrings: Old Navy
Much as being a parent in law school (or in any setting where relatively few people have kids) has its “oooh! Look at the pandas!” moments, my particular experience suggests that pandas might not be so rare. In one three-month span this summer and early fall, five children were welcomed by students from my first-year section (of 120) alone.
This is not at all representative of law students as a whole, or even students at my law school, and I don’t know what was in the water last winter that explains the great Section One Baby Boom of Fall 2011. It’s worth noting that it’s not just our child-rearing habits that seem to be ahead of the curve; a decent number of my classmates were married before beginning law school, and that number has grown over the last 2.5 years. I’d like to think we’re exercising some kind of group defiance against the (bogus but oft-repeated) idea that law school has to entirely kill your personal life and your relationships with anyone outside law school, but that rebellion is probably more in my head than anything else.
We make a strange secret society, our motley crew of zombie parents (frequently indistinguishable from zombie law students of other stripes). Some of us were good friends before we all became parents at around the same time, and some of us have little in common other than that. But amid a whole lot of trying to appear normal, we share our secret Real Lives, passing down leftover newborn diapers and advice about class schedules and back-up child care. Membership comes with its own private rituals and obligations, a strange amalgam of commiseration about sleep schedules and an iron-clad promise to cover if you have to miss class.
Although I planned (or attempted to plan) many aspects of our process-of-becoming-parents (and boy, am I eager to tell you about them!), this was not one of them. Among my friends from college, D. and I were frontier settlers in the land of marriage, and if you’d asked me who I thought would be accompanying us on this journey to the outer space of parenthood, I certainly would not guessed that it would be my law school classmates. It’s turned out to be a wonderful surprise: while there are universal things about parenting that anyone whose done it can tell you, there is a kind of magic, healing bond that comes of experiencing very similar things at very similar times. And while much of the “parent wars” (I won’t say “mommy wars”) rhetoric out there is unhelpful nonsense, it is certainly not false that the way our lives are organized (economically, structurally, logistically) influences how we experience parenting, and that it can be incredibly helpful to have people around you implementing similar models and experiencing similar challenges. I don’t know if you’ve heard this rumor, but the early days of being a new parent can be incredibly lonely, even as they are magical in ways you never could have guessed; it helps to have some hands to guide your metaphoric leap into the great unknown.
I wore this outfit to a lunch with some of our partners in crime/law school parenting; my friend S(3). and I are both home with our kids on Fridays, and often get together for lunch with the babies and sometimes a spouse or another friend from school. His son l. is only six weeks older than baby m., and they aren’t really old enough to meaningfully interact, but they smile at each other sometimes, and we trade off holding babies and burp clothes so nobody has to eat the entire meal one-handed, and we go home relieved that we’ve made it out of the house, that we have Done A Thing Today, Darn It. It has done wonders for everyone’s sanity. This dress (yet another accidental Target find), in all its milk-friendly glory, was forced into early retirement after the fourteenth spit-up incident during the two hours we were out of the house. Thankfully, it seems to have survived the wash, and I look forward to rejoicing in its dot-matrix pattern, its swishy shape, and oh, yes, those fabulous buttons, in many remixes to come (particularly if this warm weather keeps up. Insane!).
There are aspects of our experience that we don’t share, of course, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that of these five families, I am the only female parenting student. There are days when this state of being not-just-a-parent-but-a-mother matters more and less, but for these last few weeks and months before we all splinter off to the wide blue yonder, I’m trying to be a lumper rather than a splitter.
All the same, I’ll reserve the right to refer to our Friday lunches as “mom dates.”
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- Teal Earrings: Mall vendor
- White Pashmina: Union Station vendor
- Tweed Sweater: Vintage Ralph Lauren, mommed
- Eye-Searing Orange Top: Olian via Nordstrom’s, gift from Mom
- Navy Cords: J.Crew, tailored (narrowly! ba dum, ching!) by yours truly
- Brown Riding Boots: Franco Sarto via Zappos
- Diaper(!) Bag: Storksak “Emily,” gift from parents, tip from Amy
If you were trying to be polite, you might refer to me as a creature of habit. There are less charitable variants. It’s true: much like my parents, I am the kind of person who craves routine, who finds a thing and sticks with it to—and often past!—the point where a reasonable person would explore other options. Often, at some point, I get sick of it and move on to something else, but I can last a surprisingly long time. It’s true of brands (sometimes), tv shows watched while on various forms of cardio equipment (Buffy, The West Wing), breakfast foods (Greek yogurt and maple syrup), and my non-coffee coffee order (tall sugar-free-vanilla extra-foam chai. Vestiges of my dark past as a barista, about which the less said, the better).
It’s also true of handbags. I realize it’s a big sartorial missed opportunity, but barring an extraordinary occasion, it’s rare that I gather the je ne sais quoi to move my stuff from one bag to another to match what I’m wearing. I suspect part of this is because I tend to carry around way, way, way, WAY too much stuff, with some morning organizational fails thrown in there for good measure. Baby m., for all of her enduring charms, helped with neither of these things.
Before and after baby arrived, we researched a variety of “diaper bag,” “non-diaper-bag-diaper-bag” and “non-diaper-bag-non-diaper-bag” strategies for carrying around m.’s necessities when we’re with her. We needed something that had enough separate pockets for all those baby-related things that somehow go missing, and most importantly, that wouldn’t require us to carry more than one bag (this eliminated the “diaper bag follows the child” approach, despite its gender-neutral appeal, because it seemed to result in me always carrying both a purse and the diaper bag, or discovering the next day that I’d left my wallet and/or cell phone in the diaper bag which was now with my husband or our nanny or my mother-in-law.). In news that shocks no one, all approaches have their shortcomings.
That said . . . when Amy tipped me off about the Storksak “Emily” bag, I heard little tiny cherubs rejoicing. It’s a purse! It’s a diaper bag! It has a plushy, ultralight changing pad in it! It has 8675309 pockets! It can be worn over the shoulder or cross-body! It’s large enough to hold a variety of baby pleasing-and-amusing essentials without being have-to-hang-it-on-the-stroller huge. You can still fit it on your shoulder while wearing the baby! It’s a soothing, non-black neutral! Bliss. Bliss in a diaper bag. Not a phrase I really imagined I’d be uttering . . . and yet.
And of course, true to form, it’s the bag I’ve carried 90% of the time since my parents gifted it to me at the end of last semester. By way of explanation, I’ll kick that one to the inimitable Paula Radcliffe: “I had a baby, not a personality transplant” . . .
Kind of.
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- Tweed Sweater: Vintage Ralph Lauren, mommed
- Maroon Maxi Skirt (as dress): Old Navy
- Black Tights: HUE
- Brown Woven Belt: LOFT
- Scarf: Malo, mommed
- Earrings: Lulu, gifted
- Black Suede Booties: Franco Sarto via Nordstrom’s
Ever late to the party, I’ve been on the hunt for a full-ish midi-length skirt since they burst (back?) onto the scene last spring. Admittedly, it’s been a pretty casual hunt: if I were the skirt, I’d have almost zero fear of being captured. My tenuous relationship with waistbands over the past thirteen months has been in part to blame, but it’s probably more generalized pickiness, and a hesitancy towards jumping in on a trend that feels unlikely to suit my proportions. (I am really, really working on feeling all kinds of love for my post-pregnancy body, but there’s a difference between how you feel about your body and how you feel about what clothing items do for it. I recall audibly gasping when I tried on one such pleated number. Holy hip-inflation, batperson!)
When I’m tiptoeing my way in to a new style, I’m always on the lookout for low-cost, low-commitment ways to try something out, so last week, when Terra showed off this neat trick for converting a maxi into a midi-for-short-folks, no scissors necessary, I gave it a go. Like most “x worn as y” tricks, there are some contrived little nips and tucks going on (sweater to cover the fact that I don’t own a strapless nursing bra, scarf to mask any awkward layering incidents, etc), but I’m really pleased with the way this turned out. It wasn’t something I ever would have figured out on my own, and it gave new life to a piece I’d been struggling to wear. And while these booties are not the most comfortable pair of shoes I’ve ever worn, they’ve become my “instant drama” item of the winter, adding a little punch and surprise wherever they go.
Midis on minis: yay, nay, or eh? What are your favorite strategies for dipping your toe into the pool of a new trend? What motivates you to get off the dime and give something a go that you’re skeptical about?
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- Blue Patterned Faux-Wrap Dress: Target
- Red Cardigan: Vintage Michael Kors, mommed
- Nursing Tank: Bravado Designs via Figure8Maternity.com
- Black Tights: HUE
- Black Boots: Born, gift from D.
- Belt: LOFT
- Necklace: gifted
- Arm party of hair elastics I forgot to take off
- Sniffly nose: gift from baby m.
The week, David Amsden style: baby m. is doing much better, but like all loving children, has used her newfound giggling abilities to transmit her cold to her devoted parents. My class schedule went through about 24952318 permutations during add-drop week. In honor of the momentous occasion of my last first day of school ever, I wore that red sweater that is (strangely) my power animal, even though it made my nose look even redder than it already was.
This dress is what Amy would call an “accidental Target” purchase: I went in looking for something else, saw it, and was struck by lightning/inspiration/my need for surplice necklines/the effect of too much Downton Abbey on my perception of ruffles and appear to have been overcome. And while I was initially sure I was going to return it (my approach with 95% of impulse purchases), it’s grown on me, to the point that it now feels destined to become a frequently remixed favorite. Or at least that it might become one, once I’ve gotten the baby spitup out of every. sweater. I. own…. In the meantime, I really like the pairing of bright red against the mottled blue, and the decidedly different effect of black boots over the brown riding boots I overwear tend to live in in the winter. While there are arguments for a black belt, the brown one has a slightly more casual vibe, and one that feels a little bit more me.
Did I mention it’s my last semester of law school, and almost definitely my last semester of school, ever? That I have thirteen weeks left? How did that even happen?
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- Ubiquitous Black Jersey Dress: Ann Taylor
- Cream Cardigan: Halogen via Nordstrom’s, gift from Mom
- Suede Obi Belt: Garnet Hill, gift from SIL E.
- Black Nursing Cami: Bravado Designs via Figure8Maternity
- Black Tights: HUE
- Black Boots: Born, gift from husband D.
- Necklace: Gifted
- Earrings: Old Navy
This post could also be called “when you are engulfed in mucous,” or “dressing to impress medical professionals.” Much to our chagrin, baby m. has yet another cold (le sigh…). According to our pediatrician, it’s more theatrically spectacular than medically problematic, but it has still made for several quite long and messy days around here. We’re pulling out all the stops (or as many as you can at this age!), and keeping our fingers crossed that she rallies in the near future.
For a long time, black was the foundation of my closet. Then I bought a pair of brown riding boots, and it was more or less all downhill from there. I started cheating on black with other neutrals. I became less and less discriminating, falling hard and fast for grey, navy, and even off-white and camel. Then I got pregnant, and every list of maternity wardrobe essentials and pregnancy style advice I found urged me to build a wardrobe around slim black pants, black tank tops and drapey sweaters and I just rebelled. It was more than 95 degrees outside for many, many weeks of my pregnancy, and I was having none of this all black nonsense.
But now that Baby M. is thankfully outside of my insides (and much cuter for it), and the weather has cooled down considerably, black and I are beginning to reconcile. I still think black plays best when paired with other neutrals, or with other neutrals and an accent color, and I’m still on something of a break from black suits, and I still have to watch the tendency of too much black with my stark-white complexion to appear slightly vampiric. But with those caveats, black and I are making peace. Black, as it happens, can live up to some extraordinary demands, lending instant sophistication and credibility while having an obliging attitude towards spit-up stains, which, come to think of it . . . is a powerful metaphor for the state I’m in right now, don’t you think?
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Hi! I'm S. Welcome to Narrowly Tailored, a blog about life and style from a law student and new mom. In short: work and life gets dressed; balance mostly gets amused.Follow Along
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