01.23.2012 [mon]
Adjacent colors week: red/red-orange

Worn to: work, out for tacos

Tee: JCrew (outlet)
Cardigan, earrings: Target
Skirt, boots, purse: Forever 21
Tights: LOFT
Watch: Anne Klein (gift)
Coat: Worthington (via JCPenney)
Scarf: gift 

Thoughts:
And the adjacent color experiment is off! This is actually the color pairing I’m most excited about for the week, I adore red and red-orange together. So fiery! Going into this week I have only the tops pairings somewhat decided on; I thought of a couple options for bottoms, but mostly I’m going to just pick whatever I’m in the mood for each day.

So far this is still the only way I’ve really been able to get a pencil skirt to feel like it’s my style: adding some slouch, boots, and/or rocker elements. I think if this particular skirt were longer I could do more with it, but for now I like styling it this way. I really dig the vibe of this outfit!

Behind the outfit:
This cardigan and tee were an easy pairing for this challenge because they were sitting next to each other on the shelf, but I’d forgotten that the sleeves have varying lengths; the tee is long sleeved, and the cardigan is 3/4 sleeved. So I rolled the tee sleeves back and pushed everything up.

I actually had on my black skinny jeans first. But by chance I got a text message and when I went to look at my phone, I spied an old JCrew catalog and was immediately inspired to swap the jeans out for a pencil skirt. So glad I did! I tried tucking just the tee, tucking both the tee and cardigan, belting just the tee, belting over both… And ultimately I just loved the slouchy, untucked vibe so I went with that.

The rest fell into place easily from there. I decided on these slouchy boots, and then because it’s freezing out (still have some snow) I wanted to wear sweater tights; I have both charcoal and black, but liked the visual interest and softness the charcoal offered against the black skirt and boots. I wanted to keep the colors as the focus, so I chose to keep accessories minimal; I wore only earrings and a watch, choosing long dangly earrings instead of a pendant which I would normally have worn with this.

This outfit is VERY waist surrendering (clearly changes my shape from hourglass to rectangle), and is certainly not something everyone is comfortable with; the loose tee and cardigan definitely add extra width, especially considering just how fitted the skirt actually is. There are a couple of things I do to keep these types of outfits from feeling unnecessarily huge on me:

1. Make sure the top(s) fits well. The cardigan and tee both fit properly in the shoulders, arms, and length. This makes the waist no looser than it needs to be, so the silhouette is as slim-straight as possible.
2. Highlight other small parts, and show a little skin. I have a smaller bone structure so showing my wrists and collar bone help keep the look a bit daintier. Keeping a slim leg line can also help. In this case I wore lower, slouchier boots and because the skirt is shorter there’s still plenty of leg. If I were to wear taller boots (which would hide some leg) I would be sure to pick a fitted pair so the leg line is still clear.