So, here is my Summer 2014 everyday wardrobe design concept:
- Smart casual: dress and barefoot-looking flats. This is for the days when I am out in the morning for both going to the gym and running errands (usually Monday, Tuesday, and Friday).
- Active leisure: sleeveless workout top and yoga pants or dance shorts. Carried in my gym bag, along with my workout shoes which have still never been worn outside.
- Outdoor leisure: crewneck and mid-thigh shorts, sandals or sneakers. Every day ends in these, my gardening clothes. Topped with one of the several blazers I seem to have trouble wearing, it makes a cute gamine running-around outfit.
The biggest lesson I learned from this exercise? Same as in costuming:
Create a schedule, with deadlines, and stick to it!
It is very easy for me to shop before I have established a budget, drag out the research process, or continue designing when I need to be shopping for constructing.
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Delightful illustration! (and wonderful good fortune to you for your upcoming mystery project)
I found that I had to extract outfits from my closet and put them on a rolling rack in order to see what I had and pair them up (or with some alternative looks for the bottom pieces). My closet is not crammed but too dang dark and sunlight won’t light it up with the doors open plus it’s a weird W arrangement so clothes
hang front to back.
Now this was working and let me see that for warm weather I like Hawaiian shirts but equally like colored tops with print skirts. I don’t have active or outdoor leisure. Life for me is more like [pretend] resort chic.
I pulled weeds from the driveway the other day in a typical one of those outfits. I guess this is my own version of incongruity (hi-low).
But now… I have to go back some steps and reevaluate. I gave myself that mental thwack in the back to make an appointment to color my hair. (my version of deadline). I wore a typical outfit and wouldn’t let myself be covered with a drape until I was able to show the stylist and explain that with a tailored leopard print skirt and black hawaiian shirt with large pale yellow blossoms and sage green leaves, she could see I liked to mix prints and wanted a medium level of contrast and my current greyed hair color was way too light to hold its own. I told her I didn’t care about the length but I had some small jowliness and need some tendrils or a sweep or hair to obscure that. Did not care whether wind blew it away. Showed her my hair had wave and I could scrunch it into loose waves but when a good wind came up, it ruined it and I couldn’t make my hair my hobby. Told her I didn’t care about frizz, split ends. Said I liked clothing that was very ladylike but thrown on. Hair had to have that effect, too.
She shocked me by suggesting copper. Not entirely far off from old snapshot I dredged up and showed my husband. He said I looked a lot like her. I said I was her.
So what I have is a messy bob that is short enough to show my shoulders, which I always like. As soon as my hair was darkened with the first step, I felt relief. But a little nervous about step 2. After she did it, she asked if I wanted it partially dried so I could see the color better. (too late, eh?) And at first she had it very plain and I told her that I could not have hair that announced, “Look here, I have just been to the hairdresser and you must bow before my sculptural hair.” She nodded and started in to mess it up and I felt immediately more like myself. What I probably could have explained was that sexy was good but dominatrix was a couple steps too far. Son likes it – it’s close to his hair – and husband likes it – he was a redhead and likes redheads. He insists that this is “my” color. Welllll, kind of. It does have an effect that is best seen around the part of actually being copper metallic. At first I thought maybe the whole thing is good except for this and then later wondered if maybe I actually want more, more, more unnatural metallic. 😀 I wore no foundation or even blusher so she could see my skin tone. She kept saying how light it was – it doesn’t seem light to me but I’m bad at that stuff – and how the new color was bringing the natural color up in my face even without blusher. The darker hair brings back a lot of the translucence of my skin – isn’t that the 7th airy fairy iconic type 😀
So now, my clothes. (and I spent 2 months of my arbitrary clothing budget on this because color plus cut plus tips for colorist/stylist and other stylist who was the shampooer. ) A lot of the clothes I wear that are my favorites go wonderfully well with the auburn hair. I can see how in one way I kept trying to dress a person with a stronger, darker colorful color hair. Some things, though, like a sweet silky pleated skirt with circles of cool sherbet colors, they fight with more dangerous hair. My darker brown items, though, have a new life. Though none of this puts me at Warm because the hair is somewhere between warm and cool.
Sounds like your stylist is worth every penny! How fun! 🙂
I like your description “resort chic”. I am still sort of annoyed about a friend, years ago, saying she could see me working in the yard in a dress. Lol. I won’t even go to the chiropractor in a dress! And this whole active leisure thing is very new to me; I am pretty sure I have not found the exact template I prefer for working out and I am completely okay with that for the time being.