Light of Day

This dress hasn't seen the light of day in awhile. It's a bit difficult to style because it's really more of a tunic length, so usually when I wear it I layer a skirt underneath. These ponte knit pants are a great alternative, not to mention they're superbly comfy. I'm getting a lot of use out of them lately because they're as easy to style as jeans but have a somewhat dressier look. This was a great day-to-evening outfit; for evening I simply swapped out the denim jacket for my cropped black leather one.


Dress: All Saints
Jacket: Tulle
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Necklace: Wendy Brandes
Pants: Club Monaco
Boots: All Black

Bumble Bee

Just look at that sweet little puppy face, will you? Spencer decided to give me a good pose this time. He's doing really well; he's starting to settle into the household and learn the daily routine. He's still a handful when he gets in his rowdy moods, running all over the place and randomly grabbing all sorts of stuff he's not supposed to have, but once he settles down he sure is sweet and snuggly. Once his injured leg is healed up and we no longer have to carry him up and down 2 flights of stairs every time we need to take him out, he'll be a lot less work. In the meantime I'm seeing a noticeable improvement in muscle tone in my legs, so I guess it's not all bad. Carrying 40 pounds of puppy up and down stairs is a great workout.

I've decided that I love black and yellow together, even though it's sort of a taboo combination due to the association with bumble bees. But it occurred to me awhile back that there really isn't anything wrong with looking like a bee; in fact, bumble bees are pretty darned cute. As Katie pointed out, most bees aren't even yellow anyway. Nevertheless, the easiest way to avoid bee comparisons, should you wish to do so, is to add an intervening color to break up the black and yellow. Here, I've added the long white tunic to separate the yellow cardigan and black pants, and then splashed in a little purple and green with the scarf. Brown can also make a great intervening color, as the cords did in this outfit.

Note that in this outfit, where I have large solid expanses of black and yellow, I separated the two main pieces with the intervening color (though I threw the black belt in to integrate the two halves of the outfit). In general the larger the blocks of color, the more you'll want to separate them if you're working with a difficult combo. Unless, of course, you think it's perfectly fine to look like a bee.

For more on difficult color combinations, check out this post from Sal.

Tunic: Asos
Ponte knit pants: Club Monaco
Cardigan: Anthropologie
Scarf: vintage
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Shoes: BC Footwear
Bangles: Amrita Singh

Burgundy and Blue

Burgundy and blue has become one of my favorite color combos this year; for other ways I've combined these shades, check out this post, and this one.

In other news, Spencer is quickly picking up habits from his big sister Georgie. This is his first foray into posing for pictures with me. Here you can see that he started out sitting like a little gentleman...

...before he quickly got bored and started being a goofball.

I love how it looks like he's making a gagging face. Clearly the dog has no appreciation for a good pair of shoes.

Dress: Red Dress Shoppe
Cardigan: American Eagle Outfitters
Shoes: John Fluevog
Bracelet: a gift from Mom

Black and Brown

Wow, a few days slipped by since my last post and I hardly noticed. My life is a whirlwind of activity right now, let me tell you. But I've got some exciting things cooking, which hopefully I can share with you soon.

I thought this outfit was a virtual repeat of an older one, but when I looked back at the original I saw that it actually has several differences; in fact the only commonalities are the tunic and cardigan, everything else was swapped out. The overall look is still the same though, with the fitted pants and boots under the longer layers. I think this version works a bit better than the original one.

This is such an easy look to wear; the long layers provide more than enough waistband overlap so I don't end up tugging and readjusting my shirt, the boots are rugged and comfortable, and everything is stretchy and non-constrictive. The boots really bring everything together, since they have panels of both black and brown.


Tunic: Anthropologie
Tank: Forever 21
Cardigan: Anthropologie
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Necklace: Wendy Brandes
Bracelet: a gift from Mom
Ponte knit pants: Club Monaco
Boots: Timberland Boot Co.

Reworked

As I mentioned in my last outfit post, boots are in heavier rotation this summer than normal. This pair in particular has been hauled out quite a bit, mainly because they're mid-calf height and therefore don't have quite as wintry a look as some of my taller pairs. Because of the hardware, they also add quite a bit of visual interest to an outfit without too much effort on my part, a quality I'm especially appreciative of at the moment.

This outfit was reworked from an older one. I really liked the military jacket with the teal skirt, but in looking back at the original outfit I thought the addition of the gray skirt underneath was unnecessary. I therefore decided to try a simpler version, eliminating both the layered skirt and the hardware-heavy belt.

This gorgeous necklace by Wendy Brandes is also getting a ton of use lately. On the days when I'm feeling less creative, I can throw on some jeans, flats and a t-shirt and tell myself that I'm simply letting the necklace be the star of the outfit. I always feel put together when I have it on.

Do you have any special items in your wardrobe that you deploy when you don't have the energy to build an entire outfit creatively?





Jacket: Thrifted
Necklace: Wendy Brandes
Skirt: LA Made
Boots: All Black
Leggings: Audrey Cantwell

Support Stacy Lomman's Spring 2012 Fashion Show

If you haven't done so already, please consider supporting fellow blogger and fashion designer Stacy Lomman in her Kickstarter campaign to raise funding for her Spring '12 fashion show. Her "Biohazard" collection is a wonderfully creative concept and the show will be a huge step towards getting the big break she needs. By pitching in a little or a lot, you can support American design and you can get some cool stuff while you're at it -- bracelets, sunglasses cases, t-shirts, and all kinds of good stuff is available at different pledge levels. Every little bit makes a difference, and as soon as Stacy reaches her goal, the show is ON! Help make it happen!

Click the widget below to become a sponsor.

For more info, read Stacy's post about the project, and Wendy B's post for an overview of Stacy's past shows. Go Stacy!!

Arachnophobia

Thanks so much for all your words of encouragement and understanding. Taking a few days' break was exactly what I needed, and blogging will probably continue to be less frequent for awhile until things settle down. I haven't been photographing my outfits every day, mainly because many outfits lately have either been repeats or just truly aren't that exciting. It's been nice freeing myself from what was beginning to feel like an obligation; setting up the camera and taking photos takes time in the morning, and lately I haven't had much of an urge to deal with it, especially for outfits that I wasn't too excited about.

It doesn't help that we're having an absurdly cold summer, which is ironic when nearly everyone else in the northern hemisphere is melting in the heat. Cold, foggy mornings aren't very inspiring for summertime style; sandals are left languishing in the closet, and jackets and boots are getting way more rotation than they ought to be. And because I work in shitty South San Francisco, I miss the few hours of sun and low wind that we get in the city after the fog burns off in the afternoon and before it rolls in again in the evening. On my work campus a freezing, awful wind just blasts through all day long, making it miserable to go outside even when it looks sunny and beautiful.

There's one upside to a cold summer, though. At this time of year we typically start to see big, creepy spiders in areas that have a lot of landscaping. And because the area around our house has a lot of plants and trees, we tend to see many of those big garden spiders, some of which will occasionally make it into the house and terrify both me and the equally arachnophobic Mark. Not this summer though; I've only seen a few spiders this year and the ones I've seen have been pretty small. So Mark is getting off easy this year, because at one point I put my foot down and declared that as the man of the house, it is his responsibility to put the spiders outside, like it or not. Was that a strike against feminism? Well, I don't care; what's important is that the spiders go back in the garden where they belong.

Shirt: Target
Scarf: Banan Republic
Pants: Cynthia Steffe
Shoes: Born

We Interrupt This Program

Things are a little crazy around here right now, so I need to take a few days off. Our little guy Spencer has a torn ligament in his back leg (an injury he got at the shelter before he came to us, but which was just diagnosed), so we're dealing not only with vet visits and medication and all that, but also the herculean effort it takes to keep a rambunctious puppy from running around and doing further damage.

Those eyes! Don't they just slay you?

On top of that, I'm swamped and stressed out at work right now and have a bunch of other side projects going on at home. Oh and our refrigerator broke, because obviously things were just too calm around here. All of which means something's gotta give, and right now it's blogging. Pardon the disruption in service; I'll be back next week.

Office Girl

I was happy to pull out these under-worn shoes and give them a spin; they have sort of an early 60's office girl vibe that I thought played well with the vintage-styled dress. In order to add a little color and contrast to the outfit, I used the colorful patterned scarf as a belt.

I'm hoping to finish the second installment of my San Francisco Travel Guide very soon, but as you might imagine my time and energy has been limited lately. It's coming soon though, I promise!


Dress: Red Dress Shoppe
Cardigan: Max Studio
Scarf (worn as belt): vintage
Tights: Hue
Shoes: Tsubo (a gift from Sal)

50's Style for a Wedding

As I mentioned a few posts ago, Mark and I attended a wedding last weekend atop Mt. Tamalpais (known around these parts as Mt. Tam), which is just a few miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It presented the perfect opportunity for me to wear this beautiful vintage dress I bought a few months ago. I don't often go for 50's style dresses because I feel like they aren't ideal for my figure, but this one caught my eye because of the lovely fabric, the cute collar and neckline bow detail, and the best part, the row of giant buttons down the back:

I found this dress at Decades of Fashion on Haight Street, which is an amazing (albeit pricey) vintage store. It fit me so perfectly that I knew I had to have it, and what a perfect outfit it made for a wedding, no? To me there's something reverent about wearing vintage to a wedding; weddings have such a strong cultural significance that it makes sense to wear clothes that hearken back to eras with a greater sense of decorum.

Astoundingly, of all the dozens of hats I have lying around at the house, none exactly captured the vibe I wanted, so I made one special for the occasion. It's made of a thick, braided straw material, which has a nice shine to it that matches the black buttons of the dress. I made a matching bow out of scrap straw and edged the bow with a pale blue silk to match the striped fabric on the dress's back panel and neckline bow detail.

 

I got loads of compliments on this dress, and I felt utterly fabulous. Perhaps I need to rethink 50's dresses; they seem to suit my figure just fine.

 Puppy update: Our puppy finally has a name! After struggling with it all through the weekend, we finally narrowed it down to the last 3 choices, wrote them on slips of paper, folded them up and threw them on the floor in front of the puppy for him to choose from. He sniffed the first two and then enthusiastically grabbed the third, thus selecting Spencer as his new name. And yes, he's only a few months old and he's almost as big as Georgie. Perhaps Goliath would've been more accurate...