My Jolly Sailor Bold

Apologies for being such a useless blogger recently, I have been totally snowed under and a little lacking in inspiration. *Sigh* I was also out of the office last week at a trade show for work and seeing as though I do most of my blogging from there I just haven’t found the time – my family, god bless them, is extremely nosy and this little project is just for me, as silly as that seems.


My outfits have been really pared back recently. Today I’m wearing my favourite Breton top, a black cardigan and a grey double breasted blazer. It’s freezing so I also have an enormous black pashmina wrapped around me. As far as pants go, like Lin I also recently pulled out a pair of old favourites in the jeans department. I have a cupboard full of jeans, I love them and I will live in them until I die. While they are mostly standard colours and styles, some pairs are special. A few years ago I had to fly to London at very late notice for a family funeral and in order to distract myself I went shopping. It was the first time I discovered Uniqlo and their multicoloured denim was a revelation. Not because of the bright colours but because of the slightly washed out and vintage-esque treatment of the denim. I bought a pink pair and a purple pair and wore them to death with simple white tees and black/leopard print ballets all summer. The time in which I was wearing these jeans was a bit of a style revolution for me, I cut my waist length hair into a pixie bob and stopped wearing anything remotely girly in an effort to finally define my own self and my own style. I had wanted to dress more androgynously for a while but was afraid of the backlash, in the end I decided that anyone who wanted to poke fun and call me a dyke just wasn’t worth listening to anyway.

These two pairs of jeans were my uniform for a whole season and it felt a bit strange to wear the pink ones again today, like I was slipping a bit back into my insecure old self, unsure of how people would react to my style statement. It’s funny though, when I wore them the first time I got hardly any comments about the colour – my uni was in a very bohemian part of the city so I was dressed rather tamely – but now in an office situation all I have heard is: “Wow, pink pants”. Thankfully it was mostly followed by: “Cool” or “I really like them”. I guess after 10 months my co-workers are finally coming to terms with my dress sense – the leather shorts raised the most eyebrows – and I am eternally grateful that I work in a professional environment that embraces everything from suits to pink jeans and battered biker boots.


What have you guys dug up recently that brings back memories, good or bad?

 PS. the title is because I saw Pirates 4 last night. Love the mermaids! Oh and I tried to post this yesterday but Blogger freaked out.

We Reach the First Hurdle...

…and the horse decides to wander off to the side of the track to graze. I had finished my shopping for the season. Honest. I had everything I needed for this fall and only two things on my list for the next season:


-loafers
-suede boots
-leather shorts-faux leather skirt
-black merino sweater

-white silk shirt
-black cropped pants


But all the while I have been nursing a secret crush on fleurette’s APC sweater (seen here in all it’s stripy perfection). But being unable to find something even remotely similar, in a nice semi-heavy fabric for winter, I had struck it off the list… that was until a chance search of NAP, due to their recent free postage offer, led me to meet this little piece of perfection:

Aubin & Wills Chedburgh Striped Merino Wool Sweater

And at only 83 pounds I was staring down the barrel at some serious lust-and-found. So despite all my protestations that I had absolutely stopped shopping for autumn, I whipped out my credit card and hit purchase.


So over dramatic I know, but it arrived today and it could not be more perfect nor the weather be more perfect for it – today being the first really cold day of the season. So this is how I am wearing it:

I have so far gotten lots of compliments on the red touches at the sleeves and base and I have to admit that I adore it – the merino is super soft and not it the least scratchy – and I will be happily wearing this for many years to come.

Have you guys given in to lust and come up trumps? Or have you ended up regretting it?

Clothes Coffin?

The one thing every woman longs for is the perfect wardrobe. You know, that one from the depths of urban legend where you open the door and can quickly select one or two key items that will easily mix to form the perfect outfit each and every time with a minimum of fuss?

I don’t know about you, but my wardrobe isn’t so much a carefully edited selection as it is a coffin for my clothes. A wildly and carelessly accumulated stash of all of the crap I though I might have needed at some point in my life and just never got around to wearing or throwing out.

The strange thing is I have never been one to follow trends religiously - I cannot artfully drape or layer an outfit to save my life and I certainly don’t do whatever fashion magazines tell me to - but the more I aimed for a great wardrobe the more I missed. Nothing matched. Nothing really suited me. And certainly nothing was of a good quality. It actually scares me when I think about how much money I have wasted in chain stores on clothes that I love but that fall apart after an unacceptably small number of wears.

One thing I always noticed about my clothing habits was an obsession with t-shirts – which I’m convinced is genetic, one look at my brother’s wardrobe can only confirm this. In my youth it was brightly coloured ones with strange images, but for the last few years it has been white ones. With everything. It has been my stop gap for a long time now and has always been paired with either pants and a bright scarf or a statement-y type skirt (I would just like to say that I have photographic evidence of myself doing this long before that Jil Sander runway ;) ). I have now also segued into the Parisienne staple of Breton striped tees and own far more than most people consider healthy. But, they’re the perfect style statement and they, along with my hefty collection of white tees, are going to be the starting point of my plan to build the ultimate capsule wardrobe of timeless classics.

It's going to be a bumpy ride.

image: inclinedtocreate.com