Archives for September 2014

September 2014 - Page 2 of 2

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Lavender, Jade, Denim and Grey

September 13, 2014

One more visit to the denim and grey Core of Four - this time, with accent colors of lavender and jade. All of the shades are cool - some are soft and gentle, and others are almost vivid. Lots of options here!

One of the nicest things with the shades of lavender - they can easily be blended so long as you have the same basic tone.

Once you find someone who's selling a color that you love, it makes some sense to stock up!

I looked for moonstone jewelry for this collection. Moonstone has such a lovely iridescent, almost colorless quality that picks up the colors that you wear. I think it's beautiful (and it's one of the three birthstones for those of us born in ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Pink, Rose, Denim and Grey

September 12, 2014

This color palette felt to me like it was giving you permission to indulge in a variety of shades of pink, and so that's sort of what I did. I also took this opportunity to pretend that the person choosing this capsule wardrobe had a deep and abiding passion for stripes. That sort of fondness/obsession is great in a wardrobe, if it's deeply and truly felt. You should definitely wear your heart on your literal sleeve if you know what you like, and you're happy sharing it with the world. It certainly makes shopping more focused, and you project a clear point of view to everyone around you!

Why yes, the grey and blue shirts are the same, except for the color. When you ... View the Post

Start With Art: The Church at Coggeshall, Essex by John Armstrong

September 11, 2014

What a cool painting! It shows the World War 2 damage to the church, and the "reveal" of the interior structure of the church is fascinating. So sad that such a lovely piece of art is the result of destruction...

From this, I selected two relatively minor colors in the painting as the neutrals, and then used the gorgeous pastels as the accent colors. The black is clearly visible, but I grabbed the sage green from the shrubbery that's relatively obscured on the left side of the painting.

I think what I'm trying to show here is that, although the painting itself is very light with muted pastels, it's still possible to pull together a wardrobe from these colors without enriching your dry cleaner. Capturing ... View the Post

So MANY things I don’t understand…

I'm having a "tired day" today, so I'm going to share with you all sorts of stray questions that wander through my head from day to day. Maybe you see something that I'm missing in some of these situations....

First thing - have you noticed a huge trend of tee shirts with random French phrases on them? I really wish I could have found an image of one of my favorites, which had a misspelling, and which thus made absolutely no sense...

So does one wear this in order to appear French? Or conversely, to appear vehemently non-French? Or is it just another random trend of things to put on tee shirts to that people continue to buy them?

And why do grown adults wear tee shirts with writing on them?

What might be ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Denim, Wine, Grey and… (AWOL)

September 9, 2014

One of the unstated goals of The Vivienne Files is for all of us to benefit from the mistakes that I make or the problems that I encounter. That was brought painfully home to me today when, after HOURS of looking in all of my secret stashes of garments for sale, I could NOT find anything in leaf green. Well, I'm pretty sure Target has some things, but they didn't have good photographs, so that puts them out of the literal picture for me...

I think it's safe to assume that someone out there right now is thinking about working on a color scheme for which one of the colors is very scarce in the market. Like completely missing. So how do you handle that - what do you do?

This was the capsule wardrobe that I ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Teal, Wine, Olive and Camel

September 8, 2014

Camel and olive are pretty versatile - here's a much more subtle use of these two neutrals, compared to the vivid gold and red from last week. But let's talk teal for a second: If you look around for things which claim to be "teal" in color, you get a range anywhere from an almost emerald green, all the way over to an almost navy blue. That's annoying when we're trying to describe colors, but in the case of this capsule wardrobe, this flexibility was useful for me. When I initially started working with a couple of tops closer to green than blue, I found that I had all kinds of clashing nastiness when putting the teal garments next to olive. It was basically trying to blend ... View the Post

Capsule Wardrobe Project 333 Autumn 2014 – I’m IN!

September 6, 2014

No, it's nowhere NEAR cool enough to wear autumn clothes in Chicago - I think right now the temperature could be around 90, the humidity nears 3 digits (I swear it goes over 100% - it's like swimming in a bathtub...) and we're going to get thunderstorms any time now. But I am travelling very soon to cooler climes, and it's only reasonable to be prepared when the weather whiplashes us into cold, as it will...My clothing requirements become more and more simple; after I spend eight hours a day looking at thousands of garments and accessories for The Vivienne Files, I only want to wear black or grey. Maybe some pearl jewelry. Maybe a scarf! I now understand why some fashion designers wear ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Bright Gold, Tomato Red, Olive and Camel

September 5, 2014

Looking for the right items in this color combination caused me to hit the wall - at some juncture, I was at a loss to find more camel garments that were suitable for this capsule wardrobe!But then I thought about you all for a moment (as I think about you all constantly when I'm working on The Vivienne Files!), and I realized that if I was having trouble finding garments, then you must have the same experience, right? I spend hours a day working on this - you certainly don't have the time to devote to shopping that I do to my full-time job of blog creation. So rather than throw the towel in on this wardrobe, I figured out what a reasonable approach might be, and I'm sharing it with you all.

The ... View the Post

Start With Art: The Magpie by Claude Monet

September 4, 2014 In our mythical leisure, Belovedest and I watch art courses from The Great Courses. Our current course is The World's Greatest Paintings, in which we studied at some length the beauties of this:

Talk about mixing warm and cool colors to great effect! I was irresistibly drawn to use this as a Start With Art subject. Note one really interesting innovation that I'm trying: rather than attempt to nail down two specific browns and greys, or one color to represent the damp and frozen branches, slats on the gate, and branches in the fence, I'm working with a spectrum of brown to darkest grey. Doing this frees you up to build a wardrobe around any color that might be found in the ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Burgundy, Pearl Grey, Black and Petrol Blue

September 3, 2014 I love burgundy - it has subtlety and richness, while still maintaining the complexion-flattering qualities that it shares with red, pink, peach, and all of those rosy-ish shades. For those of us gradually migrating away from black, and toward grey in our capsule wardrobes, I could see that burgundy would be a very wise accent color to consider for those days when we're feeling a bit pale.

This is a pretty casual wardrobe - no skirts...

In my mind, this color is distinctly different from the color of denim - it has more grey to it. It's a very difficult color to find - if you're a fan of petrol, definitely also look for slate blue, smoky blue, and dusky blue.

This ... View the Post

A 4 by 4 Capsule Wardrobe in Saffron, Ivory, Navy and Brown

September 2, 2014

We've spent a lot of time considering the many charms of navy, but nothing quite compares to the new look that we get when we introduce a bright orangish-gold color into the mix! The beauty of these bright accents is that you still have the option to dress is a neutral, monochromatic way, when you wish to, but you also have the ability to break out some statement accents when you want to stand out in a crowd. I was amazed at how beautiful this is... I think what we can all learn from this capsule wardrobe is that you should be faithful to your accent color of choice, no matter how rarely it appears in the garment world. If you truly (TRULY!) are drawn to a particular color, be loyal to your instincts ... View the Post