May 8, 2023
Let’s see what our second trio of heroines has been up to!
The first has decided that she would like to own something sort of like a suit, so she finds a cardigan/blazer and pants that match. She can’t resist the Liberty print shirt – it goes with so much of her wardrobe!
Pearl earrings – The Met Store; Liberty print shirt – J.Crew; ivory sweater blazer – J.Crew; pearl brooch – The Met Store; natural chinos – J.Crew; cream loafers – Miz Mooz
This is her wardrobe now; it might not suit many of us, but I can see this on the right woman…
Her accessories are a soft and feminine delight:
Her new outfits show that even an unusually light and delicate wardrobe can be versatile:
Our second heroine made a pretty big decision about her wardrobe this month!
The main character in her inspiration painting is wearing what appears to be a pretty dark purple coat. This is NOT a color that’s easily found in warm weather! So our heroine has decided that lighter shades of purple will be perfect alright for a few new things…
This is the kind of choice that each of us gets to make when we choose our wardrobe color palette – how flexible are we going to be with these colors?
If it means that you get to wear this lovely wisteria, I’d vote in favor of flexibility!
I actually wore Eileen Fisher wisteria silk for my wedding…
Earrings – Leeada Jewelry; pendant – Leeada Jewelry; wisteria tee – J.Crew; wisteria cardigan – J.Crew; white pants – J.Crew; sandals – Zodiac
How do her new purchases look within the context of her wardrobe? I feel that one’s wardrobe should look at least somewhat like an ensemble of relatives, if not siblings!
Her accessories are great – I love accessories though, so I pretty much love them all!
The real test of branching out in your color palette is seeing if new purchases (or potential new purchases) add to your wardrobe flexibility or just give you 1 new outfit:
Our last heroine is the most disciplined of all – her wardrobe is a pretty tight grouping of colors from cream to brown. I can envision her deciding to shop (maybe one a month), and thinking “I could use a summer dress, and maybe a top and pair of shorts…” and then buying this…
and then not thinking about shopping until she needs something else, and not having to think terribly much about getting dressed, either!
Earrings – Mignonne Gavigan; dress – Banana Republic; cream cotton sweater – Banana Republic; honey brown shorts – J.Crew; pearl pendant – Banana Republic; sandals – Jack Rogers
I love the “getting dressed in the dark” flexibility of this wardrobe!
Her accessories are equally versatile! And notice that this month I added the pearl pendant that matches earrings that she has owned for a while. There’s no rule against matching jewelry…
Of course she can wear her new garments a ton of different ways!
This month, I must admit that I really love the effortlessness of the last wardrobe; picture a woman with warm coloring, who always echoed her coloring in her outfit…
love,
Janice
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The first of this trio is so me and I think that what you have shown with those colours is amazing. So many ideas and options, I will treasure this. Thank you.
Love the wisteria. I seem to be struggling w/my wardrobe recently and I’m not sure why. Possibly the shift of seasons, and I always struggle with warm weather clothing! The last wardrobe intrigues me and I’m wondering if I could duplicate it in a different color for myself. Always so many good ideas in your posts. thank you!
PS Regarding the look back. When my grandmother passed away I got her china. My mother was upset it was a “whole” set because my grandmother used it every day and pieces got broken. I embrace using the china every day, not saving clothes for “good” because good never comes. Recently we had a dress up day at school and I mentioned to one of the little girls how beautiful her dress was and wishing I had a place to wear pretty dresses (I only have one or two to begin with) and she said,”wear them every day!”…. out of the mouths of babes…..
wasn’t a whole set, not was… jheez.
All six of the wardrobes have some really excellent additions this month. I admire the brown-tan-ivory Degas set most, although I don’t think I could actually pull something like it together and live with it. It looks effortless, and dressing would be a breeze. However. Looking in my closet, I see a Lot of denim and navy. Even my flannel shirt is navy and ivory. I am wondering, as I have before, whether I should just give up on the accent color effort and stay with what I actually wear! Sometimes it’s boring but never frustrating.
I love colors, but navy is my neutral and I have so many navy things in my closet! The problem I have is mixing shades like the Degas set. I guess it could be lighter denim colors, lighter blues and such. I just don’t love all the blue shades together like I am drawn to the cream – brown shades. Oh, well! I do love mixing in color and have plenty of it. But I think the shades of one color would be harder to do with navy or grey (my regular neutrals)… but I’m not sure why I think that. Hmmm…
I’m not sure of any range of colors that works well the way these ivory/browns do – I think about black and grey, and it is NOT the same at all… I never expected this to be such a compelling wardrobe!
hugs,
Janice
I wonder if at least part of the trick is that the Degas wardrobe clearly has only WARM browns in it. It’s relatively easy to tell if a brown color has a warm or cool undertone, so putting together a wardrobe with similar undertones is (relatively!) straightforward, but it can be difficult to tell with navy and *extremely* difficult with grey. My goodness, all the undertones of grey, ugh. I think black clothing also can have some kind of undertone since we are talking about dyed fabric, not pure color (or the lack of it).
While I love seeing all the beautiful colors in each wardrobe, I find the last one composed of cream and browns most comforting. Strangely, those are not the “best” colors for me, but I don’t care; I wear them happily. Thank you for showing us so many gorgeous options.
There is such tangible comfort in that wardrobe, isn’t there? And that’s not something I ever planned or thought about when I started the “very monochrome” wardrobe…
hugs,
Janice
I need all the clothes the first heroine packed. ASAP
We live in Charleston, SC, where it will be 92 degrees tomorrow (May 9) and we’re traveling to Boyne Falls, Michigan next week where it’s about 30 degrees chillier. I’ve put away all but a few of my 65/40 degree clothes. This should be interesting. The firs heroine’s clothes would work great for our trip. Layers, Layers, oh goodness we are looking forward to Mackinac Island!
One of my favorite places! Pack good walking shoes! And a wool shawl!
Although none of the six wardrobes are quite right for me, they are all so darn well put together. Replacing the earth tones in the Degas with blues would be my best bet. As someone else stated, I could nearly throw accent colors out the window!
You always inspire me with your choices and colors. However, most women of a certain age don’t look their best in elastic waisted pants. Could you try to find more with a flat waist which won’t emphasize our not flat tummies?
Thank you.
As always, thank you for sharing your talent for creating beautiful, functional wardrobes with us. The Degas is still my favorite. I like it more and more each month, especially because I am that woman with warm coloring. I struggle with neutrals, always. I always want to drift back into creating a Soft Summer-ish wardrobe because I love the blendability of the colors, but I think you have finally hit upon a version of a wardrobe with pieces that blend together that would work for my True Spring coloring (and not stress out my anal nature of worrying about colors matching exactly). And speaking of stress, I also see this wardrobe as a very good option for stress dressing. The only thing I would probably add is a pair of blue jeans, because those function as an essential for me and though they are blue, I always think of them as a neutral with anything. Although I could never leave behind my love of accent colors, the wardrobe you are building here would absolutely be the perfect foundation wardrobe for featuring them. I could very easily see using the 5 Piece French Wardrobe concept multiple times for as many colors as I wanted to include and mixing them with the Degas wardrobe here. And just for fun, I might try to follow the Weekly Timeless Wardrobe format using this wardrobe as a starting point, to see what gaps I need to fill.
I continue to love the Degas wardrobe, but would definitely also need color as it suits me more than neutrals. I was struggling with the idea of incorporating a second neutral until recently, when I took a step back looking at my wardrobe and saw that I already have one: blue. Not navy, as that is too dark for me, but royal to cobalt to electric blue. Everything else I own coordinates with blue, including the Degas neutral shades.
I am very interested in the addition of wisteria to the Berlin wardrobe this month! I think the advice to ensure that you can build multiple outfits with the new pieces is wise, but for me, it doesn’t provide quite enough guidance. A twin set + sandals in pretty much any accent color will create many new outfits once you have your core neutrals in place so the “wardrobe flexibility” feels like a given. I would consider two additional points in making the “to wisteria or not wisteria” decision:
(1) How does the new color work with the existing accessories? Here, the wisteria looks good with the skull, plaid, and ombre scarves (I can’t recall which of these are warm-weather appropriate) so the wisteria is an easy-to-incorporate color vs. something like bright green. This issue feels more important the more that the heroine (a) is committed to a small overall number of items and (b) buys expensive accessories (like the scarves shown).
(2) Do you like WEARING this color or do you just like the color? As this is a twin set, do you like wearing this color next to your face? A classic Winter who is drawn to and flattered by the optic look of black and white with bright colors might not feel entirely herself in this light, muted color…or it might be a nice change of pace for her. Of course not everyone cares so much about what colors flatter them, but it’s worth considering. Purchasing an item in a color because she thinks it’s pretty, or that it’s the closest she can find to the color she really wants (leading to eventual disappointment with the second-best color)…these are classic shopping mistakes.
Of course Janice is engaging in an exercise in which adding items every month is part of the deal…and those of us with soft Summer coloring or who legit love light muted tones may swoon over these items and find them useful to buy for our own wardrobes. But for a real life heroine, it’s worth considering whether the wisteria is a compromise that should be resisted, holding out for the darker purple that is her true love, or a delightful expansion of the original color palette. Naturally we can’t operate with 100% foresight on how any items will work out for us, but I do think it’s worth putting some thought into.
This comment was sponsored by the word “worth,” haha.
I am loving all these painting wardrobes! Each one is beautiful. Thank you for the time it takes to pull all together. The color ways are great and inspirational. Warm here in Sugar Land so ironing my linen wardrobe.
I was just thinking the same as Cindy said, about replacing the browns of the Degas with blues. It’s a beautiful wardrobe, but brown is not for me. It’s blue all the way, and I’m happy to mix shades. The look-back was a treat, including the comments – I do love to read about people wearing their best clothes and eating off the good china.
I am still loving the Degas and think that there are many different colour options that could work like it. Yes, blues are the first, but what about olive to sage? Or ivory to pale gold to deep mustard? Ivory-peach-coral? White-mint-emerald? The key to making it work is picking your deep first and then deciding if you lighten to an ivory tone or a white. Anyone else think that thinking like an artist mixing paint would make the monochromatic easier?
That is a great way to think about it!
Earlier in the year, the Monet painting had a lot of the monochromatic feel for me when it consisted of just blue and gray. The addition of the green gives it a different feel. The outfits Janice put together with the blues and grays of the Monet were some of my very favorites ever on TVF.
I hope that green accents will be added to the Silber/Klee wardrobe.
I love the orchid pink for the Street in Berlin. Finding dark versions of summer clothes is best done in late summer when the shops begin to sell clothes in autumn colours but the weather remains warm. I have found darker purple tees and trousers at that time. The suggestions for the blended Degas wardrobe made me imagine it in shades of purple, pink/burgundy or blue. I wore shades of purple the other day and it made for stressless dressing.
Regarding the look back. We should wear special clothes more often. Casual clothes have their place but dressing up should always give you pleasure. If you think that you look over dressed, you aren’t, other people just haven’t bothered. So next time you throw a party, tell people to wear special occasion clothes that they have at the back of their wardrobes.
I’m with Sheila on using inherited china and glass. I use mine for celebrations and special occasions throughout the year, such as the King’s coronation at the weekend. We remember the people we inherited it from whenever we use it. We’ve also found pieces to fill gaps in charity shops and antique shops.
Love the brown/khaki/cream wardrobe!! That was my warm weather color scheme for many years, perfect with my youthful coloring but with the advent of my gray hair, I now need much cooler tones. I’m attempting something similar in stone and white with silver jewelry and gray accents (hat, shoes, purse). I would love to see what Janet could come up with for that color scheme.
Reconciling the gray/white hair with warm coloring is such a challenge!!
Yes, I do love the last wardrobe. I would like to own it all, it is perfect! It’s proven difficult to find the right shades of brown in real life. I have to be very disciplined about what I buy.
I do like the idea of being flexible with shades of colour, but it’s something I find challenging, so I’m not at that “getting dressed in the dark” stage, yet.
What I am doing is adding photos of my clothing items to a board in Trello by category (tops in one column, bottoms, knitwear, coats in others, etc). That way I can scroll through each column to see which items and colours go with each other. It’s not always accurate due to the items being photographed in different lighting, but it also gives me a good indication whether something that I’m *planning* to buy would go with my wardrobe, when I add the photograph to the board.
Admittedly I’ve accumulated quite a lot of second-hand purchases on Vinted recently, but I hope they’ll prove to be versatile pieces that plug some of the essential holes…
My favourite recent purchases have been a pale lilac denim jacket (looking in my wardrobe the other week I didn’t have a spring-coloured jacket – I had black, grey and white, but I’m selling the latter two, now) by FatFace. Second-hand but still with the tags on, and it’s from the kids’ section, so the sleeves are the right length for me! Also, a black, sleeveless, organic cotton dress by Patagonia, that I can wear both under and over various layers, shirts, jumpers, cardigans etc. It has a bit detailing around the waist, so it can be worn on its own without looking like a solid block of plain colour. And yes, the two pieces look very nice when worn together!
I do love your blog and have taken a lot away from it. Thank you for encouraging me to try new things while still being true to my style. :)