April 19, 2024
Blue Skies, Smiling at Me…
She’s finally feeling a change in the weather, internally and outdoors!
And she’s making a small but meaningful (to her) change in her wardrobe, to celebrate her newfound optimism. First, she treats herself to a beautiful set of bracelets:
For years, she’s always dressed for summer in a simple mix of beige and white… This year, she’s adding a dash of blue-green to match her eyes and the brighter lights in her heart.
She quite likes her core summer wardrobe – it’s light, and so easy to wear. You literally can’t put a foot wrong with these classic pieces:
White puff-sleeve top – J.Crew; hoop earrings – Kendra Scott; beige linen shirt – J.Crew; white smocked shirt – J.Crew; sailcloth tee – L.L.Bean; cotton cardigan – L.L.Bean; white sleeveless top – L.L.Bean; antique white canvas pants – L.L.Bean; straw bag – Aimee Kestenberg; white linen skirt – DKNY; antique white shorts – L.L.Bean; white shorts – J.Crew; sandals – Donald Pliner; sneakers – Spring Step
But then she saw the blue/green carried at L.L.Bean, she new that it was time to add some pizzazz to her neutrals!
Bracelets – Fierce Lynx Designs; blue apatite earrings – Barse; pleat-back tank top – L.L.Bean; sweater – L.L.Bean; scarf – Alie Street London; sandals – Flexus by Spring Step; loafers – Minnetonka Moccasins
She has a small clothes rack in her bedroom, on which she keeps her current wardrobe. In the warm weather, it’s a delight:
This is truly a wardrobe from which you could get dressed in the dark, or with your eyes closed! It’s good for every kind of weather from sweltering heat to cool-ish and rainy…
Of course this would work with navy and white, or navy and beige, or olive and white…
Do you wear brighter colors when your mood is brighter?
love,
Janice
p.s. Ten years ago, we were adding turquoise and periwinkle to a navy and beige wardrobe...
Love this wardrobe? Save it to Pinterest!
What a nice summer wardrobe! And yes, hard to make a mistake when getting dressed. We are just coming into winter now. However! I wear a lot of off-white and silver grey in the summer, and would love the teal (?) with it. The bracelet is beautiful. And the sandals. I have teal Merrell sandals already, that I wear anywhere and everywhere. I have walked many kilometres in them, and it will be a shame when they finally give up. I’m not sure about any correlation between bright mood and wearing bright colours, actually, and I am super-interested to see what other folks have to say about this! Hope things have settled a bit for you, Janice. I am really amazed at your output during difficult times. Much aroha to you.
What a lovely, calming wardrobe this is! The teal adds just the right touch of brightness. Hope your days right now find a bit of brightness, too.
Oooooo! I can’t tell you how much I love this! That bracelet made its way straight into my cart and is now on its way to me. Loving the blue green!
I have a shockingly large collection of bracelets from Fierce Lynx – my mother has commandeered a lot of them – and they always bring joy, as the saying goes. They don’t need to be specially insured, nor do I need a bodyguard to wear them in the city – they’re just very lovely, and (I know Alison, who makes them!) filled with care and love. There’s a reason we look at a bracelet as a starting point for style every month!
hugs,
Janice
I will wear bright clothing to brighten my mood. I love the blue green, and the scarf with the hint of rust orange. Have a great weekend ladies.
What a beautiful bracelet – and a beautiful versatile collection of clothes which are right up my street. I find that choosing to wear bright or rich colours lifts my mood while all neutral makes me feel drab rather than elegant/simple.
Thanks for this inspiration, Janice, and hoping for brighter days for us all.
Gorgeous bracelets and color!
I tend to vary color primarily with the light, then mood – in the darker light of winter, I wear more neutrals. When I do wear color pops they tend to be vivid and high contrast – I tend to do that more when it is overcast/grey to counter a sad mood. I definitely use color to 1 – counter my own low mood; and 2 – counter the potential low mood of my colleagues on an overcast day. In the summer I wear brighter and patterns – it goes better with the light to me (and I dont do scarves much in the summer, so the patterned tops add interest.) Mood seems to matter less, perhaps because sunshine makes me happy (for years I was very low in Vit. D, so I would get a heavy dose of “seasonal affected depression”)
The best example I can think of is yellow. I would do a cold, neon yellow in winter, a clear bright yellow in summer, and a warmed mustard yellow in fall – to match the cold winter light, intense summer light, and softer fall light. I haven’t quite figured out the spring light.
Happy Friday!
I love everything about this collection! I almost never wear all neutrals because it depresses me. I must have a color somewhere.
Lovely to place light neutrals with a pop of color! While I have soft coloring, I need a splash of color. Teal is a gorgeous color for some of us and difficult to find. Just ordered the bracelets to add to my Fierce Lynx collection.
Oh beautiful.
For me the beige would be a little darker and I would add yellow.
It’s snowing here at the moment and I have a winter jacket in this turquoise that I’m wearing again now.
Snow! I adore snow… I hope it’s fun for you…
hugs,
Janice
Serious Whappage!! Couldn’t get that bracelet into my cart fast enough. I have been adding blue/green, or teal or turquoise, or whatever you want to call it, to my navy and grey closet over the last couple years. The perfect pieces are elusive but I have learned patience from following your posts. I’ve also learned that when something this perfect shows up, don’t hesitate or it’s gone. Can’t wait for it to arrive. Thanks for bringing me such joy to start my day.
Swapping the white for cream, I could easily live with this breezy, summer wardrobe. Maybe add a few rust orange pieces to reference that color in the scarf. Like the heroine, I have blue-green eyes so turquoise and teal are signature colors for me year-round.
Sometimes clothes reflect my mood, while other times are chosen to lift my mood. But also chosen for where’ll I’ll be and with whom, as in how I present myself. So a mix of both interior and exterior influences on wardrobe choices.
I 100% agree that the scarf is pointing the way to a potential next accent color with the rusty orange (complementary to blue-green). I think that would be really nice for the heroine to consider adding as she moves into late summer/early fall.
Gorgeous bracelet! Could go with the Klee painting and wardrobe for 2024! Love this color on the bracelet, in this wardrobe, and on me and my accessories!
Anything in the Blue-Green section of the color wheel is a winner for me so I love the addition of these pretty teal pieces. I would recommend that our heroine look into a skirt/pants in this shade as well, esp. as she’s added two pairs of shoes (which always feels like a commitment to a color to me). Having that color to play with on the bottom half would really increase her outfit options.
I know some people say they don’t like wearing accent colors on the bottom half, but are there people who say NO to accent color bottoms but YES to white pants?? My sense is that white is the hardest color to wear in pants, so if you are willing to go there, you wouldn’t balk at a relatively-easy-to-wear color like teal in pants. I’m almost assuredly wrong about that, though, and I’d be happy to hear from anyone who would wear white pants but not colored ones.
Beige + white…I’m not sold on the combination somehow. I LOVE the white + teal, and the beige + teal is fine. But the white and beige are so similar and yet distinct that I think it falls into a bit of an uncanny valley of color matching for me where it’s unclear whether these are intended to be two different colors paired together or a failed attempt to match, if that makes sense.
Since Janice offered us so many sample outfits to look at, I’m able to narrow down my thoughts on that a bit. When the clothes are white and the shoes and/or handbag are beige, that combination works for me; leather goods have taught my eye that we will often wear these pieces in shades of brown with pretty much any color of outfit. White top with beige bottom and shoes…OK, that looks fine; I wouldn’t necessarily add the tiny bit of teal in the accessories but again, there’s something about the white top + other color bottoms and shoes combo that my eye is used to seeing. The last two outfits with a white top + beige outer column + bits of teal accessories have the same “not enough of the accent color” problem for me as we saw in the recent Pantone post, and the white and beige are just not great together here.
It’s interesting to observe the combinations Janice didn’t demonstrate, which I may have found the least successful when I consider them. Beige top with white bottoms. The teal tank with either beige bottoms and white topper or white bottoms and beige topper. The white shirt under the teal sweater with beige bottoms.
My takeaway is that a purely beige and white wardrobe (while it would not make me happy AT ALL) could be done, carefully, with that whole coastal grandmother/coastal chic vibe of white, cream, beige, etc., in natural fibers, breezy cuts, and a sort of boho-lite style. Adding the teal absolutely increases our heroine’s wardrobe options, but also makes the beige and white work together less well, at least to me. It’s funny, I think I would readily have accepted a chambray/denim addition as a continuation of the coastal grandmother look but the teal (while still a completely valid coastal color) has an intensity that almost makes the beige look like a form of dingy white, especially when paired with the true white.
So for me the hierarchy is Teal + White > Teal + Beige > White + Beige > Teal + White + Beige. For me, a three color palette in which I don’t much like the three colors together would be hard no.
Sally in St. Paul,
Alas , my bottom half accommodates neither white, nor colored, nor printed bottoms , as it is the larger section of me . I wish that it was not so, but there it is !
Hello,
Thought I’d wade in on accents versus white on bottom half!
I adore colour and detail and am carefree enough to wear some some very bright hair and clothes. But I aspired to looking consistently awesome everyday not just the odd day when it all came together so following advice from this site I spent a few years investing in neutrals which was very much worth doing and I also allowed myself to buy duplicates of something if the shape worked in another colour. I found a pair of chino trousers from Country Road, an Australian brand, where I live, which would be equivalent to the Gap I suppose. I have them in Navy, Gunmetal Grey, Bone and a beach blue. Even though I have neutral tops, I find an accent trouser awkward to wear and I just don’t get the same wear out of the blue pair unless it’s high summer. It was this summer that I realised I won’t be buying more accent bottoms any time soon. They just aren’t value for money for me.
Sally,
I wear white bottoms. I feel white bottoms can elevate an outfit. a lovely patterned top pops with white pants while dark neutrals tone it down. However, I haven’t comfortably worn accent color pants since the eighties. I don’t even look at them when I’m shopping because I know for me it will be a waste of money. Janice featured an amazing bright pink pant a while back and I seriously thought about them, then I came to my senses. I do wear accent colored and patterned skirts. I guess they feel more like a dress to me.
I love the way these colors look together and have happily worn beige and white together many times. Anything in the blue-green family is an automatic “yes” for me as it coordinates with/brings out my eyes.
On a general color note, I’ve noticed that I tend to wear darker blues when I’m tired or drained, on in the depths of winter, lighter colors like aquamarine when I feel calm/relaxed, and bright, zingy colors like coral or chartreuse on a bright, sunny day or when I need a pick-me-up. In neutrals, I just feel depressed, and depressing.
Janice,
I love this concept, though my beige would be more of a tan, for a bit more of a contrast, and in lieu of navy, I might use chocolate brown , though navy could be an alternate choice . I have capris in this brown ( not an easy find) and they look great with the blue- green , which is one of my favorite Summer accent colors. For some reason I just do not care for olive green combined with this blue-green. Maybe they are too close in value for me . I have started to wear blue-green already in the form of a cardigan, along with navy or brown pants, and an ivory long sleeved top, plus a scarf or a necklace, as it is still chilly and rainy here in PA .
On another note, I am torn between the purchase of some 3/4 sleeve length polo shirts and long sleeve ones for ultra casual wear. The 3/4 length feels like a clear indication of Spring, and yet I might get a longer wear out of the long sleeve versions, though I do change accent colors seasonally.
Hmmm, what to do ? Anyone out there have any suggestions ? Long sleeves can always be pushed up to 3/4 length ( I’m still ruminating on this ) . I know — neutrals in long sleeve length and accents in 3/4 length because of seasonal color changes ???
Oh and as to colors and dreary days — I often pick a warm yellow at those times to brighten up my internal skies ! And yes, when I’m feeling light and devil- may- care, I choose a coral or a light teal instead of a burgundy or a navy .
I must confess – I just push up my sleeves in the spring! Or roll them up – whichever. I just can’t be bothered to remember that I have 3/4 length sleeved tops; my closet is enough of a mystery/disaster right now as it is…
hugs,
Janice
Janice,
Thank you for that very logical response! I was headed in that direction ,as I like to get the biggest bang for my buck , and I tend to always be cold. Sometimes the difference between a 3/4 length sleeve and a full length sleeve makes the difference in my comfort level. Sounds picky, I know, but hey, it’s my body, my comfort ! Yesterday I wore a short sleeved top with a long sleeved cardigan , rushing the current weather we’re having, and I felt cold the whole time that I was in that combination . A full length sleeved top would have made the difference ! I am even saving out a few turtlenecks from being packed away for the season as low’s in the 30 ‘s are being forecast for all of next week, despite this supposedly being Spring !
Thanks again !
I think I pack up my last cotton turtleneck at the end of May – in Chicago the temperature can dip into the 50s any time of year, and in July or August that feels VERY cold.
“My body, my comfort” is a good slogan…
hugs,
Janice
In South Florida, on the other hand, we can almost never wear long sleeves, so three-quarter sleeves are a blessing for a little ventilation as the day warms up. I keep my long sleeved shirts for cooler travel destinations, although that turned out to be a fail on my last trip, where it was warmer in Strasbourg than in West Palm Beach.
I would probably go for long sleeve… I have found 3/4 sleeves to be frustrating if I try to layer a cardigan. (because I can’t hold the end of the sleeves while I put on the cardigan and they bunch up) Which I do a lot since we heat with wood and the temperature fluctuates.
OOh, very good point – trying to hold onto those sleeve ends can be maddening…
hugs,
Janice
So disappointed to see that the bracelets are sold out! Love this wardrobe, Janice.
Dear Cynthia,
Send Alison a note – she’s away for the weekend, but I’m certain that she plans to make more. Neither of us expected them to sell out the FIRST MORNING!!! they were available.
hugs,
Janice
What an amazing summer feel to this bracelet & wardrobe. Love the white, beige & turquoise.
I have given them a name for the turquoise colours that remind me of the sea – LAGOON colours. These include the blue-greens, aqua greens & blues, turquoise & even a little bit of light purple can sneak in.
I’m feeling the summer!