March 21, 2025
Let’s take a second look at this two-piece dress, or camp shirt and skirt, as you wish!
You can – of course – wear these pieces separately. The only thing you want to be sure to do is launder them together always, so you don’t have a really soft and faded shirt with a still crispy and bright skirt!
I’m going to start with fairly obvious ways to wear the pieces, and then branch out into more adventurous ideas…
There’s no color that you can’t wear with beige – some go better than others, but all are worth at least trying!
shirt – Alex Mill; earrings – Kurt Geiger; scarf – Elizabetta; shorts – Lands’ End; handbag – Baggallini; sandals – Sam Edelman
Same with white – I think that this shade of blue, with white, looks lovely for summer:
shirt – Alex Mill; earrings – Classicharms; bracelet – Classicharms; sandals – SoftWalk; linen pants – J.Crew
If you want to cover your dress for some reason, having this shirt handy works well. I can see this going from a religious service (with your shirt in the car?) to lunch with a bunch of little kids…
Maybe you have a tee shirt that’s 99% the perfect color, and 1% not quite… Go for it! If anybody wants to get up close to your clothes and tell you that things don’t match, just laugh at them. Who has time for that kind of rudeness?
Top – L.L.Bean; earrings – Talbots; bracelet – Talbots; tote bag – Gyllstad; sandals – Sam Edelman; skirt – Alex Mill
Honestly – these are all just shades of the same blue…
If you’re feeling bold, a striped tee with a floral neckerchief and a DIFFERENT floral tote bag will keep things interesting!
Tee shirt – Alex Mill; earrings – Samuel B.; neckerchief – Talbots; tote bag – At Last…; sandals – Circus NY by Sam Edelman; skirt – Alex Mill
And how about an entirely fresh new color? For Bastille Day, this would be snappy and fun!
Linen top – J.Crew; earrings – Gold & Honey; bracelets – Ink+Alloy; skirt – Alex Mill; tote bag – At Last…; sandals – Bzees
And yes, when you accumulate all of these clothes together, you have a nice little travel capsule wardrobe for a long weekend:
Before I’m finished, we’re going to look at both of the other colors of this two-piece wonder (thistle and moss). That should be good fun!
love,
Janice
p.s. Five years ago our heroine had freckles, and our colors were Sandstone and Amberglow…
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Thank you for doing the blue, you have given me a few more ideas for the skirt. Cannot wait to see what you come up with for the other colours. Have a lovely weekend everyone.
The 99% matching piece (or 85% or wherever the line is for you where it starts feeling iffy) is definitely easier to wear when you style it as Janice did here:
-Make the not-quite-matching piece a print rather than a solid, even if it’s only simple stripes. Solid + solid is harder to fudge, in my experience, than solid + print.
-You introduce other versions of the color into the outfit, creating an intentional multi-tone look. It looks like “several shades of blue that coordinate nicely” rather than “oops they thought those were the same color but they’re not.”
-Wearing a print mix adds a “more going on” aspect to the outfit, and I think the eye searches for the similarities to make sense of it. As long as the pieces have similar colors, the palette doesn’t need to be 100% matching for it to work, and no one is going to scrutinize that the blues are very slightly different.
A couple other strategies:
-Make one piece darker in value than the other; I think it’s harder to compare the underlying hues when they aren’t the same value so you don’t notice the difference as much, if at all.
-Make sure the pieces have a different texture, for the same reason.
-Wear the pieces visually separated, even just a little bit. Even adding a narrow belt between a top and skirt can be enough.
-Introduce another accent color to the look. I think we make our distinctions between colors based on the range that we’re looking at, so broadening that range pushes the original color and not-quite-matching color closer together. Metaphorically, this is a bit like…
Blue A————————————————————-Blue B
Blue A—Blue B————————————————–Pink
I will say that for me, esp. when pairing solids, sometimes pieces that are a 90% color match look worse together than if they were an 80% color match, so I’m not sure that it’s a total “the closer, the better” situation.
And I don’t think there’s a substitute for putting the outfit together *on yourself* and looking at the picture your whole self creates. Two items that look iffy when held up together in the closet and scrutinized might look just fine in the full context of the outfit and yourself wearing it.
Great ideas for using the shirt and skirt as separates. I had to chuckle/feel dismay about the first stripe t shirt not being a 100% perfect color match. When I was 13-14 yrs old, mom took me to buy fabric for a shirt and skirt outfit that I would sew and then enter into the 4-H county congress fair. The skirt was a bluish aqua color and the top some kind or print with several colors but definitely included an exact match to the skirt. Besides being judged on our sewing skills we had to model the outfit in the style show! I received outstanding marks for garment construction but the judges for the modeling commented that the top did not match the skirt and my marks were less favorable there. I only the wore the outfit a few times because, they didn’t match! Later I did realize the predominant color in the print was not my skirt color and from a distance it did read as a mismatch. But that has played in my mind many times thru the years! I like all the outfits in today’s example except for the one with the red shirt. Perhaps my challenge with color blocking goes all the way back to 4-H! Haha!
I’m haunted by a junior high school sewing issue; I used my real measurements to choose the pattern size, and it turned out to be a TENT. HUGE. ENORMOUS… And my teacher never headed me off to avoid the complete waste of fabric that ensued. I’m scarred…
love,
Janice
Pattern sizing is so weird. I remember a situation just like this. The dress was so baggy, my grandmother helped me pleat the skirt instead of simply gather it. I could have fit my whole family in there. I did wear the heck out of it though!
This set is so versatile.
I like it best with white and red. Tonal isn’t really my thing. Sally explained it well.
I’m looking forward to the other capsules.
Janice, I adore these mix and match with other pieces and other colors. I know that I tend to be more bold when it comes to mixing patterns and colors than many people and I could also care less if pieces aren’t 100% matching, as long as they’re part of the same family, (That being said, I never, ever mix shades of black…but, that’s another story..)
I am particularly drawn to the striped top and the red top with the skirt. I think they look vibrant and fresh, giving the pieces less of a ‘uniform’ feel. I am also enamored with the two print bags you’ve shown, as a bag is an easy way to bring in a fun print to any look.
I hope your family emergency has settled a bit and that you’re in a good place.
This sort of skirt/top combo is exactly what I’m looking for — thank you for highlighting this version. Talk to me about American Giant quality. If I bought this, it would be the most expensive outfit I’ve ever owned. If it lasted me ten years, however, I’d pay and be happy. What do you think?
American Giant gets generally good reviews, although I read that they run small, with narrow sleeves. Check out this review:
https://www.reviewed.com/style/content/american-giant-review-made-in-america-clothes
When I need something again, I will look at their offering, and maybe just size up a bit to get the baggy/easy fit that I love.
hugs,
Janice
Loved all the different looks you managed to get with just a few separates. Thanks for the ideas!
I like tonal outfits but multiple patterns of different tones/shapes in the same outfit can create a discordant note.
I saw a lady recently whose top garments and accessories were floral but different colourways. Each one could have been used to create a tonal outfit but were too much altogether. On the same day,.I saw another floral lady but she had used a limited palette to striking effect. The basis was a black coat with a floral embroidered back in red and white
My favourites of these are outfit 1 and I absolutely love outfit 6 which would be perfect for any national day in the UK. I now know that I would pick one floral item to jazz up a plain outfit. It’s good to make those preference decisions.
I’m.looking forward to the moss and the thistle.
Question unrelated to this post: How do people affiliate their personal photo with their profile here at the TVF? I love seeing what my fellow Viviennites look like!