After last week's muted skirt outfits post, it's time to return to vivid colors for Jodie's Bright Color January challenge. The weather has been overcast and distinctly not bright. We have had snow and gloomy skies, so other than the fact that the river is still unfrozen, my world once again looks much like it did earlier in the month. All the more reason to don some cheerful and colorful outfits!
I created the first outfit around this new striped sweatshirt tunic from Lands End that I purchased at the same time as the red plaid one I featured in my "red plaid after Christmas?" post. I purchased it for $11.98 during their sale (and it's still available, though not as inexpensively: plus; straight...not affiliate links). I love the color combination and the mixture of stripes, and I think I will get a lot of use out of it as a go-to cold weather weekend item.
Several years ago I had a brown and black zebra print sweatshirt that I wore a lot on the weekends with either black or blue jeans, and it was nice to have it as a default choice for a simple stay-at-home outfit. Winter is long enough in Minnesota to count as two seasons, so having the red plaid sweatshirt in heavy rotation for the first half of winter and the turquoise striped one on deck for the second half (which extends well into what many people consider spring) sounds about right to me!
With its longer tunic length, the sweatshirt works best for me with skinny jeans/pants or leggings, so I wore dark wash ankle length skinny jeans as the obvious choice for the sweatshirt's debut. I wore a blue cashmere scarf, which I fastened with my DIY shank button scarf ring to which I'd added a DIY paper pendant as a decoration.
Here's a close up of the two sides of the reversible pendant [tutorial]. Either side would have looked good with this outfit, but I selected the bright pink side to stand out better against the blue scarf. I have no doubt I will pair the navy leaf pattern side with this sweatshirt in a later outfit.
I already had a blue/aqua/pink/silver DIY bracelet set that was a wonderful match to this outfit, so for my daily stack, I used those four pieces (the two paper bead, the aqua, and the pink) plus the DIY stone/bead bracelet in various shades of blue-green from mint through teal. However, if it turns out that I have paper with images of this sweatshirt from the Lands End catalog in my stash, you can be sure that I will be making a DIY bracelet set to perfectly coordinate with my new garment!
It's always a pleasure to bring out these cloisonné fish earrings that belonged to a friend's mother that he gave me after she died. For some reason, I have always loved cloisonné; I remember my mom having jewelry made of cloisonné when I was young that I really admired. It only now occurs to me that I could probably buy cloisonné beads/charms/pendants for my own jewelry making (!).
I went all-in with stripes and finished my outfit with these blue/aqua striped knit flats. If it makes your feet cold to see me wearing shoes without socks in Minnesota in January (and no, I'm not wearing no-show socks), I only wear shoes like this in my well-insulated apartment, not out into the snow! My feet tend to run hot so I often go sock-free indoors even in winter.
On to my second outfit, in which I used bright pink as a pop of color against a more muted background. This is an outfit that I had put on my outfit list long before Barbiecore was on my horizon, but with bright pink having a fashion moment right now, it felt like the right time to wear it. I truly can't recall my rationale for choosing a bright pink scarf to wear with this beige, wine, and denim outfit, but it was probably something like "the multi-tone bright pink stripes on this scarf remind me of the Cheshire Cat from the 1951 Disney animated movie, and the wine vest reminds me of the purple in the stripes, so if I put these two items together, it'll be amazing!" The cheetah Oxfords are like a double-down on the cat theme, and I thought they worked well with the wider leg trouser jeans.
This scarf is super fringe-y, so I used the "ends through the loop" scarf technique multiple times until the scarf tails and fringe were totally tucked in so as not to obscure the elephant motif on my sweater. I pretty much rolled the scarf up until it was a large striped fabric necklace, right? I think this makes a nice alternative method to the braided technique I typically use to wear a scarf like a necklace. In this case, the rolled method results in a "necklace" that is clearly still striped, not with the stripes braided over themselves...and I think it's more Cheshire this way. (That's right...move over Barbiecore, it's time for Cheshirecore!)
My daily bracelet stack consists of a silver-tone Amazon bracelet and 5 DIY bracelets: two burgundy garnet bead, one lime-yellow jade bead, and two paper bead bracelets.
And yep, since I did have the Coldwater Creek catalog promoting this sweater, I made a paper bead bracelet from the sweater image to coordinate with it. I was happy to be able to make the front four tube beads in the bracelet from the wine/lime elephant image in the catalog.
So there we have it...Bright colors. Jeans. Scarves. Stripes. Alice in Wonderland references. Print mixing. DIY paper pendants. DIY paper beads made from catalog images of clothing items that I own.
Are you wearing bright outfits this month? What jeans are you preferring to wear this winter? Is it sweatshirt/sweater and/or scarf season where you are?
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