I am joining Jodie's Bright Color Challenge for January with two skirt outfits I have worn this month.
For my first back-to-work-after-the-holidays outfit, I knew I'd want something comfortable yet more dressed up than I'd been during my time off to help me transition back to work (i.e., WFH sitting at my computer looking at data and graphs). On my days off, I rarely wear tights and pretty much never wear tall boots, so an outfit with an easy-to-wear knit skirt, tights, and tall boots was my choice. For the upper half, I went very comfortable with a red t-shirt and a bright blue t-shirt knit cardigan. Of course navy is the expected choice...one I easily could have made using my navy boyfriend cardigan...but I picked the brighter blue color for the challenge. (And surely I get extra points for a bright color that doesn't match anything else in the outfit, right?!) I really liked the energy between the red and bright blue, and rolling up the sleeves of both pieces together so I had a red cuff on the blue cardigan was a fun touch.
I had originally planned to wear the scarf in a typical warm-my-neck-in-winter kind of way, but (1) I didn't need the warmth and (2) I didn't want to cover up the red T. So I braided the scarf into a necklace (using the method in Jodie's tutorial) instead. I left the two ends of the braided scarf a little longer than usual for some nice drape (and of course managed to arrange the scarf so that the Lands End tag shows, sigh).
I have made four navy and red DIY bracelet sets so far, and three of them use red/navy plaids from Lands End catalogs! Lands End likes their plaids and so do I. This set is one of my chunkier DIY bracelet sets, consisting of 8mm plaid paper tube beads painted gold on the ends, 8mm bamboo coral beads, 6mm + 4mm gold beads, and 6mm paper bicone beads (made from an alumni magazine). The chunky tube bead bracelet is basically the cousin of the "beer can" plaid bracelet that I wore in the last outfit in my recent red plaid after Christmas post, just finished with gold instead of silver. It may seem redundant to have such similar bracelets, but I really like having both a silver and a gold option because I wear red/navy/gold and red/navy/silver in my outfits about equally often.
Today's choice of the gold metal was made to match my earring selection: a set of the world's easiest DIY hoop earrings made with red glass pearls and gold spacer beads on a gold hoop. Of course gold also coordinates well with my hair!
I also almost always wear gold metal (or mixed metals) when I wear these tall cognac boots. I have occasionally considered starting a search for tall navy boots because I wear navy so often, but every time I think about it, I realize that if I want to wear tall boots with navy, I'll just wear these cognac ones because they are so gorgeous with navy. Given how expensive tall leather boots are (and how limited your options are in a wide calf boot), I'm happy with the decision to keep wearing these boots with navy and working down that cost per wear (currently: 53 wears, $2.39 cost per wear).
I was pleased to note that with the exception of the oddball bright blue cardigan, all the pieces in my outfit are straight from the My Scarf 2022 capsule wardrobe! I didn't plan it that way, it just happened naturally. I'm going to take that as a sign of a good capsule.
My second bright outfit makes a bit more sense in the context of the conditions on the ground in Minnesota right now - yep, covered in snow. We got 11" in our last snowfall and everything is dressed in white. Yet people don't generally consider white a winter color! I get that white pants and white coats are problematic in this kind of weather because they are so readily dirtied, but there really is no reason not to wear white on the upper half of the body in winter.
So I chose my surprise MVP bright white quilted vest (currently: 23 wears, $0.73 CPW) to balance the darker blues and match the intensity of the colorful printed skirt (which has a white background) in this outfit. Again, I could easily have worn navy instead, but I really like the lightness and brightness the white vest brings to winter outfits.
Because the skirt and vest both have a "loud" quality, I went for more subtle options with my sweater and scarf. The sweater is a nice dark blue marl knit that has a soft appearance, and the scarf is a low contrast dark blue/dark aqua tie-dye. (Again, I purposely avoided the navy option for more colorful ones in the spirit of the challenge.) My DIY scarf ring is simply a black elastic and a shank button. I love clock motifs (which appear in both the Alice books and The Phantom Tollbooth), and this one is funny because the way the shank on the button is oriented means that the 12 o'clock is where normally 9 o'clock would be when I put it on the scarf. I picked this button because it's rimmed in gold (my metal choice for the outfit) and the orangey tan color picks up the orange in the skirt print.
My daily bracelet stack (all DIY) is the four pieces from my navy/orange set (striped paper tube bead, orange stone bead, navy square lapis bead, and colorblock paper bicone bead) supplemented with the white glass bead and navy starry sky paper bicone bead bracelets to echo the white in the outfit. I find that adding a white bracelet to a stack can be jarring because it so draws the eye, but with the navy/white bracelet, it feels a bit more integrated.
I continued the orange/gold theme with another pair of world's easiest DIY hoop earrings made with orange tiger-eye beads and gold spacers on gold hoops. You can also see my glittery gold headband from Amazon that I wear all the time because it blends into my hair. (The Golden Rod 2-pack; not an affiliate link.)
Are you wearing bright colors for January? Do you naturally gravitate toward dark colors in winter or are light/bright colors typically part of your mix? Would you wear a white vest in winter?
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