Rosemary at Distinctly Southern Style is wearing red for Heart Awareness Month to raise awareness that heart is disease is the leading cause of death in the US. See her post for a run down of risk factors, healthy choices, and preventative measures regarding heart disease. I thought that this was a good reason to revisit the color red as a style choice for the rest of February. While I get that there can be a bit of red overload after the Christmas and Valentine's Day holidays, perhaps one of red's more muted cousins like maroon or burgundy might be more appealing.
So today I am sharing 13 outfit ideas from my OOTD archives that feature red, maroon, or burgundy for some style inspiration in this late winter/early spring season. I've covered a range of temperature options so I hope you'll see something that matches up with the climate where you live. Plus a DIY black/yellow/green/rust/gold paper bead bracelet set that shows how upcycled catalog/magazine pages roll up into beads and bracelets.
The last week of January and first week of February are often the coldest days of the year in Minnesota, and while temperatures this year weren't as extreme as they sometimes are (school gets canceled/switches to an e-learning day in St Paul when the wind chill is below -35 F at 6:00 am!), it was still cold enough for several layers of clothing indoors.
Here is one of my Peak Cold outfits from earlier this month with three top layers: a long-sleeved shirt, maroon pullover sweater, and quilted vest. This is my winter version of the Triple Top Secret layering technique. I could have layered a long-sleeved T under the shirt for a quadruple version but I luckily I didn't need to do so!
It's also a triple print mix with the check shirt, striped scarf, and botanical print skirt. As another testament to the relative mildness of the weather, I leaned into the collared shirt thing and wore the scarf like a men's tie rather than wrapping it tightly around my neck. I like how this scarf works with the skirt because all the colors in it also appear in the skirt for a tightly matched color palette, which is one of the easiest ways to print mix.
This skirt has an autumnal color palette in the print, but with the black background, it works very well for winter too. And there are enough lighter colors in the print to draw out for spring and summer wear. I consider it a 4 season/365 day skirt; I've worn it successfully from well below 0F to almost 100F. Warm leggings/tights and tall boots are in order for the height of winter.
My daily bracelet stack contains two paper bead bracelets I made specifically to coordinate with this skirt, plus a couple DIY black bead bracelets and a gold bracelet from Amazon. I had decided I wanted my paper bracelets to reflect the range of lighter and darker colors in the skirt, and I was fortunate to find two pages from Audubon magazine that fit the bill (and were even thematically related to the skirt's botanical/insect print).
I fell in love with this full-page drawing of birds, flowers, leaves, and bugs that accompanied an article about bird migration. I cut my 7 triangular strips for 1" bicone beads from the central section of the drawing with the orange and green pie shapes because that was the most colorful part (but I cut some additional strips for .5" bicones from the two edges also, to use in a later project). The beads rolled up very nicely with a speckled color-block appearance...two with light green, two with light orange, and three with darker orange and teal. I decided on gold for my spacer beads because it works well with the warm yellow/orange/rust colors in these beads and the skirt print.
For the darker bracelet...well, it doesn't get any darker than the pitch black of the background of this photograph of seeds in yellow/teal, dark orange, and wine. There was white all around the edges of the black that I cut away so that the tips of each triangle I cut would be black. I added black marker along the edges of the strips to cover the white core of this thicker paper, which adds thin black stripes to the finished beads. I added identical gold spacer beads to both bracelets as a unifying element for the bracelet set.
A few days earlier, I wore my burgundy poncho with a burgundy long-sleeved T underneath...a variant on the "modern twin set" concept. I am not a big fan of turtlenecks, but I like the chunky cowlneck on this sweater. (This 100% cotton "Shaker Poncho Sweater" is currently available at Coldwater Creek in cream, mustard, and dark blue in misses, petite, and plus sizes; not affiliate an link.) In the past, I've always worn it with slim pants/jeans, but I decided to try it with a more voluminous skirt this time...and I like it! It's not necessarily the most flattering silhouette/proportion of all time, but it's just flattering enough for me, and I look forward to pairing the poncho with other skirts in the future.
I like to break up the expanse of solid color with one of my chunkier pendants when I wear this poncho, and this gold one thrifted from ThredUp is probably my favorite with it. (It cost a whopping $1.80 and has a current cost per wear of $0.11!) I added my black/brown woodland critter print silky scarf as a headband. My earrings are a pair of the world's easiest DIY hoops with round black glass beads and square gold tone spacers.
I'm not sure why I can't find any photos of the making of this 3 piece DIY paper bracelet set (?!), but I created it specifically for this skirt, drawing on the black, maroon, and olive colors from the print. I like wearing it with the olive/black bead bracelet (from a set I bought from CJ Banks) and the same DIY black glass bead bracelet(s) as in the previous outfit.
I have selected and cut paper to make an additional two sets to coordinate with this skirt! One with a lime/olive/black/silver color palette; the other with a maroon/orange/black/gold color palette. Of course, the crafter supposes and the god of crafts disposes, and this is especially true where paper beads are concerned. I won't know what I have until the beads are rolled. Sometimes all goes to plan, and other times...well, we can always switch things up at the end, right? I'll let you know how those sets turn out.
And here are 11 more outfits in red, maroon, or burgundy for you consideration...
Other posts in this series:
Do you have a favorite shade of red/maroon/burgundy? Do you have a favorite color to wear with red? Do you get tired of red by the time Christmas and Valentine's Day are over?
Blogs I link up with are listed here.