Style Over Time: Summer Outfits from July (Part 1) + DIY Paper Beads

A couple times in the past, I've shared an outfit of the day along with earlier outfits from on or around the same date in previous years, and I know some readers have found that interesting to see. I am always a little surprised by two things:

(1) How weather variations from year to year make these "outfits of the date" less similar than I would expect, and

(2) How often older outfits look like ones I would wear again today.

Regarding point (1), unlike in my previous residences in Oklahoma, Texas, or North Carolina, where summers are just flat out long and hot, a summer day in Minnesota can vary a lot. We could have a high temperature of 70 F or 100 F. It could be raining hard or oppressively bright. I could wear pants and multiple layers or a skirt and linen top. Perhaps the only reliable style marker in summer is that I won't be wearing tights!

Regarding point (2), I always chuckle when a blogger shows an outfit from their past (maybe even just a year or two earlier) and says "What was I thinking?!" Because it's usually very, very obvious what they were thinking. They had been thinking "I am wearing an outfit that is heavy in all the current trends so I look totally on point." It's especially funny when this is followed up with an "and this is how I would restyle this outfit now" photo, and it's once again "I am wearing an outfit that is heavy in all the current trends so I look totally on point."

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wearing head-to-toe current trends if you want to do that, and there's real value in showing how to update outfits, but can we just stop pretending that we don't know why trend-heavy outfits start looking dated fairly quickly? I mean, an outfit that is built to be completely "of the moment" just isn't going to look right once that moment passes. That's the nature of trends!

People definitely differ in how important wearing the current trends is to their personal style, and if you've been here before, you probably have realized that being very "current/on trend" is not a high priority for me. I also have a strong dose of "classic" in my personal style, which shows up in the simple lines and clean silhouettes of my clothes, and that gives my outfits a more timeless quality than a trendy one.

I actually like it that my outfits are not hugely different from one year to the next. Seeing the same items and same/similar combinations repeat themselves shows me that I have been making smart purchases for my personal style and lifestyle, and that my personal style reflects something enduring about myself rather than "whatever other people say we should all be wearing right now." And I know that I am not alone! But typically when I see people posting older outfits, it's about why these outfits are dated and what you should be wearing instead and so on...all those ideas that push us to feel insecure about our style, purge our closets, and buy new things.

I thought it would be fun to start posting in a Style Over Time series in which I periodically check in with my recent and older "outfits of the date." This can offer a counterpoint to the "your older outfits/clothes are bad" narrative, and also showcase a broader range of outfit inspiration than shows up in a single outfit. But mostly, I just hope that this will be interesting for you to see and for me to write about! Thinking of these outfits in a time context might prompt different ideas about them. And if either you or I have a "what was she thinking?!" reaction to any of these outfits, that'll be funny too.

In today's Part 1, I am sharing two outfits from on or around July 5 for 2024 and 2023. (I say "on or around" because I don't always have OOTD photos every year for a given date.) Then in Part 2, we will head further back in time to cover 2022 to 2017. Let's get started!

Outfit 1: July 5, 2024

High 79F, low 62 F, trace of rain

Since I bought this navy-based floral shirt (a "feels like me" item) for $42 in June 2020, it's been a high priority wear item for my summers. Luckily it has a lot of lovely soft colors in the print that make it easy for me to mix and match into new outfits. It has both warmer colors like yellow and sage/olive green as well as cooler colors like pink and light blue. (I am up to 29 wears of this shirt, so only 1 more wear to hit the 30 wears goal...though the $1 cost per wear will take a bit more time.) In this recent outfit, I layered it over a light/bright base of white tank and yellow ankle pants for a vacation day following the Independence Day holiday.

OOTD 7/5/24

It's interesting that I often gravitate toward my brown flats when I wear the yellow ankle pants, and my affinity to the shoes is even stronger with this shirt in the outfit. There is no brown in this shirt but it feels like there could be, you know?

I am still firmly in my Layered Necklace Era, so I added long and short pendant necklaces that share the muted tones of the shirt with a few seed bead strands that provide a pop of brighter color. (The short necklace with the brown cord hit my $1 CPW goal with this outfit.)

Befitting its high priority wear status, this is the summer shirt that has launched a thousand paper bead bracelet sets...well, 11 of them to be more precise! With this set, I leaned into the warmer yellow and green tones of the shirt and the brown that works so well with that combination. While gold would be the obvious metal choice for the warm tones, I went with the less-expected silver for some contrast. {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial} {tube paper bead tutorial}

The top paper bead bracelet with the floral spacer beads started out as two different images from a Coldwater Creek catalog (who also made my shirt, by the way). The navy and brown with warm yellow and green accent colors was just perfect for my palette. I made 4 beads from the stack of jeans image and 3 beads from the row of tops image. The strongly similar coloration and stripe patterns of these two sets of beads made it easy for me to mix them together in my bracelet.

A Coldwater Creek catalog was also the source of paper for my second paper bead bracelet in the tube bead style. Because only the end of the rectangular strip shows in the final bead, I could pick a small area of the page to show on the ends and ignore the rest of the page. Once again I had two different kinds of beads that I combined in the bracelet: the patterned ones from the skirt and the solid ones from the top.

The bottom paper bead bracelet started out as this calendar image of two green jays on a branch...another slam dunk page for my desired color palette. Because the paper was heavier, I applied marker to the edges of the strips to cover the white core of the paper, which added nicely contrasting striping to the finished beads.

I made bead soup earrings to coordinate with this bracelet set, starting with the small brown wood beads that have painted white and yellow dots in the form of a flower...aren't they perfect for this use? I stuck with the brown and yellow color scheme in the glass beads and finished the earrings with silver bead caps and flower beads.

I like how brown became an accent color in this outfit, and you could follow it through the accessories from my glasses (which I always wear) to my earrings, the cord of the necklace, the bracelets, and down to my shoes.

Outfit 2: July 5, 2023

High 77F, low 62 F, clear

Last year I was working from home on July 5, and I dressed in a variant of the traditional Independence Day color scheme of red, white, and blue. I am dressed in more layers this time, including a 3/4 sleeve cardigan and scarf, but it's interesting to note that I'm wearing the same white tank top as in Outfit 1. This outfit is one of my experiments in combining navy and black in the same look, and I leaned into the fact that the cardigan has a marl knit that appears mostly navy but has a bit of black and grey in it as well.

OOTD 7/5/23

My pants were new as of the previous winter so I was wearing them as a priority item even into the summer months. By contrast, the blue ballet flats are an old favorite dating to 2015 (and still going strong today!). I enjoy a pop of color shoe, and these bright blue ones definitely fit the bill.

I threw myself into print mixing with this thrifted elephant scarf that is a riot of prints all on its own. The red, white, blue, and black from the rest of my outfit appears in the scarf on a pretty light pink background. I would not have thought to add pink to this color palette but it looks quite nice while diverging from the hard core July 4 colors. I tied the scarf using my very easy summer go-to method (Method #4 in this post) and added a long pendant necklace in red that pops against the white top.

My all-DIY daily bracelet stack consists of one chunky (8.5mm) paper bead bracelet with 3 bracelets using 8mm stone, metal, or glass beads. The colors in the paper bracelet are not a 100% match to my outfit but there was enough overlap in colors that I thought it worked well. {stretch bracelet tutorial} {bicone paper bead tutorial}

The reason my paper beads are (relatively) chunky is that I upcycled heavier paper this time: the cover of an alumni magazine. Cutting the strips from side to side (or up and down as oriented in this photo), I got 7 8" long strips. I edged the strips in silver again before rolling to cover the white paper core. As you can see in the photo of the rolled beads, they have a rougher appearance with ridged edges due to the thicker paper. (When the paper is thin, the rolled bead has smaller, less noticeable ridges.) However, after adding two layers of glaze to those rolled beads, the beads are smoother because the glaze fills in the ridges. But I don't mind at all when my paper beads are a bit "ridged" because I like the organic, irregular, imperfect nature of this kind of bead. (And since I'm an organic, irregular, and imperfect person, it fits me very well!)

My earrings are an older DIY pair from the summer of 2021. I simply added various red, white, and clear beads in a simple pattern to pre-made earring hoops I bought from Amazon. These earrings come out to play on or around July 4 every year.

Do you wear trend-heavy outfits, do you have a more timeless style, or are you somewhere in the middle? How do you incorporate trends into your style? Do you prefer to buy pieces with longevity in your closet (measured in years) or do you like to have a closet with very current items? Have you ever looked at your "outfits of the date" going back in years? Do your older outfits often look dated to you or would you wear them (maybe with tweaks) again? Is your summer weather variable or predictable?

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