Are Your Favorite Accent Colors Incompatible? Start With a Scarf – Saffron Flowers by Silk & Soul

October 16, 2026

It’s a question you send me more often than I would have ever expected, 16 years ago when I plunged into this adventure: “What do I do when my two favorite accent colors don’t go together?”

WELL… I could, of course, launch into a diatribe about how “all colors go together – if they exist in the world, they are meant to be together…” 

Which is small consolation when you still don’t feel like they look right together!

Let’s start with this gorgeous thing:

To me, the most prominent colors here are orange and purple! They look so good here; there’s something to be learned from that.

And – again to me – it appears that there’s both brown and black in this scarf, so we have two neutrals, as well as enough white that you could always include the happy white shirt and/or tee shirt.

This is my vision:

I’m becoming a big fan of arranging my wardrobe in groupings of 9 or 10 garments, which I think of as a “Domestic Valise.” To me, if I get this assembled at the beginning of a week, then I can dress from the front of my closet, and from a double-handful of clothes that can all hit the laundry at the same time, over the weekend (but only if necessary – don’t over-wash your clothes!)

If you wear a uniform for work, you may only need two or three of these “valise” for a season. At the most? Maybe?

In my wardrobe, a valise is three outfits with an extra garment or two – whatever gets us to ten!

Start with an obvious favorite for me:

Let’s give equal time to the second neutral; note that the addition of a black cardigan gives us a black “suit-like” pair of clothes:

There’s a very similar cardigan available for quite a bit less – it’s the one I own, and I love it!

If we’re including three outfits in this “valise,” I would usually make the third bottom a skirt. If you abhor skirts, don’t do it – grab another pair of pants instead. And I wasn’t going to resist this Fair Isle turtleneck for this heroine:

Note that I put the bright garments with the conflicting accent colors in two cardigan – no temptation to wear them together, but they’re still both here and highly visible:

But how does one wear these clothes – except for the three outfits that I’ve already shown?

Some ideas – some a bit more adventurous than others:

A really beautiful scarf can open the door to just about any color combination!

love,
Janice

p.s. Ten years ago, I was in Italy! The post of the day was a “Tote Bag Travel” for someone who was invited to a quite dressy evening out, at the very last minute…