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Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature

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Accessorizing Archives - Page 8 of 23

Start with Art: From the Lake by Georgia O’Keeffe

March 9, 2019

Planning a wardrobe with mostly neutrals doesn't mean that your wardrobe will be predictable...

Let's start with this most wonderful painting:

It's pretty simple - we can start with the same neutral clothes that we used a few days ago...

Ah, but the accent pieces are quite different. One of the neat things here is that this heroine could have 5 neutrals... the brown and the grey would both be excellent secondary wardrobe neutrals, don't you think?

This wardrobe feels very different to me than the earlier version with bright accents:

I've kept the silver earrings, and then added in brown and aqua...

Same with the bracelets - her neutrals are still perfect for her wardrobe, but ... View the Post

Choosing Accessories to go with a Blue and Grey Travel Wardrobe (for Ireland!)

March 4, 2019

It's all well and good to have your clothes sorted for a trip, but you really MUST pack accessories. Not necessarily all that much stuff, but some shoes are critical, as well as a few more odds and ends...

As a reminder, this is the photograph that was inspiring us, and the color scheme that we were using:

You've got to have shoes - there aren't terribly many places you can go and NOT need shoes... Even though the dress shoes aren't as important as hiking shoes, let's start here anyway!

If you're not going to do hard-core hiking, you might adjust your choice of hiking shoes to be something a little bit less rugged, but it always makes sense to have something very comfortable for lots of ... View the Post

Narcissus! The Birth Flower for December

December 10, 2018

These feel SO out of season right now - I wonder why they are the flower for December? I'm really happy that it isn't poinsettias (!) but I was expecting to find that December's flower was something... wintery?

What this flower does give us is 3 possible accent colors (orange, yellow and white) to brighten up neutrals during these shortest days of the year. (Northern Hemisphere, of course; for those of you south of the Equator, just hold these ideas for a few months!)

There are some lovely pieces of jewelry available with narcissus - or narcissus-ish flowers:

If you would really like to splurge on a brooch in your birth flower, check out the Joseph Giovanni site. They have three different levels of ... View the Post

Start with Art Accessory Families

November 7, 2018

This is the time of year when my email begins to fill up with requests to write "gift guides" on The Vivienne Files... As if I know what kinds of things your friends and family will want for gifts! All I can do is show you pretty things that I see; you still have to make the difficult gifting choices yourself!

So I seldom do these, but The Met Store is exceptional. Anything inspired by art, and that helps support a wonderful museum, is alright by me...

My plan is to start with beautiful art, choose a simple garment that might be something that this particular heroine might love, and then add some accessories. Let's see how this works... Of course one would probably not wear ALL of the accessories  - but I like ... View the Post

Adding Accessories to a Grey and Pink Perfect 10 Travel Wardrobe

October 3, 2018

Last week I left you with a (what I thought was) lovely wardrobe, but it didn't have any accessories! Well, I was trying to share a new idea about how to choose what to pack, so I didn't want to throw too much out there at one time...

So let's accessorize now!

First, let's remind ourselves of the clothing that we had in this 13-piece (Perfect-10 to pack) wardrobe:

In order to make certain that we have enough accessories, I'm going to take a handful of outfits that I previously assembled, and accessorize them. When it's all collected, we're going to have a few too many pairs of shoes (well, unless you like to pack lots of shoes...) and quite a few handbags. One could of course reuse any or all of the ... View the Post

Choosing Accessories for a Project 333 Wardrobe? How about a template…

September 14, 2018

 

Monday I built a 4 by 4 Wardrobe based on this lovely scarf from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Store (they have a LOT of lovely scarves...)

Before we dive into accessories, let's remember what our final color scheme was (remember, I had to change the colors halfway through building the wardrobe!):

And the wardrobe was this; yes, I could easily have re-arranged these items to put the camel-colored items into the 2nd row to be the 2nd neutral. Proof that these templates are guidelines and NOT rules!

I've been thinking about accessories a lot... Maybe we can organize them the same kind of way we organize clothes? Let's start with the stuff that most of us MUST have (although bear in mind ... View the Post

Experimenting with Project 333 – 20 garments and 13 accessories?

September 7, 2018

Wednesday I experimented with a different approach to Project 333 - in which I built a template for 4 5-piece "clusters" of clothing:

Partly to showcase 2 of Eileen Fisher's "new" fall colors (Midnight and Nutmeg), I pulled together this wardrobe:

If we're going to be really strict with Project 333, this would only leave us 13 accessories for this wardrobe! But let's bear in mind the LAST thing the creator of Project 333 wants is for us to feel limited or constrained by this process - she just wants us to be thoughtful...

That said, I'm going to see what I can accomplish with only 13 accessories, just as an exercise in planning and in limits! If nothing else, it's educational to see what you really want ... View the Post

Can Accessories Tie Together Clashing Colors?

July 4, 2018

Some of us felt pretty uncomfortable with the grey Common Wardrobe paired with warm citrus-hued accent colors. That's okay - everybody is NOT going to like every color combination in the world!

So I thought that I would try to bring the colors closer together visually by choosing accessories with that goal in mind...

This is the color scheme with which we are working, based on this really cool painting:

While the first wardrobe from this painting - with brown and beige neutrals - looked great with gold jewelry, now that we've changed our core neutrals to cool grey, I'm thinking that silver jewelry is the direction to take...

It's always reasonable and smart to have a plan when you're pulling together ... View the Post

What Accessories do You Need to Pack?

June 15, 2018

 

Wednesday I shared one approach to pulling together a travel wardrobe when your original plan starts to fall apart. Today, I'm going to look at what accessories need to be packed in order to make sure that you can get dressed without problems and panic...

First, let's look at our wardrobe color scheme:

For accessories, you want to make sure that you're including a color that will be suitable for jewelry - something metallic - and a color that can be used for your leather goods. This is pretty straightforward for this color scheme; the brown is perfect for leather, and gold just feels right...

Next, you want to think about what you expect to want to pack. This might not turn out to be exactly what ... View the Post

Roses! The Birth Flower for June

May 28, 2018

 

Roses! What's not to love? (I'm a little biased, because I'm born in June...)

There are roses everywhere - if you want home fragrances, or perfume, you're in luck.

And if you want to add some accessories to your wardrobe, maybe pick 2 or 3 pieces that look happy to be together? Sort of an instant update to your neutral outfits... I would cheerfully buy all 5 of these items, just to wear with black...

Or if you wanted a more striking color palette:

Maybe pink roses are your favorites? If you wear black, you can certainly live in that first scarf, and the 2nd scarf would be perfect with denim...

Yes, you might not want to wear a floral watch every day, but if you wanted to find one that you ... View the Post

Adding Just Enough Accessories

February 21, 2018   Yesterday she managed to wrestle her wardrobe into shape, so today she want to be certain that she has enough accessories. She's not mad about having tons of stuff, but it is pretty important to have at least some appropriate shoes! Her color palette looked like this when she was finished:

She thought for a bit, and chose gold as the metal color for her jewelry (maybe just for this season - who knows?)

And she's going to rely a bit on navy as a "cooling" influence on her wardrobe, as she moves away from those warm olive-ish greens that made her feel drab. So she drafted a 2nd color palette, like this:

Now that her colors are all settled, she things for a minute about what she's going to look for in ... View the Post

What If I Don’t Really DO Accessories?

February 8, 2018  

Some people just don't wear a lot of jewelry; they don't want to collect handbags, nor shoes, and they find one scarf suits them quite well...(okay, they're nuts...)

Actually, that's their right. Of course it is! But it does suggest that they're going to want to plan a bit to make certain that they have what they want and need when they get dressed.

Let's start where we were yesterday, with this nicely tidied leisure wardrobe:

When we finished this wardrobe yesterday, we had a lovely color palette for our heroine's clothing. Working from that, we can easily devise a corresponding palette for her accessories - add a choice of metal (if you're not going to have a lot of jewelry, what you do have can ... View the Post