Start a Capsule Wardrobe With Archives - Page 118 of 155

Building a CASUAL Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Festival in Montmartre by Gino Severini

September 21, 2015 I love this painting; it lives just down the street from me at the Art Institute of Chicago. Severini isn't well-known, and I think that's a shame - his Cubist works are lovely...

This painting lends itself to a color scheme firmly grounded in versatile neutrals, but sparked with some extraordinary accent colors. In addition to the pink and blue that I've chosen, you've got some beautiful yellow, a hint of true red, and some aqua too!

Care-giving as Art She took care of them all - children, spouse, parents, neighbors, and never missed a beat...

And she always looked lovely while doing so! Never over-done or fussy, and ALWAYS appropriate to the occasion and the activities. But ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with a Scarf: Cvetaeva by wrq.e.d.

September 16, 2015

Another beautiful scarf...This one, entitled Cvetaeva, is from the amazingly talented and creative team at wrq.e.d. The images include collages, ball point pen illustrations, florals, and a poem, by Marina Cvetaeva. It's written around the border: the dear art of oblivion the soul has mastered all the way. some overwhelmingly big feeling melted within my soul today. This is the wondrous object:

The first time I looked at the scarf, these were the colors that I saw. I was always envisioning this with burnished brown accessories, to reflect the beauty of the border of the scarf:

She's a Poet Yes, she earns her daily bread as an office manager for a real estate company. But if you ... View the Post

Building a DRESSY Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: A Bridge in a Snowy Landscape by Utagawa Hiroshige

September 12, 2015

One last look at our beautiful art, and the very unusual, but workable, color scheme that I chose from it:

You Must Always Look Elegant and Refined That's what they told her when she accepted the position. They even give her a clothing allowance any time they change the color scheme of the business, which is every 4 to 6 months, sometimes more often!

But she's clever, and knows that they aren't going to ask for receipts, so she chooses timeless, elegant, classic clothes that might be "recyclable" into a later scheme...

She knows that a simple ivory silk blouse might be usable in any number of different "aesthetic messages" that her employers choose. No frittering away of a that ... View the Post

Building a BUSINESS CASUAL Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Bridge in a Snowy Landscape by Utagawa Hiroshige

September 11, 2015

Yesterday, I put together what I thought was a pretty casual wardrobe, based on this painting. It wasn't the MOST casual thing imaginable - it included skirts and nice sweaters - but it would certainly be appropriate for most non-work activities that didn't include garage cleaning, painting, or basement mucking...This is our art, and our color scheme:

In order to take yesterday's wardrobe to work, I upgraded the skirt and the pants from the more casual cotton to nicer wool pieces. Depending on how casual your office actually is, you might easily have been able to wear yesterday's pieces to work too!

For the off white - same thing; the tops were keepers, but the skirt and pants were moved to slightly ... View the Post

Building a CASUAL Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: A Bridge in a Snowy Landscape by Utagawa Hiroshige

September 10, 2015

It's a question that comes up from time to time, and I'm long overdue to respond: "does the color scheme dictate the level of dressiness?" I don't think so, although I can easily see how it might seem logical. Often, by the time I've incorporated the aesthetics of a piece of art into a particular wardrobe, it can seem like there was no other POSSIBLE way that it could have gone. But in fact, I think that there's a lot of versatility possible in most color schemes.

Let's start with this simple, but gorgeous, little work, submitted for our consideration by Belovedest!

This gives us the possibilities of every sort of cream, ivory, off-white etc. shading through to any depth of warm grey we want. The ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art in Orange and Red: Nature Morte by Georgette Agutte

September 4, 2015

This color scheme had to be revisited one last time, because there's an eccentric aunt lurking in the background who wants a bit of attention. (just for the record, I'm the eccentric aunt in my family's tree...)

She persists in believing that orange and red are meant to go together! They're side by side in the color wheel, they're both in flowers, and fruits, and lots of beautiful prints. Why not pair them - it's a singular style statement that you don't see every day!

You would see this woman... on a plane, train, you name it, she's going to be visible. Happily, her sunny personality is equal to the level of high-intensity color.

For reference purposes, and to give credit where artistic credit is due, ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Egypt Drawing 9 by Susan Osgood

September 3, 2015 So beautiful... the depths of the black throughout the blue, the radiance of the red shining in the distance, and are those footsteps moving up off the top of the image?

A color scheme of clarity, but with dimensions of color:

Can You Play the Game? The rules are few, simple, but rigorously enforced:

Either participant can initiate the game. You must be ready to leave within the hour! You must be able to carry (not roll) your bag...

The destination is not known by either participant until after arriving at the airport and talking to an airline representative to find the least-expensive flight (within certain parameters). No sand, no snow. Trips last ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Version 2 of Nature Morte by Georgette Agutte

September 2, 2015

We took a look at this painting a few days ago, and my result was a very dark and subdued mix of burgundy and black. THIS version is quite a bit brighter!

This is the same general scenario: a lovely woman who has to make a quick overnight trip for a (possibly) dressy event - wedding, dinner party, etc.

I've kept the jewelry and scarf from the previous iteration of this project, and black pants are still on the menu. But a change of coat, sweater, boots and tote change everything completely.

Just to refresh our eyes, here's the painting with which everything starts:

But this time, I'm going back to an earlier version of the color scheme, that doesn't include the very ... View the Post

A book winner, and a question

One of the only blogs in the world that occasionally start with a random number generator...

The winner of the book How to be Pretty, though Plain, is Linda Becker! Dearest Linda, please email me at [email protected], and get your mailing address to me...

Now, on to a serious question about something I was planning for The Vivienne Files:

I'm going to clean out my scarf drawer, which means that I'm going to cut back the number of Hermes scarves that I own.

(1) are you interested in how this is going to be done? and

(2) is it okay, appropriate, not annoying, if I offer the scarves to you all to purchase before I throw myself on the mercy of Ebay and other venues? I'd rather sell them for less to you, than to make more ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with a Scarf: French Paisley Striped Shawl from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

August 31, 2015

For all of us who are art lovers, it's important to remember that we can indulge ourselves while supporting our favorite museums. Gift shops make a real point to find the most beautiful items available, and they always have a certain quality that you just don't see in every store...This beauty screams fall, doesn't it?

What really appeals here is the way that the strong camel and brown tones provide a perfect backdrop for the clear red, green and blue:

Under the Radar She wanted to travel. A lot. She has a project, and some goals in mind. So she wants to get out of town, maybe as often as every other weekend, through the autumn and winter...

There are LOTS of cities really close to her - ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Nature Morte by Georgette Agutte

August 29, 2015

The wealth of colors in this painting lead me in all sorts of directions, so I thought I'd share with you my thought process as I finalized a color scheme for us to work with here.

My very first instinct was drawn to the fabrics in the background of the painting - the vivid blue was the first thing that I envisioned as a lead neutral for a color scheme, with accents of the white fabric, all of the red flowers, and the oranges.

But where this would make a great scarf, or piece of jewelry, I realized that there wasn't going to be any easy way to find enough garments in that shade of blue to put together even the smallest capsule wardrobe. (this is a BIG advantage to being able to sew - you could make ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe Starting with a Scarf: Silvie Shadow by Ted Baker

August 28, 2015 If you are a fan of floral prints, get yourself to the Ted Baker site... I stopped into his store in Chicago on Saturday, and it was an oasis of beautiful floral fabrics. His items sell out really quickly, so if you see something that really grabs you, it's worth acting quickly. The prints are intricate, beautifully rendered, in lovely fabrics, and very feminine without being at all prissy or twee. Gorgeous...

There are at least a couple more colors that I could have pulled from here - there are touches of apricot, and of course a soft white would be ideal - but this is what I'm working with:

You don't dress like a scientist... She has like flowers for as long as anybody can ... View the Post