Beige Archives - Page 40 of 57

Start With Art: A Shelf of Books -> a Summer Wardrobe

November 7, 2014 You really, seriously, can get inspiration anywhere, if you keep your eyes and your aesthetic heart open to what's out there. This absolutely wonderful picture was sent to me - what a delightful mix of softly faded colors.

It wasn't at all hard to come up with a color scheme. Many of you ask about how I build color wheels - I use the graphing gizmo in PowerPoint. I use PowerPoint for all of my vignettes, because it does everything I need. Just insert a graph into a slide, and then change the colors and sizes of the various wedges to suit your preferences. You have a new, beautiful mnemonic for your wardrobe colors, AND you have a new skill to put on your ... View the Post

Start With Nature: Bird’s Eggs photograph from Kevin Fleming Photography

November 3, 2014

Someone sent me this gorgeous photograph... I've flipped it sideways so that I could put up a bigger image...

This was my chosen color scheme:

It's hard to introduce "egg-like" elements into a wardrobe, but I did stick with rounded earrings, and I aimed for a sort of softness and subtlety that would honor the gorgeousness of the photograph.

I introduced the most subtle greenish color to blend with the warm beige, tan and brown already here. It's an amazingly effective combination, I think.

To me, these combinations are warm, gentle, and comfortable.

love, Janice ... View the Post

Travel Capsule Wardrobe Packing with Scarves: Missoni

October 31, 2014 One of my most loyal readers recently purchased this scarf and wanted to know what I would do with it - the answer is, of course, a LOT. One of the many joys of a scarf from Missoni is that they contain a wealth of colors that you wouldn't otherwise put together. I don't know why I saw bright pink here - when you get your nose right up against the scarf, it's not really there. There's teal, as well as a softer sage green, quite a bit of light blue, some slate greyish blue, navy... Lots of things to consider... Missoni scarves are available in a lot of places, and often on sale. Different vendors get different designs, so if you have your heart set on one particular color scheme, don't forget to check ... View the Post

Start With Nature: Panicum Shenendoah, aka switchgrass… a Four Pack

October 28, 2014

So what do you do if your favorite color scheme includes colors that are just plain difficult to wear together? This beautiful grass (growing in the Lurie Garden, about a 10 minute walk from chez nous) includes some striking colors, but it isn't at all simple to find ANYTHING, clothes or accessories, that include the two colors...

But these are really pretty...

So you just have to accept that you might wear them separately most of the time, until and unless you find things that bring the colors together. As long as you stick with your neutral core, these kinds of "color conundrums" aren't really limiting!

love, Janice ... View the Post

Start With Art: The Church at Coggeshall, Essex by John Armstrong

September 11, 2014

What a cool painting! It shows the World War 2 damage to the church, and the "reveal" of the interior structure of the church is fascinating. So sad that such a lovely piece of art is the result of destruction...

From this, I selected two relatively minor colors in the painting as the neutrals, and then used the gorgeous pastels as the accent colors. The black is clearly visible, but I grabbed the sage green from the shrubbery that's relatively obscured on the left side of the painting.

I think what I'm trying to show here is that, although the painting itself is very light with muted pastels, it's still possible to pull together a wardrobe from these colors without enriching your dry cleaner. Capturing ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Berry, Beige, Navy and Brown

August 22, 2014 I was going to save this post for during my Paris vacation (September 18 - 28!!!), but I really like it, and I think it shows two great accent colors that many of us could consider incorporating (at least in small doses) in our capsule wardrobes. The fact that the berry red is going to be pretty flattering for many people is worth remembering...

The same starting four in brown, with a really brown skirt...

And navy separates that look familiar too!

And these guys have been around too...I think the most amazing thing about the clothing from The Row - aside from their prices - is that they're designed by the Olsen twins. From Full House. I don't see that they have any fashion ... View the Post

A Four by Four Capsule Wardrobe in Navy, Brown, Green and Beige

August 20, 2014 While these are the same neutral colors that we saw yesterday, these accent colors are much more subdued and much more frequently seen along with the neutrals. Therefore, this capsule wardrobe came together much more quickly and with greater ease.

This was my color scheme:

And this is our familiar brown Core of Four:

I've changed up the jeans for a skirt, since I'm going to swing this wardrobe a little bit more toward a work environment. If you don't need skirts, you could certainly keep the jeans.

I found ONE more sweater in this color combination - equally blindingly expensive... And I opted for a more tailored ... View the Post

Common Capsule Wardrobe Colors: Cobalt

August 7, 2014

How maddening.... This is a great shirt. At a great price. And the way Uniqlo shows it on their website (with a superimposed color swatch) makes it look like there's something defective with the left sleeve. Really, do you NEED a swatch, in blue, overlapping a blue shirt. Did we think the shirt was really, surreptitiously, pink?Ahem...

I love this color. I wore it in the '80's, as did many of us. Maybe you can't shake those memories, but I'd encourage you to consider a little bit of bright blue...

Earrings – Dorus Mhor, shirt – Uniqlo, bracelet – George J. Love

I loved this color with brown and beige WAAAY back when...

This is how I wore ... View the Post

Common Capsule Wardrobe Colors: Teal

July 26, 2014

Sometime very soon I'm going to HAVE to do a capsule wardrobe based on mallards or some other duck that shows this color in a natural palette. I'm beginning to believe that I can't go wrong looking at nature for ideas. In the meantime, this is a great color to transition into the end of summer/hot days of early autumn. As much as we'd all like to start wearing fall clothing the first day of September, it's sort of insane to really consider it (at least in Chicago) until the last week of the month. A color like this at least lets you FEEL a little bit autumn-ish!These earrings are silk, and the bracelet is leather - what WILL they think of next?

By now you of ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch Step 18: One last review, considering Whatever’s Clean, and A Common Wardrobe

July 16, 2014

Many of you have been following the concepts of A Common Wardrobe, or a Whatever's Clean wardrobe, and you've expressed great curiosity about how those ideas work with this much larger capsule wardrobe-building concept. So let's see if we need to make any last tweaks to our wardrobe to be as inclusive and versatile as possible...First off, remember this bad boy? This was the original Common Wardrobe - garments that I saw day after day on my co-workers from international advertising agencies. These garments and accent items were combined in all sorts of different ways, and accessorized like mad:

I threw my analytic brain at this, and defined each of these garments functionally, i.e., the first is ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch Step 17: A Few Finishing Touches, for now…

July 15, 2014

Many of you have written to me to ask how this capsule wardrobe compares with my earlier 24-piece wardrobe - excellent question!Just as in the 24-piece wardrobe, this Starting From Scratch includes to two core "Four by Four" assortments in your neutrals, it works with two accent colors and a light neutral, and it includes the concept of the "bridge" garment, which is something that incorporates both of your neutral colors and allows you to wear piece from both neutrals seamlessly.

So I decided to look at each wardrobe one last time (for now - I'm sure we'll be back to revisit this concept when trench coats hits the stores, and when there are other requests/needs), and see how things stacked up in terms of a 24-piece ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch Step 16: Evaluating and Balancing our Neutrals

July 14, 2014 BIG BIG BIG EDIT: THIS IS ONLY STEP SIXTEEN... If you are going to make a typo, make a really big one! I had medical tests this a.m., and have been asleep all afternoon; I am so sorry for the delay in fixing this inexcusable error! We're very close to wrapping up our capsule wardrobes, but there are a couple more things we need to do to make sure that our choices will work as well for us as possible. So far, we've added pieces within our color scheme, but we've not been particularly rigorous in making sure that we have a balance between our neutrals. To address this, I've looked at each wardrobe and tried to find the "Core of Four" (two tops and two bottoms, that will ... View the Post