The Vivienne Files

Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature

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Olive Green Archives - Page 8 of 19

Cleaning Out a Closet Full of Impulse Purchases

June 25, 2018

Our heroine is pretty loyal to her favorite store... Every time she goes in, she just feels happy; she loves the outdoor equipment, and the feeling of love and pleasure in nature that the company really encourages. And it seems that most times she stops in, she walks out with something!

So her warm-weather closet looks like this:

She doesn't really struggle to get dressed, but she feels vaguely... uneasy... when she looks at her closet. She would like more focus, and maybe a clearer sense of personal style than she currently has.

Where to begin? The fastest, easiest starting place is to sort everything by color and see if she can learn something:

Oh. Dear. An equal number of navy and black garments ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – June 2018

June 1, 2018

Always one of the great days of the month!

This month, in honor of heat (in the Northern Hemisphere) and the easing-up of many schedules, let's add a casual dress to these wardrobes!

Additionally, I'm going to find a tote bag for each of these heroines, some footwear to wear with their new dress, and a couple of pieces of jewelry. This wouldn't be a horrid shopping trip; once you find the dress, the accessory shopping should be fun...

Dresses can be an opportunity to really exploit your color scheme; because you don't have to coordinate a lot of different garments to wear with a dress, you can find a classic, summery linen shirtdress in a bright color and add it to your wardrobe without worrying that you don't have ... View the Post

Start with Art: Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Revisiting Jack Pine by Tom Thomson

May 16, 2018

Someone asked me to revisit this most striking of paintings... Years ago I showed some outfits that were based on this work, but it's well worth returning to works of art from time to time. If you choose a work of art or other lovely image/object to be your style inspiration, you'll be coming back to it often, so why shouldn't we do the same here on The Vivienne Files?

As much as brown plays a really big role in the painting, I've chosen to not include brown in this wardrobe because it's terribly difficult to find for spring and summer! If you've got a good source of beautiful brown garments for warm weather, take advantage! That's the only way these colors will move back into the marketplace...

I'm imagining that ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – May 2018

May 1, 2018

Always my favorite day of the month, for The Vivienne Files! And since today (April 30th) is actually somewhat warm in Chicago, this doesn't feel like an insane outfit to bring into our capsule wardrobes!

If you haven't seen these before, the general idea is that I start the year with 6 Hermes scarves, and for each of the 12 months of the year, I choose an outfit to add to a growing capsule wardrobe. Some of them turn out really well, and others... need some year-end adjusting! But it's a fascinating process...

Let's get started; one of the things that I liked most about this scarf was the juxtaposition of the surprising yellow, green and blue against the black. Not your usual accent colors!

This wardrobe is ... View the Post

Passion Flower with Hummingbirds by Martin Johnson Heade, Revisiting for Spring 2018

April 16, 2018   Our heroine is quiet. Subtle, but not without interest, and great depths...She draws her personal style inspiration from this moody, but beautiful, painting:

 

  She traveled back in January with a warm, simple, but at the same complex wardrobe. That sounds silly, and like an oxymoron, but there's more going on here than will meet the casual, careless eye...

She's traveling again, with a wardrobe that looks uncomplicated, but which includes 2 neutrals and 3 accent colors...

The key here is that all of her accent colors will work equally well with olive green or deepest charcoal grey...

 

It's such an eclectic, but harmonious, little capsule ... View the Post

Daisies! The Birth Flower for April

March 27, 2018

I think that daisies are popular for lots of reasons - in real life, they're a great cut flower to buy because they're generally very inexpensive, last a REALLY long time, and the buds will actually open after you buy them...

For ornamental purposes, they're simple in design, familiar to almost all of us, and for many people have associations that make us smile...

So if you want to add a daisy or five to your wardrobe, you have options:

If you don't want the actual daisy - but the "feel" of the daisy, you could wear white with any color in the world (I don't think I need to show you how to do that!), or you could choose to add a dash of yellow to your wardrobe... (yes, this is indeed the 2nd month in a row ... View the Post

My Casual Wardrobe is a Disaster….

She got really sick of the struggle - it wasn't like climbing Mount Everest, or building your own home by hand, but it was still a bother...

She has some things that she really likes, but just can't seem to get dressed for evenings or weekends...

This is approximately what she has right now:

What to do? Is the problem that she doesn't have enough of a particular "category" of clothes - not enough tee shirts? or sweaters?

Nope - her ratios are pretty good, and there are no glaring omissions. Is it a question of color?

Immediately, when we see that mass of warm green with some "outliers" of cool green that just don't blend in, we can start to see the issue...

And here's the gut-check moment - does she really ... View the Post

“Fixing” a Wardrobe that Just Doesn’t Feel Right…

She's worn navy forever, and really, legitimately loves it. She also really feels comfortable with bright colors - she doesn't mind the high contrast. But, for some reason she can't quite put her finger on, she's not quite "right" with her wardrobe...

This is what's she's got for spring:

She really doesn't know what to do to feel more comfortable with these pieces, so she just started getting dressed as normal, but changing 2 small things:

She pulls out and wears what she really "feels" like wearing, rather than trying to carefully rotate everything in her wardrobe. If she focuses on what she most likes, it might help her learn something, and She keeps careful track of what she wears.

After three weeks, she sorts ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – February 2018

I'm still not sure why I always add a dress in February - a long-standing affection for Valentine's Day? Or just a desire to make sure that I'm well prepared for dressy spring events?

It's not quite expected to accessorize a classic black dress with bright spring green...

I didn't find a beige dress that appealed, so I thought that this delicious cocoa brown would be perfect with this scarf, or with a grouping of blush pink accessories.

The red is probably the most expected accent color with a navy dress, so I ignored that and chose teal instead!

This green isn't as yellow-ish as the greens used last month, but since it's a dress, it doesn't have to be "dye-lot matched" to the other neutral in this wardrobe... And ... View the Post

Passion Flower with Hummingbirds by Martin Johnson Heade – Inspiring a Tote Bag Travel Capsule Wardrobe

January 16, 2018 Quiet.... It's just the way she is...

She appreciates peace. Tranquility. Simple pleasures that don't involve amplification...

Which is not to say that she's boring - just that if you're going to see the interesting things, you might have to look a little while!

Her color palette is mostly muted, with a single bright accent of geranium pink... She shops with incredible patience to stay true to her long-standing preferences!

When she travels, she doesn't need much. Because everything she owns suits her to a "T," she can be contented with just the necessities and a few lovely accessories...

A long time ago she heard a phrase - maybe in an advertisement? - that said that "if you ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe in 12 Months, 12 Outfits – January 2018

January 1, 2018

It's that time again! I looked and LOOKED at the Hermes scarves for this year - I wanted to find some unique color combinations... I kept changing my mind until literally the last possible minute!

This year's focal points for gradual wardrobe building are these lovelies:

A word to the wise - these scarves are selling FAST this year - I had to go to the sites for 3 different countries to find these colors, literally just 3 days after I started working on this post! Your best option for finding a fast-selling scarf is to call an Hermes store and ask THEM to find it and send it to you. Their staff is usually delightfully helpful and nice, and it will save you the legwork of trying to mail-order a scarf from a ... View the Post

The Twelve Art Works of Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of those who are celebrating today, and a warm and wonderful day to everyone!

Today I've got 12 works of art for you - 11 paintings and 1 pretty amazing photograph, along with color palettes, and a sense of how the colors might be made to work in a wardrobe.

I've chosen almost all "modern" works of art - for what we do here on The Vivienne Files, I need to have a relatively limited color palette. Paintings that are completely realistic tend to have every color of the rainbow in them, and THAT would make a carefully edited wardrobe almost impossible!

So, if you have time, and if you have an opinion (or 12!), tell me if you'd like to see any of these developed into a wardrobe. If you've a preference for warm ... View the Post