pastels Archives - Page 2 of 4

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Marguerite au Chat Noir by Henri Matisse

Yes, I saw this in Paris last week!

Aside from the charm and beauty of Marguerite, I was immediately attracted to the colors:

Quietly Rebellious

She seems like the most conventional of women. Very pretty, always very nicely dressed.

She's rather quiet, a bit shy, and well-suited to her work in the library...

And yes, she owns a cat!

BUT, every day, without exception, she breaks a rule that she was told countless times, as a child!

"You know, with a round face, you should NEVER wear a round neckline!"

But what if she LIKES her round face?

And what if she REALLY likes the way it looks in a round neckline? What if that became sort of a personal signature for her?

So, she rebels. Very ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe of Accessories, 1 at a Time: Beige, Sage and Blush

Adding the accessories is fun - I'm going to do a few of these in a row, so we can all see the system, and the cumulative benefits that accrue when you get a nice core of accent pieces, growing bit by bit. Here's where this second "1 at a Time" started: (you can see the original wardrobe post here)

Shoes will ALWAYS be the first thing to make sure you have, for obvious reasons. It's entirely likely that you already have the shoes that you need, but it's always wise to be absolutely certain.

A bag is, to me, the second most important accessory to have. This time I've put the tote bag first...

From those two essential pieces, everything after that becomes much more discretionary! I love a small pair of earrings to give a ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe in Grey, Blue, Lilac and Black: 1 Piece at a Time

I thought that this would be challenging, but I really enjoy the options provided by including both black and grey with these soft accent colors:

If you like florals, I can't encourage you enough to look at products from Ted Baker London. While not inexpensive, they are SO beautiful, and you really only need 1 piece to be the starting point, and the lynch pin, of a beautiful wardrobe.

While my first inclination was to buy the sweater to match the cardigan, I thought that instead I'd invest in another piece in grey. These pieces, although they are 3 different greys, all work well together.

Introducing another grey piece gives you that sort of "suit-like" idea that you get when a cardigan or jacket matches a pair of pants or skirt. ... View the Post

Build a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Nature: Black and Yellow Broadbill

You've very possibly seen a Photoshopped version of this photograph, which made the colors really BRIGHT... and I'm not sure why someone would have bothered - this photograph is quite beautiful just as it is!

Weeks ago, someone asked me, on Facebook, to work with this photograph. It's about time I got around to it, because it includes lovely colors! I did NOT include the yellow circle around the eyes of the bird, except for a bit in one of the scarves, and the yellow gold in the jewelry. And while I don't always pick up the background color of a photograph, this one was really the perfect color, in the ideal intensity, for this color scheme...

Yes, I really, TRULY believe that if you find a color scheme you love, you can live with it, ... View the Post

Wearing Unflattering Colors: Pastel Blue and Green

Oh, I could tell you stories about wearing mint green...

I decided to combine these two posts, because it wasn't tremendously easy to find nice things in these colors - especially nail polish. That surprised me; I would have assumed that all pastel colors would be pretty readily available...

A LOT of these items appealed to me, and I thought that the combinations turned out well. And what I wouldn't give for a pair of lace trainers...

I love this look - it reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream! And that can ONLY be a good feeling...

I also thought that this was lovely - soft and feminine...

The ring just makes the all come together! I don't suggest that you wear ALL of these accessories at one time, though - that might ... View the Post

Choosing an Accent Color for Rust

First things First - for those of you who subscribe to my posts via email, please note that I don't run that service, and that it's working very poorly... sigh... Rest assured that unless I'm very ill, or away unexpectedly, you can assume that there will be new posts her at LEAST 3 or 4 times a week, and probably every day but Sunday. I will try to track down the responsible (irresponsible?) culprits and kick some sense into them, but I hold out very little hope of any correction...

A more challenging color to find, but VERY beautiful:

I'm going to take a break for a day or two in this series to do some thinking, and to get ready for my trip to Paris on the 10th. But I'm not quite finished here, unless I ABSOLUTELY ... View the Post

Choosing an Accent Color for Olive Green

Oooh, olive is a difficult color to find, and when something turns up that's called olive, it could be anything from a nasty yellowish green pond-scum color, to this lovely deep and dusty green:

You will, I'm sure, note that these colors don't match absolutely exactly perfectly. I don't have too much trouble with that, so long as they're lighter and darker versions of the same shade of green. It's a difficult color to find and to match, but well worth the effort. By virtue of being so uncommon, you will never blend into a crowd when you wear it! And it can be madly flattering...

First up, what neutrals look good with olive? I'm quickly learning that marsala/wine/burgundy goes with EVERYTHING - a change of accessories for a bit of ... View the Post

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

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 ask her (that horrible American ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Portrait of a Girl by Marie Laurencin

Why yes, she is my favorite artist! Does it show?

In the Rare Books Department, you have to wear a lab coat...

and after years of showing undergrads how to work the copy machines, and shelving books, and fixing microfilm readers, you've been promoted to work there...

Rare Books is a department that's always warm, always spotlessly clean, and which has a surprisingly casual dress code.

So you've decided that you're going to indulge your love of pastel colors and focus your work wardrobe on your favorite blush and aqua shades...

Because of the fanatically dust-free environment, most of the staff wears light colors under their lab coats. Some people in the main part of the library think that this is an affectation. ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Bright Women in Front of the Hat Shop by August Macke

This painting is great - I want to revisit this one with a more fall/winter orientation. For warm weather, my first thought was that the shades of blue reminded me of denim and chambray, accented with that YELLOW, the rose, and some acid green (which I didn't address here, but might in the future!)

So this is my warm-weather color scheme:

Everyone is at the lake but you...

Yes, everyone else went to the cabin last night. But you KNEW that you had to go into the office this morning - that client report wasn't going to write itself!

But if you put your head down and WRITE, you can be out of the office by 2:00 or so - in time to get to the lake for cocktails...

Since you never know who might be in the office on ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Version 2 Steamboat leaving Boulogne by Edouard Manet

I really love the combination of blue and grey! (I often consider including blue as an accent color in my wardrobe...) So I decided to look again at this painting, with an eye to warm weather. I brightened up the blue a little bit - Manet gives you a whole range of blue possibilities - and I equalized the proportions of the four colors:

I haven't built a Four by Four wardrobe for a while, so I thought this would be an interesting project. First up, the core dark neutral charcoal, in linen:

One of the reasons I wanted to do a summer leisure wardrobe - I found this gorgeous blue at L.L.Bean. A perfect secondary color!

The Expansion Four is usually four tops of some sort, since tops tend to get more wear than bottoms. ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Winter at the Convent by Margaret Loxton

I love this painting... if this doesn't make you smile, I can't help you.

While I strongly suspect that these nuns are wearing black habits, the habits look very navy on my computer, and so my imagination was strongly drawn to working with navy, white and cool pastels.

I've talked before about the usefulness of having six garments that are the same color, that give you a basis for getting dressed on Monday morning without opening your eyes. That idea has really stuck in my head, so I've decided that I want to build on it a few times. Let's start here:

Even if you get dressed out of here every Monday, you still have LOTS of clothes unworn, so let's toss in a few extra goodies to carry us into an equally effortless ... View the Post