pastels Archives - Page 2 of 4

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

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Wildlife near the Gosse Range – Albert Namatjira

There's really no question that I'm going to be looking at warm weather clothing!

Although the overall look of this painting is very light and bright, I always feel more comfortable anchoring a wardrobe with a few pieces of dark neutral, so I took advantage of the birds to work a dark brown into the scheme. The rosy beige of the sky is my 2nd neutral, and after that, the sky's the limit - pastels taken from the grass, the trees, and the distant mountains are all possibilities. What lovely colors...

I would start collecting pastel, bone, earthy accessories...

Multi-colored bracelet – Eddie Borgo, bone teardrop earrings – Devon Leigh, pearl necklace – Majorica, ... View the Post

Denim Blue Capsule Wardrobe with Floral, Bright and Silver/White Accessories

Denim blue is a great, versatile and flattering color, even when the fabric isn't denim! Imagine these six garments, along with a pair of real jeans, a white shirt, and a couple of tee shirts - the perfect simple travel capsule wardrobe. I'm ready to go on vacation ANY TIME NOW... ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: A Shelf of Books -> a Summer Wardrobe

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 resume. How fun is that?

This lovely ... View the Post

How to Build a Capsule Wardrobe from Scratch: Choosing Color Schemes

It's a question that's as old as The Vivienne Files - if you're starting a capsule wardrobe from scratch, how do you start?

What an ambitious question! But after thinking about it for three years, I'm going to give it a try - a step by step approach to rebuilding your wardrobe from the ground up.

Before you buy any garments at all, you've got to make a couple of decisions. One thing you'll have to work out for yourself - which silhouettes suit you best. I'm really not qualified to answer this question for every woman, but I encourage you to address this question on your own; you know better than anybody else in the world what shapes and sizes of garments suit you best...

But the next question - truly critical - is to choose a color ... View the Post