The Vivienne Files

Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature

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Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with a Scarf: Ted Baker’s Dreams Scope

May 17, 2016   She's so smitten with the scarf that she decided to plan her entire trip around the colors she found in it!  

Every Year They go back to the little town in which their wedding took place. For the most part, it's a very casual long weekend, spent walking around the lake, browsing in used bookstores, or maybe taking in an estate sale...

But every year, on Saturday evening of their weekend together, they go back to the place where they were married. And they repeat their vows...

 

 

 

 

This year, she's going to remind him that beautiful brides come at every age...

love, Janice ... View the Post

Building a Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Study for the Muses by Brice Marden

May 20, 2016  

This lives just down the street from me, at the Art Institute of Chicago. I'm quite taken with it:

I could have included all three accent colors, but I wanted to think about a small, long-weekend packing wardrobe, so I limited myself to these two glorious shades:

  Off Season "You can't go to the beach house NOW! You'll never be able to go outside..."  

It is possible to dress warmly. And just because the calendar doesn't specify "beach" anywhere, doesn't meant that it's going to snow! The weather is often very lovely this time of year...

Yes, she seems rather feminine - pastels, round collars on her shirts, the whole "girly" 9 yards. But that doesn't mean that she's ... View the Post

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

April 18, 2016  

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  

Cardigan – J. Crew; pants – Boden; tee – J. Crew; skirt - A.P.C.  

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

 

Cardigan – Stella McCartney; jeans – L.L.Bean; tee – L.L.Bean; denim skirt – A.P.C.  

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

 

Blue top – Part Two; ivory shimmer tee – Mint Velvet; soft teal tee – L. L. Bean; salmon sweater – Odeeh  

And yes, she owns a cat!

Tie dye tee – ... View the Post

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

March 10, 2016  

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 ... 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:

cardigan – J. Crew; shirt – Uniqlo;   

scarf – Ted Baker London; trousers – J. Crew Factory  

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.

cardigan – J. Crew; shirt – Uniqlo;   

scarf – Ted Baker London; trousers – J. Crew Factory  

While my first inclination was to buy the sweater to match the cardigan, I thought that instead I'd invest in another ... View the Post

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

January 6, 2016   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 ... View the Post

Wearing Unflattering Colors: Pastel Blue and Green

December 31, 2015   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 ... View the Post

Choosing an Accent Color for Olive Green

November 30, 2015   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 ... 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 Capsule Wardrobe by Starting with Art: Portrait of a Girl by Marie Laurencin

July 13, 2015   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 ... View the Post

Start With Art: Bright Women in Front of the Hat Shop by August Macke

July 9, 2015   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 ... View the Post