The Vivienne Files

Capsule wardrobes inspired by art and nature

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Six Paintings - 12 Months Archives - Page 9 of 13

The Second of Six Paintings-Twelve Months, March 2025

March 4, 2025

A painting that I love, and a wardrobe that grows on me every time I look at it:

At the end of February, our heroine had this very tidy and versatile (as well as lovely!) 12-piece wardrobe:

Our heroine decided that she was going to try to fill in some of her cold-weather basics, before they vanish from stores in favor of bikinis! She knows that - even though it seems like it's the end of winter - there are still at least a few more weeks of weather plenty cold enough for a turtleneck.

If you've been looking for wool pants that are lined, I found these; you see them pretty often here, but they're a rare species of garment here in the 21st century...

Now, when she looks at her Weekly Timeless Wardrobe ... View the Post

The First of Six Paintings-Twelve Months, March 2025

March 3, 2025

March! Even though we still have to wear winter clothes in Chicago, once it's March we pretend that it's spring. At least the days are long enough to go out for a quick walk after work - that makes SO much difference.

This month, I'm starting here, with a change/addition to our color palette:

 

This is the 12-piece wardrobe that our heroine has assembled through the first two months of her project:

Frankly, this wardrobe was feeling DARK. For a heroine with fair, freckled skin and hair somewhere in the red/russet family, it got to be TOO dark... So an executive decision was made to add ivory to this wardrobe. Well, you can call it bone, or unbleached, or off-white, but the effect is the ... View the Post

The Last of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 10, 2025

This painting to me just cries out to inspire a wardrobe for someone who lives near water, and probably has a pretty long "warm" season and just a short winter. Anybody else feel that?

There's enough navy here to dress her for cold weather, and plenty of shades of sand, lovely sea blues and sea green for warmer weather. I could be so tempted...

At the end of January, our heroine had a wardrobe that was pretty great for weather that might be all over the place! She was really trying to find shades of blue and green, so she veered into that very summery tee shirt; sometimes you grab what's available if it's perfect for you, even if it's not "in season." The seasons will change, what's available in stores ... View the Post

The Fifth of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 7, 2025

I think of this wardrobe as that of someone who once wore black, white, and red, and has now softened and gentled her colors into grey, white and shades of burgundy...

You know, one could easily make a case that some of the background colors look like navy... I'm not going to do that unless I find that I hit a wall building this wardrobe, but it could be done!

As blessed February dawned, our heroine had this very simple eight-piece wardrobe. Nothing amazing, but extremely versatile:

This seems a good time to fill in more basics for this heroine, so I grabbed her my favorite white shirt, and a pair of black jeans. She already has grey jeans...

The sweater vest is one of my favorite garments, and ... View the Post

The Fourth of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 6, 2025

I love this painting...

And I think that this wardrobe is going to be fascinating; we start with the world's most simple neutrals of black and ivory, and then add FOUR accent colors - one for each season. Yes, the idea of white as an accent color when we've already got ivory in the wardrobe is a little bit of a stretch. I'm interested to see what happens with this, since so many of us don't wear mixed shades of white and off-whites as often as we could.

When we happily ran screaming from the end of January, our heroine had a wildly versatile, if not super-exciting, eight-piece wardrobe:

It seems obvious to me that the coral/peach accent color makes a lot of sense for spring. Our heroine was ... View the Post

The Third of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 5, 2025

I often ponder what I would do with my wardrobe if I had to start from scratch. I mean ABSOLUTELY from scratch - I got out of my apartment in my moose-print pajamas and nothing else!

Well, THAT'S a nightmare, but I have to admit that I would be very tempted to go this direction:

These colors are timeless, and so appealing. And I think it's one of Delaunay's very best paintings...

As we very happily left January, our heroine had this eight-piece capsule wardrobe. It's small, but you could get dressed for quite a bit of the cold weather with just these:

Our heroine could certainly use a brown cardigan, but I didn't see one that really suited. But at least we've put her in a really good position for ... View the Post

The Second of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 4, 2025

This will warm us up!

Our heroine is committed to building a wardrobe in these colors; her patience might be tried, finding clothes! Beautiful as these colors are, they're not ubiquitous...

At the end of January, this was our heroine's eight-piece wardrobe. It all goes together nicely, and includes a deeply beautiful scarf!

This month there wasn't any grouping of clothes, or complete outfit, that appealed to our heroine, so she instead found four garments that are perfect in her wardrobe, and pretty doggone lovely, too!

The scarf she found is relatively small - it's described as a bandana. In the warm weather, tied in her hair, or to the handle of her tote bag, or around her wrist, it will be a ... View the Post

The First of Six Paintings – Twelve Months February 2025

February 3, 2025

I've already reached the point at which I really want to look at these painting one at a time! It's possible to focus better on just one painting at a time - at least for my limited capacity...

This month, the top of the heap is this beauty!

When I look at this painting on different screens, the dark neutral color varies between camel and a dark olive green. I'm sticking with camel, although it's lovely to have a second option...

Our heroine comes into February with this compact but pretty excellent capsule wardrobe:

This month, our heroine decided to lean into the chambray blue in her wardrobe, as well as grab a good pair of loafers and a handbag:

With these additions, the overall feeling ... View the Post

Six Paintings – Twelve Months January 2025 Part 2

January 3, 2025

Here are ALL of the "cool" toned wardrobes - in the randomness of life, the warms and the cools got split down the middle. No wonder Wednesday's post left some of you out in the cold... or rather I guess I should say the warm!

I have to warn you before next month - I suspect that we're going to start moving right into spring clothes. It's absurdly difficult to find winter clothes right now that don't cost the moon, are decent looking, in the colors we like, that are available in the full range of sizes. I will NOT include something for which there are only 7 size XXXS available...

Let's start with a warm/cool wardrobe, and a wonderful favorite painting:

Such lovely, classic colors...

Back on Christmas ... View the Post

Six Paintings – Twelve Months January 2025 Part 1

January 1, 2025

Happy New Year! We've got new paintings, new heroines, and new wardrobes to build - what fun!

This year, I'm going to try to start all of our heroines with basics, and so I've dredged out the Weekly Timeless Wardrobe list for reference. I'm not sure that I'm going to keep using it for the entire year, but as a guide in the early days of a wardrobe, it may be helpful.

Let's jump in and start with some Georgia O'Keeffe. I think I've used one of her paintings almost every year - she's just THAT good...

I could have broken out a number of shades of blue and green for this color wheel, but I wanted to think of these colors as all being closely related, on a spectrum. We shall see how that works!

Our heroine ... View the Post

Merry Christmas! Six New Painting for Us to Enjoy in 2025

December 25, 2024

Happy Christmas to all who observe today, and a happy and joyful day to everybody! 

So after wrangling, pondering, occasional hair-pulling, and a lot of general angst, I chose the six paintings for next year. This is - no question - the hardest thing I EVER do for The Vivienne Files, so if your favorite painting wasn't chosen, don't doubt that it was considered, and re-considered, and finally eliminated with great pain.

If there's anything you particularly miss, let me know and I will do a post about it! That's the least I can do, eh?

With no further ado - let's go!

This is the second year in a row that I've included Elizabeth Magill - I think she's got magical talent...

This heroine is going to ... View the Post

December 2024 “Six Paintings, Twelve Months” – 6th Painting, by John Nash

December 9, 2024

I'm leaving for Paris on Wednesday unless something happens to hold me back. I haven't been to Paris in five years, which for me feels like half my life... I plan to have posts here for you while I'm away, but bear in mind that I won't be able to fix stupid mistakes - or smart mistakes! Love, J

Our last installment of our last heroine, assembling a wardrobe that holds a strange appeal to me - the soft earthiness of these colors would be such a comfort each morning...

This heroine, as is true with all of them, currently has 48 garments in her wardrobe. For most of the world, that's an embarrassment of riches! And - if well chosen - most of us could probably manage with this:

Of course, I SHOULD have been ... View the Post