Black and Blue

Here's Georgie again, making an appearance to add a little variety to my blog photos. I have to apologize for her unladylike pose; she hasn't been trained in the finer points of etiquette.

This outfit features a skirt worn as a dress worn as a skirt. The original garment is an ankle-length skirt, hiked all the way up and worn as a strapless dress, and then covered up to wear as a knee-length skirt. The belt keeps everything in place, since the skirt doesn't have any elastic at the waist to keep it from slipping.

Mixing navy and black can be tricky to do, and the key to making it work is to really mix everything up rather than wearing blue on the top and black on the bottom, or vice versa. Here I used a very dark navy scarf to mix up the top half of the outfit, while the tights have both black and navy to bring it all together. Imagine how dull the outfit would look with plain black tights and no scarf.

This color combo is the perfect starting point to explore pattern mixing if you've been hesitant to give it a whirl; if you stick to just the two colors you really can't go wrong with whatever patterns you try. The combination of two dark colors really requires some contrast to make the pairing look intentional. And since the color scheme is so simple, the patterns almost can't clash no matter how adventurous you get.

Scarf: Banana Republic (?)
Skirt/Dress/Skirt: Ralph Lauren
Sweater: Anne Taylor
Belt: The Red Dress Shoppe
Boots: Doc Marten