Truly Toasty

For the next several days I'll be featuring the outerwear that I've been pairing with my outfits, since the weather has gotten really chilly here and coats and jackets have been much more of a necessity than normal. Today it's this beautiful vintage coat, which I've actually shown before. It was really cold that day, so I wrapped myself in layers of cashmere, tulle, wool, and fur for a truly toasty ensemble.

This outfit was something I had been wanting to try: a winter white look. Now, I don't have the sort of complexion that looks good surrounded by lots of washed out colors; I have olive undertones in my skin and pale colors tend to make me look, well, dead. So I modified the look somewhat and added this light brown scarf around my neck; the color is soft enough that it doesn't ruin the harmony of the rest of the outfit, but at the same time it frames my face with a warmer color that gives it a little life.

The beautiful leather half vest was custom made for me by one of my favorite designers, Tiina from Attila Design. I knew it would make a great starting point for my winter white look , especially since the contrast topstitching was a perfect way to tie in the richer brown color that I knew I'd need. The vest also helps bring shape to this bulky cashmere sweater, which otherwise tends to hide my waist. In the end, none of the colors was really white at all, and no two colors matched; I thought this was a more interesting way to approach the washed out winter look.

Dress: Lady Language
Sweater: Anne Taylor
Vest: Attila Design
Tulle skirt: Noa Noa
Shoes: Tsubo; a gift from Sal
Coat: vintage (via eBay)

Hardware

The first time I wore this skirt it occurred to me that I could try it layered this way, so I finally gave it a try. By opening up one of the functional zippers, I was able to let a little of the gored tulle skirt pop out at the hemline and create some movement and depth. I liked how the soft, nude pink softened all the saturated stripes and dark neutrals.

This skirt was an excellent buy from Gilt (although Mark likes to refer to it as Guilt, which I have to admit is pretty damn funny). It's really hit or miss on there; sometimes the 'sale' price is still in the thousands of dollars range and all I can do is ogle the offerings and try not to drool too much; other times I've found a gorgeous, quality piece for under 200 bucks, or even less. Either way, it's fun to peruse the selections each day and look at all the beautiful designer clothes and accessories.

I wore a lot of rings that day, which someone at work actually noticed. I guess I was inspired by all the hardware on the skirt and belt; I felt like I needed some on my hands too.

Jacket: F21
Shirt: H&M
Belt: thrifted
Skirt: Marc by Marc Jacobs
Tulle skirt: Noa Noa
Shoes: Tsubo

Important Inches

Following on my layering skirts tutorial from last week, I thought I'd break down what I did with this layered skirt look. As I've mentioned before, this black skirt is made of a lightweight fabric that blows around easily; that, combined with its short length, make me loathe to wear it without a layer underneath. I decided I wanted to play up the fullness by adding this little gray tulle skirt, however the gray skirt is even shorter than the black. So, since the gray skirt has a thick elastic waistband, I simply yanked it down around my hips, positioned the waistband of the black skirt above it, and covered both waistbands by belting over the top. Everything stayed in place, a couple of important inches were added to the overall skirt length, and the layers of tulle had the added benefit of keeping me warmer than the black skirt alone.

As luck would have it, Sal recently posted some brilliant, and very timely, advice for balancing accessories. One of the gems that stuck with me was this: "Consider pattern to be an accessory itself, and choose pieces that will complement instead of fight with a busy print." Since I already had a lot of pattern going on here between the skirt and the leopard print top, I chose one of my smallest pairs of earrings and a single bangle that fits with the safari vibe of the top. In this case I wouldn't really count the belt as an accessory, because the black is pretty harmonious with the black of the skirt; in fact, I positioned it to give the illusion that it's part of the skirt, giving it a high-waisted proportion.

T-shirt: H&M
Top: F21
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Skirts: F21
Boots: Fly London