Advanced Fashion -- Do Try This At Home

I love it when I'm right...
So the Marni top is back from the cleaner and the YSL skirt is back from the tailor and I bunged them right on and here it is.


First off, time to bust out the self-tanner and take care of the runner's tan on my arms. Yoiks, that's unattractive. Secondly -- whaddya think?

(I NEVER feel sillier than when I am posing for these pictures, and I? Am a pretty silly woman, my friends.)

Me, I kinda love it. No, I don't kinda love it, I full-on love it. (Click on photos to make 'em bigger.) I have a feeling most folks will not. I have a feeling most folks will be discombobulated or discomfited by this. Some might even react violently, or at least vehemently. I fully understand that this is the sort of outfit that is going to provoke a strong reaction in people. I'm a little amused by that, because when you consider the grand scale of How Weird an Outfit Can Be, this really doesn't even register.

See?

Someone called Annabelle Gutman. I have no idea who she is. I don't want to know who she is. Oh, so much wrongness in one place... I feel deep regret at having inflicted this upon you, but I'm making a point here.

So. When you big-picture it, my little skirt & top combo is pretty tame. I might be talked into throwing a long ivory cashmere cardigan over the ensemble to bring it down a wee bit, but then again I might not. Right now my primary quibble with this look is that the top is longish and full -- I may have to wear a pair of Spanx or something of that ilk to tuck it into in order to make a smoother line under the skirt, and that gives me pause. Post weight-loss, I sort of did a Scarlett O'Hara, fist-shaking, as-god-as-my-witness renunciation of Spanx, but that may have to fall by the wayside. (I've also been thinking Spanx might be in order for the other skirt I bought at the same time as this one, since it's unlined and I'm never going to find a double-vented, me-colored slip that won't bunch up underneath it.)

Why does this work for me? That's a tough question to answer. Breaking it down, I feel like any given color in the entire outfit works with any other color -- there's no color clash. The silhouettes of both pieces are super-simple, so there are no extra bells & whistles to add to the busy-ness. I think that prints have a similar... feel to them, and the fact that they are abstract make it easier to see them each as sort of a color field rather than a pattern -- my eye sort of glides over the print & takes it in, rather than focusing on any one part of it. If one of these pieces were a traditional floral, say, it wouldn't work, because I think I would focus on the recognizable object or a discernible pattern in the print and that combined with the randomness would be jarring.

Oy. Blah blah pretentiousfashionspeak fishcakes blah. The short answer is, I dunno, it just does. I just look at it and think, "Yes. Good. Like it." Why do I like Mark Rothko's paintings? I dunno. I just do.

I'm still on the lookout for a good solid navy top to wear with this skirt (of course, a simple thing that is apparently impossible to find, story of my fashion life), which would provide me with a less eyebrow-raising option. Because I have to confess, I'm not sure I'll ever wear this outfit like this. High as I like to wave my fashion freak flag, I know a lot of folks will find it pretty difficult. I have a couple of IRL friends who will go to bed with a migraine after one look at this, and perhaps I should not inflict it on them. This makes me a little sad. The truth is that I frequently walk that tightrope between what I want to wear and what I feel like other people want me to wear. I know that will come as a surprise to many who know me and consider me the most outré dresser of their acquaintance, but the truth is I modify my sartorial impulses quite a bit on a regular basis. I love fashion, but I live in the real world, and my real world happens to be Austin, TX, where cutting-edge is approximately as sharp as a butter knife. So next time I start yammering away about being yourself and wearing what makes you happy, the rest of the world be damned, feel free to call me on my BS. I gotta be me and all that, but I don't want to embarrass my friends to the point where they don't want to have drinks with me, and so I dress accordingly.

Mostly. Honestly, I think I like this outfit too much to let it languish unseen, even knowing that it's going to elicit all those backhanded quasi-compliments I've gotten so many times over the years: "Wow, I would never have thought to put those things together!" "Gosh, I could never pull off something like that." Or my favorite, "Well, you can wear anything!" (Really? What does that even mean??)

And the next time anyone looks a me sideways, I'm going to whip out a photo of Feathers McKiniwax up there and tell them to count their blessings -- it could be much, much worse.




Photos: Style Spy, gofugyourself.com