Outfit of The Week With Teal Double-Serge Pencil Skirt (For Real!)

Thank you for the comments to my last post, I actually tried to comment back but my post must have stirred up some bad karma in the universe of mass technologies and my comments didn't publish.

In any case I have great news dear readers, the el cheapo cable arrived super-fast (thank you Amazon Prime!) and worked like a charm, so I could download my pictures and I can resume my regular blogging!

I will start with the Outfit of The Week That Didn't Make It Into My Last Post. This is what I was talking about, with the difference that in the oufit that I had (poorly) captured with my iPad I was wearing my champagne toothpick cords and not the teal double-serge wool pencil skirt:

I went a bit crazy during the 30% off and bought more pencil skirts than I can wear in a lifetime. It is all the fault of the outfit below, that I wore two weeks ago to a girlfriend birthday brunch at the Carlyle hotel:

I felt so put together and strangely comfortable in this outfit that I decided that I needed to add another wool pencil skirt to my closet, possibly in a brighter color, since I tend to buy neutrals more than brights. The occasion came a few days later when I saw the in-store only deep turquoise one in my size on sale. These are the fitting room pics (the skirt is a size 0):

The necklace is the Palm Springs beaded necklace that some JCAs were very excited about and I wanted to see IRL. As soon as I tried it on, I remembered that I have a very similar beaded necklace in an almost identical color that I NEVER wear, so obviously I didn't get it (the stone-studded casting also looked a bit cheap IMO).
Below is the skirt with the Stadium-cloth car coat in buffalo plaid in a size 2 (it was a bit big). I tried this one only for the blog, I am not interested for myself and I didn't like the giant pockets even if I must say I kind of like the look of it in this pic:

I thought that this pencil skirt would be enough to fill the hole in my closet but a few days ago I stumbled upon the viridian green one on the website in my size (in a 2P, my other pencil skirt size) and ready to ship (as you probably know this color has been waitlisted for months), with 30% off and free shipping to boot. It was too good to pass and I jumped on it thinking that there were great chances that my order would be cancelled. But lo and behold it shipped the day after and it arrived yesterday.
In the meanwhile I had rationalized the purchase and almost convinced myself that "deep turquoise" and "viridian green" are two shades too similar to justify keeping both the skirts and was psychologically ready to return it, but when I opened the package and tried it on I was completely smitten, the color is just gorgeous and it looks GREAT with black so there is no way that I am going to return it (when you put the two skirts next to each other, the teal one reads much more blue, while the viridian green is definitively green). Interestingly enough, the 2P is a good two inches shorter than the 0 (as you can see, it is definitively above the knee but this is not an issue for me as I like shorter skirts):

The sweater is the Cashmere cascade sweater (the black is currently sold-out but it was on sale, watch for popbacks). I decided to try this sweater because for some reasons I can't push myself to buy the classic turtleneck in black and I find this one more interesting but I didn't know what to expect from that giant cowlneck. I went with my regular XS and it fits great, even if there is a little bit of extra fabric in the shoulders (I have pretty broad shoulders). It looks boxier on the model than it is in reality, as you can see it is quite long and fitted around the hips.
The cowlneck won't lay flat and you could feel a little bit like you are carrying a hoola-hoop around your neck at first but once you get used to it it looks actually very chic and elegant. The extra fabric in the cowl is functional in that it provides coverage even if the neck per se is cut very low, so that you don't have to worry about a plunging neckline unless you bend or ... shake it around. If you feel a bit sexy you can wear it alone or with a cami but it also looks good with a button-up under it (here I am wearing it alone and as you can see you can't see a thing. Pun intended):

Bottom line: I recommend this sweater as an alternative to your old turtleneck.

I have one last pencil skirt to show you (I told you, I bought for a lifetime), along with my Xmas outfit. Stay tuned!