OK, It's Adorable But Is It for Grown-Ups (Styling the Hearthrob Shirt)?

Good morning, I hope you all had a relaxing and fun weekend. Mine was pretty busy: we invited friends over for dinner on Saturday night and yesterday we went to Chinatown for the New Year's Parade. I also got to watch a very good movie yesterday night, that I highly recommend if you haven't seen yet: 50/50 with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and the always funny Seth Rogers (the movie manages to be very funny, thanks to Seth and a very good script, all while dealing with a heavy topic like cancer threatening to take a young life). I think that Joseph Gordon-Hewitt is the new Gregory Peck, don't you agree? Anyway, as you know I fell for the heart throb shirt and I got to wear it Saturday night. I wanted to post pics of my outfit and a few styling ideas for this shirt because, as many of you, when I saw it for the first time in the catalog I thought that being over 40 I would never wear a shirt with little hearts on it. It turns out that in real life the print is more sophisticated than cheesy, if a bit quirky, so my answer to the question "Is this shirt for grown-ups?" is "Yes, if you don't wear it on Valentine's Day". No, seriously, you can even wear it on Valentine's Day, I am just jalous because my husband will be travelling that week and I will get to spend Valentine's Day alone. I will live vicariously through my daughter and probably throw a party for her friends. By the way, my daughter told me recently that she is "falling in love" with a girl in her classroom and I thought it was very cute (she said it with a daydream expression). I remember "being in love" with a girlfriend at her age, so I am not worried ;-). To go back to the shirt, first I would like to point out that the background is black and not navy. I am 100% positive about it because I tried it with a lot of black items and it blended seamlessy. It could be a navy so dark that it reads black but in this case call it navy would be a sophism. Because of the black background, it is easier to style it for the evening than for daywear. The black and red combo can read a little bit custom-y, especially in the daylight, so I will start with a few evening outfits. The easiest way to style this shirt is, quite obviously, to pair it with a black bottom. You can give in its intrinsic romantism (please forgive me if I like to throw big philosophical words at you this morning. I know it's a Monday and you probably you needed a double dose of coffee to make it through your morning but I can't help myself) and pair it with a feminine skirt, like this pleated skirt with self-tie from the Gap (that I wish was 2 inches longer):

For a more sophisticated look, you can try it with a maxi-skirt. This is a cotton jersey one from Joe Fresh, it is inexpensive ($24) and will be a staple of my summer. The fabric is doubled (I mean that the skirt is made of two layers of jersey), so it isn't sheer (genious!) and it is substantial enough to be worn year-round:

The skirt itself is pretty casual, so I added an embellished elastic belt to make the ensemble more elegant:

Saturday night I wore it with my Curator pants, which are THE ultimate dressy pants IMO. I had my hair pulled in a side ponytail (by the way how gorgeous Diane Lane looked in her one-shoulder blue dress and a ponytail at the SAG awards? Am I the only addicted to awards?) and it added (in a positive way) to the quirky-ness of the shirt. I felt a bit Amelie Poulaine. I took a pic before my friends arrived buy it came out blurry. These were taken earlier in the afternoon and before the pony-tail:

By the way, the first thing that my friend (who is almost 50) did when I opened the door was telling me how much she liked the shirt. I wore my orang-y flats (that you can vaguely see in the pic above) more because of comfort issues than for styling but they turned out to be perfect with the outfit and that gave me some ideas. In fact a bright coral like the bright papaya is the perfect color to wear with this shirt instead of black. It doesn't work very well with a real red IMO, like the maraschino cherry (here with the cafe trousers), it is more of a washed-out red:

But my bright papaya cashmere cardigan from HO09 is perfection and it makes it more suitable for the day:

The other option for daywear is to pair it with a bottom in the tones of gold, olive or camel. Here are a few ideas (and the last two are office-appropriate, I think):

OK, so what do you think? Do you think it is for grown-ups or it is still not for you? Please share! By the way, I don't want to convince anybody to buy this shirt, after all I don't work for JCrew and you are free to think that it is childish and people who are not in their 20s and wear it are regressive. I just wanted to show you that it does work for me and I think I am going to wear it a lot beyond Valentine's day. On another note, have you seen 50/50?