Packing for Paris

So I am leaving tomorrow and I have been preoccupied with packing all the week. I am travelling alone with my daughter and this year for the first time since she was born we will go to the beach with my parents for almost our whole stay in Italy (I am spending only few days in Milan, which is great because Milan in August is a desert inhabited only by mosquitoes). I am very excited about it, it is the place on the Italian Riviera where I used to go with my parents and grandparerents every year in the summer growing up and I have a lot of memories of those summers, so I hope that something will stick with my daughter too, especially since she doesn't have the chance to see her grandparents very often. Going to the beach means that I have to pack a lot more stuff for her and also myself but it is easy packing because what works here will work there, I just have to take my favorite summer clothes (just not ALL of them).

The second part of the trip is going to be Paris, where we are going to meet my husband at the end of August. This is the part that is giving me packing headaches because the weather in Paris at the end of August is totally umpredictable. It could be very hot if we are lucky but it could be cold and rainy and Fall could be in full swing. I don't have enough space in my suitcase to take a lot of "in case" clothes so everything must work perfectly together. I had to take a windbreaker for me and my daughter and that took up un entire layer in my suitcase. I have to admit I panicked a bit and run to the store to buy something that could make my Parisian wardrobe work (the "store" obviously is not the grocery store, it is how I call JCrew around the house). Besides my Altuzarra for JCrew Patricia dress (that I bought with Paris in my mind already) I didn't know what to pack and in particular I was struggling to find a top that I could wear with my pants and skirts.
The painter boatneck tee in stripe in the moroccan stripe black color is what I needed, the black and sand stripes work with both my Minnies, my cargos and my long black jersey skirt:

We are going to walk a lot so I am taking two pairs of flats, that are easy to pack and comfortable. One are the black studded Sam Edelman "Frankie" flats that you can see in the pics above (I had to replace my black Revas and I got these at Bloomingdales during one of their sales); the other ones are the JCrew Collection snakeskin Lula flats in strawberry red that I bought at the sample sale. They add a pop of color and look great with my Patricia dress:

I am only taking one extra summer dress, in case the weather is really nice (as it was the last time that we were there at the end of August). It is kind of funny but even if I lived in Paris for more than eight years, the image that now comes to my mind when I think of Paris is the one of Rachel McAdams rocking the shirtdress look in Midnight in Paris. Power of the great filmaking, that replaces reality with an imagined one, I guess. In any case I just found the perfect shirtdress to replicate the look, at the Gap and with 40% off to boot. It is the rolled-sleeve shirtdress in a XS:

I also tried the Perfect oxford shirtdress but I didn't like the style on me and it looked more like a sleepshirt (it is a very nice shirtdress though).
The white shirtdress look can be difficult to pull off but this dress is effortless and I am banking on the fact that I will be very tanned after 15 days at the beach, so I won't look like a nurse. If you like the style but can't do white (it is a bit sheer despite the double layer in the skirt), it also comes in chambray and in stripes or checks

The only thing I am still undecided about at this point is if I am going to take a pair of pumps only to wear them one night when my husband and I are going to celebrate our anniversary in a nice restaurant.
I am hoping that this Lilly dress that I am going to take with me to wear with flats in the evening at the beach can do double duty and be dressed up for our romantic dinner in Paris. I bought it in May and I was saving it for a special occasion like our anniversary (that was back in July but we didn't do anything special because we had the worst storm in NYC that day and that's when we decided that we were going to celebrate in Paris):

Dressed-up version with my splurge jacket and slingback Valentinas:

But I am not sure that I want to risk to take an extra jacket and an extra pair of pumps with me only for one evening, not to mention that it could be rainy and cold (sorry I lived in Paris long enough to know that the weather can be shitty in the summer).

Anyway, that's it. I have a post scheduled for you and if you want to leave a comment I will read them since I will be more or less connected until Wednesday in Milan, then I will probably take a long break from the Internet until I am back on Labor Day.
See you then!