OOTE: The Beaded Mockneck Goes To Party

First of all, I really enjoyed reading your comments and advice on the paisley pants even if I didn't have the time to comment back to each of them. I will surprise some of you but I have decided to return the pants, in fact I already returned them. I think I wasn't feeling good about paying that price, especially compared to the SW boots that seem such a better purchase as some of you pointed out, and as Gigi said I would probably have felt guilty and tried to "avoid" them instead of wearing them. It looks like it was the right decision because I didn't feel any pang of regret while I was returning them, as sometimes happens. In fact now that I think about it, it could be a good test to see if you are really in love with something, to try to return the item (aka physically take it to the store) and see if you can actually DO it. I understand that this doesn't work if you are nowhere near a store and you have to return everything by the mail but it is something to think about for those who live near a JCrew!
I also did it to give myself some kind of limit, like reminding myself that in my world, it is not OK to order $300 pants. If I start to order $300 pants without blinking I will soon be ordering $700 designer shoes and so on. Anyway, thanks again for the insightful comments and let's move on.

My dear friend threw a party yesterday night to celebrate the New Year. She loves to throw parties and she is always trying to come up with some entertainment and this time she had a trivia contest. She had all the guests grouped in five different teams and we had to answer 50 questions (5 sheets of questions pertaining to different areas, like geography and music). It was a lot of fun! She also wanted us to bring to the party a piece of paper with our answer to these two questions "Who is the person you want to be like the most this year?" and "What's your resolution for this year?" and at the end of the party we read all the resolutions (some of them were serious and some were more of a joke). I answered "Claire Danes at the Golden Globes" to the first question (because she has it all) and "Find the secret of happiness" to the second one. I wanted to answer "Start to fight my natural tendency to acedia" (inspired by interesting WWM post about this) but I thought nobody would understand so I went to the more vague search for happiness. So now I turn these questions to you!

Of course I was excited to go out and wear some of my evening clothes that don't see much the light of the uhm.. moon these days. It is freezing cold here so I thought it was the occasion to finally wear my beaded mockneck. I always thought that this sweater would look awesome with a pair of slouchy velvet pants (something refined in terms of fabric but cool in terms of style) and I found the perfect pair a couple of weeks ago at Zara for $39 (which reminds me that one doesn't necessarily need to spend $300 to solve wardrobe shannigans). These are a bit high-wasted, which is exactly what I was looking for. They remind me of the JCrew "a href="http://www.jcrew.com/womens_category/pants/novelty/PRDOVR~35509/35509.jsp">Collection cropped velvet pants
that I would have probably bought if they came in other colors (I really wouldn't know what to do of a pair of mushroom velvet pants) except that they are black and not cropped. I tried them with my black pointed pumps to take pics even if this is not the look I was going for yesterday night (I would wear them with booties for a more casual vibe):

I also found a satin pencil skirt at Joe Fresh as an alternative to the pants. This was like $15 on sale and reminds me of the JCrew satin pencil skirt, which costs much more and it is ALSO poly (so why pay more?) It has an elastic waist and I think an awesome fit:

In the end I didn't wear any of these because the occasion was more casual. I actually wore another pair of Zara pants that I bought before the holidays and are "coated". I couldn't take a pic of the outfit before heading out but here is a pic of the pants (this is an outfit that I have worn a lot in December but didn't get to post. The sweater is the Theory one that I bought at the sample sale):

Just try to imagine these pants and booties with the beaded mockneck, it was very rock chic and very me!

So, you would you like to be like in 2013?