OOTD (Gone Fishing!)

So I mentionned that last Saturday I bought the perfect shirt in candy plaid in the green colorway, that appears top be currently sold-out on the website. I have waited for this shirt to go on sale since it came out, so I bough it at the first markdown (less 20% off).

This shirt really reminds me of a "camping" or "fishing" shirt and it is one of those things that I probably wouldn't have even noticed at another retailer. But since it is Jcrew, the fit, the softness of the cotton and the design made it a must-have for me. Call it Crewlade if you want.

I have to say that this shirt in this colorway is tough to pair, there are only so many colors that goes with it and they are not the more usual ones (basically what they call seaweed green, light pink/blush, clay/brick, citron yellow and light khaki). The other colorway is easier to pair because it goes well with navy and looks great under a navy blazer, so keep it in mind if you have to choose one or another.
I broke it out this morning, pairing it with my green (pardon me, vintage taupe) JBrand cargos and a blush cashmere cardigan from last spring:

I also tried it with the Mackenzie blazer from last year, for a more polished look and it worked too (but I would wear another pair of pants):

The sun outside fooled me a little bit. I thought it was much warmer than it really was and I regretted not wearing my puffer instead of my Gap twill jacket (one of the best jackets ever made by the Gap IMO). I liked the "country" look, but I admit I was freezing like this at the playground:

Later in the season I plan to wear it with white bermudas or denim shorts. By the way for some reasons, this shirts reminds me of the SATC episode in season 4 when Carrie and Aidan go spend the weekend in Aidan's country cabin (and then Mr. Big shows up). I don't remember if she actually wore something similar in the episode, but she definitively could have worn this shirt with a pair of super-short shorts!

Have a great weekend!

Flower Power (The Rose Vine Blazer Styled in Real Life)

I am sorry, this is not the post with the party pictures yet. I have been busy this last two days (OK, busy shopping, but still busy) and I need a little bit of concentration to write up that post. Plus I made a purchase this past weekend that I feel I need to share with you NOW so if the online price drops tomorrow (do you feel the "Wednesday mornings excitement" like I do, these days?) you can make a more reasoned choice.

So the item I am talking about is the rose vine blazer, which is still $99 online but only $59.99 in stores. I had a coupon that I have found in the last catalog and that I had saved until the very last day, which was last Saturday, so I used it on the blazer (and a few "ride-alongs", or should I say "walk-alongs", to reach the $125 minimum amount for the coupon to be applied) and in the end it coasted me $48. Which I think is a great price for this jacket.

I liked this jacket immediately the first time that tried it on but $168 was too much for something that I was afraid I wouldn't get much wear out of due to the color: a whit-ish blazer (because even with a little bit of grey and a pop of orange it remains a white jacket) is really for the summer and summer equals sweat, that equals that you don't want to sweat more wearing a blazer (plus, sweating ladies beware, if the body is lined in cotton, the sleeves are lined in Acetate which isn't the most breathable fabric around).
But $59.99 or $48 is a much better price and in fact it was the only one in the store. I grabbed it even if it was a size 2 and surprisingly I liked the fit even better than the 0, which was more high-waisted on me and a little bit tight on the shoulders, as almost all the Jcrew blazers (I came to realize that I have probably a long torso and I should probably buy Tall in jackets and tops and petite in pants, which doesn't make for a great advertisement of my body, I must say, because long legs are generally much more appreciated than long torsoes. And what can be said about short legs anyway).
But I digress. What I really want to say is that this jacket will make a great addition to your wardrobe IF you have a lot of whites and light blues or light greys (and oranges, but that can be a tough color to wear especially in bottoms) in your closet. It doesn't look good with dark colors like navy, dark grey and black, so if you are planning to pair it with those colors you will be better not buying it. Also, I wouldn't steer much from the grey/blue/orange palette: it really works better with the colors that are already in it (light blue being the exception).

Now, even if I have a lot of whites and light greys and blues for the summer, I still found it difficult to come up with outfits with this jacket. It looks like an easy, thrown-on everything, jacket but in my opinion it's not. And as much as I liked the picture on the cover of the April Catalog that featured this jacket, I am not sure that I want to walk around with three layers of flowery prints.

So, here are a few outfits I came up with. If you like them and you can somehow recreate them, buy it. If not, don't buy it as it will probably hang in your closet unworn. I know that this sounds a little bit too affirmative like I have the skinny on this jacket but I really think that there are not many other ways to wear it. If any of you have worn it in a different way and you think it looked great, please share your knowledge!

So I will start with the "how not to wear it". I said no dark colors. Demonstration with the denim pencil skirt and a navy perfect tee:



See? Too much contrast. Even if you lighten up the top, there is still too much contrast at the bottom:



I did give the catalog "flower power" look a chance. The only other liberty print that I own is my Gap blouse from a few years ago (one of my favorite blouses ever BTW). This one has a mandarin collar though, which is not ideal under a jacket:



Not sure that I like it. It looks much better with a light blue solid shirt, like the slub cotton one (not sure why I left the shirt untucked here):



As I said orange on the bottom can be a tough color to wear, but if you can pull it off it should work. Here with a pair of Tory Burch linen bermudas (that aren't too flattering on my figure, but I just wanted to show you the color combination):



A pair of light denim, short or long, work too:





But total white is probably the best look with this jacket, especially if you can add a pop of color in form of a neon belt:





And a variation of the last one, with the jacket closed and belted:



I really like this look. However, it isn't something that I would wear everyday. It's just too white: with a toddler around I would probably get all frumpy and dirty even before getting out the door.
I thought that I needed an orange top to be able to wear this jacket more often but for the life of me I couldn't find anything in my closet and I thought about ordering one of the neon orange tees that are offered this year. But then, while I was cleaning my closet and sort my old or unworn clothes in piles (Maybe Next Year I will Like It Again, Salvation Army, JCA Weekly Exchange, Storage - which is like a Limbo - for Death Clothes etc.), I found an almost forgotten Gap top that happened to be right what I needed. And that's when I came up with my outfit of the day, that I think it's the best of all the outfits that I have shown you. It pulls out the best of this jacket and it is extremely wearable.
At the beginning I wore it with an old woven belt:



But then I found that my coral beads necklace really made this outfit shine and I also changed the belt, so here it is my OOTD featuring the rose vine blazer:




It was perfect this early morning. Then, it started to get hot and the sleeve lining of the blazer made me sweat, as I said before, but I liked the outfit so much that I put up with the sweat (I was almost home and I like to dress up "for the ladies in the elevator". Hehehe).

Do you own or have considered ordering this jacket? Do you like any of the outfits that I have shown you? Do you know any other way to wear it? Please share!

Wedding in Seattle: Outfits

The wedding in Seattle that I have blogged about a while ago is coming up this weekend and I will fly out to Seattle on Friday. I have worked on my outfits in the meanwhile and want to share with you what I have decided to bring.

I have listened to your comments and looked for a cardigan to wear with the watercolor dress (in any case even in NYC it would have been too cold to wear it alone). I don't have a black cashmere crewneck (a no-brainer) and the only option currently available is the featherweight cashmere cardigan that is still full price. After trying different alternatives (including the Jackie in pink frost that is a perfect color match for the dress), I have settled for the Celosia cardigan in black, which goes very well with the style of the dress and also has the advantage of being very thick so that it should keep me warm. I am going to wear this to church, probably:





I think that the black Celosia is a nice option for those of you looking for an evening or dressy cardigan: the ruffles are elegant but not overwhelming. Before buying this one, I sold my other Celosia in cinnamon spice on the JCA Weekly Exchange because I didn't want to have many cardigans in the same style, especially ruffled. I think that I am going to wear the black much more often than the cinnamon spice.

For the evening reception, I have two options and I think that I am going to bring both and decide at the last minute.
The first option is to wear my BR cocktail dress with my BR velvet blazer from last winter and a BR necklace. I hadn't thought about it when I was putting it together, but it's a 100% Banana outfit, which, for me, is kind of unusual as I don't own a lot of Banana:





In pictures the dress is a little bit loose on the top but that's because for the life of me I couldn't zip it up and I didn't want to force and break the zipper just to take pictures of myself (that would have been silly, right?) The necklace is very sparkly IRL and I bought it along with the dress on supersale for something like $18, after seeing it on the adorable Slastena who highly recommended it.

The second option is more elegant in a classic way. It features an old dress by Caterine Malandrino that I had bought years ago at a sample sale and I was simply afraid to try on because I was sure that it wouldn't fit any longer. Well, it looks like I did loose all that baby fat after all, as it fits me again like a glove!
It's made in a double layer of silk chiffon and has a beautiful draping:




I think that it is maybe a little too serious for a friends' wedding but the advantage over the first outfit is that I am very comfortable in this dress and I can dance the night away without worrying about my ladies coming out (which is always a problem with a strapless). What do you think?
The only outfit that I haven't figured out yet is the one for the rehearsal dinner. The invitation says "Dressy Casual" and I interpret it as evening casual without jeans. So I was thinking of a pair of pants or a mini and a nice top, like the ribbon beaded one. Any advice?

If you have something to say speak now or keep silent forever ;-).

Dear Mackenzie, I Heart You

I heart you so much that I bought you in two colors. I must say, I could afford you, you were kind of cheap at $70 and I just couldn't decide between the pretty and springy "bronzed clay" and the "will-never-go-out-of-style" black versions of you.

Ladies, meet my new love, the Mackenzie blazer. That's the blazer that I bought last week. I am not sure why it's lingering in the sale section in all the colors and sizes: $119 seems like a tempting price already (especially with some additional % off). I had seen it for the same sale price in stores but I waited for a new markdown as things tend to be marked down more quickly in stores than online. Luckily the store where my PS works had it in my size in both colors when the price went down to $79.99 and even if I hadn't planned to buy two, I ended up bringing home both.

The website description says: "Crafted from drapey wool, one of our new (and favorite) fabrics of the season. It's a special wool blend that has a beautiful drape (and amazing handfeel)." Completely true. The wool of this one is amazing and it drapes beautifully.
This is the bronzed clay from the fitting room. I'm wearing a 0. The sleeves are a little bit long, but I think that a petite would be too short elsewhere:



I just love this shade for spring and it looks really good on me, so I had not doubt about this one.

But the black is another story. If the bronzed clay color is somehow hard to find at another retailer, black blazers are everywhere and to be honest I bought it thinking that I would give it a try at home and probably return it. But it's growing on me. First of all I don't have a black blazer (I know, shocking). Second, to me a blazer must look good with jeans because I wear jeans 90% of the time. Boyfriend blazers typically looks good with jeans but I can't rock the look: they are usually too long on me and they overwhelm my short frame. I love the proportions of this one and I like that is not structured (it has no padding at all in the shoulders for example), which gives it a bit of coolness even if it's not a boyfriend:




Third, it also looks good with more classic pants (obviously, I took these pics Tuesday and you are familiar with the rest of the outfit):





Fourth, it's a black blazer that looks good with black pants (especially my Theory ones) without being part of a suit.

So I think that I'm going to keep it but I would like to hear from you. What do you think? Do you think that the black is a smart purchase? Would you buy two colors of the same style? Remember that I paid $70 for each of them (i.e. a third of the original price) and even if I know that I shouldn't keep something only because it's a good deal, it is something that I like and is sort of missing from my closet.
Also, do you own the Mackenzie? Have you ever considered buying it? And if not, why?

JCrew Spring Blazers

I have been trying a lot of jackets as of late, so I have enough "material" for a post on the new jackets that JCrew is offering this spring. I haven't tried any "utility" jacket as I have many and honestly I think that you can get a better deal at other retailers (like Old Navy).

The first is the Tweed jubilee jacket. I tried this one for a friend who was interested but nowhere near a store. I really liked the fit but the color washed me out and it is one of the most expensive jackets out there. I think that I would have considered buying it on sale if it came in another color (a grey maybe?). But even the SA, in an impetus of sincerity, said that the color was meh on me:



Buttoned up (the 0 was perfect with a tee/cami but a little bit tight in the shoulders when worn with a sweater):



Close-up on the fabric. It's a cotton tweed and it's very comfortable to wear (not stiff at all, but for $350 that should be a given). It has threads of canary yellow that don't show up well in the pic:



The next one is similar but a little bit less classic (it has an "unfinished" feeling). This just came out in the new rollout and I don't have the style number. It was priced at $350 as well. It looks like $350 is the new standard for a jacket this year. I have only seen it oin this orangy color:




The next one is probably my favorite. It's the Rose vines blazer that retails for $168. A totally useless jacket, because it's so lightweight that you could wear a shirt instead. However, the print is so pretty that it was hard to resist (but don't worry, I resisted). By the way, it's the same rose vines print that the shorts, the romper and the perfect shirt come in but yet another shade, called "bright orange" (the overall effect is that of a white jacket):



Basically it's the 2010 edition of the poppy floral jacket from last year, but the ruching at the back make the fit more feminine:





The next one is the Calvary linen twill blazer. Nothing special, really, and it fits big, I was swimming in the 0:




I also tried the Tweed Delphine blazer but completely forgot to take pics. It was a little bit boxy on me but I think that I will retry it when it goes on sale. It has beautiful "fleur de lys" golden buttons and looks more like a Chanel than a Chanel knockoff.

I didn't buy any of these jackets, but got another one that is currently on sale. But that's for another post.
Are you considering buying one of these jackets? Do you own one? Please share!

Enjoy the day!