Mother's Day Weekend Outfits

Good morning! I hope that you had a great Mother's Day and that you got to celebrate with your mom if you are not one and with your children if you have been blessed with motherhood.

It was a very busy weekend for me. On Saturday I took my daughter to a birthday party and then we had friends over for dinner with their two girls (aged 3 and 6). I don't usually dress up when we invite friends over but this girlfriend is always dressed up to the nine, so I made an effort and wore my Calypso dress that you have already seen here. Since refraining from shopping is a lost cause, this year my pledge is to wear everything that I buy with a target of 0 clothes with tags on at the end of the season (I am proud to say that I am almost on track).
This Calypso dress is the perfect dress for hosting a dinner party, it is very comfortable to wear and it won't distract you from entertaining your guests. I simply accessorized it with a sparkly bracelet. This bracelet looks like the real thing but it is a $10 Forever21 (I have to thank Gigi who had blogged about it back in the day):

We had really a good time (including my daughter, who collapsed around 10 after playing dress up all the evening with my friend's girls. They were so, so cute, the three of them).

The day after was Mother's Day and even if I didn't get to eat breakfast in bed as many of you did (I just can't delegate coffee-making), I had a very relaxing day. Now, I had already showed you what I was planning to wear (my lady lace popover and my new factory pencil skirt) but UPS screwed up my Mother's Day outfit. Long story made short, my lady lace had a flawn (a problem with the stitching around the neckline) and because the thing wasn't cheap, even with the 30% off, I decided that I wouldn't suck it up and on Thursday morning I took it back to my store where they took good care of it and reordered one for the same price and with free overnight shipping to boot so that I would get it in time to wear it on Sunday. The package was out for delivery on Friday so I was sure that my outfit was saved but for some reasons UPS missed me (ie they didn't deliver it and rescheduled for today. Thank you very much UPS, today is two days too late!) By the way, this is the second time that they miss an overnight shipping delivery, which makes me think that they can't make it in one day as a general rule.

In any case the result of the ordeal was that I had to come up with another outfit for Mother's Day brunch. Luckily it was very hot yesterday so I would have probably been sweating in my merino popover. I had my mind set on wearing a pencil skirt and my summer pencil skirt choices are very limited (I have three including the new one). In the end I picked the flower pastiche one and paired it with the very cheerful retro shell in popsicole pink (that I hadn't the occasion to wear yet since I bought it on the JCA when it was still fp online and in stores):

The shoes here are the Cate slingbacks, because this pencil skirt is loooong so definitively looks better worn with heels. But then I came to my senses and realized that heels weren't a viable choice for the day (that involved walking ten blocks to the restaurant and back, at least), so I changed them for a pair of flats and topped the outfit with a Jackie in champagne:

My daughter and husband had a little surprise for me. My daughter had drawn a beautiful Mother's Day card for me:

and they had framed a picture of the two of us to add to our wall of frames in the dining room.
Here we are outside the restaurant, after lunch (as you can see it was hot enough to wear the retro shell alone). BTW, if you watch the Real Housewifes of NYC, this is the French spot where Sonia and LuAnn had dinner with Brian (the painter) and LuAnn's boyfriend (whose name escapes me right now) a few episodes ago (it is my husband's favorite restaurant in the neighborhood and they have a great terrace):

As I told you I have a very busy week ahead so unless I have something very timely to let you know I will probably disappear for a few days and be back at the beginning of next week with plenty of pictures.
Have a nice week!

Outfits with the "Pastiche" Pencil Skirt

I apologize for being a bad blogger: I had promised to write a post a day this week but I am suffering a little bit from BOB (blogger's outfits block, as the always super-stylish blogger from A Bigger Closet so precisely put it in this post. Basically I was a little bit tired of taking pictures of my outfits and then I started to think that maybe my readers too were tired of seeing my outfits. Add the fact that my daughter napped very little this week (today is the first day that she's making me the gift of a decent nap) and the fact that I indulged in watching some movies and my favorite shows on TV (Glee and the Real Housewife of New York City) instead of blogging and here we are.

But there is nothing better than a great new purchase to put BOB to a rest and give the tired blogger a renewed energy to try outfits in front of the mirror with a camera. At least, this is the effect that the Pastiche pencil skirt had on me.

Boy, I love this skirt. If you have been following this blog for a while you now that I don't usually wear pencil skirts (in fact I have a very few) because of my pretty casual lifestyle. Initially I didn't care much for this "pastiche" print on the shirt, cardi or the skirt itself, even if I own the scarf where the colors are slightly different. I thought it was a little bit too much and not at all my style. By the way, because JCrew apparently wants to educate his costumers by using "big" words, I played the game and looked up the meaning of "pastiche", that I vaguely knew was related to a form of art. Well, in case you didn't know, a pastiche is more exactly "a piece of art, music, literature, etc. which intentionally copies the style of someone else's work or is intentionally in various styles". Still, I didn't see why they would call this print "pastiche" exactly and what it was supposed to be imitating. The answer is in the website description of the cardigan in the same print: "One of our favorites of the season, with a fetching watercolor floral print (it reminds us of a work by one of our favorite Impressionist artists—and it's exclusively ours). Strangely, out of the seven items currently available on the website in this print, only the description of the cardigan provides the explanation for the "pastiche" in the name. Now you can let your imagination free and try to guess which artist they are talking about (could it be Monet?) I find kind of funny that they wouldn't say the name, like there was a copyright or a secrecy that they are afraid to infringe, like when they say that their cashmere yarn comes from a famous mill without saying the name.

But I digress. I started to have a second look at this skirt when I saw how they styled it in the catalog, with a green utilitarian jacket. That isn't the classic interpretation of a pencil skirt (that's one of the reason why more and more people turn to Jcrew, I guess) and it looked like something that I could wear in my everyday life. I became a little bit obsessed with it (actually with that look from the catalog) and when I heard that it went on sale I asked my PS to put one on hold for me (luckily she had one). I contemplated to order a P2 (my regular size in pencil skirts) but it was still FP on the website and the 0 available in store wasn't too big or too long (just a little bit), so I picked it up yesterday.

As everybody says, Jcrew knows how to make a pencil skirt and I think that the cotton textured ones, like this one, are particularly flattering and slimming.
You can certainly do ladylike, as it is a pencil skirt. This is my interpretation of ladylike, with heels and a cropped cardi:



The tee is the rosette tee from last year in shell and the cardigan is the new version (just arrived in stores) of the crystal-button featherweight cotton cardi in a color that to me looked identical to the desert brown (but the color code says DMU which I always thought was dark mushroom but doesn't remind me of a mushroom at all in this case):



What I really like in this skirt is its versatility and the fact that it goes with just about any color but navy/blue and black.
This is my take on the look in the catalog, with a camp shirt from a few years ago:



You think you have nothing to wear with it? It looks good with a plain tee:



Actually it looks even good with another "flower" tee. What a surprising "pastiche":



This is the Applique flower art tee, that went recently on sale and apparently is currently sold-out on the website. In my opinion is one of the best tee that they have made this season, very flattering and summery, but it was just too expensive and I waited for it to go on sale before buying it:



Too much? You can partially hide the flower under the same camp shirt and add a belt:



And you know what? You can even do blue with it after all, if you have a denim jacket (in this case the safari denim jacket from last summer):



I think that this might be a pencil skirt for those who think that pencil skirts are not for them. If you happen to see it in your B&M you should give it at least a try now that it's on sale. I personally think that the print is more stunning and less overwhelming in the skirt than in the shirt or cardigan.
Do you own this skirt? Do you like the "pastiche" print in general? Please share