LA Story: This or That

A little back story…As a young designer starting out, I found practicality to be very overrated. Experience taught me that designing with an understanding of a garment’s intrinsic value would take me places. I started to edit at the same time I designed my lines or Merchandising. That mindset is what made Styling an easy next step. If it’s a matter of this or that, I will likely go with the piece that is more special but also practical. In the case of my navy-blue patent leather leggings, Spanx, it was a no brainer. Black would be the choice of most but seriously, how many versions of black leggings do we already own? For my lifestyle, the blue is different enough to deliver the impact and practical enough to give me an array of styling options. They can go uptown, downtown and everywhere in between.

Today, I’m wearing them with a white crewneck T, Hanes, and a vintage linen jacket, Claude Barthelemy. The shorter length of jacket and its slightly squared off shoulder bring balance and proportion next to the higher waist and long line of my leggings. I’m using my vintage, Whiting and Davis, chainmail pieces – a snake belt worn as a necklace and little clutch bag with these open silver sling-back sandals, Nine West, to ramp up reflective qualities with a dose of metallics, trending for Fall. This sleek casual look takes me from day to night with ease. If I purchased the black patent leggings, I would not be able to pull off this kind of daytime look.

*style-tip: mindful choices will extend our wardrobe and give us more styling options.

LA Story: Geography

I’ve never been good at math or big on pattern mixing. Unless you really know what you’re doing, both can result in a giant mess. Normally, with regard to pattern mixing, I tend to use ones that have a commonality of colour but today I’m mixing patterns with nothing in common. I’m depending on my solid piece to keep that from happening. Here’s how…I need to keep my patterns separate and I need one key item that they both have something in common with and that would be my denim jacket, Juicy Couture. The jacket is blue and so is the stripe on my blouse, Chaps, and its top-stitching is a tonal match to my animal print shoes, Nine West. The denim jacket is also one of the solid pieces to keep my patterns separated.

Moving to the second solid piece, my black matte vegan leggings, Black NYC Jeans. The leggings create a long line and take up a lot of body space. Together with the jacket they read like a solid colour block that grabs most of the eye’s attention. The third solid is my, Vintage, rust leather handbag that lives down toward my shoes and is a match to the animal print. Its shape and size, like the other solids, draw the eye in. I’m not trying to make my patterns disappear rather make their contrasting colours easier for the eye to absorb. I’m wearing 2 large pearl necklaces on the outside of the buttoned jacket collar as a point of interest. One of the necklaces has leather cording that joins the print tone on the bottom with the top. This is my kind of Geography.

*style-tip: geography, in regard to styling, is all about product distribution.

*please treat your wardrobe well. many people worked very hard to get it to you.