Here’s an outfit I wore to school on Thursday – all BR - black herringbone pants, faux wrap sleeveless shirt, BR merino wool cardigan.

http://s374.photobucket.com/al.....ckteal.jpg

I think the cardigan is too tight though – it was an incredible deal (more on that below) and even though it was a tad too small, I bought it anyway figuring I could give it to a friend if it didn’t work out. I did wear my black wedge heeled booties with this outfit – just don’t have them on in the picture. My posture is terrible without shoes on! Once I saw the pictures, I was thinking that pearls might have been better than the necklace I am wearing (AT chunky teal/turquoise beads) but I am keeping my eye out for some inexpensive chunky pearls as the one I have right now are small. This is a typical school outfit for me. I usually dress up because I like to (lots of dressier clothes and no where to wear them) and the vast majority of the students in the program are working professionals so the dress code is definitely dressier than the average grad school class.

So I was at the mall this week looking for suits (I’ll write a separate post on that) and when I went into BR, I was shocked to see the markdowns. All the sweaters were down to $10-$15 range including the popular BR cardigan that many ylfers posted about recently. I love the BR merino – I have some of these in my closet that are nearly 10 years old and still look great! I had money left over in my discretionary amount for the month (husband & I decided that we needed some personal spending money so that we wouldn’t feel so deprived) and decided to stock up – I got the cardigan in a few different colors (teal, ivory, purple, although the teal is going to my friend since it is too small and the others were one size up), I also bought an emerald green 3/4 sleeve sweater, a black v-neck sweater, a pair of high-waisted wide leg trousers, a berry/red cowl neck and the black faux wrap pictured above. In the end, my total was about $80 because in my shopping frenzy, I failed to notice that all sale items were an additional 30% off! So I was able to buy the cardigans for about $7 a piece! My only regret is not buying a cute merino long, boyfriend cardi that was also on sale – this is one trend that I didn’t think would work for me but I realized that its because I was looking at sizes that were too large & bulky. I tried one in a petite size that looked awesome unbuttoned over a cami but put it back while I thought about it and when I went back to the rack to get it, it was gone. Given that in the northeast we still have plenty of winter left, I think I will be able to put these items to good use!