Dear Aubergine
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First of all, a belated birthday wishes to you, our resident midimalist with the most gorgeous wavy hair and the smile that can melt icebergs. I hope you were celebrated and spoiled on your day, and I wish you happiness, joy, good health and memorable experiences. And, of course, lots of fun on YLF. I am sorry I did not notice before it was your birthday, but the Universe had worked in the most wonderful way to correct that injustice by pairing us up. Rest assured I'll never forget your birthday again - because you share it with my son
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While checking the archives in order to prepare for the challenge, I've had a great pleasure of studying your style a bit closer and what is instantly obvious is that you dress in very feminine way, you love and wear black and dark colours beautifully and you don't compromise on comfort. My kind of girl Add to that we're both pears and both in the niche markets, you in petite and me in tall, and we actually have very similar dressing issues because we both have somewhat it challenging to find the clothes with the right proportions. This is why I personally believe that partly to offset those hard times while shopping we must reward ourselves by wearing happy outfits. Which brings me to the first focus of your challenge - high happiness factor. You are already on the right track since you've self-diagnosed the Conservation of Cardigans and you now know which traps to avoid.
You've found your winning winter dressing formula of cardigan+dress outfits, but you also said that you need to refine your choices. I think we need to focus on those that really work and how to make them work even harder for you, but also try to identify what is their magic ingredient so you can make more of the right choices in the future. Did you find yourself recreating only the same type of outfit with one type of cardigan only? You'll need to come up with the new, or rarely worn, base outfits/dress style for certain cardigans.
Finally, with the Spring hopefully knocking on your doorstep very soon, we need you to be ready - but without the pastels which you don't favour from what I understood. That's your final focus.
To sum it up, your challenge is:
Come up with three outfits which all have:
- ( 1 ) high happines factor,
- ( 2 ) use your best and most loved cardigans with different from your usual formula for the base outfit for those cardigans, and...
- ( 3 ) ... here is the quirk - try to avoid more than 50% of (solid) black content. Bring the brightness and colours you love into your outfits to see whether that would be the way to go into Spring.
If you feel inspired to do some extras, here's more:
- ( I ) You've mentioned somewhere you had burgundy ponte pants. I think I've read that you have burgundy top as well. How about creating outfits with burgundy (or any other non black) Column of Colour and then just change the cardigans - see how many options you actually have and how the vibe of the outfit changes with different topper.
- ( II ) Last but not least, these are the pieces I'd steal from your wardrobe instantly: your oatmeal long cardigan, your obi belts, wedged shoes, dotty hose and that pleated skirt you had in one K/R post (I hope you kept it, btw). Come up with two more outfits that will include at least two of these ingredients in each, following the same guideline as the main challenge. That is, of course, if they are not already included in the outfits created for the main challenge.
Have fun
1. This thread is part of the series YLF Challenge Chain (Spring 2014)
2. Previous challenge: YLF Challenge Chain: Greyscale challenges Ornella (when the current challenger was challenged)
