You know how it goes. You purchase a new wardrobe item and want to wear it all the time because it makes your style feel refreshed and fab. Well, it’s like that with the coral skinnies that you saw me wear last week, so I packed my new favourite for our recent business trip to Los Angeles.

I wore this outfit to visit Karen Kane Headquarters in LA. It was a day long business meeting, visiting various sections of their clothing manufacturing operation, including the design rooms and the factory floor, so it was essential to wear something comfortable. Smart casual attire was 100% appropriate for the setting.

We stayed by the beach in Santa Monica the night before visiting Karen Kane, which is where these pictures were taken. I wanted to look professional and polished, yet playful and trendy. So I matched a non-iron white button down shirt with my charcoal grey pinstripe Theory suit jacket, and wore that over coral skinny jeans. I left the shirt un-tucked and folded back the lining of the blazer for a more relaxed and interesting look.  I finished off the outfit with layered champagne pearls, gold satchel, gold watch and 8-hour low heeled pumps.

The top half of this outfit projected a professional vibe, but the trendy and playful colours of the bottom half communicated something different. Perhaps these deliberate style messages were lost on everyone but me. That’s okay. The most important thing is that the outfit made me feel confident, comfortable and energized, paving the way for a fabulous and productive day.

I spent most of our time in the factory wearing an even more comfortable version of this outfit, namely with my blazer off,  collar popped, sleeves scrunched, and phone and notebook in hand. The blazer and jeans were perfect coverage for air conditioned areas, and with the blazer off, I was adequately ventilated in the fresh air.

The sun in Los Angeles is extremely bright, much brighter than Seattle, and I don’t know what I would have done without my sunglasses. I spent a lot of time in LA swapping out my specs for my sunglasses, something I am not used to doing back home!

That was just the outfit. You’ll hear all about Karen Kane’s very large and impressive head office and manufacturing plant in a series of posts we’ll do over the next few weeks, so stay tuned. We are excited to share an industry insider’s point of view for such a successful label.