A lot of my shopping and experimenting this season has focused on 2 things-- color and shape/silhouette. For the most part, I've loved experimenting with silhouettes and now have a larger variety although getting the right piece has taken a lot of help, analysis and trial and error.
Color is a totally different matter. I already knew I looked best in charcoal, navy, and black as my neutrals and a mid-to-dark olive. I look good in some deep toffees and camels, but they are trickier to find in the right shades and harder to mix with black, grey, and navy. I also knew I liked deep colors-- deep purple, deep reds, deep royals and inks, deep oranges, and deep greens. Although I ordered a lot of colored pieces, I haven't kept a single one except shoes. Mostly it was fit and or quality-- lots of cheap rather than rich looking things, but sometimes it was the shade. I have colorful shoes and often wear colorful earrings (i.e. I like citron/peridot greens, but can't imagine a whole sweater on me). My glasses are purple, black and grey. Not finding colored garments in "my colors" that worked otherwise I loved means that my closet is very dark/inky, very black, very grey. It does have texture, heathering, and some shine-- not all flat black.
Right now I'm not unhappy with it, but I'm a little afraid that the lack of variety leaves things too dark and too one note (although I love mixing my dark neutrals together and mixing textures). Especially for our long cold winter.
So, I tried some black and white pieces, some white, some lighter greys, some light blue, some light chambray in an attempt to shake things up and add contrast and interest in my layering-necessary winter wardrobe. And I didn't love it-- mostly I felt like the colors were unflattering on me-- white and ivory don't look bad, but they don't do the white-of-the-eye and teeth popping thing they do on others. Plus, white and ivory are SO impractical for work and for my weekend life that involves lots of time outside and lots of cooking. The blues and greys were pretty blah.
What do you do when you don't like light neutrals on yourself? Do you keep hunting for the "right" colored tops? Do you buy a few scarves and hats in good shades and wear colored shoes and call it good? Do you embrace the all dark neutral look? Are there other light neutrals to try? I struggled with this even more this past summer.
