So. I always love when you see fashion bloggers taking one item and remixing it to make more than one outfit. The one I'm thinking of right now is Sally Jane Vintage's recent posts like that--they're so inspiring and fun--and I'm sure lots of other girls do it, too. Do you? I want to see them! Please send them my way!!
Over Christmas, while we were down visiting my family way out in the woods in Mississippi--I had that happen to me--but on accident. Allow me to set this up by saying that I am a terrible packer. I always over-pack. I brought my biggest suitcase for the week-long trip, but since the airlines are charging per bag I could only bring that one and I had to fit a lot of Christmas presents in there, so there was not a lot of room left for a bunch of cute outfits. Just a few cute outfits :) What I ended up taking a lot of were tights, two berets (though I soooooooo wish I had just gone through the trouble of dealing with my cream-colored cloche on the plane...it was missed), and a couple of skirts and tops.
It's very typical in this part of the South, even in areas where you have lots of tiny, tiny towns--that people drive 20 or 30 minutes (or more) through completely flat farm land to a cocktail party or a restaurant 1 or 2 towns over--and often in some old, gorgeous Southern mansion in a town of 100 or so. It's just the coolest thing, in my opinion. Just incredibly old-fashioned and Southern. A lot of these houses were built back in the late 1800s-1930s and they're just beautiful all done up for Christmas.
Anyway. I knew we would be doing all that again this year, but there were a few more outings than I had outfits for. So I had to get creative. I was so happy I brought this little lace dress. It was something my mom bought for me (from French Connection) to wear to my engagement party a few years ago and while I've worn it a few times since, I had kind of forgotten about it until I saw Francesca's post about lace dresses, so out it came and into the suitcase it went!
This was the first incarnation on Christmas Day.
I LOVE these tights. They are made by Eloise and I bought them at Anthropologie. I am sad to say I am basically anti-pink and have been for a very long time, sort of inexplicably. But this particular pink with the taupe-y brown was too much to resist. The beginning of my pink-therapy? Maybe...
The very next day we went to visit with some family friends in the next little town. It was an afternoon visit, and they're considerably older, so I didn't want to wear something quite so short, but I still needed to look nice, so I came up with this:
Beret: thrifted
dirty hair: laziness
wool pleated skirt: thrifted and hemmed
maroon tights: sock dreams
oxfords: vintage, probably 80s
handbag: vintage
I also was so happy to get to use one of my mom's Christmas presents to me--that sweet little tapestry handbag! I can foresee a lot of usage for that little guy...
Sometimes a pair of tights makes all the difference...
And I loved it with my grandmother's wool coat...
The next day--we ended up going into another little nearby town for lunch and pottery-shopping with some other ladies so I wore this:
Striped jumper: UO
scarf: vintage, another gift from mom :)
tights: $3 from some cheapie store in Brooklyn
oxfords: vintage (from the 80s, I think)
Better view of the jumper here...
I was so happy I brought those red tights, because they went perfectly with the vintage scarf my mom gave me--total kismet.
(Thanks for taking pictures, Mr. Wood!)
I love those colors together! And that red-orange is my all-time favorite color. It strangely goes with quite a lot (at least to my eyes)...
And that's it! I learned first-hand (yet again) that its all about the tights/hats/scarves/etc for me. This experience might help my packing issues, since I had to come up with a little fashion ingenuity and it turned out all right :) Perhaps I'll try packing a little less from here on out...perhaps...