Inspiration and Execution: A *casual* work look!

More work outfits!  Sorry my life is so boring - I wish I could do posts of fun outfits, but I really do just wear work clothes and having always interned and worked in law offices rather than in fun fashiony jobs, my work clothes are rather tame.  But hopefully, I can use this as a space to reflect on how to "jazz up" a rather boring template.

So, here's a rather casual Friday outfit.

Inspired by Belle from Capitol Hill Style (for her - featuring the peeptoe flats again but for me, I liked the pairing of the casual blue shirt with a black pencil skirt).

I also came across this Polyvore set I'd saved a while ago (I have no idea what I would've saved it for - normally I look up specific pieces that I have trouble with and save a bunch of sets that use that one item but I don't recall looking for any of the pieces in this set - maybe brown boots?).

I don't have a chambray shirt, honestly I'm not a "casual" person (lol!) and have no idea how I would wear it in real life unless I were... calling in the ranch hands after a day of "working the land."  Nonetheless, using these two casual inspirations, I was able to create an outfit around a blue oxford polo shirt I had worn somewhat often to class and found much too casual to wear to work.

I actually liked doing a casual shirt with the black pencil skirt because it made it easy to wear brown and black together (with the brown helping make the black more casual).  Wore a dark brown belt and lighter brown ankle boots.  I think I wore a dark grey turtleneck but now think I could've done brown as well.  I wore black tights because of Belle's 2 out of 3 rule and my brown tights looked a little weird.

Good?  Bad?  Should I just give up trying to casual myself and stick with the formality that I'm comfortable with?

Inspiration and Execution: Sheer black blouse and Chanel-y jacket

I have this Milly blouse that I love but could only wear it out to bars with friends because I couldn't figure out how to make it more day/work-appropriate.  So when Belle at Capital Hill Style posted this Three Ways she helped solve one of my work conundrums: how to make a sheer black blouse work-appropriate.

My take:

My jacket is a little less Chanel-y than the inspiration jacket, but it's a white knit jacket with ladylike ruffles.

I'm horribly unphotogenic even when you can't see my face (how sad is that?).  I swear the outfit was SUPER-cute in person.  I got compliments at work and even my mom was super-impressed that morning and commented that I had put together a really good outfit.

I need to figure out how to take better pictures.  This is just getting embarrassing...

Inspiration and Execution: Club Monaco Layers

I don't feel like thinking this week(end) so my pre-written, scheduled posts shall continue to be Inspiration and Executions.  This one is "fun" because it's not strictly a work outfit.  Although I think if you worked in a more casual office or switched up the pants for some trousers, it would be totally work appropriate.

A pretty layered look from Club Monaco's Spring 2012 collection (I believe).  Yup, just checked and I got the image from Mizhattan.

Wore my version of it out to lunch in the city this past Saturday.

Luckily, I already had all the basic pieces.  I did switch out the springy lightwash for a more season and weather-appropriate darker wash denim - but kept the (what my mother calls) "pantalones" shape, what I guess would be a wider leg trouser/bellbottom cut.

Club Monaco styled it with a brown bag and I like how it grounded an otherwise pale and potentially washed out palette.  I wore it with my Louis Vuitton Speedy 35 in Damier Ebene.

What do you think?  A pretty close interpretation, no?

Inspiration and Execution: Twist-front top and suit.

Maybe I'll think of a better name (especially if this becomes a regular thing).

In college I started to keep a notebook with clippings of outfits I've liked (from catalogs and magazines mostly) and now I have a digital folder with outfits and pictures from the Internet.  I started this because my mom got tired of me calling her in the morning (when I was away in college) and asking her what I should wear (yes, I'm aware that I might have some attachment/mommy issues).

Anyway, I sometimes feel like I get stuck in a style rut and like to keep images for inspiration.  I also started photographing my daily outfits - first because I liked documenting outfits that I really liked but then it turned into a bit of a documentary project.  I found patterns and habits and comfort zones.

For example,  I wear a lot of solid colors.  Most of my wardrobe is solid and it falls into two color/season categories.  My fall/winter clothes are black/grey/navy and my spring/summer clothes are yellow/pink/white.  I own hardly any blue, green, purple, red (no saturated colors, really) and not that much in the brown/khaki family.

I have NO prints - sometimes I get as adventurous as a wide-stripe or a polka dot accent.  So, I started to try and buy some more clothes with prints on them.  (I'll have to document some examples of my old habits and new trials sometime).

Anyway, the point of THIS entry is to share an inspiration outfit and my actual outfit.  So here goes,

The inspiration outfit was from a series called "Three Ways" by the lovely Miss Belle over at Capitol Hill Style.

I didn't have a grey top like that - but I did have a black one so my version of the outfit inverted the colors.  I wore a charcoal grey pinstripe skirt suit with a black knot/twist-front jersey shell.  (Sorry about the horrible lighting - you can barely see the contrast in color).  And as per Belle's suggestion, I wore rather large-ish-for-me earrings.

The color contrast is a LITTLE better here - but I'll try for better lighting/contrast next time.  And I know her "Three Ways" if focused on the shoe - but for me, it was really the outfit that I'd liked.  I just don't like peeptoe flats.  I don't find them attractive on my vamp and I think it's just a little, too, forced (hard to explain).

What do you think?  Was this a faithful "execution" outfit?  Should I have stuck closer to the inspiration?  What would you have done differently?