Wardrobe Architect :: Week 5

This week is all about color.  For the most part I think I have this down.  Yes, I have a lot of clothes in colors I know I don't/won't wear, but I know that, even if I can't seem to get rid of the clothes.  I would like to skew my wardrobe more towards solid color monochromes on the black and white scale as well as browns, but other than that, the colors themselves as they're currently present work well.  It's more the styling of the clothes and individual pieces that I need to work on.   That being said, colors:

I started out picking out the colors that most commonly occur in my wardrobe throughout the seasons.  Each season my have a slight variation (or multiple similar colors) but these are the basics.

Then I went and played around, recreating some of my favorite outfits to get a sense of how the colors worked together, what roll patterns played in pulling in various accent colors and the like.

Then I tried playing around with colors as they currently exist by season, grouping them according to the garment they were most often associated with: bottoms, blouses, cardigans, shirts/sweaters.  As you can see the versatility of each group with regard to the others isn't great, neither a pumpkin orange or a purple cardigan is going to work with a bright red blouse, at least not in my book, so I defiantly have to work on finding a better configuration of colors.

Outside of the scope of this week's exercise, a couple of things.  I've noticed that since I've started this project I've been paying a lot more attention to other people's clothes, the the fit and the color, to the way they style individual pieces.  I've started to try and play around with my own clothing choices, as unenthused as I can be getting dressed in a hurry in the morning and I've begun to notice some things.  For example,:

• Shoes, accessories, and makeup/hairstyle is an important element, regardless of how much I would like to ignore this fact.  Jewelry in particular has been catching my eye a lot lately.
• Little "architectural" details are more interesting to me than patterns.  Texture is nice but it's these added touches, particularly the unexpected ones that I like.
• Tucking shirts in makes me look/feel like I look short-waisted.  Maybe it's just something I have to get used to but I feel like when I tuck things in something isn't quite right in the abdominal area.  Perhaps  because of the fit of my shirts (fitted around the bust, loose around the stomach) it ends up looking a bit square.
• As much as I love skirts the thought of wearing one, even with fleece lined leggings, when it's negative ten outside isn't appealing.  I need to learn to work with non-denim pants.
• Pants with wide waistbands ftw.
• I need to find out what fabric my tabbed black pants are made out of because it's infinitely preferable to some of the other fabrics I have pants in.
• Button up + boxy/structured sweater = A++.  I don't know what it is about this combo but it's instant love.  It reminds me in a sense of tee + blazer = win.
• I would much rather throw on a scarf than a cardigan to keep warm.