March 2019 Outfits: Part 2

March! Gotten a bit behind on blog posts as I've been busy trying to get more sleep and exercise.And for reference, the first two weeks of March:I've decided to just stick to using normal photos in these posts instead of linking to Instagram. As easy as that is to do, it doesn't scale well in the mobile view and the captions often include other rambling that isn't related to this post.

Overall Impressions

Just looking at the gestalt of the collages, I think I like the first half of March better mostly because the color values is more even. I have 7 white tops in the latter two weeks vs only 3 in the first two. I also didn't get in quite as much variety of silhouettes, but that was largely because I've been on a wide-leg pants kick again. While eventually I'd love to get both a variety of outfits and have them be all ones I love to wear, I think for now I shouldn't really mind too much if the reason the collective outfits don't look nice is that I was getting in more iterations of a particular style.11 of these outfits I liked enough that I'd happily wear them again as-is. I only had one outfit which I didn't like (the white sweater with black leggings-pants and raincoat – boring and I realized that the sweater doesn't really fit), and 4 outfits (11, 12, 15, and 16) where I'd be down to try something similar but with some tweaks.

Progress on Goals

In order to give this whole fashion blogging project a sense of direction, I'm focusing on giving my wardrobe a greater sense of depth as well as injecting outfits with a stronger sense of personality. Not necessarily the same sense, but I think it's fun when outfits feel like they might be from a TV series or book and are not completely nondescript. At any rate, I find that framing things that way when I'm getting dressed tends to result in more visually interesting outfits than if I just get dressed based only on the weather.

🌊 Depth – do textures, layers, and accessories provide a feeling of richness? Are there small, medium, and large shapes throughout the outfit?

I don't think this set had quite as much depth as the first half of the month. I didn't wear as many printed items, and because it's still been rainy and there were more warm days, I didn't use as much outerwear. As it warms up, I think I'll need to work on my accessorizing as outerwear becomes less of an option. I wish I didn't need to lug my laptop and a gym bag around on weekdays (across public transit of various sorts), but it is what it is.

✨ Whimsy and wonder – my general aesthetic goal is to have outfits that feel like they could be out of a storybook (see the My Style page for more details on this). Erring a little on the dramatic side is good.

While the outfits don't look like they all came from the same character, I think I did pretty solidly here as except for the white sweater + leggings outfit I think every outfit had something a little extra in the styling that put it solidly above the "I am wearing clothes because I need to wear clothes" category. Steering my wardrobe away from mostly smooth fabrics has helped immensely with this.For example, this is just a sweater and jeans outfit, but the texture added from the cable-knit and the braided belt along with the vintage style injected by the oxford pumps and red lip make it feel more polished and distinct.Here I used one of my plainer tops, a striped tee, but I really doubled down on the green and brown color palette and even though they're all earth tones, they're fairly saturated and have distinct color values and I thought the overall effect was really cheery. I particularly liked how the collar of the moto jacket, pointed toe boots, and belt (along with my round glasses, which at this point I often forget are part of the outfits and not my face) added some clear-cut shapes to the outfit, which I think was my favorite look in this half of the month.Here's one look from my retro-normcore style sub-capsule. Basically a late 1970s programmer look lol. The shirt says "QUOTRON WORLD'S GREATEST SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING TEAM WE DO IT ALL!" Quotron made computer terminals for the financial industry and apparently was a household name through the 1980s.Before anyone cries that I'm making fun of / appropriating the culture of programmer nerds, I do actually work as a software engineer (the past few years I've been primarily focused on DevOps sort of things – CI, test frameworks, etc) including a stint working on firmware test infrastructure at a hardware startup 🤓. I'm actually not ashamed of this blog or feel like it absolutely must be kept secret or anything, but I do want to keep the top search results for my full name to career-oriented things.Tangentially, here's a tragic graph from the 2019 Stackoverflow developer survey that was released this morning (stackoverflow is a hugely popular resource that is a sort of cross between a Q&A forum and a wiki for programming topics). The y-axis starts at at 10:1 ratio and DevOps is hovering around 30:1 😂😭

☑️ Goals for this month – this month I didn't have any specific goals, so I'm defaulting to iterating on a few outfits that I think I could make better.

I wanted to do a less frumpy outfit with the space dress. This was purely just for personal enjoyment and not as a styling challenge, because it's a flatteringly cut dress with a cool print and the point is that it's a statement outfit on its own. Took advantage of a warmer weekend day to wear it with sandals. I appreciate that the print has some warm reddish browns in it because it makes it easy to pair with warm neutrals like this moto jacket.Another iteration was the floral blouse + midi + boots outfit. I just wanted to give it a stronger aesthetic. I went with lace-up boots to mirror the more romantic feel of the blouse and wore my pleather midi skirt to emphasize the texture. I wore a raincoat since it was kind of rainy but I actually like how it adds a lighter color value to the outfit and pulls out the floral print. I feel it also looks less disjointed in the outfit despite being a technical fabric because the base outfit is all materials with a bit of a sheen to them.I like it more than the first version overall, although this top is too slippery to hold the skirt any higher on my waist, so it hits at a wider part of my calf than I normally like. Not a fan of the proportions around the legs here as the boots area is about the same as the bare calves area, which I think always comes across as rather stocky.I did not get around to repeating the tall lace-up boots with culottes outfit, but I did get them into a fancy look which I wore to go see the SF ballet (specifically their Bjork Ballet). I liked this outfit overall, although I think long sleeves with a maxi skirt is just too much fabric for me especially in a spring themed outfit. The mesh dress really needs a shorter slip dress under it to not result in a sister-wife in a cult in the 1970s vibe, but in the meantime, that's what cropped moto jackets are for.I'll be doing a separate post with my thoughts on wide-leg pants + sneakers outfits since I'll be experimenting with them more through April. I was pretty happy seeing how the first half of March came together in wardrobe cohesiveness so now I feel better about focusing on new (for me) types of styling. Getting some core combos and colors down for my wardrobe makes me feel more emboldened to experiment as I know I have a solid base to come back to if stuff goes all wonky.