A big file I worked on before my mat leave was finally (and successfully) wrapped up, so the responsible senior partner invited me to join the rest of the team for celebratory drinks. An evening with adults? With adult talk, and adult beverages? Minus kids? Yes, PLEASE. I will even dress like a grown-up.
I had planned on wearing a dress for that purpose, but the weather conspired to botch my plans. Again. Whatcha got against me, Mother Nature? Humph! So, instead, I went with a boring but classic combo of sweater + button-down shirt. Snooooooooooze. At least I looked relatively presentable and professional … until the wind decided to re-arranged my coiffure, gratis.
Dress, Joe Fresh; cardigan, J. Crew Factory; shoes, Old Navy; bag, MbMJ (via eBay)
This is such a cute dress – only $24 at Joe Fresh! pockets!! – and it really doesn’t deserve to be buried under this cardigan. But, them’s the breaks. I am hopeful there will be one day out of the next 30 29 when I’ll be able to wear this dress on its own. In the meantime … cardigan.
Oh, and also … unintentional mixing of black and navy. I’m probably hideously behind the fashion times on this issue, but I hate pairing dark navy and black because they just end up looking like mismatched shades of the same colour. A lighter navy and black? Yes. What’s happening here? Nope. No. Nooooo! This personal fashion low happened because (a) I wanted to wear this dress on a day that required tights, and (b) after getting dressed, I realized that I didn’t include my navy flats in the 30 x 30 line-up. D’oh! And sigh. So Adina of me. Anyway, I didn’t feel like messing about with my chosen clothes on the very first day of the challenge (how failure-riffic would that be!), so … there you have it. Mind-numbingly boring explanation and everything.
So … the title pretty much sums it up. Everybody, including your grandma, your 2-year old niece, and your cat, has already done a 30 x 30 challenge or twelve, but it seems that I’m all about chasing bandwagons that left the station 3 years ago, so here we are. In all seriousness, though, I’m working through a bit of a funk (and not of the fun, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch variety), and I thought a simple little project like this would provide some much-needed distraction. It’s actually a great time to do it, too, because my closet is at its pared-down leanest, and my day-to-day clothing needs are much simpler than before, now that I’m at home all the time.
Speaking of which, some of you may wonder why I go to trouble of getting “dressed up” (I use that term loosely here) every most days when my daily to-do list typically involves mundane errands and running after small kids. The answer is … not this blog, actually. I don’t really dress up for the blog anymore. (I find that, whenever I tried to be “creative” and “so fashun” in the past, more often than not the resulting outfits were … questionable. At this point, I’ll take boring over ridiculous-looking. I’m closer to being an old fart than a 22-year old pixie.) I dress up because not doing it makes me feel worse. Worse about myself, about whatever small annoyances creep up in my day, about the weather, you name it. It’s kind of like … taking a shower. You can probably get away with not doing it every day, and some days it might seem like a small luxury, but you feel 100% better if you take that 5 minutes all for yourself. But I digress.
I’m excited about doing the 30 x 30 challenge now (unlike before) because I’ve been working a lot lately on exploring a more minimalist approach to dressing (not just in terms of quantity, but also style); now, I see the limitations of the challenge as providing an opportunity to test my mettle, rather than an exercise in frustration. (Picking 30 items is much easier when you have 60 to choose from, as opposed to 120.)
I expect to break absolutely no new style ground with this challenge. I can promise that you will not see anything you haven’t seen before, possibly even on this very blog. In fact, if you skip this post entirely, things will seem to be pretty much business-as-usual around here. But, in case you feel like playing spot-the-repeat at home (could be a fun drinking game!), here are my 30 pieces for the next 30 days:
L to R: Old Navy; eBay; J. Crew; J. Crew Factory; Vero Moda (the 6th top (Old Navy) is not pictured because I forgot)
Three cardigans and a sweater …
All from J. Crew Factory
Three dresses and a skirt …
L to R: J. Crew Factory skirt; Joe Fresh; Old Navy; J. Crew (via eBay)
Five jackets/toppers …
L to R: Gap; Old Navy; Tommy Hilfiger Factory; Old Navy; J. Crew (via consignment)
And six pairs of shoes …
Top row (L to R): J. Crew (via consignment); Tory Burch (via Kijiji); J. Crew Factory; Old Navy Bottom row (L to R): Gap Factory; Old Navy; Mel; Converse
Um, make that 8 pairs of shoes. Also, math is hard, you guys. Yep, I managed to include 31 items in my 30 x 30 capsule. Hahahahaha! Hah! Ha! Sob! I’m laughing mostly to keep from crying because, OMG, complete fail. Head, meet desk, etc. I would take out a couple of pairs of shoes, except it’s too late now.* I need a drink.
On that successful note, let’s start this damn thing, eh!
*Quick scheduling note: I’m running the 30 x 30 posts every day starting on June 1, because it seemed sensible to do it over the course of a 30 day month; however, I actually started the project this month, because the blog runs 2 weeks behind. It’s neither here not there (except for making it impossible to fix my mathematical incompetence), but those of you who follow me on Instagram will have already seen a bunch of my outfits. Of course, you will now get my scintillating commentary so there’s that.
