This was one of those thrown-together-in-30-seconds-or-less outfits that turned out … kinda cute. At least, I thought so at the time. It was a bright, sunshiny day, and my winter-addled brain may have suffered a temporary, joy-induced malfunction, leading me to overestimate the cuteness factor of this whole thing. To be fair, every time I type out “mustard” in a blog post, I suddenly feel like I need to start questioning my sartorial choices.
Anyway.
At the first glimpse of sun, plus flats-friendly sidewalk conditions, I immediately pulled out my AG Stevie slim cropped cords. I’ve been waiting to wear these since I bought them last fall, in a Kijiji-deal-of-the-year situation. They are sooo soft and comfy, and totally worth the $20 I paid for them. Did I mention they were new? Did I also mention that I subsequently went to Anthropologie to look for more pairs, and had a bit of an ugly cry when I saw their regular price? That, my friends, is the downside of being really, really, ridiculously good looking* at finding bargains; you come to have impossible-to-meet price expectations. I know, I know. Don’t y’all whip out your tiny violins at once.
* I could not resist a reference to the best movie about fashion of all time.
Let me start by doing what every parent does, more often than they’d like to admit, and that is blame something (I’d have a hard time justifying) on my kid. See, I just had to go to the mall. I did. My kid made me, because he is my kid and he considers going to the mall a social activity. He visits the mannequins. (I am serious.) And when we go to the mall, we have to go to Zara, because that’s where his favourite mannequins reside. And it all started at Zara.
I swear I was not looking. Well, I technically had my eyes open so I could steer one over-excited toddler and a stroller along, but I wasn’t looking looking, if you catch my drift. But, somehow, these caught my eye.
Zara ballet flats
In my defence, they were very, very twinkly. I also blame the lighting at Zara, for making things extra twinkly.
I was in love in about a nano-second. Now, I already had a pair of rhinestone flats in my closet, but these … were special. For real. I’m not generally a big Zara fan, but honestly, these didn’t look like Zara flats to me. They looked Chanel-esque, if Chanel took to designing for Tinkerbell. They looked expensive. Scratch that. They were expensive. $80 for rhinestone encrusted mesh? No.
No, right? Right?!
The rational part of my brain eventually kicked in, and I steered the troops out of Zara, Tinkerbell shoes-free. (It helped that the biggest size they had was a touch too small. Comfort above all.) I did the sensible thing, and went to SoftMoc to look for the pair of Chucks that was actually on my to-buy list. And was rewarded by finding them on sale. Of course, this story doesn’t end here, because my name is Adina and I like to make things difficult for myself. Initially, the plan was to look for a grey pair. Eminently sensible and practical, yes? But then I saw the red pair. And it looked awfully cute. I like red shoes. My husband thinks red Chucks are awesome. My youngest has a hand-me-down pair of red Chucks from her older brother, and we could do a mother-daughter thing. Cute. So … What to do?
The red … or the grey???
Like any normal person would, I turned to social media. The consensus among my Facebook peeps was “grey”. Naturally, I bought the red. Went home, and promptly reconsidered. And then I made my poor husband drive back to the mall the next day so I could exchange them for the grey. What can I say – he has the fortitude, not to mention the patience, of a saint. But I love my grey Chucks, and they are ever so practical.
The end.
P.S. You didn’t really think that was the end, did you? Of course not. So, one late night not long thereafter, I somehow zombie-clicked my way on to the Zara website, and before I knew it, bam. A pair of Tinkerbell shoes were on their way to me. Sigh.
Don’t worry; the spell-check on my computer still works. My aptitude for punny titles … still leaves something to be desired. To explain: I had a case of the Monday blues, so I wore burgundy, because it’s something of a pick-me-up colour for me, and it’s more or less guaranteed to work with whatever outfit I manage to throw together. Recipe for success? Well, maybe on a Monday.
I am wearing head-to-toeknee J. Crew (Factory), but the nice thing about monopolizing a store to that extent is that it increases the chances for a hastily-thrown-together outfit to look somewhat cohesive. Most of my Crew pieces are interchangeable, and I mean that in the best possible way. OK, that belt is probably too bright and fuchsia-leaning for the rest of the outfit here, but this outfit needed a jolt of something bright to get it off its one-way track to snoozeville. The result is … passable. Yes? Maybe? Vote in the comments.
