Another week, another wool pencil skirt from my extensive collection. These things really are like Garanimals for adults — add a print blouse and solid topper, and you’ve got yourself an outfit. This particular blouse is one of my faves because it mixes a bunch of cool colours (which I love), like blue and green. An excuse to wear my blue suede pumps? I’m there!

I tried to add a bit of interest to this admittedly basic ensemble with my new Lulu Frost necklace. I also tried to take a close-up shot to show it to you, as promised, but … well, it took a few tries … and I still don’t have a good, all-in-one picture. I love long necklaces like this one, but they’re a pain in the butt to photograph so you’ll have to trust me that it’s cute.

And the “gardenshade” blouse made a very apropos background for it, no? For the record, I hate bugs, but this little scarab is definitely adorable. Lord help me if I see a real life beetle, however. Eek. (Unless it’s the vehicular kind of Beetle, especially the vintage ones like the specimen in our garage — those are also adorable, although don’t tell my husband I said that about our “Bert”. I don’t think “adorable” is the vibe he’s going for.)

My husband usually doesn’t have much to say about my outfits, but he wasn’t sure about this shoe-skirt combo. In his own words: “I see what you’re trying to do there, but it might be a bit much.” Hah! It Might Be A Bit a Much is my style motto, after all. So, although I did try more sedate footwear as a back-up, you know which way I went in the end, right?

Right: teal all the way. And I threw on my new Alexis Bittar necklace, which is one of my current favourite pieces. It’s hard to photograph, but it’s really cool — asymmetric & kinda unusual. I found it in the clearance section at Holt’s, which has been a veritable goldmine (pun intended) this year. This necklace was only $60, down from around $250. It makes me feel very fancy, indeed.

I don’t know why, but as soon as I saw this Anthro dress, I thought: layering opportunity. The neckline is a bit on the revealing side for work, but I think it works nicely with a sleeveless shell. I was a bad blogger and forgot to talk photos without the blazer, but the dress has sleeves so it’s actually quite warm. I threw on the blazer because work, naturally. And also to de-twee-fy the dress. Did I work? Well, at the very least, I think I pulled off “librarian chic”, which is a win in my book.

I did try to play around the lighting in these pics so I could show you the details of the dress fabric, but no dice. The style was called “Geo Burnout” and I think is supposed to mimic velvet devore … also known as burnout. It’s got an interesting texture, and it provided a nice contrast with the tweed blazer.