Hi friends,
Today I have a couple of outfits to share, plus I wanted to talk a bit about color.
Pantone's Fall 2015 Colors
Pantone, a design company whose work revolves around color releases apparel color trend reports for each season. And I wanted to show you all the one they created for fall. They call it Fall 2015's "An Evolving Color Landscape" They basically try to predict what colors will be popular in a given season, and honestly at this point they are some of the people who are setting the color trends because they're so widely viewed. Over the last few seasons Pantone has noted a trend for men's and women's clothing to use the same color palette, meaning that sometimes colors don't have to feel feminine or masculine because they're using more muted colors overall.
I think it's interesting to look at what they choose and compare it to the colors I wear and also look at it in light of various skintones. For example, I'm a cool skin tone, my skin has a lot of pinks and blue shades in it so I tend to wear cool or neutral colored clothing. Those with warmer skin tones have yellow, tan and rich brown shades, some folks are more in the middle with no obvious yellow or blue tones, but they might have olive or green undertones and they can wear many colors well with their base being in neutrals most often. You can check by looking at the veins on your wrist what you skin tone might be, and you can find out more about this on Pinterest too by searching cool, warm or neutral tone clothing colors.
Personally I can't wear all the colors on this wheel, and maybe you can't either, it depends on skintone as we discussed above. My personal favorites are 3 Amethyst Orchid and 6 Biscay Bay. However the ones I definitely can't wear are 9 Oak Buff and 10 Cadmium Orange. They're very warm and are shades it's hard to influence with surrounding colors to look cool. Because yes, you can surround one color with another and the lesser color will seem to change in appearance because of what it's next to. In fact, 7 Desert Sage is the perfect example of this. Let's take a look:
Reflecting Pond makes Desert sage look nice and cool as it we were preparing for a storm, now let's make it look warm.
Well look at that, now that Desert Sage resembles nice warm sand when it's put beside Cadmium Orange. Color is magical you guys! Want to have your mind blown again? Scroll back up to the color palette. The text describing each word looks like it's the same color shown in the big circles right? Nope, it's actually the color shown in the smaller circle, a darkened version of the real color that I made because the white background changes how we perceive small amounts of color on a mainly white background. The text color works the same way as the small squares of the Desert Sage do. Because you're only seeing a small amount of color it's influenced by the main color taking up so much more space. So if you want to make a neutral look warmer or cooler just pair it off with A brighter color, B a greater amount of that bright color, and C if you can place the neutral in the middle of the brighter color rather than at the edge of it. All of these will help change your neutrals into colors that you can make look just a bit different when you need a "new" look from old clothes.
Hopefully you all enjoyed this, and if you'd like to learn more about how to manipulate and pair colors let me know in the comments and I may come back to this subject again soon. I really love talking about color, and when I went to art school we spent a year in one class completed devoted to learning to use color in ways like this. I'd love to share more with you all.
And Now the Outfits!
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| Tunic - Isabel+Alice/Gwynnie Bee, Necklace - The Rafiki Foundation, Leggings - Target, Flats - Torrid |
The Rafiki Foundation is a Christian organization that works in Africa providing homes, medical and educational services to orphans, training to teachers, and helps widows in the community learn various crafts to support themselves. Their end goal is training communities for a better standard of living that's sustainable and entirely run by the community members themselves. The widows there make jewelry, bags, clothing, baskets, and home items and then teach others what they've learned. I heard of them through the church my family went to when I was growing up and love how passionate they are for the work they are doing.
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| Tunic - Isabel+Alice/Gwynnie Bee, Necklace - The Rafiki Foundation, Jeans - Lane Bryant, Boots - Trendsetter/Hushpuppies |
I'm reading one of the selections for
Fight or Flight Comics (My local comic book store! Raleigh, NC) "Word Balloons" discussion group. Bryan snapped this shot of me last week when we stopped by the store, and tomorrow we'll me up for the discussion group. I'll tell you all about what I think of the 3 books we're reading by reviewing them next week!
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| Finally a nice cool day with perfect coffee drinking, flannel wearing weather! Mug - Mesa Verde National Park, Flannel Shirt - Walmart, Doctor Who/Harry Potter Tee - Once Upon a Tee, Jeans - Lane Bryant, Flats - Torrid |
I really love that mug, I got it when my friend Holly and I were on a road trip and visited Mesa Verde National Park. The designs are from Mimbres tribal designs that originate from the cliff dwellers that used to live at the Mesa Verde site.
You can get a better look at it here◊, I have the one with the quail design, but they're all really lovely! I had just been studying Mimbres and other Native American pottery the semester before our trip, so I was thrilled to find a keepsake with one of the designs on it.
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| Top - Forever 21, Necklace - Forever 21, Shorts, Levis/Amazon, Flats - Torrid |
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| 9th Doctor Dress - Her Universe, Leggings Target, Boots Trendstter |
And lastly here's a peek into my bedroom. My husband was sweet enough to let me get this big shoe rack so I could store my shoes more easily. I love having them all visible and it allowed my to go through them all one final time and everything else is going to be donated or sold! I'm so glad, I was hanging on to shoes I had from 15 years ago, and shoes that didn't even fit me well. Speaking of things selling my Thred Up order was processed and if you'd like to see the items they accepted (about 1/2-2/3 of what I sent)
you can have a peek here and maybe even catch a sale if you like what you see. (Thred Up is an online consignment shop to buy and sell clothes from,
you can get $20 off your first purchase from this link if you want to check them out) I found that the good stuff goes fast, and you can hold items in your cart for up to a day (thought admins may remove them in some cases). So you can put some things in your cart that you like, do something in another window, and reload the first page of new items and find new things every 10-15 minutes. This works especially well if you shop in the evening. And since I had some credit I did buy a couple of things! I'm nervous to see how they work out, but will let you know. Let me know what you think.
Let me know what you think of this batch of Pantone colors in the comments. Anyhow, that's all for today ladies and gentlemen, thanks for stopping by, and I will see you next week!
Love,
Lydia
