A Piece of Winter in Spring

Back to Boots--Monday, 5/11/15

58 degrees F, windy, and raining means it's time to bring back the tall boots, and I'm going to use it as an excuse to wear something new that I thought I'd have to wait until autumn for.

I got inspiration from two bloggers.  Alice shows us how to wear black and blue with a cool jacket and tights.

From happinessatmidlife.com

And Katie pairs a black and blue dress with a black blazer.

From styleontarget.com

I got my dress from the Jones New York sale for $14.22.  The print reminds me of an animal print, so I call it my faux animal faux wrap dress.  Adding my VIP black moto jacket, leggings, and tall boots was a no-brainer.  I decided to mix things up with a gold necklace instead of the ubiquitous claw/tooth necklace for once.  I hoped to achieve much of the professionalism of Katie's look with some of the edge of Alice's.  I was pleased with the result.  (I'm also quite happy that the dress is knee-length so I don't have to reserve it for tights-only situations.)

*Black/blue faux animal print faux wrap dress (JNY)+
Black moto jacket (JCP)+
Black leggings (Kohls)+
Tall black boots by Fitzwell+
Gold chain necklace (Ann Taylor)

Maybe I'm an animal print crazy-person for thinking this has an animal print-esque look to it.  Is it faux zebra, maybe?  (Sorry, Matisse, it's not faux penguin.)

Data Geek Time:

I went back and recorded previous wears for my clothes/shoes/accessories for the last two years (starting April 20) based on what I documented on my blog.  I know this under-counts things, some categories more than others (jeans especially), because I have been very spotty about recording my weekend outfits, but that's OK.  I'm interested in getting my cost-per-wear down to something in the $1 range if I can, and I don't think the under-counting will hurt me if it generates a somewhat inflated cost-per-wear for some items. I'd rather over- than under-estimate the cost-per-wear.  Starting on April 20, 2015, I am recording everything I wear in my spreadsheet whether the outfit makes it on the blog or not so I'll have solid data.  (Yep, I'm sparing you from seeing my cuddle bunny shirt/jeans/bright pink puffy vest combo for the zillionth time.  You're welcome.)

One thing I'm already learning from my clothing spreadsheet is that dresses are the category with the highest cost-per-wear in my wardrobe, and this is not because I wear them all the time on the weekends without documenting them.  (Dresses are probably the category with the least-inflated cost-per-wear.)

I currently own 29 dresses.  Two of them are very recent purchases, including the black and blue dress I wore today.  One is so old and I've worn it enough times that I consider it fully depreciated (I got the cost-per-wear down to nearly $1 on a vacation several years ago alone).  So let's focus on the 26 other dresses.  5 of them I've never worn at all!  That includes 3 thrifted dresses and 2 new dresses.  14 of them I've only worn once.  Of the 21 I have worn, 14 have a cost-per-wear of over $10.  That's terrible.

Clearly I need to do a better job of wearing my dresses.  Luckily with summer on the way, this will be easier.  When it's too warm for jeans on the weekend, I switch to skirts instead of shorts.  Several of my dresses are perfect for casual weekend wear, so I just need to remember to reach for them instead of skirts every time.  That will be easy with the black and beige bunny dress because I always want to wear bunnies on the weekend.

Dresses seem like among the easiest things to wear--put on a dress and a pair of shoes and you can be done.  But I think they seem less mix-and-matchable and thus more boring than wearing separates, so I don't gravitate toward them in the closet even though I do gravitate toward them in the store.  I hope to remedy that this spring.  Spring is a good time for wearing dresses to work because I can add a jacket or cardigan (and sometimes a scarf), which can make a dress-based outfit feel less like a replay of a previous outfit.

Apartment Photo:

Black and blue made me think of this somewhat desolate shot of our balcony at the tail end of winter.  It's so astonishingly neat and so astonishingly boring without the bird feeder and birds and scattered seed and peanuts that it has now.  This weekend, we added another bird to our yard list--a female red-winged blackbird found the feeder.  When I told Robert that word is spreading among the bird population about our feeder, he said, They're tweeting it.  Hah, it makes sense that Twitter is the birds' favorite social media site.  #freefood