Two Sides of a Sartorial Coin

Well Suited--Thursday, 5/28/15

It doesn't get much easier or more basic than this--a striped sweater and a black pencil skirt.  (Let's not even acknowledge those shoes, OK?  The peep toe is a travesty.)

From StyleUp

A great opportunity for me to wear my new striped sweater and black pencil skirt.

Sometimes I sigh at the number of black skirts (relative to other colors) available at Goodwill, but that's just because I've already amassed (emphasis on mass) a nice selection of them.  For example, this Calvin Klein suiting pencil skirt, which I picked up for about $5, sells for $70-$80 new.  Now, if you need a full suit, then buying your pieces new, at the same time, from the same suiting line, etc., totally makes sense.  But if you want to wear the suiting separates, well, separately--the thrift store is a good way to go.

*White/light blue/orange striped pullover sweater (JNY), $7.02/wear
*Black suiting pencil skirt (thrifted, Calvin Klein), $5.00/wear
Gold flats (Nordstrom), $5.00/wear
Aqua drop necklace (JNY), $2.27/wear

I liked how this combination turned out, but I decided to also wear a jacket into work just in case it felt cool (and I wore it almost all day, so good call).  I guess the flip side to my argument about separates above is this--when you buy two pieces from the same company in the same line in the same season, they tend to coordinate really well with each other, like this sweater and jacket from this spring's JNY collection.  I don't ever shop like this on purpose (in fact, I didn't really realize how much this is a thing until I looked at the various coordinating pieces I got at the mega JNY sale), but I admit, it is very nice to have things that work together so easily.

Light blue color block zipper jacket (JNY), $11.13/wear

Wearing this outfit with my faux patent leather gold flats was fun and practical.

"Fun and practical" is also a pretty good description of this colorful lamp in my office.  (The air filter unit on the floor is straight-up practical...indispensable, really.)  As for the "SILLY HUMAN!" wall art, that's a birthday card from Robert and the bunnies that I liked so much that I framed it to keep forever.  It is good for the soul to be reminded of my silly human status on a daily basis.

In other news....I enjoyed this article in The Atlantic about how older women (like Hilary Clinton) can possibly use their older "grandmother" status to help them do something that men do regularly and women achieve rarely and with great difficulty--seem both competent and likeable in the workplace.

This is a stand-out paragraph for me; I have a continuing interest in the idea that discriminatory practices aren't just harmful when they're biased against one group but when they're biased in favor of another group:

Then consider Presidents Clinton and Obama, both elected while in their 40s. For all our progress, it’s still hard to imagine a 40-something woman being swept into the White House, like Obama, based on a brief tenure in a state legislature, a few years in the U.S. Senate, a great speech, and a liberal sprinkling of audacity and hope. And yet, the argument could be made that both Clinton and Obama were promoted before they were seasoned, and might have been greater presidents had they been obliged to warm the bench for as long as, say, Yellen did. Perhaps the real tragedy is not that women aren’t promoted on potential; it’s that men aren’t forced to wait until they have performed. “Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?” asked a 2013 post for the Harvard Business Review’s Web site; the author, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a professor of business psychology at University College London and Columbia, concluded that a key leadership problem afflicting American companies is the “lack of career obstacles for incompetent men.”

I am loving the idea of being on a task force charged with creating such obstacles.