Short skirts, where art thou

Forgotten silhouettes and tiger tights, oh my!

Welcome to the Sunday newsletter.

An every seven days curation of touch sight taste and sound in relation to fashion and beyond. An accountability marker to maintain the never-ending curation of style, and to stay in contact with the senses through fabulous things.

I’m writing to you from New York this week, sitting in the sunshine in my favorite park in Brooklyn. It’s 82 degrees in October, and I think I might be the happiest girl in Greenpoint. The past week has been a whirlwind of last-minute purchases, packing frenzies, and outfit formulas documented in preparation for my month-long departure. I hope you enjoy this last letter stuffed with Copenhagen content, because for the next four weeks, it’s New York or nowhere, baby.

Light Bites of the Week

Stockings delivery

These purple pair of tights have my panties in an existential twist

There is nothing more soul-crushing than when the fashion vision you had in your head shatters at the first attempt to bring it to life, and you find yourself staring in the mirror with both horror and disappointment. While the skirt-tight-shoe combo photographs fine enough sitting down, it didn’t quite come to life the way I had hoped. So, in a toddler-like rage of disappointment, I tossed them to the side and moved on to the tiger tights, whose neutral palette proved to be much more forgiving.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I purchase something, it’s imperative that I spend 30 minutes styling it upon its entry into the wardrobe. As a sort of initiation ritual, it helps me visualize wearing it beyond the obvious styling choices and keeps the item at the front of my mind when getting dressed.

I packed both pairs in my suitcase to New York. Though the purple tights have yet to be cracked, a big ole styling session is coming for them very soon.

Short skirts

Something I always love to keep track of is my fluctuating inclination toward certain styles. One day, I’ll wake up and only want to wear knee-length skirts for six months. Then I wake up again, and decide it’s maxi skirts from here on out. Whenever I notice that first pang of disinterest in a piece I previously considered a staple, I have to have a little giggle with myself. Right when I think I’ve got my style by the nape of its neck, it shape-shifts into silk and slips right between my fingers. There is something so karmically hilarious about never being satisfied.

My most recent shift in interest has turned to mini skirts. You know what they say: when the economy goes low, wear your skirts high.

Actually no one has ever said that. In fact, historically it’s the opposite. But whenever I’m personally in a state of disarray, I like to wear something semi-obscene and have a nice evening out with friends—and that’s a philosophy I see coming into fruition before my very eyes.

This may also be a desperate attempt to style the purple tights, but I have a vision: a powdery blue 1990s silk mini skirt, paired with the tights and some strappy little heels. Maybe a light sweater on top. I also realized how long it’s been since I’ve indulged in a classic black A-line mini skirt casually. I tend to put clothing in a box—this style is only meant for this time of day, and these fabrics can only be paired with their opposites, that kind of thing. Currently skirts are synonymous with night. Sometimes these boxes get suffocating, and on the rare occasion I remember I have free will, I like to step outside of them and indulge.

I’ll keep my eyes peeled at the vintage shops this week to see if anything strikes my fancy, but just know, a very short renaissance is coming.

Leisure clothing

I’m currently working on writing a piece about the reimagining of what we consider to be “athleisure.” I’ve been thinking a lot about the clothing that can only be described as our liminal wardrobe—the clothes we wear for all of the in-between moments. The ones that stealthily become our most-worn pieces, yet are often not considered in our journey toward personal style.

For example, Nina and I often find ourselves having tea at the docks in the morning before work. We cozy up on the wooden planks with our mugs from home, watching the water and discussing the upcoming day. We aren’t particularly going anywhere, and yet, I still want to feel put-together and intentional, even if it’s just to hold her by the water for a little while.

It’s plans like these—walking to get a coffee, grabbing groceries, meeting a friend downstairs to exchange baked goods—that make up about 40% of my weekly outfits, and yet I never know what to wear for them. My natural inclination is to grab a pair of jeans, whatever sweatshirt has the least amount of stains, and get my ass out the door.

But what if I had a separate little portion of the wardrobe, a few outfit ideas at the ready, for those in-between moments? Not a matching Lululemon set, not sweats, and definitely not something impractical either.

I flew in wearing a brown sweat set, hat, and loafers, and I couldn’t help but think how much my airport style could use a little pizazz, a little personal flair. Going forward, I’ll definitely be paying more attention to what I reach for in the in-between, and curating ways to make those tiny moments of getting dressed just a little more special.

V-necks

Another shape I had been disinterested in until recently is the v-neck, particularly this v-neck sweater I purchased from Athleta three years ago-

It’s the perfect slouchy, oversized cotton sweater, which I’ve recently come to realize is my favorite kind of sweater. I don’t want to go on a tangent, but 100% cotton sweaters are possibly the most underrated sweater type in the fashion universe. Fleece pills, wool takes two business days of handwashing to clean, cashmere gets complicated (and expensive), and there’s not enough cosmic brownies in the world you could bribe me with to cough up the $50 chain stores are asking for their acrylic-polyester blends.

So cotton, for me, is the very best. I also find it easier to mold into multiple different layering techniques, something thicker sweaters can’t really do. Which leads me to my point: this v-neck cotton sweater has become a layering secret weapon. Anything I throw it over creates a more personal, textured outfit that looks ten times more thought-out than it actually was.

A few days after this realization, I found a white Ganni v-neck tee for $9 at the flea market and was inspired to give it a whirl. Worried it might lean a little too Seventeen Magazine circa 2010, I took it home and was pleasantly surprised. The exposed clavicles and droopy, almost sheer fabric created a lovely character, and it was promptly thrown into my checked bag to take to New York.

Outfits of the week you may have missed

Style exercise of the week

For this week’s style exercise, I want you to focus on patterns. What subconscious choices are you making, ones you might not even be aware of, that are forming the perception of you and your style?

Spend the next week documenting your outfits. It doesn’t have to be much! Just a quick mirror selfie saved to an album, and a sentence or two about how the outfit made you feel.

After seven days of tracking what you actually wear in real life, take a moment to identify your most common colors, textures, and shapes. What do you keep gravitating toward?

Then ask yourself, do I like these styling choices? Are they reflective of, or guiding me toward, the personal style I have envisioned for myself? Or, do these outfits feel like they’re going in the completely wrong direction?

Take note of your answers, and we’ll talk about what to do with them next Sunday.

Vintage and unique finds of the week

You can shop these an more here

That’s all for this week! The fashion focus has been a bit scattered as I prepared for my trip but I’ll be settled and back next week with all the October inspiration I can muster.

See ya next Sunday!