'Colour is my day long obsession, joy and torment.'
Claude Monet.
This may seem a fashion anomaly, but i love colour, even though i mostly wear neutrals. I suppose that is the case for most girls, wishing they could be Margherita Missoni but only managing to get as far as Mary-Kate Olsen. Some say it's all about playing it safe, and while there is a degree of safety associated with blacks, whites, browns and greys, it is not wholly about being boring and normal. For me it is that i genuinely appreciate the way blacks and greys and browns look together, dark and sinuous like a cup of coffee. I do have a lot of coloured clothes, which i have been wearing more and more recently, but it is always a pleasure to reach happily for my neutral basics and slip comfortably into something classicly chic.
Simple and banal as it might sound, colour requires more effort. And when you're ineherently apathetic like me, and have so much work you think you're going to drown in it, it just becomes a lot easier to dress without having to think about whether or not this colour goes with that.
But, as i was thinking today after handing in a slew of assignments and for the first time in a while feeling a little free from the shackles of the syllabus, should this necessarily be the case? We are constantly told by parents, magazines, fashion forecasters and department stores that certain colours just don't GO with each other, and that you should never wear pink and orange, blue and green should never be seen, that colour on colour is often too much, that you should never wear different shades of the one colour all together.
It strikes me as fairly stock standard to say that perhaps we shouldn't follow fashion's rules, i highly doubt anyone with their own blog is a slave to the fash pack, but i think this is an extreme case of breaking out from their advice. And i know it must seem bizarre to receive this advice from somewhat who, admittedly, doesn't wear that much colour herself (although i am trying to integrated more and more into my wardrobe, as can be seen from recent pics)... But i think that colour on colour, and in particular the different shades of colour all together, can be a striking, vivacious and exuberant look, perfect for capturing that summer effervescence and even better for lightening the mood of the dreary, windy winter we in Australia are plunging headforth into.
Not content to just tell you, i want to show you. But lacking the amount of colour necessary to make this idea work within my wardrobe, i have turned to polyvore, and fabulous future me. So if you don't believe me, believe her. She does work for Vogue and goes out with a fabulous actor hottie.
Do it for the clothes!
Monday: YELLOW SUBMARINE
'look at the stars, look how they shine for you, and everything you do, yeah they were all yellow.'
Coldplay, Yellow
lanvin bag, oscar de la renta shoes, philip lim top, vera wang skirt, missoni duster coat.
You don't like Mondays, and it has nothing to do with Bob sodding Geldof and the Boomtown Rats. It's to do with all that residual anti-establishment fervour still infecting you from your anarchic punk-rock teen years. You hate the constrictions of the working week, and strongly believe in the way they do things in spain, frequent fiestas and malleable working hours. Usually, in your early monday morning stupor you would throw on as much murky grey and charcoal you could find and stumble into work, grumbling about how terrible your life is. But today you feel you need a pick me up of the sartorial kind. On goes every single shade of yellow you can find in your wardrobe, from goldy hues to flaxen shades, bright lemon yellow and then veering softly into a pastel and khaki. As you stride into work, confident grin on your face, you stop the fashion assistants in their tracks, some of them squinting to see who would wear such a colourful monstrosity on a monday. Maybe it is a little bright, but then, so are you.
Tuesday: PALE BLUE EYES
'linger on your pale blue eyes...'
preen coat, vivienne westwood shoes, richard nicoll shirt dress, dries van noten skirt, dries van noten overshirt, ysl muse bag.
The brightness of monday always fades away once you reach tuesday. You always seem to have more work on a tuesday, more things to do, less time for yourself. And you're not saddened by it, and you are definitely not frantic like a frenzied orange. You are, instead, intensely and unashamedly collected. Calm. Cool. And when you dress in the morning it's with the lyrics to 'pale blue eyes' by the velvet underground in your head, a quietly melancholy song, soft and dainty, and very very dignified. As you pile on your dries and richard nicoll and preen in the palest of the palest shades of pastels that is exactly how you feel. A little bit blue.
Wednesday: PURPLE HAZE
'purple haze all over my brain... whatever it is that girl put a spell on me.'
Marc Jacobs, Dries Van Noten, luella skirt, mulberry bag, marni shoes.
You waltz around London on a wednesday in a purple haze. Historically a colour of royalty due to the exorbitant expense of the dye, today it signifies a kind of youthful playfulness in its palest lilac shades and conversely a sombre and mature sophistication in its deep wine coloured hues. Purple is an equivocation within fashion, and boy don't you love it all the more for it. And you can't decide whether you're being the effervescent youth in your luella purple mini, or clever and oh-so-cool fashion features writer in your sky high purple marni platforms. All you know is that you're having fun. As you laugh at the top of your lungs people look your way, and are instantly charmed. Such is the power of purple.
Thursday: PRETTY IN PINK
'isn't she pretty in pink?'
Jil Sander coat, Richard Nicoll dress, Jimmy Choo bag, Fendi shoes.
You feel weird, at first, bringing a beach bag to an evening party, but you were determined to dress entirely in hot pink, this is a benefit for breast cancer research after all. When you arrive you see a sea of sombre suits, all with a pink ribbon pinned to the front. You wonder whether your brand of support, read: head to toe pink, pretty as can be, is too much. But the women gather around you, complimenting you on your fashion cred and style savvy, and later on that night you win best dressed, a prize rewarding you for your daring with a weekend getaway in Scotland. Fabulous. Life really is much better in colour.
Friday: GREEN WITH ENVY
'Mother Nature is calling to you, so put on your green shoes.'
Burberry Prorsum trench, Marni dress, Marni bag, Dries Van Noten shoes.
Green is a very tricky colour for you. On paper it should work, you have the right kind of colouring, the dark hair, the piercing eyes, but whenever you put something green on you look weird. Like a vegetable. And not a lithe, spindly asparagus either, but a stumpy, frumpy broccoli. So you duly avoid green at all costs. However recently you have been aquiring all sorts of green clothes, in particular this Burberry trench made from netting and embroidered unbelievably with raffia flowers. You had to have it, and you have to wear it to the garden party of your photographer friend. What then blooms, pun intended, is a search to find the perfect accompanying outfit. When you emerge from your wardrobe in head to toe green, albeit with shots of brown in your DVN shoes, you marvel at how you went from hating green to loving it all in one day. But, you do look good. And you were playing Cyndi Lauper while you were getting changed, and you couldn't get the refrain out of your head... 'put on your green shoes...'
So, go forth, faithful readers, and colour!
X
You have read this article colour /
fashion /
inspiration /
polyvore /
style
with the title colour me happy. You can bookmark this page URL https://startthefire-cafagesta.blogspot.com/2009/04/colour-me-happy.html. Thanks!
