The cute black duck grooming itself on the lawn waddled right up to me today and appeared to take a liking to my fur vest! Well, that’s how it seemed, but of course it was just after some bread.
The fur vest in question has been in my wardrobe for a few years, and with the temperature plunging to 15 degrees, it’s once again on high rotation for layering.
Layering is the skill that Melbourne forces on you whether you want it or not. Sixteen degrees and drizzling at eight in the morning, twenty-four and glaring by two. You are not dressing for the weather here, you are dressing for four of them.
The one rule: short over long
If you remember nothing else, remember this. The layer on top should be shorter than the layer underneath.
A short fur vest over a long cardy is just one great way of layering, and it works because the hems land at different heights. Your eye gets two clear horizontal lines instead of one thick block, and two lines read as deliberate.
Get it the wrong way round (a long coat over a longer dress, or two things finishing at the same point) and you look padded rather than layered. Same clothes, same weather, completely different result.
You can also pop a fur vest over a leather or denim jacket, or for extra warmth, try a fur coat over a cardy.
Keep the volume in one place
The second rule follows from the first: if the top half is doing a lot, the bottom half does nothing.
Look at this outfit. Vest, cardigan, layered necklaces, a head-piece. There is plenty happening from the waist up. Below it, a short skirt and long boots, which is about as lean a line as you can draw.
Reverse it if you like. A full skirt with a single fitted knit on top works beautifully. What does not work is volume at both ends, which is how a genuinely good coat ends up making someone look twice their size.
Three layers is usually the number
Not two, which tends to look like you were cold and grabbed something. Not five, which is a costume.
Three gives you a base, a middle and a topper, and it means you can take one off when Melbourne changes its mind at lunchtime and still have an outfit.
Base. Thin and fitted. A long-sleeve tee, a fine knit, a shirt.
Middle. The warm one. A cardigan, a jumper, a shirt worn open.
Topper. The one with personality. The vest, the leather jacket, the fur. This is the layer people actually notice, so it is the one worth spending on.
The base layer being thin is what makes the whole thing possible. Start with something bulky and you have used your entire volume budget before you begin.
Layering when it is not actually cold
The half of layering nobody teaches is doing it at eighteen degrees, which around here is most of the year.
The trick is that a layer does not have to be warm. It only has to add a line. A shirt worn open over a tee, a waistcoat, a long thin cardigan you never do up, none of those will keep you warm, and all of them turn two pieces into a considered outfit.
Three that work in mild weather:
The open shirt. An oversized denim or cotton shirt over a fitted tee. Sleeves rolled. This is the most useful mild-weather layer there is and almost everybody already owns one.
The long line. Anything that hangs open in a straight vertical line: a duster, a long cardigan, a kimono. Vertical lines lengthen you, which is why this works on every shape.
The vest. As above. Warm enough to matter, cool enough to survive the tram.
The test is simple: if you can take the top layer off and still have a complete outfit underneath, you have layered properly. If you are left standing there in your underlayer feeling exposed, you have just worn a coat.
Boots and skirts, and getting the gap right
Long boots look great with a short skirt. The longer the boots the better! I’ve been a fan of over-the-knee boots for years.
Another hot look being embraced by fashion mavens is a midi skirt teamed with long boots. That one is trickier than it looks, and it comes down to the gap.
If the skirt hem and the boot top nearly touch, leaving a couple of centimetres of leg showing, it chops you off at the widest part of your calf and makes everybody look shorter. Either overlap them properly, so the skirt covers the boot top, or leave a decent stretch of leg between the two. The in-between is the only version that fails.
With opaque tights the whole problem disappears, since your leg reads as one continuous colour from hem to boot.
Layer the jewellery too
The 70’s boho chic look is gaining momentum, so don’t be afraid to embrace necklace and neckpiece layering. I threw on the diamante head-piece for good measure.
Necklaces layer on the same principle as clothes: different lengths, or it looks like a mistake. Three chains all finishing at the collarbone tangle into one lump. A choker, a mid-length and a long pendant read as three separate things.
Mix your metals while you are at it. The matched set is what dates an outfit, not the mixing.
(From 2015, and that fur vest is still going. Some things earn their place.)
If layering is the bit you find fiddly, it is one of the things I work on most in a styling session, usually by pulling three things you already own into a combination you had not tried.
Hope you all have a fab weekend!