I was planning to wait for spring to wear these leather shorts … but I couldn’t help myself!
I decided to follow in Miranda Kerr’s glamorous footsteps and winterise them for Mum’s birthday celebration lunch today.
I slipped into fashionista daredevil mode but tempered the look with my favourite red Very Very coat.
Winterising shorts, properly
Shorts in July sounds mad and it is not, provided you do the whole thing rather than half of it. Half-winterised shorts look like someone who got dressed in the wrong month. Fully winterised shorts look deliberate.
Four things have to happen, and they all have to happen together.
Opaque tights, not sheer. This is the difference between an outfit and a mistake. Sheer tights read as summer legs with something over them. Opaque tights turn your legs into a solid dark column, and the shorts start behaving like the bottom half of a suit.
Cover the leg below. Boots, ankle boots, or enclosed heels. Bare ankles undo everything the tights just did.
Add weight up top. A coat, a heavy knit, a leather jacket. Summer shorts with a summer top is just summer. The shorts need something substantial above them to belong to the season.
Keep the leg covered in between. Which is really about length, see below.
Do all four and nobody reads it as shorts at all. They read it as an outfit with a very short skirt, which is entirely normal in winter.
Leather is the fabric that makes it work
The material matters more than people expect here. Leather, wool, tweed and heavy denim all winterise beautifully. Cotton, linen and anything floaty do not, no matter what you put with them.
The reason is simply that your eye reads fabric weight as a season. A heavy fabric belongs to winter regardless of what shape it has been cut into. That is why leather shorts work in July and the identical shape in cotton would look ridiculous.
If you are buying a pair to wear year-round, leather is the one to get. It is also the pair that will still be in your wardrobe in ten years, which cotton shorts will not be.
On length: mid-thigh is the sweet spot for winter. Very short shorts fight the tights, because there is not enough shorts to establish the shape. A slightly longer, tailored short reads almost as a skirt once tights are underneath.
The coat does the tempering
A leather jacket like this luscious Hunt No More number is perfect for a birthday lunch and can be worn with anything. If you’re thinking about what to wear out this weekend, consider throwing one on with jeans, any style of skirt, or even over a dress. Winterise with pantyhose and boots or enclosed heels.
The red coat is doing something specific though, and it is worth naming. Leather shorts are a slightly daring item. A bright, structured coat over the top is what stops the outfit reading as trying, because the coat is the first thing anybody sees and a red coat is cheerful rather than edgy.
That is a useful trick generally. If you love a piece but feel self-conscious in it, put something warm and friendly over the top. The brave item becomes a detail rather than the headline.
I adore details on clothes like the embellished cuff on these shorts.
Which is the other reason to spend on shorts rather than treat them as an afterthought. Detailing at the hem, a good cuff, well-placed pockets, on a garment this small, the details are most of what anyone sees.
Dressing for a family lunch
Enjoyed a very tasty calamari salad and the company of my beautiful family at Sofia’s beach-front restaurant. The fact that Mum is such a blessing is not lost on any of us. She’s so loving, generous, fun, and a true trendsetter.
A family birthday lunch is one of the trickier things to dress for, actually. Too casual and it looks like you did not think it mattered; too done and you are the person who overdid it at a lunch.
The formula that works is one interesting piece and everything else easy. Here that is the shorts, with a coat, tights and boots that would be unremarkable on any winter day. You look like you made an effort, without looking like you made a production of it.
The paparazzi were hot on my tail! Truth be told, that’s actually my Dad (who shouted us all lunch) armed with one of his big daddies (camera).
Once our soiree was over, he whisked Mum off for some birthday shopping. He’d already given her a black handbag with gold studs and chain handles, which happened to match the studded-leather jacket I bought her. Ah, there’s nothing like being spoilt!
(From July 2013. If you want the warm-weather version of the same shorts, it is in leather shorts, a steal for summer.)
If you have summer pieces sitting idle for half the year, working out how to carry them through winter is one of the quickest ways to make a wardrobe feel twice the size, and it is a large part of what a wardrobe edit does.
And now you’re Looking Good Girls.
“The Lord will make you the head and not the tail; you will only move upward and never downward if you listen to the Lord your God’s commands I am giving you today and are careful to follow them,” Deuteronomy 28: 13.