I promised you a look at the snakeskin-print Sportsgirl jeans I scored for $5 and here they are!
Mum and I took off for a coffee at a cafe nestled inside a lovely garden nursery. Normally our shopping and coffee sojourns are a male free zone, but my little fella joined us.
Printed jeans: everything else goes quiet
Printed jeans have a bad reputation and it is entirely earned, because most people wear them wrong.
The mistake is treating them as jeans. They are not jeans, they are a statement piece that happens to be shaped like jeans, and they need the same treatment you would give a sequinned top or a bright coat. Once you think of them that way, the rules are obvious.
Nothing else on your bottom half competes. No patterned shoes, no contrasting belt doing anything clever.
One plain top. Solid colour, simple shape.
The print stays small and dark. A subtle snakeskin in black and grey behaves almost like a textured black jean. A large, high-contrast print does not, and that is where costume territory begins.
The thing that makes this particular pair work is that from three metres away they read as dark trousers with an interesting texture. Up close you see the snakeskin. That is exactly the right amount of print, a detail rather than an announcement.
If you are buying printed jeans, squint at them in the mirror. Whatever you can still see when everything blurs is what people will actually notice.
Layering lace, without looking like a doily
It was a bit cloudy and cool so I layered up with a Valleygirl lace singlet, I’m loving the sheer peplum, and popped a floral lace singlet underneath.
Lace over lace could easily have been a disaster. The reason it is not is that the two pieces are doing different jobs: one is sheer and structured with the peplum, the other is solid and sits flat underneath. Different weights, different roles.
Two lace pieces of the same weight, worn together, just look like you could not decide. The one underneath has to be plainer than the one on top, every time.
A sheer peplum is also a genuinely useful shape, and an underrated one. It flares at exactly the point where a straight top would cling, so it skims the tummy without adding bulk, and being sheer, it does not read as a big structural thing the way a solid peplum can.
Neon works better than you would think
A big hit of pink neon, in the form of this jacket, brought me back to summer.
Neon has a reputation as being difficult and for most people it simply is not, provided you follow one rule: keep it away from your face unless you know it suits you.
Neon pink next to the skin can drain some complexions completely. Worn on the body (a jacket, a bag, a shoe, a piece of jewellery) it does the opposite, giving the whole outfit a lift without doing anything to your colouring at all.
That is why a neon jacket over a neutral top is a much easier proposition than a neon top. And it is why the neon in this outfit is on the jacket and in a necklace sitting away from the face rather than in a scarf against it.
Against dark, textured jeans, one bright is exactly enough. Two would be a fluorescent tangle.
This Lovisa neon green and pink neckpiece livens things up a bit more.
Dig the gold and silver embellishment on these SM New York sandals.
Mixing gold and silver, on purpose
There is gold and silver on the same shoe here, and gold and silver going on elsewhere in the outfit, and that is not an accident.
The matched metal set is one of the things that most reliably dates an outfit. Everything gold, or everything silver, reads as a decision made in about 1994.
Mixed metals look modern, and they are far more practical, because you stop having to sort your jewellery into two camps that can never meet. If you are nervous about it, start with one piece that contains both, a two-tone watch, a cuff, a shoe exactly like this one. Having both metals together in a single object gives your eye permission, and everything else in the outfit falls into line behind it.
When to wear a print you love and when to leave it
The honest limit on printed jeans is not fashion, it is context.
They are wonderful for a coffee, a nursery, a weekend, a party. They are a poor choice for anything where you want to be taken seriously without being noticed first, because a print will always arrive in the room before you do.
That is not a reason to avoid them. It is a reason to be clear-eyed about what they are for. My rule is that anything with a print on the bottom half is weekend clothing, and anything with a print on the top half can go anywhere, because a printed top is read as a blouse while printed trousers are read as a decision.
If you own one printed piece and want it to work harder, put it above the waist rather than below it.
The holidays are winding up but I’m just kicking back as long as I can. Don’t tell the nurseryman. My little guy picked me a flower. How gorgeous is that? Both the boys do that for me. I’ve got them in training for their future wives.
This is a close-up look at the snakeskin pattern on these jeans.
(From early 2013. Those $5 Sportsgirl jeans were a one-off, though print jeans have come back around several times since.)
If there is a bold piece in your wardrobe you bought and have never quite dared wear, working out what goes with it is one of the more satisfying parts of a styling session.
And now you’re Looking Good Girls.
“The words of a man’s mouth are deep waters, a flowing river, a fountain of widsom.” Proverbs 18:4.