Modern

This top was a birthday gift from my sister, and I really love its modern shape. It's quite unlike anything else in my closet, so I was surprised at how easy it was to style. It looks great without an over-layer as well, but the day was just too chilly to go sleeveless.

Wearing this outfit gave me an excuse to pull out these new boots again, which worked perfectly with the ponte knit pants. I'm very happy to see more moderate heel heights creeping back into the stores, because for awhile there all the cute styles came with towering  height. As much as I love a tall heel, it really isn't very practical for most days in downtown SF. Between the potholes, the cable car tracks, and the uneven pavement, walking in the city can be a hazard even in relatively low heels. These boots have proven to be both comfortable and stable when I'm dashing from the bus to the office, or going out to grab lunch.

Top: MM Couture
Cardigan: Max Studio
Pants: Club Monaco
Boots: See by Chloe

Mushroom

This long cardigan is fun to wear when it's windy, since it's lightweight and blows around like a cape. The top is one that I bought before my last trip to France. It's tissue thin and was great by itself for the hot days in Aix-en-Provence, but it needs to be layered up for most days here. Now that we're into the heart of summer we're getting a lot of the cold, foggy days that San Francisco is known for, which means layers and boots.

The top is sort of a mushroom color, which frankly isn't very flattering to my skin tone, but pairing it with the cream-colored cardigan and accenting it with black brought in the necessary contrast to make it work.

Top: LA Made
Cardigan: Twelfth Street Cynthia Vincent
Pants: Club Monaco
Boots: Brako
Necklace: Metal Pointu
Bag: Boktier

Intentional Black

A long ago post of Sal's discussed being intentional with black, and that's what I thought of when I put together this outfit. Here I'm using it as a high contrast accent, letting it appear in small swatches but repeating it so that it doesn't look like I simply didn't have other items to choose from. In this outfit none of the clothing had any black in it but I really wanted to wear the sandals, so I chose a small coordinating handbag and necklace so that no single piece created a large expanse of black and yet they all worked together. Throwing in the brass and crystal bracelet kept the whole thing from being overly matchy.

Dress: Thrifted
Cardigan: Max Studio
Sandals: Michael Kors
Bag: Zadig & Voltaire
Bracelet: Leslie Danzis

Executive

It's been so long since I took this photo that by now the blue color has completely washed out of my hair. It fades out after only about a week, and since I'm not taking photos every day anymore I only caught a few outfits where you could still see it.

This was an outfit for a presentation I had to give in front of our executive team. I wanted something that looked polished but not too business-formal, since hardly anyone in our office ever dresses that way, even the executives.

Dress: All Saints
Cardigan: Anthropologie
Belt: a gift from mom
Bag: Coccinelle
Tights: Hue
Shoes: Calvin Klein

Free Days

What a couple of weeks it's been. Last week (I think it was last week, anyway) I had a last-minute work trip that took me out to the east coast, and this week I've been scrambling around trying to get everything caught up before I head off to France again. What's great is that I was able to stop in Manhattan just long enough to meet someone I'd long wanted to meet in person, Ally of Shybiker. What a delight! Ally is every bit as thoughtful, articulate, and interesting as you'd expect, and we chatted for hours over dinner about an incredible array of topics. I even coaxed a bit of the lawyer side out while discussing the constitutional aspects of the current battle for marriage equality, and how the Supreme Court has become increasingly politicized in recent years. I do so love a lively and intelligent conversationalist, and Ally really delivers.

As I mentioned, I'm off to France again for work on Saturday, and this time rather than spending my free days in Paris I'm heading to Aix-en-Provence. I was completely inspired after meeting up with Deja Pseu the last time I was in France, and this time of year should be just perfect weather-wise. I only have about 3 days there, but who can argue with 3 free days in Aix-en-Provence?

Cardigan: Cynthia Vincent
Top: Asos
Skirt: Anthropologie
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Shoes: Cydwoq
Bag: Boktier

Shaping

This sweater is probably at least 10 years old, and even though I don't wear it so much anymore, I still love it. Mostly I don't wear it because it's just scratchy enough to require an under layer, and it rarely gets cold enough here for that. In fact the day I wore this it wasn't quite cold enough, and I ended up carrying my jacket so as not to be too warm.

I wanted the shaping to be the main focus of this outfit, since both the sweater and the skirt really hug my curves. To that end I kept my jewelry simple and highlighted my hips by wearing the low slung belt. Hidden under the skirt were leggings for warmth, and my super comfy pair of Romika boots. Between those and the stretchy skirt it felt like I spent the day in my pj's.

Sweater: La Redoute
Belt: thrifted
Skirt: Anthropologie
Boots: Romika

Mod

Yep, I'm totally in love with this little mod dress. There aren't many vastly different variations I can create with it because I think with a dress like this it's better to let it be the star of the outfit. I really like the look of it over solid legwear, which plays up the contrast in the blocks of color. Here, I let the cardigan's straight lines mirror those in the dress and avoided adding any other pattern to the mix. In warmer weather I can see this dress looking great with bare legs and sandals.

This week has had all sorts of excitement, with the Edwardian Ball on Saturday and a couple of Noir City shows during the week, including tonight. Next week I'll share some of the outfits from these events.

Dress: Promod
Cardigan: Max Studio
Pants: Club Monaco
Boots: Ecco



I'll leave you with this pretty photo I shot from our patio a couple weeks ago. We've had a gloriously warm and sunny winter (though sadly, that means we're probably in for a horrible drought this summer), and this was one of those gorgeous, clear nights with a big bright moon.

Quick Conversion

One thing I've noticed since I've been walking to work is that I'm wearing pants a lot more often, I think because they feel less fussy -- there's no slip to deal with, or a skirt that's clinging to my tights, or blowing in the wind, or whatever. There have been a couple of times where I've changed my entire outfit once I got to work, but that involves a lot more hauling of stuff than I'm willing to do most days (especially since I often also walk home and thus have to haul everything for 6 miles). So my goal is generally to build an outfit where I can wear it mostly in its finished state, and change or add one or two things once I get to the office. Don't worry, I'm still looking for ways to make my skirt and dress-based outfits easy to wear for the walks, and I'll happily share any new tricks I hit upon.

This is an example of just the sort of quick-conversion outfit I'm after. I wore my Bastien short boots for the walk, and carried the tall boots as well as the white cardigan in my backpack. Then when I got to work it was quick and easy to convert the outfit for the work day.

Next week I'll be traveling to Germany and France on business (I know, I know -- what a sacrifice, right?), so I'm definitely going to be putting some of these new tactics to work for my travel outfits. In fact I think a couple of the pieces in this outfit will be making the trip with me. I'm going first to Dusseldorf and Strasbourg, and then spending the weekend in Paris before coming home. Dusseldorf and Strasbourg are for work, but the Paris weekend is all mine. Good thing I haven't started my Christmas shopping yet!

Tunic: All Saints
Knit pants: Club Monaco
Cardigan: 12th Street Cynthia Vincent
Boots: Modern Vintage
Necklace: Wendy Brandes

Office Girl

I was happy to pull out these under-worn shoes and give them a spin; they have sort of an early 60's office girl vibe that I thought played well with the vintage-styled dress. In order to add a little color and contrast to the outfit, I used the colorful patterned scarf as a belt.

I'm hoping to finish the second installment of my San Francisco Travel Guide very soon, but as you might imagine my time and energy has been limited lately. It's coming soon though, I promise!


Dress: Red Dress Shoppe
Cardigan: Max Studio
Scarf (worn as belt): vintage
Tights: Hue
Shoes: Tsubo (a gift from Sal)

Sneaky

I'm completely in love with this skirt, especially with the weather being as shitty as it's been lately. The swirl and movement of the skirt gives it a breezy look, especially when combined with this gauzy, cape-like cardigan, but its length sneakily hid a couple of extra warmth-providing layers. First there was a pair of cotton leggings which served to keep my legs warm, and over those was a full length slip to keep the leggings from sticking to the skirt, and also to add extra insulation. It doesn't really come through in these photos, but the outfit really did have a lightweight and summery feel even though it kept me toasty.

I'm also clearly smitten with the scarf, and love the way it adds an edgy touch to even a soft, floaty outfit like this one.

Thankfully this was the last day before I got my hair cut; my hairdresser had been away on vacation and I simply couldn't bring myself to go to anyone else for a touch-up. In the meantime my gray-streaked roots had grown out to a shameful degree, and my hair had gotten to an unruly length that required a great deal of wrangling in the morning. For some reason I don't mind putting a lot of time into my makeup, but I hate spending a lot of time on my hair. The new 'do will make its debut next week!

Top: Ann Taylor
Skirt: Anthropologie
Scarf: Alexander McQueen
Cardigan: Twelfth Street Cynthia Vincent
Shoes: Fly London

Downtown (things will be great when you're downtown)

I recently attended two back-to-back scientific conferences in San Francisco, which was such a treat. Conference #1 was on a Thursday and Friday and Conference #2 was the following Monday - Wednesday; 5 straight business days of getting to live my dream of essentially never leaving the city limits except for personal reasons such as travel or visiting friends. Why would I ever want to leave when everything I need is right here? Everything's waiting for me!

The last time I got to live and work in San Francisco was in 1992; I worked at a photo lab downtown, and although my bosses were two of the most horrible people I've ever had the misfortune to meet, I still got a thrill every day out of taking the subway downtown and being in the midst of city life. I always thought it would be cool to be one of those well-dressed professional women, with their blazers and heels and stylish handbags, because obviously, working with chemicals in a photo lab didn't really lend itself to wearing nice clothes. When I attend conferences in town, I feel like I've finally become one of those women.

This All Saints dress was just the perfect thing to wear to a conference, because it has many of the interesting details that are key elements of my style, while still offering a tailored and elegant look.  Conferences are great opportunities for networking, so I generally dress a little more professionally for them than I do for my usual kooky office looks. For what purpose I might wish to network at an industry conference I'll leave it to you to guess. Shhh... just don't tell my boss.


Dress: All Saints
Blazer: Promod (Prague)
Belt: Red Dress Shoppe
Necklace: Wendy Brandes
Tights: Hue
Shoes: Bettye Muller
Bag: Coccinelle

Progress

This is the sort of outfit I envisioned when I bought this big cocoon-cardigan, because even the warmest days in SF are rarely warm enough for a dress like this all on its own. The cardigan is a tissue-thin slub knit fabric, which is great for adding just a tiny amount of warmth without being too heavy. On a breezy day it also flies out behind me like a cape; perfect for those times when I need to pretend I'm a superhero. What would my super power be, you might ask? I would be the Translator, able to speak any language fluently so that I could show up to help hapless travelers who are trying to find their way or just get to a bathroom. That's way more useful than having x-ray vision any day.

I also thought I'd include a wider angle shot of this corner of the house, because I finally got this window ledge looking the way I want it to, after many unsuccessful attempts at decorating it. Not only that, but I finally got Mark to move the half-assembled fountain that's been sitting in the corner for nearly a year -- which is now sitting, half assembled, where the vase used to be. It's slow progress, but at least it's progress.

Dress: Tracy Reese
Cardigan: 12th Street by Cynthia Vincent
Shoes: Camper

In Full Swing

Over the weekend I put together a few days' worth of outfits and recruited Mark to take some photos outside, just to mix things up a little. As you can see, spring is in full swing according to most of the plants, although the bougainvillea seems to disagree; it's half-heartedly putting forth a few small leaves, but seems content to hibernate a little longer until it warms up. I can't really say that I blame it.

For this outfit I kept it springy with the pale pink and off-white skirts, even though with all the layering it was designed with cool weather in mind. It was also the perfect vehicle for this fab new harness that Mark made. Actually I 'ordered' it from him; he had this very pretty caramel-colored, smooth leather in his stash and I thought it would look great for spring and summer in a lightweight harness style. This harness is the basic "Jane Doe" style, with straps that are thinner than the original. This strikes me as being a great option if you've been wanting to try out the harness trend, but don't want to look too edgy or bondage-y. The color reminds me of some of the leather accessories seen in Lanvin's SS11 RTW line.

Tank Top, pink skirt: Anthropologie
Jacket: French Kiss, thrifted
Harness: Audra Jean
Tulle skirt: Noa Noa
Tights: Hue
Shoes: John Fluevog

Layered Cardigans

This crazy-ass giant cardigan cocoon thing is really cool; it's going to be the perfect lightweight cover-up for breezy summer days. If you can believe it, this is a petite size, so presumably if I were actually petite this thing would be skimming the floor. I like it better this way.

I started with a plain cream tank to fill in the low neckline of the butterfly tank. But with the two tank tops and the bra there was an awful of of strappage that was visible under the sheer cardigan, so I added another layer, the black cardigan. This not only covered the strap action, but also brought some black into the top half of the outfit and punched up the contrast. Layered cardigans! Is this a new first?

Continuing with the sharp black/cream contrast, I wore opaque black socks so that the lines of the shoes would really stand out. I'm totally obsessed with cream colored shoes lately, and several times now I've had to stop myself from buying more pairs that look overly similar to these. Something about the soft cream leather with the hardware is so appealing.

Butterfly top: Banana Republic
Black cardigan: Express
Cream cardigan: 12th Street by Cynthia Vincent
Jeans: Diesel
Shoes: Rock and Republic

I just loved the way this cardigan looked with the sunlight coming through it.

Pi�ce de R�sistance

The image that sparked the creation of this outfit is this one from the Prabal Gurung collection, which was part of my Fashion Week roundup post last week. And yes, I realize the two outfits really look nothing alike, but the kernel of the idea was simply to wear my furry vest over my long cream cardigan, not necessarily to recreate the whole outfit (though I still want to try that too). After that I just got carried away, grabbing as many white, cream, and beige items as I could find and throwing them all together.

The pi�ce de r�sistance was this cream harness that I snagged out of Mark's workshop; I thought it integrated really well with the other pieces and gave some geometry and structure to the outfit. I showed it here without the vest just so you could get a better look at it, but I did wear the vest all day at work so that the harness just barely peeked out.

Vest: Adrienne Landau
Harness: Audra Jean
Shirt: Michael Stars
Dress: Anthropologie
Cardigan: Max Studio
Skirt: Noa Noa
Boots: Apepazza

Harem Pants

Here's the second wearing of my new harem pants; this time I wore them with pumps so that the shape of the pants is more visible.If you look closely you can see that the pant legs are quite snug where they end, about mid-calf; they can also be worn with the cuffs pushed further down towards the ankle, giving the upper part of the leg less of a baggy shape. So far I'm really liking these, and I can see them working equally well in a sock-less warm weather outfit.

Jacket: Max Studio
Top: Ann Taylor
Pants: Vera Wang
Shoes: Tsubo

Another Airing

You can tell how warm it still was when I wore this; we had some unseasonably hot weather which reached its peak the day the Giants came home for their celebratory parade. This outfit was worn right before it turned chilly again, when I had checked the forecast and thought I could eke out one more day of bare legs and arms. I took the opportunity to try out one of the cute pairs of ankle socks that I bought just as the last heat wave was ending.

I wore and posted this outfit almost verbatim last month; all I did to change it up was to replace the gray tank with an off-white one, swap the cowboy boots for socks and sandals, and add different jewelry. But I couldn't resist giving it another airing, because we don't get too many days around here that are suitable for wearing something like this, and I wanted to fully enjoy what was potentially the last really hot day we'll see until spring.

Vest: F21
Dress, skirt: Anthropologie
Socks: Sock Dreams
Sandals: John Fluevog
Jewelry: Betsy Johnson

Rightful Place

By this time it had gotten so hot and sunny in our apartment that I had to move one of the photos out of the window, lest it start to buckle and bleach out in the sun. The photo is of my mom in high school -- she's normally just over my right shoulder, but now you can just barely see her peeking through the bookcase door behind my left elbow. Don't worry mom, you'll be back in your rightful place soon!

After the last time I wore these shoes, I stretched them a little more and they got even more comfortable. In between wearings, I plan on keeping the stretchers in there until the shoes are fully broken in with their new wider width, otherwise I fear they might shrink back a little. I definitely noticed the difference between the first round of stretching and the second, so if you're planning on doing any significant amount of stretching on your shoes, keep in mind that it may take more than one try. Another trick is to apply the stretching spray before you wear the shoes, as the heat from your feet will also stretch them a little as you wear them; the spray will help them conform to the shape of your foot.

I love oxfords and am very glad I bought this pair, but to me it sometimes seems that they're only ever used to create very sweet and somewhat twee outfits, so I added the harness to toughen up the look and give it an edge.  

Shirt: a gift from mom
Harness: Audra Jean
Shorts: White House Black Market
Shoes: All Saints

Quite Orange

Thanks for all your great comments on Friday's post about customer service. A few people pointed out the shameful way that customers sometimes treat the people who work in service industries, and I think this is an important point. Certainly no one has the right to demand quality service when they walk in the door ready to abuse the first person who comes forward to help them. And just as customers should exercise their right to complain about poor quality service, so should they also make the effort to reward exemplary service, because only by doing both can we as consumers influence the industry standards.

Anyway, it's undoubtedly healthy to leave an extra generous tip or fill a comment card with praise once in a while, lest our lives be filled with nothing but negative interaction all the time. So let's hear a few positive stories if you have some to share. I'll start by sharing that I once filled in a glowingly positive customer satisfaction survey after I took my car in for a tune-up, and the heartfelt, personal thank you email I later received from the person who helped me made me realize just how infrequently that kind of feedback is ever heard.

Right, so here's my outfit. This dress always manages to look red in the photos, but I assure you it is quite orange, as is the pattern on the socks. It being a little cooler that day, I wanted to cover my legs but not be too warm, so I chose long socks rather than tights. From the front you can just see the gap between the bottom of my dress and the top of the socks, but from the back the longer cardigan covered everything; this made the thigh high socks look a bit more subtle and less schoolgirlish.

Cardigan: Max Studio
Scarf: Banana Republic
Dress: Orla Keily
Sandals: John Fluevog