I Wear: Suited & Booted
Here’s a post I’ve had in my drafts for a few weeks but not put up because I didn’t want to crowd the page with only pics of myself. It was meant to be my last hat-tip to the slight winter that Mumbai had this year. Now that summer is baring its raging self at us already, I’m going to bring it up as a belated goodbye to the cold season.
The occasion was a date, a formal dinner at a ‘nice’ restaurant. It was a weekday and I knew he’d be returning from work so he’d be in office formals. I thought it would be nice to match his look for a change instead of contrasting his starkness with my colour.
January had been cold enough for me to only want to step out with my legs and feet covered. But the evenings of February still brought in cool temperatures. The only thing in my decidedly well-equipped winter wardrobe that hadn’t gotten any use were my knee-high boots.
I bought these at the height of the boots fashion from Catwalk. The heels are just short of trip-worthy (I’m a regular klutz). Also the lack of rivets, buttons and shiny attachments gives this pair a distinctly powerful feel.
Now the best (and only) real way to wear these is with a skirt. I’ve worn them to work, mostly with knee-length skirts and occasionally with a calf-length shift with slits on the side. Very chic, very power-dressing.
For the evening, I decided to stick to the semi-formal look to match the boy. I picked a black A-line skirt from Allen Solly with an oversized clutch from Westside. I really like this particular clutch on account of its size (aren’t most clutches too tiny really?) and how comfortable it feels in my palm and against my size. Most of the time the severity of the pattern makes it a mismatch with my bohemian style. But it was a perfect fit with the skirt.
Now the top had me thinking for a bit. A white shirt would be the obvious choice but that was a bit too ‘board meeting’ for this occasion. Then I thought of the powder-blue drape shrug that came to me as a gift from the US. I’d never quite found a way to wear it. It’s as long as a shirt but with no buttons and the front falls in folds on the side like an open jacket. On the other hand, it’s half-sleeved so it can’t really be worn in chillier weather.
The weather that evening was perfect for light layering. I could have probably picked out any plain tee-shirt to wear inside, for a colour-blocking effect. But I stuck to black and picked out a slinky sheer top that I’d usually only wear to a party or a pub. A silk scarf in black and white around the neck and inside the drape-shrug added both modesty and some interest to the stark ensemble.
And I was ready for a classy night out on town!
I wear:
- Black leather knee-high boots: Catwalk
- Slinky black top: Chemistry
- A-line black skirt: Allen Solly
- Powder blue drape shrug: Somewhere in the US 🙂
- Oversized clutch: Westside
- Black-and-white silk scarf: Janpath, New Delhi
~O~O~O~O~O~O~
Update: Blurring the face may detract from the quality of the picture and subsequently the post. But trolling & harassment are causing the only option to be no posts at all. I think all of you will agree with me that this is a reasonable solution. I don’t wish to discuss this further so please do not start any conversations on this issue, on this blog.
Nice look..although i am not very sure about the blue shrug…..would have looked great without that. Nevertheless, nicely put up!
@fiestygirl: Thengyu! The blue shrug was to tone down the severe, formal ‘dress-to-kill’ness of the outfit. It was just a simple dinner out after all.
Read the ‘About Comments’ on this site – http://simplyrecipes.com/about.php. Very nice, succinct and clear. Something for you to think about on all your sites.
lots of love!
L
@Lakshmi: Thanks for sharing that link. The thing is, I suspect most of the trolls on my blogs are people who just get a kick out of saying offensive things online (sort of like kids spraying dirty word graffiti). They don’t usually listen to polite reasoning so I’m not sure if they’ll even bother reading this page, let alone following it. So I think I’ll just be preaching to the converted (or the anyway-decent-and-sensible in this case). As a policy, I try not to moderate comments too much or be rude. When it gets to personal attacks, I usually warn the person and if they still persist, I filter them out. The trolling has increased recently but I still don’t want to penalize my better-minded readers. But if it reaches unmanageable proportions, I may need to bring in a stronger filtering policy.
“The thing is, I suspect most of the trolls on my blogs are people who just get a kick out of saying offensive things online (sort of like kids spraying dirty word graffiti). They don’t usually listen to polite reasoning so I’m not sure if they’ll even bother reading this page, let alone following it.”
That’s why they’re trolls! This is your space. If anyone is mean or rude, mark them as spam/filter them out. Don’t even bother to reason. Why should you spend your energy talking to folks who are ONLY there to heckle you? If they wanted to have a decent conversation, they wouldn’t be saying such awful things anyway.
@Lakshmi: Discerning those trolls from people who’ve just expressed an opinion, umm, strongly is tricky. See my conversations with one M in this very same comment-thread.
Fair enuf. More than fair actually, m surprised you haven’t deleted any of my comments, parts of which, in retrospect, are less than kind. I assume you’re dealing with much worse. Well, good luck with that and be safe. My respect for you just went up 5 notches, FWIW! 🙂
PS: yep, same person.
@M: Thank you. 🙂
Also you shouldn’t be touchy (I suspect, nay KNOW) about comments like the ones I made about your clothes. Learn to appreciate honestly, if the intention of my words was to hurt, I could do a lot worse, I assure you.
I would find them cheap, but still tell you you looked nice, IRL. The internet affords us something special, a degree of honesty that we can’t have in real life. Sadly you can’t have it online either and have to be all uppity and tight-assed about stuff cuz you have a real reputation to protect. Also, I think you should get real and stop kidding yourself about all this blurring crap. You’ve posted your name and face several times on this space and selective censorship makes you look just coy or plain dumb. And I don’t think you’re being coy.
@M: Honesty is well-appreciated. You have an opinion and so do I. We don’t need to agree and that doesn’t make you a troll or me, ‘touchy’ or ‘uppity and tight-assed’. Your comments are welcome when they’re your opinions. Let’s not take this down to name-calling, please.
And like I said in the update, I don’t wish to discuss the issue of anonymity any further.
The clothes don’t work for you, Ramya. And don’t even get me started about the boots! But you’re frikkin gorgeous, as usual. 🙂
@M: Subjective, I suppose. I like them so they work for me. But thank you for commenting, anyway.
A dress would go with the boots too. Or skinny jeans. That’s a lovely scarf… you’re rocking that look!
What ‘nice’ restaurant is this? Just curious… 🙂
@Lakshmi: The dress, yes. Only my dresses are all summery shifts and those boots are torture during the hot season! Also, they’re not quite roomy enough to fit jeans inside but also too broad to pull the jeans over them. That’s why I end up with the short skirt look everytime with them.
The scarf is a bandhini print, would you believe? I didn’t even realise it till I wrote this post and mum told me (she’s the one who bought it).
‘Nice’ I said because I didn’t really like the food or the service. I’ll DM you the details if you like.
a li’l too loo loose on the calf, isnt it ? 😛
Sorry if you considered this comment trolling. To balance it out, I’ll say – very nice scarf ! 😀
@sahu: A personal attack would count as trolling. But this is your (inoffensive opinion and it’s welcome at The Idea-smithy. 🙂 About the loose-around-calves, I think the traditional boot design actually was that. I don’t know whether this pair was meant to be worn fitting tightly on the legs but I don’t think it looks too bad this way either. And thank you about the scarf too – it’s a bandhini print, by the way (something I forgot to mention in the post).
is that for woman’s day celebration!..;) Have good one..
@Yuva: No, that was for an evening way back in February. 🙂