| NYC |
Thrifted Dress (similar) | Foley & Corinna Bag | Tom Ford Sunglasses
A couple of weeks ago, when I was in New York, I was sitting on my friend’s couch wearing a pair of denim shorts with my legs stretched out in front of my and my feet plopped on her coffee table, rambling on about something or other, and all of a sudden I realized that she wasn't listening to me; she was staring, horrified, at my legs.
Sometimes you've just got to have a good girls' day out. Lunch at a restaurant with a sunny patio and good bellinis, ice cream with chocolate sauce for dessert, a little window shopping. Our girls' day included all of those things (plus a boy).
The outfit I'm wearing here is obviously nothing special - it's basically my default outfit for when I physically need to be wearing clothing but don't really care what I look like in it - but what's nice is that lately I've been trying to do what all those fashion-advice-type women on TV are always telling you to do, which is whittle down my closet so that it's stocked primarily with pieces I can just pull out and put on without really thinking about it. Like, say, a pair of jeans that feel like your most beat-up pair of pajamas (but aren't), and a pair of oxfords that feel like your most beat-up pair of sneakers (but aren't). So even when you're "not wearing anything special," you're still wearing something that kind of...is.
Also just while we're on the topic of oxfords, everyone in the entire city of New York has been wandering around in these for the past year and I loved them when I first saw them and continue to love them now.
This post was created in collaboration with Clairol.
I asked Kendrick to take this photo the morning I left for New York, because I knew I was going to need a “before.”
Sunset | Sausalito, CA
Anthropologie Sweatshirt | Free People Jeans
Told you we were going to talk about this sweater again. But not too much, because while it may be 8:30AM in New York City (where I am, sitting at my parents' dining room table in a ratty, oversized sweatshirt that I bought at the Christmas Fair in elementary school and drinking cup after cup after cup of coffee out of a mug with my childhood cat's photograph on it), it is 5:30AM in my West Coast head. I'm here for a week on business, but Indy came with me because he wanted to and he's at an age where he can tag along with me to work things and be okay about it - but as easy as he is to travel with, he still "needed to ask me something" until about 2 o'clock in the morning. And then, once he was absolutely positive that he had woken me up (over and over) beyond the point of no return, he passed out.
For someone who has objectively quite a lot of clothing, I spend a bizarre amount of time standing in front of my closet feeling like I have nothing to wear. Because while I own plenty of cool stuff that's fun to put on when I feel like getting all dressed up, what I actually wear on a day-to-day basis are basics in neutral colors - striped tees, grey sweaters, black pants or jeans. But since I have a limited number of these items, what happens is I wear the same four or five shirts and the same two or three bottoms over and over and over and over until finally they're completely falling apart.
Which brings me to the fact that fall is a great time to stock up on basics: those things that you should always have sitting in your closet because they're what you'll really wear. A perfect sweater, jeans you can live in, a comfortable pair of boots, a button-down plaid shirt, etc. What I'm wearing here are a few wear-everywhere-everyday basics from JCPenney: a great pair of grey combat boots, a striped tee (with a twist, so it's not boring; I love those dropped sleeves), and cropped, stretchy black pants that feel like pajamas but are cute enough to wear out at night.
