How I wore it: business casual

Today was just the kind of day where you want to stay home all day, preferably huddled under a blanket and watching a movie. It was cool, mostly grey, and pretty dreary. [Side note: I went out for a run today wearing shorts - yeah, that won't be happening again till the spring.] However, my glamorous dreams of napping all day working on my dissertation were foiled by the fact that I had my weekly tutoring gig.

I planned out today's outfit a while in advance. Not necessarily for tutoring, but for some point soon. I knew I wanted to wear my new grey studded flats and a cool idea had come to me when I was thinking about how to style them. When I was in college, I played around a lot with rocking out conservative outfits: I'd wear a Velvet Underground t-shirt with dress pants; my fourteen-hole Doc Martens boots with fancy skirts; a KISS baseball t-shirt with pinstripes...you get the picture. I wanted to do something similar today with the only vaguely rock & roll t-shirt I still have on me:

Amalía decided to get in on the action too. Forgive the quality of these: they're terrible. Anyway, I wore my old David Bowie t-shirt with a grey pinstripe pencil skirt that I bought a year ago solely for work. By wearing a Bowie tee and studded flats, I got to make the skirt a little less office-friendly. I can see my nineteen-year-old self beaming in approval. I kept my jewelry simple and opted for a big, messy bun - I've been recently trying to be a little more soignée with my hair, but I wanted a messy updo to go with the polished + edgy vibe I was trying to capture this afternoon.

For the outdoors, I wore the green corduroy blazer that's been making the rounds this past week:

There you see the messy hair at its finest

Although I really liked how this came together, I didn't feel that comfortable in the outfit for most of the evening. Since my skirt is so fitted and I was wearing stockings, it kept on trying to creep up and I kept on having to yank it down as I walked. That alone was a huge buzz-kill. Also, as I was wearing an article of clothing that I specifically bought for my conservative workplace last year, I felt a little bit as if I were in costume, what with the shoes and the blazer and the skirt. I don't know: while my nineteen-year-old self would've loved this outfit, the twenty-nine-year-old me was sort of wishing she'd dialed it down a notch and worn jeans, y'know? 

That being said, once I got into the swing of things and sort of settled into my outfit (I guess during my lesson at some point), I felt much more comfortable, confident, and - most importantly - "me." It also helped that my husband loved my outfit when I picked him up at his office and he especially loved my new shoes.

Oh, right, the new shoes! Well, they didn't fall apart, so that's good, and I walked them a fair amount today. However, they are not very comfortable: I honestly can't tell if it's a sizing issue or a pointy-toe issue [my feet used to hate pointy-toed shoes, although I have/had a couple of really comfortable pairs, especially recently], but my toes felt all jammed up in there. I was very aware of them all day (I mean, between 4 and 8 PM, when I was wearing them), but they weren't so bad that I couldn't walk the fair distance that I did in them. If I had to re-grade them, I'd probably give them a low √ or a high √/√- 

They are cute, though, and a welcome addition to my wardrobe.

Green corduroy blazer: Gap, remixed

David Bowie t-shirt: Gap, remixed

Grey pinstripe skirt: Banana Republic, remixed

Grey tights: Gap, remixed

Grey studded flats: Adi Shoes, courtesy of CSN Stores