Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Number Five: Menswear Prints and Patterns

In The One Hundred, Nina Garcia gives several examples of many articles of clothing that women have stolen from men, and ended up doing much better. The tuxedo jacket, trousers, wristwatches, crisp wbite button-down shirts... women have been taking men's clothes for a very long time.

I don't always like men's clothes, but I do love their patterns and prints. I have one shirt in particular, with a very feminine mock wrap silhouette, a deep V neck, and adorable cap sleeves. The twist is that it's in a bold plaid, that looks like it was taken right off of a kilt and reworked into a top that's just as easy to dress up as it is to dress down.

There are plenty of ways to try a little bit of androgyny in your look... a houndstooth scarf, a plaid heel, or a pinstripe hat would add to the look. Fortunately, you can go a little more extreme with this look as well, by mixing a pair of pinstripe pants with a checkered shirt. My only tip to avoiding the grunge look of the early 90s would be to make sure that everything is in the same color family. If you have a pair of black-and-white pinstripe pants and a black-and-white checkered shirt, you can go nuts on the scale of each pattern, and never look like a crazy person.

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