azurelunatic | Raven's child's new clothes

People have been boggled about my clothes for the longest time.

Quite a bit of the time I dress in near-unrelieved black, tip to toe. Around here, I typically wear long-sleeved black shirts, and either long black pants, or a long black skirt. (It's summer, still, and too hot for shorts.) When Darkside and I were still meeting for breakfast before he graduated, my "uniform" was the long black pants or skirt with a black tank top and a button-down shirt (black) open over that.

People accuse me of being a goth. When I'm not in all black, though, my color choices, well...

I have a skirt. I call it "the frog skirt". Mama made it for me. It's got a pattern of 2" brilliant rainforest frogs on a bright turquoise background. I love that skirt. (Maybe I'll be able to wear it again someday soon.) I have a padded cotton jacket. I can't remember where I got it, now. The tag says it was made in Guatemala. The lining is white. The outside is woven and patchwork. There is a lot of red. There is also blue, green, yellow, pink, I think some orange... there may even be black and white, but precious little, used for accent.

I like to wear the frog skirt and the jacket together, with a plain black shirt (which goes with both). If I still had them, you could bet that I'd be wearing my neon sneakers... but they, sadly, fell apart long ago. They were neon pink, neon yellow, and neon green.

Goth? Um, no. But I do look lovely!

I finally figured it out, very recently. I've got Raven's taste! Sure, I wear sober black myself, but I just looooove shinies!

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That sounds frighteningly familiar...although substitute tank top for long sleeved shirt.

You don't want to wear color unless it's color with a purpose? Makes a fair amount of sense to me. I keep intending to find an outfit that works as both normal and work clothing from some place that doesn't change product lines every year, and then just buy lots of them, in a few colors that work together. And rebuy as necessary. And never have to think about clothes-shopping again, except for speciality stuff, which can sometimes be interesting anyway.

My problem is pants. I can find nice sturdy long-sleeved black cotton shirts with no problem; I can find short-sleeved white polo shirts with no problem; I can find black button-down shirts (more short-sleeved than long) with no problem; I can find black tank tops with no problem.

I only care to wear color when I have time to wear color. Bumbling out of bed in the morning, I pick the default.

At least I know I'm a Winter. That makes clothes-shopping that much easier...

Do men's pants work for you? I remember you're built kind of like me, but I don't know if it extends to the basically rectangular torso or not. (I boggled someone my freshman year in college by having shoulders wider than my hips. I don't now, but not by that much. I don't have much of a waist. I'm a rectangle. And I have a minor canned rant about people who think that women always get extremely curvy as they put fat on, because my mother and sister have this build too, so I've seen it in a variety of forms over time, and it doesn't get hourglassy. Period. More curvy, yes. Curvy in an absolute sense, not really. </rant>)

What is the whole seasons thing, anyway? Is it supposed to be that someone looks better during the season that is theirs, or in the colors traditionally associated with that season, or...? Are there really only four coloring types? Does the season idea extend to people who aren't white? (You may need to use small words, since I gather it's a fashion thing and I am not well-endowed with fashion sense.)

I've been too lazy to drag out my tank tops lately.

Though that might have to do partly with the fact that there's no one I particularly need to dazzle with my cleavage at school now.

Pants: I've never tried men's pants. I probably should at some point. I do have the hourglass figure, but it's less evident at this weight. I hope to be re-revealing it sometime in the future. Hopefully, the near future.

Colors:
This is the color fashion thing where people are split up into four groups based on underlying skin tone and vividness of coloring. It depends on whether the undertone to your skin is more orange or more blue.

I haven't experimented widely with matching people to colors, so you'd have to ask someone else about the race vs. season colors.

The colorings are split between orange/blue, and less vivid/more vivid. You drape the person in various colors, and see which ones make them look horrid, and which ones make them look healthy and alive. Someone who looks like a ghost in black should not be wearing black; someone who looks diseased in orange should not be wearing orange.

The basic groups are winter, spring, summer, fall. Winter can wear black, white, deep jewel-tones (emerald, ruby, sapphire). Spring wears pale colors with an orangey or yellow cast to them: yellow, peach, light green, tan, brown. Summer can wear lighter versions of what Winter wears; Summer would be wearing lighter blues, some greens, lavender, cool grey. Fall gets to wear orange, dark brown, mustard, olive, and all the rest of the colors that make me look ill.

Basically, it's divided up the color wheel into warm/cool, with the dividing line on green and red. There are some nice deep cool reds, and magenta's on the cool side with purple. Emerald's a borderline color; spring green is definitely on the warm side. Then it's divided again by intensity; the Winter and Fall get to wear the purer, darker, less diluted colors; Summer and Spring have more washed-out coloring that gets overwhelmed by dark stuff.

Then there are neutral colors that everybody should be able to wear, like khaki, some greys, navy, dark brown.

The idea is, if you make sure to only have clothes that are colors that are in your season, then you can grab almost anything out of your closet and wear it, and it won't be a total train wreck like wearing an orange shirt and magenta pants would be.

Josh, for example, is very likely a Spring. He can wear olive drab and yellowy tan and look lovely. He can also pull off black, but it doesn't look as good on him as, say, a lovely apricot gown would.

Hmm. I don't have a season, then? I look best in heather grays, creams, dark blues and greens, and muted blues and greens, with dark blue as probably the single best color. I've got several bright green/blue shirts (including *two* turquoise-of-doom shirts. All hail chemical dyes!) which I wear, but look funny in. I look funny in dark brown and khaki, but reasonable in dull medium brown. Reds are out, even burgundy-ish ones, although I continue to wear my knotwork bright red shirt because I enjoy it. Yellows are even further out. I haven't checked purples, but I suspect they'd be out too. Black and white often work. Winter-ish?

Arlo tends to wear bright colors to play frisbee in. One of his outfits is a searingly orange T-shirt with red-purple shorts. Meep.

Once you hit hourglass, men's pants probably won't work, but until then they're worth a try. Belts are wonderful for fudging with.

Winter-ish, or perhaps even summer. If cream and grey work better than black and white, then you're probably a summer.

It helps that I prefer my pants baggy.

And blue wouldn't work particularly well on him either. Okay.

Okay. No lavender or tan, though.

It would really work best, of course, if I had you and various fabrics under some good light.

Hmm...

I had the advantage of Mama being an artist, and shoving Color Me Beautiful at me when I started getting interested in clothes on my own.

I really can't wear brown very well. However, when my hair's red, I can.

We obviously should have had this conversation before you were in Glendale last. *grin*

Arlo has two brown shirts that are amazing. They're ugly dishwater brown when they're alone. Not shit-brown, not unless you're a little sick, but rather like the water cup after watercoloring. Dull, dead, boring brown. They look really good on both of us. I haven't checked, but I have a sneaking suspicion that they'd look good on anyone. Very odd.

Hmm indeed.

swallowtayle is attempting to pry me out of Arizona to visit her.

Raven's child's new clothes

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