Every outfit starts with the first piece, right?  No matter how you put your outfits together, you have to take one piece out first to build from.  I know that sometimes it's hard to even figure out the first piece, and that's what leads to the "I have nothing to wear" syndrome.  But if you can get past the first piece, you are on your way.  Sometimes the outcome is better than others.  Let's face it, even the highest paid stylists sometimes don't get it right.  If they did, why do people end up on the worst dressed lists?  I'm happy with the way this outfit came out although the journey to come up with this was convoluted and difficult.  Thank goodness the following events happened on a vacation day otherwise who knows how late I would have been to work.

I love this blazer.  Last year, it was the one piece of DKNY I made it my mission to buy.  It has leather trim, it's boucle, and it has a faint metallic thread running through it.  I eventually bought it on sale at Last Call by Neiman Marcus for a ridiculously low price which made waiting for it worth it.  I planned all summer that as soon as the temperatures fell below 80, I was going to bring it out.  We had a few cool days seen here and here, and I still never wore it.  Then I went to a luncheon and the woman I sat next to had a blazer with a fur collar on.  If she could break out the winter-wear on a 70+ day in Southern California, I could wear a boucle blazer.

In my head, I had styled this blazer for work at least five different ways, but I wanted to wear it on a day off.  I turned to a J Crew catalog for inspiration where I saw a similar blazer style with skinny pants and a denim shirt.  Looking for denim in the wardrobe, I came across this denim dress with velvet trim which I've had forever.  Perfect I thought.  Then I tried it on.  Somehow the dress had miraculously shrunken to ridiculous heights just by sitting in my closet (no, I'm not that obtuse, but it's a lot easier to delude yourself with that then the real reason it's four inches shorter than you remember it).  I stubbornly wanted to wear the dress though, so I started trying on skirts to go under it.  Nothing seemed right, so I abandoned the dress and went back to this black H&M dress which I was going to wear with the blazer originally.  Teamed with pointy-toed pumps, I felt fully dressed for work on a vacation day.  Feeling ridiculous, I decided to abandon the whole thing, put on jeans and a tee shirt and wallow in self-pity.  Instead, I pulled the denim dress on over the black dress.  The pumps suddenly didn't work, so I pulled out the pair of boots which I had only worn once before here.  I'm really happy I didn't shell out more cash on the spike trend than for these inexpensive boots.  I've also tried the tread with the shoes worn here and on a bag from Zara which I haven't used yet.

This outfit actually consists of elements that I pair often and think look good on my body type: long under short, booties with a dress, texture of any kind somewhere in the mix.  I also favor a dress over another dress if it doesn't add too much bulk.  I'm a huge fan of layering which is why I probably struggle so much with summer outfits.  It's hard to wear four layers in 100 degrees.  I liked this outfit, I felt comfortable in it, I received complements on it.  Would I wear it again?  Probably not.  I don't have a simple reason why except that I had to work really hard for this, and that takes some of the fun out of it for me.  I enjoy my style the most when it feels effort-less, and this was far from it.