Triad Outfit

If you haven't already visited the girls at academichich (http://www.academichic.com), you absolutely should. I have been faithfully following them for a few days now and just can't get enough. I love how they break down the basics of outfit wearing so simply with colors, and yet it has made me look at my closet in a whole new light. They have even inspired me to put together some pieces that I would normally never pair. Today's look is an example of that. They assign themselves an assignment for the week and I jumped on board with this weeks project, using triads and analogous colors.( Explanations can be found on their page). I was bound a determined to try something new and so as I stared into my closet last night I rotated the color wheel in my head. Purple, Orange and Green was where I settled and normally I would never intentionally put those colors together, but was astounded by how well they worked. I decided to use them all subtly since this is my first color experiment. In reality, the orange of the shirt isn't quite so bright but the flash reflected right off the wall making all of the colors pop. The color combination also gave me a great reason to wear my new brown shoes which have kept my feet happy and comfy for the last few hours. I'm so excited to keep seeing what great ideas these intelligent ladies have to offer, and I am even more excited to see how they can help to change the way I look at my entire wardrobe!

Let me take a second to confess a bit of a fashion secret I've been keeping for awhile. Years ago, I worked retail in our local mall. I loved the job, and I loved working with clothes but I had to stop because I would end up not taking any money home with me at the end of the week, but bags of new sweaters, shirts and shoes. In on of our summer shipments we got piles of tube tops. They were small stretchy pieces of material that were made specifically to be placed under shirts giving the illusion of a tank top almost. They cover your bra and a bit of your stomach but are never long enough to be seen under your shirt. I've seen them since in Walmart's and a few other retail stores and they are always just advertised as tube tops. Well a co-worker and I were talking about the lack of necessity for such an item when you could just buy a tank top for the same price. That is of course until a little light bulb went off in her head, "unless you wear them on your hips" . Voila, an instant shirt elongated. It's a huge problem ever girl has, your shirt just isn't as long as you wish it was or your jeans tend to hang a little low when you bend over. But why not wear these tube tops under the bottom of your shirt. That is ex actually what I now do, with my black one, my brown one and my orange one, shown in the outfit above. It is a great way to add a little pop of color to an outfit or the lengthen the life of a shirt that may have shrunk a little in the wash. When my co-worker got pregnant this little piece of fabric saved her life allowing her to wear her shirts for months longer than she would have been able to otherwise as her belly expanded. I'm sure we weren't the first to think of such a thing, but in the 6 years since I've worked there, I have never heard them mentioned again. I've never seen the tip in a magazine of online. It is a great idea that I think should be passed on by every girl to all of her girl friends. A cheap solution to a common problem. Every girls dream.