Today, my boyfriend’s family had a massive family get-together. The sort that happens about every 5 years or so and involves aunties, uncles, grandparents, partners, children etc – the whole she-bang. The sort with a lot of introductions and pleasantries with relative strangers you may well not see again until the next such gathering – unless of course there’s a wedding or such like in between. The weather was completely unpredictable – one minute there was a huge downpour, the next we were baking in brilliant sunshine, so my outfit had to work hard. It can be really hard to know how smart to go with these things, but luckily this time I think I hit the nail on the head. I didn’t feel over or under-dressed, I was warm enough without being too warm and I generally felt good in it. A big success.
I tend to avoid all-black (I’m not a goth, or at a funeral) or all-white ( I’m bound to spill something down it and then I’m in a pickle) for any daytime events like this. So as you can see I went with emerald green instead. I love jewel colours (emerald, sapphire, ruby etc) and I really think they compliment my hair colour and skin tone more so than earthy tones or pastels. The vest top was one I bought in the River Island sale a month or so ago ( have a look what else I got here). Its a gorgeous satin-y material so adds a bit of glamour and luxury to any outfit. The shape is also perfect. Firstly because it is baggy which means you don’t have to be self-conscious in it. Secondly, it’s longer at the back which covers your bum – perfect if you want to wear it with leggings. Having no sleeves also helps to keep you cool. The one problem with this top is having your bra straps on show. I would have worn my strapless bra had it not been in the wash, so as a compromise I chose one with decent straps that worked with the outfit as best as was possible. I think I just about pulled it off.
I coordinated my top with matching emerald shoes. I cannot put into words how perfect these shoes are but I tried in a blog post a few weeks back. The last green item I wore were my beautiful gem earrings. I can only dream about one day owning real emeralds as big as the ones in these beauties but until then will make do with these bargains I snapped up in a Dorothy Perkins sale for an incredible £2 a few years back. Not one for accessories as a general rule, you know they’ve got to be something special if I love them so much.
I really like teaming baggy long racer back tops with dark skinny jeans so my gold-zip jeans were a natural choice. I seem to always be blogging about these, so much so you’d think I only actually own one pair of trousers! I promise to feature some other jeans soon. I also think well-fitting skinnies look amazing teamed with a pair of kick-ass heels – a winning combination.
To complete the look, I wore my pinstripe blazer – I really like the contrast of the black/white and bright green. I always think blazers are good for in-between weather, especially on days like today where one minute its hot, the next cold. An added bonus of this was that when I spilt something down my top ( I just knew I would), I could put my blazer on, do up the buttons and nobody had to know. Genius.
Lastly, I wanted to make my make-up a little more glam to match this glamourous ensemble so did that feline flick eye-liner, and wore some quite heavy red lippie. A little out of the norm for me but what the hell.