Outfit for a Wednesday: Black Flowers

Black irises are some of my favorite flowers; they shine and shimmer in sunlight, gleaming onyx, without alluding to anything morbid or macabre, though I imagine the black pigment has a quite different effect as they decay. For as long as I can remember, I have been strangely enamored and fascinated with iridescence, from dollar store bottles of bubble solution, light shining through thin wine glasses, diamonds. This romance has, clearly, transcended my inner cortical tunnels and manifests itself frequently in my wardrobe. Not, however today, though these black roses did afford a brief moment of reflection on some beautiful flowers and obsessions.

This skirt is a great example of a piece that can easily transition from teleconferences and status reports in the office to Tom Collins and sidecars out and about on the town; it is a copper bronze, with a bit of glitter speckled throughout, yet is not so outlandish and brazen as a pure gold or silver would be. It has a nice medium weight, so it works well as a fall or spring piece.

This type of embellishment is sometimes a bit much for my tastes, which are generally rather opulent and over the top, but not necessarily so when it comes to very definitive and discernible trends. With the cardigan being black, however, the flowers blend into the fabric more so, and I feel it will prove more enduring.

The skirt has large square pockets on either side, which, despite their size, lay flat against the cut of the skirt and do not add any undesirable weight to the waist and hip region. Because of the twinkling bronze pattern, the pockets are a more subdued accent, but very fun once discovered.

The bronze golden chain-link bracelet is another treasure discovered towards the end of high school from my father's mother's closet, my grandmother Meemaw. The other deep mahogany, cocoa, ivory blended bracelet was a recent gift to me, from my manager and friend Sallie. She and her husband just returned from a fabulously decadent trip to a resort near the beach in Viet Nam, as a well earned celebration for all his hard work and dedication to his company. The bracelet is made from the horn of a cow, carved and shaped and rounded. Sallie also gave me a camel bone necklace from near the Dead Sea, which I featured earlier; she has an excellent eye for choosing pieces which emulate my style, are beautiful with great design, but are new and different and may have passed unnoticed under my own glance, pieces that are exotic, from places that I have read and dreamed about.

These heels are a bit high, but marvelously comfortable; later this afternoon, it decided to start pouring, once again, and I found myself ill prepared, for these are made of suede and would sure to ruin if they get too wet. Thankfully, I fled the office during a brief lull, and when I made it to the confines of the belly of my car, was able to change to my tennis shoes, which I packed earlier this morning for the gym. I care not if the gym staff gave judging glances at my bronze skirt, black tights, and gray sneakers as I arrived.

I do not have my ears pierced and only wear clip-on earrings, for now, which makes finding hoop earrings exceedingly difficult, an almost Herculean feat. I yearn for a pair of large very thin white gold hoop earrings, very akin to a pair my older sister Elizabeth owns. This yearning and admiration for sleek design has become sufficient encouragement to finally get the job done, and pierce my ears; maybe in the coming months. The hoop earrings I do currently own are for the most part bakelite earrings from the late 1940s or so. These large and flat goldenrod color bakelite hoop earrings are great paired with all black in winter, or all white in the summer; with my winter whites, I tend to stick with gold or silver.

The filmmaker and his fancy camera seem to have some magical knack for making me look much more flattering than I can ever conceive I would while pretending to model.