Outfit for a Wednesday: Dots and Dots and Dots

I have never bought a mix-and-matched outfit, head to toe, straight off the display mannequin of a store, and I can say with very, very near certainty that I never will; a firm background in both science and early James Bond films have taught that it is risky to firmly commit to "never." Although I am an independent shopper and enjoy constructing my own head to toe looks, without the aid of a sales associate, a brand look book, or style editorials of the latest seasonal trends hot from the catwalk, I still often use some type of theme, even a very loose one, to unify my look. This could be purely mood-based, aesthetic-based, memory association-based, anything. Yesterday morning, I extracted this cream and polka dot patterned vintage Oscar de la Renta skirt from the cavern that is my closet; it has not been worn in many, many months and was the ideal alternative to my recent denim rut. 

The nuance of the classic polka dot pattern of this piece, stripes varying in width, oscillating between black and yellow, the sultry just below the knee length perfect for a tall woman, and the movement of the pleats have always attracted me. Playing with the polka dots and further accenting the subtle black in the pattern, I paired the skirt with a black top embellished with three strands of muddled gold medallion dots along the neck. Pushing the trope even more, I selected this lucite bangle encasing raised dots of gold, like bits of metallic dew. The circular pattern repeats, but the texture and tone vary, offering, to me, greater interest than a precisely complementing set of pieces. Finally, to polish off this polka dot parade, I wore a pair of black and gold earrings, a mostly recent acquisition and wonderfully practical for my wardrobe resplendent with gold and black pieces. Rather than the smooth, clean geometric lines of the perfect circles, these earrings offer a rugged, organic kind of mimicry to the dot, as though they were chiseled straight from some stone, or perhaps grown in a field, like a crop of cabbage.