These Are Not Gray Pants

Ten years ago, you could not have paid me to step foot into Gap or Old Navy to actually shop for anything. I went in occasionally with my family or friends, but I just wasn't interested in what they had to offer - everything seemed to be branded with logos, and I am a staunch believer in not giving a company my money in order to be a walking billboard for them. If I'm going to advertise a company by blaring their logo across my clothing, they had best be paying me for the privilege.

Well, I still feel that way.

Somewhere along the way, though, my passionate hatred of Gap and Old Navy faded and was replaced by me finding the occasional things I really like about them.

It's a pretty recent development - this post here over on the personal blog was the first time I had worn a Gap shirt in a very, very long time. And I've been adding Old Navy jeans to my closet here and there for a while as well. Then, I had a baby, and discovered the BabyGap is one of the few places that sells a decent amount of non-pink clothing for girls.

Gap, and Old Navy both have a serious length problem - I can tell they're mostly selling to teenagers and skinny college girls, because they just crank out the cropped tops like an assembly line on cocaine. Shirts are never long enough, and if they are, they're poor quality material that shrinks after one wash. Old Navy's exception to this rule is in their tank tops and camis, which I find hilarious - why would you make a tank clearly meant to be worn under your other shirts longer than the shirts it's meant to be worn with?

I'm obviously not the business genius that those running Gap and Old Navy are.

In any case, the tops just aren't long enough, on average, which means that when I do shop there I primarily shop online, allowing me to troll the 'tall' section to see if they have anything I like in a length that won't have me flashing belly every time I have to grab something off a shelf.

This stripe-sleeved top did the trick.

I won't lie - I mostly ordered this shirt in order to get to Gap's $50 limit to get free shipping. I had ordered a couple of things for the baby, and I hate paying for shipping if I don't have to. At worse, I throw something I'm not sure about in the cart and then return it later, right?

I figured this would be one of those shirts. The high boatneck and flat color on the body could easily make me look like a mack truck coming and going. I gave it a shot anyway, just to see.

Turns out, I love it.

I love the slightly faded darker blue color and that the shirt ends up emphasizing that my waist is narrow when compared to my hips, instead of flattening me out like I thought it would. I love that ordering it in the tall means the sleeves go past my hands and the hem is below my hips.

My only issue is that the thin cotton, while soft, is not terribly forgiving on a stomach that is still showing the after-effects of baby-havin'.

Ah well.

I love it anyway.

These are not gray pants.

But Katie! I hear you saying. They are clearly charcoal gray!

Nope.

When I bought them? They were flat black. I bought this pair because I wanted (and still want) black jeans, and couldn't find any at the time that weren't skinnies that were nothing less than terribly uncomfortable. Old Navy had these pants on offer - not jeans, but comfortable and a dressy black appropriate for a business casual workplace like the museum I used to work at.

Then I washed them twice, and now they're charcoal gray.

I keep wearing them because I just like them that much, but would still like a pair of inexpensive black jeans, NOT skinny jeans, to wear with shirts like this. Do you guys have any advice on that? They need to go into the lower plus-sizes.

I can't say I didn't get my money's worth, though, since I bought them on sale three years ago and I'm still wearing them pretty consistently.

I just wish they had stayed black longer than two months.

This necklace is a Christmas gift from my mother-in-law, kind of in honor of having had Audra last year. I wear it all the time. It's pretty funny, because I tend to buy large, clunky, insanely colorful necklaces but I love simple things like that that you can wear with anything and everything.

I have this, and a pretty starfish necklace (seen in the earlier link to the Gap T-shirt post from the other blog), and those are my two simplest wear-with-anything pieces of jewelry.

Well.

Um.

Other than my, uh, wedding band.



Outfit Details
Striped boatneck tee - Gap, available here.
Black pants - Old Navy, similar here
Shoes - Skechers at JCPenney, similar here
Necklace - Christmas gift from my mother-in-law





P.S. Please forgive the wonky lighting/focus issues. It's super gray, rainy, and dreary here today and I really did the best I could with what 5:45 pm light could offer me.






P.P.S. Today on the personal blog? I tell you a little story about my drive to work on Monday, and it's at least a little bit funny if I do say so myself. Check it out!

Work Outfits: The Uniform

I decided to start things off with what is basically the best example of my usual work outfit; jeans, tee, cardigan. This is my final day at this workplace, so I wanted to be very comfortable (you don't want to be both counting down minutes and also have tight jeans digging into your stomach, right?) but I said in my introductory post that if I wore it on a post day, you were gonna see it, so I kiiiiinda didn't want to start off super lazy right off the bat.

Seems like the wrong mood to set, you know?

Let's keep the yoga pants for an actual weekend day.

...

I'd like to take a moment, if no one minds, and quietly do a celebration dance as I realize this is my last day to work on Saturday. In my entire career history, it has never been a given that I could have Saturday off and for the last three years, it was a given that I wouldn't; any Saturday I managed to finagle was a beg, borrow, or steal situation. So I need this moment to sort of beam good Joining the Weekend World vibes out into the universe.

...

There. That feels better.

Yes, there will be bad bathroom selfies until I get my actual camera set up on a tripod and find a good lighting spot. Look, it's winter! It's cold and dark when I get dressed in the morning and the sun is mostly down by the time I get home! I am seriously not the kind of person who is going to take outfit photos while freezing my fingers off.

The cardigan here is a staple of mine - Target's Boyfriend Cardigan. I've even posted almost this exact same outfit when I was doing style posts over on my personal blog. I have them in about four colors - white, red, this mustard color, and navy. The upside is that they're insanely cheap. The downside is that they're cheap for a reason - the fit and the seams are all wonky, creating lumps where none exist. I mean, don't get me wrong, I have lots of lumps, but they're... really not where the photo would lead you to believe. The buttons are sewn on funny as well, leading them to look like they're pulling even when they're fitting perfectly or, in some cases, a little loose. They fade in the wash spectacularly quickly. They're basically see-through, so when worn over a striped tee-shirt like the one above, you can see the stripes right through the yellow in person.

One of my goals for this coming fall is to upgrade my cardigan collection. I want the same basic colors - red, white, mustard yellow, brick red/pumpkin orange/copper, and navy, but I'd like them to be thicker, better quality, and warmer.

Any brands you turn to for cardigans that fit that bill?

I have black and gray cardigans in this style from Lands End that I wear a lot - Lands End will show up a lot here - but I'd like an option that has this same kind of length as the boyfriend cardigan, and the Lands End cardigans are quite a bit shorter.

(By the way, this is a rant I have coming up, about how everything for women assumes we have the torsoes of small children why is that)

Did I just say cardigan too much?

Has the word lost all meaning?

I wear these shoes all. the. time.

They're Privo brand, which I don't think exists really anymore, a subsidiary of Clarks.  I bought these suckers probably seven or eight years ago. We used to live in southern Illinois and two of our friends lived just over the border in Missouri. One of them ran a shoe store and he sold this Privo brand and I fell in absolute head-over-heels love.

I had black shoes very similar to these as well that I bought during that time, but I finally wore the inside of the sole out completely and had to throw them out. These brown shoes have held together admirably, but you can see the finish starting to wear off on the fronts.

So another goal for this year is to replace my go-to brown flats. I need a darker brown color, something I can wear every day.

One more goal for the next year or so is to invest in more striped shirts, basic workhorses like this one from Loft. I wear this shirt all the time, and it's incredibly easy to dress up or down. I don't like flat black-and-white stripes on myself very much, but softer grays like this always seem to be cute.

I should make a list of these goals so I can keep track of them, huh? Since I need to add - find jeans that fit my legs better to that list as well. I buy pretty cheap jeans, just because in the last year or so my weight has changed a lot depending on what I'm doing. I went on a walking-and-eating-right kick and lost about 20 pounds, then got pregnant and, um, that progress is all gone now. I'm hoping to get back into being healthier this year, which... might lead my jeans size to change once again. So I've been buying Old Navy primarily, whatever's cheap. But I'd like to get into a size I'm a. comfortable staying at, and b. able to buy jeans that are less stretched-like-woah after 20 minutes of wear. Something shouldn't go from comfortable to nearly-falling-down in less than an hour of sitting and standing, you know?

Oh, and the headband is... well, remember one of my rules from my introductory post is "The hair does what it wants". Well, sometimes I'm very stupid and sleep on it instead of taking a shower in the morning like I should. On those days, I wear a headband to keep it in check. If I don't... strange things happen. Strange things indeed.

Cardigan: Target, here. The yellow isn't available, but it tends to come back every fall in some form.
Striped Boatneck Tee: Loft, but currently only available in black/white and gray/purple. Gift from my husband's family.
Jeans: Old Navy, here.
Shoes: Privo by Clarks, similar 'dressy or casual' brown flat here.
Socks: SmartWool. Always.
Necklace: Bought from the gift shop I ran here. Similar here on etsy.
Green Infinity Scarf: Christmas gift from my husband's family.

So this is kind of the introduction after the introduction, so to speak. An idea of what I'm probably wearing if I'm at work that day. This is actually a little more subdued than I normally am - I'm someone who basically loves colors and I do in fact own rainbow striped shoes. So we'll see where things go. I'm going to put together a list of goals, and maybe working on this blog, and looking at myself so honestly, will lead me to work harder on figuring fit and style out in a way to better suit my frame. My jeans are too baggy in the legs, I need better cardigans, and, um, not to sleep on my hair like that.

Welp.

Here we go, kids. Let's figure my clothing out together!