Let me be clear: this isn’t an essay a few maximalist turning right into a minimalist. That is an essay a few maximalist (cough, me, cough) coming to understand that it’s excessive time to personal a grey cardigan. It’ll make me no much less a maximalist, and I would even take pleasure in it.
My foray into neutrals *involuntary shudder* all began with blue denims. I went to Japan final winter and had one buying need to take one thing residence from the denim icons at Kapital. In my goals, I might purchase a pair of the kaleidoscopic patchwork bell bottoms identified to streetwear denizens all over the place, however in my finances had been the blue denims. So, in a whirlwind of Japanese denim induced need I believed, properly, alright, perhaps I’ll do that entire “blue jean” factor. Everybody else appears to be doing it.
Once I wore the pants again on the Vogue workplace, my co-worker remarked that she had by no means seen me in a pair of blue denims—ever. What she was used to was my huge number of colourful bottoms, from my inexperienced tie-dyed denims completed by a Bushwick artist to my scorching pink CDG balloon pants, my Decrease East Facet-made orange cargos, and numerous vibrant pairs in between. All of a sudden, I couldn’t cease sporting the blue denim.
Properly, my pricey reader, it seems the blue denims had been simply an introduction—a tickle, a gateway drug, if you’ll—to neutrals. Behold, the horror!
The story continues. I used to be taking pictures social content material at (paradoxically) a “Vogue editors’ necessities: favourite white t-shirt” shoot. (Shocker, I didn’t personal a white t-shirt.) I requested our producer, Fujio, if I might borrow his sweater to alleviate my frigid temperature when subsequent factor I knew I used to be 10 levels hotter, and, really, dare I say it, having fun with the outfit much more? The sweater was gray, however that’s precisely what I wanted. It made my colourful, patterned Pucci skirt actually pop, and I appreciated its elegant silhouette all of the extra, the flamboyant facet of its look not being its solely attraction. The sweater “pulled the look collectively,” if you’ll.
I nonetheless love and put on my colourful objects, however I noticed that what the neutrals gave to me was a base to play off of, to boost different components of the outfit—whether or not or not it’s a shoe or a jacket or a very daring hair coloration of the second. (Ask me about my orange hair period.) I proselytize that minimalists can discover colours that work for them exterior of greys, blacks, browns, and beiges, so it’s solely truthful that I think about what neutrals will work for me.
To borrow from the phrases of Coco Chanel, “Earlier than you allow the home, ask your self: will one impartial make the remainder of these brights pop?” So my type decision to you, Mrs. Chanel, isn’t to take one factor off, however to purchase one grey cardigan.