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On Sunday 10th, the sun came out and it was freakishly warm (19 C!), so I knew I had to drop my jeans + sweatshirt + woollen coat uniform in favour of something lighter. I put on my favourite dress, a crimson tea dress scattered with white flowers, and added my new navy cardigan and some cropped leggings. As an outfit, it looked pretty good.

Then I went outside and felt... not good. Awkward. Self-conscious. I wondered if people were noticing the way my skirt was hanging (that dress needs either a lining or a slip), or staring at my exposed calves, or even just thinking I looked too dressed up. I was too preoccupied with my appearance to enjoy being outside. I cut short my walk, went home, and changed into jeans and a hoodie.

Related: I've been meaning to make a haul post for the last three weeks, but it's been held up because I don't want to take pictures of myself wearing the clothes I bought. *sigh*

Confession time: I've been fairly depressed lately, and that's made it pretty hard to maintain a positive attitude to... well, anything. I lose interest in things, I avoid socialising, I lack energy, and my body image gets worse. As you can imagine, none of this is conducive to dressing well or writing a style blog...

When I opened my feed reader last week, this post by Sally of Already Pretty appeared.

Life is tiring, difficult, and constantly in flux. Virtually no one will feel cheerful, energetic, and serene at all times, and if a lack of cheerfulness, energy, and serenity continues for an extended period, it becomes harder and harder to tap back into that positivity. Sometimes, you’ve gotta generate it yourself by any means necessary. And dressing the part can help. A ton.

I was fortunate enough to come across that post in a relatively good frame of mind, so I read it and thought "she probably has a point. Maybe I should keep trying." Much of the time I feel like there's no point in dressing well, that I look ugly in everything anyway, etc etc etc... but I'm going to go with Sally vs. my depression on this one. I'll keep pushing myself to dress a little better, to take photographs that aren't 100% perfect and post them anyway, and to be more courageous about what I write here instead of withdrawing. So, sorry for the blog silence there... hopefully it won't happen again.

I know that for a personal style blog this post is rather heavy on the "personal" and light on the "style", and I feel the need to apologise for that too, but I'd hit a roadblock: my various hang-ups were making it harder and harder for me to post here, and I've decided to be honest about that instead of giving up and walking away.

I have several posts in the pipeline: my shopping haul from late March (some of which I have still to photograph), a couple of fitting room reviews, and thoughts on some of the spring/summer trends I've noticed lately. I know I failed to keep my promise to post an OOTD in March, but I did at least put an outfit together and photograph it; the lighting was just so bad that I counted it as a failure. In the interests of beating back my perfectionism, I'll post it now anyway.
Cardigan: unknown, possibly Johnston's of Elgin - a hand-me-down from my granny. I left it unbuttoned here to show off the tee underneath, but it looks more appealing when buttoned in some way.
Tee: Uniqlo Cath Kidston Charity Project (review to come!). The photo really doesn't do it justice; it's a lovely muted green with a beautiful floral print.
Skirt: French Connection, via a local charity shop.
Tights: John Lewis girls.
Shoes: John Lewis girls, reviewed here.

It looked better IRL than in that photo, I swear... yeah, excuses, excuses. I need to learn how to pose better. Grey + dark blue is my standard colour combination formula, but I'm not sure how well the light green goes with it. Perhaps the tee would look better under a dark grey cardigan (contrasting values).

Labels: outfit, personal