the outfit that wasn't meant to be

I wanted to look casual but coordinated, but not like I'd fallen into the hands of a stylist who'd untucked my shirt and done up my sleeves like the Flying Nun's coif. And of course I didn't want to look studied. I wanted to look as though I had many better things to do than fuss about getting dressed, and and I wanted to look as if my air of offhand sophistication was purely accidental.


First I ordered the sweaters - sizes appeared and disappeared from a few stores I ran past, and finally there was a 30% off promo on a day when I had returned so much other stuff - mainly chair cushions for the dining room in Flintstone Manor, where seat cushions tend to be short lived - anyway with all these returns credited back, I felt flush, and decided to take a flyer and order shell and cardigan. I thought the colors, mainly a brownish green or greenish brown, would work with some pants from last winter or the winter before. The name of the pants eludes me, but I'm pretty sure the name of their color included the word "elm."

I also thought perhaps a skirt, to be worn with those sweaters and navy tights? I had in mind a particular skirt, which had also been coming and going and disappearing from the merchant's website and then reappeared dramatically in a full run of sizes for one day. I bought it. Thenext day I had the price adjusted. The fabric looked to be a plaid with lines of black (navy?) and wine on a lighter shade of "breen." Packages arrived. Somehow the Merchant Prince had shipped two shells from two different stores and no cardigan. I ordered a cardigan again.


The skirt arrived the next day. For something that has been selling out like crazy, I gotta tell youse, this is some fugly skirt. If you ignore the fussy niceties of sizing, the skirt was nicely made, it was lined, it had an invisible zipper, it had a hem and a waistband. But the fabric. Heavy. Hairy. Shaggy. The itch factor came through the lining. Trying not to scratch the back of one's thighs isn't a good look for me. Fabric colors - total misrepresentation. The line of "blue" was in fact a funny light gray. I had hoped the presence of some light blue might encourage the skirt to coordinate with a "French Blue" cashmere tee from last spring, but no. That sweater had matched up with some full-legged linen pants and its work in my closet was done. The "breen" of the skirt clashed with the breen of the shell. The navy and wine-colored lines were almost indistinguishable from one another. Standing outside on the terrace (sun! For five whole minutes!) made the colors a little more distinguishable, but to no good end.

What could be the purpose of that fabric? It was suitable for wear with heavy corduroy trousers by a distinguished British public figure impersonating a colorblind poet-in-residence. It was miscast as a skirt. Time to waste a morning returning things.

Of course the next morning the cardigan arrived. In a flash of desperate hope, I held it up to navy wool pants. Beyond depressing. Lugubrious. And so I have re-named the color of the sweaters. They are and shall be henceforth -- Mournful Elm.