(Not So) Mellow Yellow

Surely an aberration of nature, this January day was altogether balmy for the mid-Atlantic region of the United States by anybody’s measure. It reached almost 60 degrees in Washington D.C. this afternoon!  I didn’t need a jacket as I made my commute to the Library of Congress to conduct research for my job in the hallowed marble halls. Tonight a cold front is due and there will be snow on the ground by the time I awake tomorrow, so today I relished the warm sun on my face.

Second in a series of three posts highlighting vintage slacks by Inclinations that I bought at JCPenney when I worked there in the 1970s, this time I am writing about the yellow ones – not really yellow, of course, but a muted mustard, tamed even more by the black windowpane plaid in the woven fabric. I intended to wear the slacks with a black turtleneck underneath an equally mellow mustard-colored open-weave sweater, reproducing almost exactly an outfit I used to wear to work when I lived in Dallas, Texas. But the yellow sweater had a stain on the front, so I took it to the cleaners and opted instead for a brighter mustard-colored crossover-neck top by Units which I picked up at a little shop in California in the early 1980s.

I couldn’t find a black sweater to wear over the tunic that suited me, so I grabbed an adorable little vest that was handmade for me by Elaine Terrell when I lived in Texas in the mid-1990s. The swirling floral pattern in gold, orange, brown and black on a beige ground are my favorite colors and played up perfectly the mustard hue in the slacks and the tunic. I decided that mixing florals with plaid would fit right in with today’s most avant-garde style trend – a wardrobe choice I would not have made a decade ago.

For jewelry I chose a choker necklace of amber glass beads from Fire & Ice Jewelers of Baltimore (http://fireandice.com/) and coordinated amber beaded chandelier earrings from Claire’s, a citrine bracelet from the DeYoung Museum gift shop in San Francisco that I purchased in 2004, and my favorite gold-metal bracelet-watch from Chico’s. I finished the look with short, black, scallop-trimmed booties by Lower East Side and a Dea Dread hair accessory for my pony tail by Thea Osato of Baltimore (http://deadreads.etsy.com/).

My yellow outfit was a sunny color for a bright, sunny day. There is a disabled man named Marvin who sits in his wheelchair every day near the subway station at the Library of Congress.  Today, as I walked past him, he shouted after me how nice my clothes always look. "You really know how to dress!" he exclaimed. Made my day.

Cheers,

Lynell