Metallic Styling Tips For An All Black Outfit
I believe accessories make or break the outfit, my go to cheat has always been metallics. Here, I share how gold accessories can spruce up a black Moschino collared shirt, G-Star drop crotch jeans and suede pointy flats.
I don't know if you're like me, I feel the most guilty when I don't use my things. I feel it's such a waste, them sitting there starring at me accusingly. Giving me the emotional stink eye like mid century stern portraitures inside haunted homes, they follow me around with their "eyes", haunting me in my head.
They flood my working memory, steal my time, energy and money through intrusive thoughts and negative emotions. Even when I tried to bury them six feet deep inside drawers, I manage to make them retreat for a while, they always managed to resurrect with a vengeance when I open drawers packed to the brim.
I started decluttering because I couldn't seem to win the stuff war and I was tired of it. I did 15 mins a day for a year and managed to scale down 50%, without a relapse.
Juggling a full time job, caregiving to multiple disabled people, housekeeping and taking care of myself is no joke. It's tempting to do a huge overhaul all at once, I initially did, felt it was not as effective as slowing down to mindfully change out my habits.
I use to hide them in dust bags, pack them in boxes, shove them deeper inside chests. Then I couldn't see them so I didn't use them, I even forgot some of the them ever existed, giving myself a pleasant surprise that turned into a shameful deflating realisation of how out of control I really feel.
After addressing my subconscious money fears, I see them all at a glance now. I got most of them displayed on a coat hanging tree, the more expensive ones are kept packed properly in boxes.
I have been using them far more, not to mention be able to confidently admire them without feeling overwhelmed. They act as wall decorations, serving two purposes instead of one, saving me space and the need to spend more on home decor.
The more I styled, the more I repaired them, the more I maintained them well, the happier I became about them. I wanted to utilise them to the maximum, which was my primary goal for home organising.
I feel proud of myself, my clean organised home, my abilities to juggle it all.
Pair with Nali drawstring bucket bag for weekends, clubbing or parties. The leopard print sequinned surface is a show stopper, people ask me about it all the time.
I added an Aldo medallion chain belt to cinch in the waist, it's fun to try out a mixture of shapes and textures, it adds depth to the look. If you think your look is too one dimensional, flat and uninteresting, try to deploy these tips.
Switch to a boxy glittery Coach tote for work, fits A4 and has loads of compartments, nice shape contrast with the round medallion belt and moon shaped shoe buckle. The entire outfit looks business casual now.
Sometimes we refuse to use belts because we're shy about our waistlines and feel it draws attention to areas we want to hide. When belts creates shapes, I look more hourglass, more curvy, visually thinner.
Pair with a Kate Spade shiny patent clutch with ivory oval handle for work or play, classic enough but not too boring. The details make such a difference when the design is simple, the more basic the design, the easier it is to notice the workmanship.
The trick is always check the quality, not only get caught up in the price tag. Quality translates to durability, so you can use them longer, without feeling tempted to keep on consuming.
Like many busy professionals, I'm time poor, which can become money poor and well as health poverty too if we're not maintaining work life balance.
It's easy to get bored with our stuff, keep on adding new ones instead of learning new ways to use existing items. The switch to skills learning can also help you discover possible career paths, add intellectual stimuli to reduce boredom and scale up emotional value to create meaning in your life.
A switch in the bag makes such a big difference, my mood changes as well, I would use the chained bucket bag as a crossbody if I didn't have a belt, bags can segment clothes and have a slimming effect too.
Single colour metallics are so versatile, I use this Coach tote all the time. It fits all my files, it has loads compartments, adds a sparkle to my life.
I also have a preloved 3.1 Phillip Lim sliver leather bucket bag, I use that one all the time as well, it went well with my lazy fuggedaboutit vegan silver sneakers.
It also matched with my pastel pink, grey and white kicks, since I chose a busy pastel printed top that day.
It's hard for fat people to feel good about our bodies, it's a constant battle to exist in a thinness centred world where diet culture is monopolised by billion dollar global corporations within a multi billion dollar industry.
Resisting the propaganda that harms us mentally is a full time job, we have so many do and we die, don't do we also die contradictions to styling.
We struggle to exist within looks obsessed societies filled with entitled demanding people that ask us to drag our fatigued bodies to do extra unpaid labor like exercise like manics to prove how strong our work ethics are.
Look, housekeeping is exercise, I perspire buckets after mopping, doing laundry and a million other little things. No matter how easy, it's still labour, it's still time and energy consuming.
Workaholism has made people expect volunteers to perform up to the same capitalistic bar even when it's voluntary activism and we don't get paid for it, the lack of empathy is real. We live in a world of addicts who shove their addictions onto us and expect us to enable them, doing the right thing gets us backlash instead of rewards.
Stop this madness!
Looking good on a budget is indeed hard, especially since losing our appetites or having larger appetites is a sign that we're overwhelmed.
Stress makes us too tired to stress manage, working long hours to survive makes us unable to truly take care of our homes, that's the cycle we're all pulled into. We lose our lives, trying to create the best lives for ourselves.
It's less about genuine health but more about capitalistic ideas of productivity, we must always be busy or we're lazy. Burn out is glorified, having no life outside of the office is worshipped as serious and ambitious.
Chained to our desks inside toxic work environments, living to work, working till death, when death is preferable to the alive by flesh yet dead inside misery of clinical depression.
Women are treated as secondary in every space, yet we're all told to be confident all the time as well, people use toxic positivity to bombarded us back into silence once we speak our truth. Even the most mundane expression of anger, even at abusers, is seen as wrong, we're socially policed and controlled as commodities, destined to serve others as servants.
I exist as not OK some days and I refuse to apologise for it.
I'm OK most days and enjoy my life most of the time, that is a far cry from when I was dieting, I was always secretly distraught deep inside, easily anxious, always miserable then.
I faked it well, in order not to burden others, nonetheless I was still overwhelmed by shame.
Not to mention I had a fat and skinny wardrobe, felt too guilty about wasting money to buy new clothes that straddle the two sides, so I REALLY had nothing to wear. To get one outfit together was a chore, I lost my joy of dressing up, it became a source of deflation, feeding my inner critic instead.
Shopping addiction, hoarding, disordered eating, body image issues are all linked, it's all part of the global mental health crisis,
Now, after 2 years of intuitive eating, it has helped me reached my set weight point, there's no more drastic up and down size fluctuations, so I have an entire preloved wardrobe to choose from.
Letting go was hard, it was also life changing, no more clutter in my wardrobe, no more reminders of the fantasy size and weight I always wanted to be, far more self acceptance and way more self love.
Metallic accessories have been my best friend through thick and thin, I hope you will find comfort and ease with them as well. They seem hard to match, when it's easier than you think, most of our accessories have a hint of gold or silver hardware on them.
If you find it hard to self care, get our declutter self care plan to compliment your decluttering. Some of us need a little more help, asking for help is a sign of insightfulness.
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