Stripes for Success

Stripes are considered a neutral, did you know that? As far as prints go, stripes are just as good as solids to pair with any busier print! I’ve chosen a few examples of how I’ve incorporated stripes into my outfits. I used to NEVER wear stripes! “It makes you look fat” was one of the most common phrases I would hear, and absolutely, if you wear CERTAIN striped patterns, you could look “wider”. However, I have a new found love of stripes, and I couldn’t agree more that it’s a neutral, and can make some beautiful pattern mixing looks!

Take this first outfit.

Mixing a striped and floral piece is beautiful! I have a very busy floral Randy Tee on, which the overlapping florals make it a great contrast to the striped Sarah Cardigan I have on. The fine stripes on the cardigan has lots of white space, which gives a nice balance of color and design for my outfit!

Main component to making this look work: a busy, bigger print should be paired with a smaller, more subtle print. In this particular look, thinner stripes with big and bold florals. To have two big prints together can make for a very loud outfit (Not to say it can’t work! It will depend on the prints, of course.)

You can put stripes on stripes, too!

This look was an experiment, and boy am I glad I tried it! Look how adorable it turned out! So, the key here is that I have two striped pieces with the same colors, contrasted, and different sized stripes. 

The top (from Dry Goods) has thinner stripes, widely spaced, and the skirt primarily has wider stripes.

The top is also primarily a dark color, navy, and the bottom is lighter (the caramel and white colors pop much more than the navy.)

In addition to the two striped pieces, that criss-cross bralette (also from Dry Goods) breaks up all the vertical lines, and brings the look together quite well!

Graphic Lines

Another way I like to wear my stripes, is to mix the direction of the lines. This look here is my striped Classic Tee with my American Dreams Madison skirt. The print on the skirt is a scripted text saying “Americana” with horizontal lines of color going through the words, giving the illusion of a horizontal striping. The horizontal lines with the vertical stripes on my top complement each other very well! I also worked with the contrast of the light colored top with the dark colored bottom.

The blue Sarah Cardigan is the one linking color between the top and bottom, which brings this outfit to completion.

Stripes and Florals, Again!

Here is my final example of incorporating stripes into an outfit. This is probably the boldest I’ve done, and it looks so good!

This is an over-sized Irma Tunic tucked into a Cassie Skirt. The Irma’s bold black and white stripes paired with the busier, but not as loud, floral paisley print works well to balance each other out. I only say that the Cassie is not as loud, because all the colors are not as far apart as black and white are.

If I put this Cassie with a solid color, or even a more subtle striped top, it would be much louder and quite a statement piece!

If you were skeptical or scared of wearing stripes, I hope these examples give you an idea on how you can make stripes look beautiful and flattering in your outfits!

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Let me know if you have any other ways you love to wear your stripes! I love to try new styling ideas!

Thanks for reading!

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Tomorrow, my Weekend Update will be up from my weekend getaway to Galena, IL and Dubuque, IA!