Style Has No Size: Pattern Mixing
The controversial topic here is pattern mixing. Believe it or not, it’s not always received well. Some people just don’t get it. I also personally think they are scared to try. To me, it’s fashion at its most creative and personal because you can mix how YOU want to mix things based on your own personal taste. It’s also fun and exciting, which is what fashion is supposed to be. So I wanted to take our Style Has No Size series here, and show you that this technique is for ALL sizes.
You can take a page out of our book and get inspiration to create similar outfits, or use this as encouragement to just try it for yourself. Look in your closet and see if there is anything that stands out to you, or that would possibly look good with something else… something else that is unexpected. I do follow a few subconscious rules. I usually put different patterns together, like a structured and an abstract. Here for example, I have a stripe and fruit shapes. I also usually stay in the same color family when mixing and matching my prints, but with this outfit, I went completely rogue. Even though they ARE the colors of Christmas… I pulled the green stems in the strawberries out with the pants, so the pairing was intentional. I try to pair something that is bold with another item that is not so bold, like my below outfit. My polka dot shirt is the star of the show and a bold pattern, and shorts are almost a neutral because of the colors and muted pattern. I do think I would pair a strong colored polkadot bottom with that as well, so as I’m writing through this, I reiterate, there really are no rules. You just have to play with it and see if it feels right!
I wore this outfit for my milk campaign for Hart Dairy on Instagram (which btw, best milk ever!), and knew I wanted to do something bold and fun. I found these two pieces during my fitting room try-on at Anthropologie at Avalon last month, and just loved them together. It’s like I was a giant abstract strawberry. The pants are a perfect fit and come in 3 other patterns. What I love about the fit is the high waist, and that they are actually a bit fitted in the thigh, but in a good way that flatters. And then they hit exactly where I love cropped pants to hit on my ankle. I am very picky about this, and anything too short just doesn’t flatter the leg, and anything too long is too hot for summer, or hard to move in if you want to wear flats. You can shop all my details below, my top is on sale!
This shoot day is when we took the kids to the toy park. I had this vision for my milk campaign of random toys strewn throughout the yard, and me sitting among them. I called up Ashley and asked her if she had any abandoned yard toys, or knew of any… she immediately was like, oh I have somewhere to take you! So we met here and got to hang and shoot some content, but also just brainstorm. I told her I wanted to take the Style Has No Size to a pattern mixing post. We both come up with the outfit ideas for this series as they come to us, so this was my latest. It was HOT out. Like humid and 99 degrees. If you look close enough, you might be able to see sweaty wet hair and glistening skin haha! What I also love about most of this shoot together, is that we truly were just chatting/refereeing our kids and Naomi captured the true candidness of that. I hope you like it! I will give more details and a roundup of cool Atlanta play places in a post next week!
You can find Ashley from House of Dorough over on her site HERE. If you aren’t already following her, she does the best IG stories and makes you feel like you are her best friend just hanging out with her all day!
Photography by: Naomi Hopkins Photography
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