What-to-Wear Panic

I am amazed, but it seems that I have this "what I am going to wear?" panic in spades (sometimes literally, given my addiction to Kate Spade) and it's cropped up a few times recently.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I can shop and my enjoyment of shopping probably translates into this panic mode, but it has taken me a bit by surprise recently. I'm also just going to roll with it!

The first was a recent work overnight offsite. Most of us were staying at the hotel where we held it and so I was planning my outfit choices in advance. Now bear in mind, I have been mostly in jeans and tops for the last couple years, we're all mostly working from home and on Zoom, so who's dressing up big for that? Well, I do like to have a chic style, it's way more honestly me than in the past pre-transition largely gender neutral looks, and so I had to plan!

So, day 1 I did go with jeans, but with a red cowl-neck sweater and knee high black boots. Day 2 I planned to wear a turtleneck with a brown blaid skirt. This led to two crisis issues: boots for day 2 and what coat to wear.

Now, to date, I have largely avoided heels as I'm really not keen to tower over others. Not that I'm super tall, somewhere around 5'11" is tall, but hardly uncommon these days. Nevertheless, the problem is that I lacked brown boots for the outfit and the only ones that seemed suitable also had a 2.5" heel. Time to be tall! Recalled that a friend was like, "Jo, just rock the heels!"

The coat was a second crisis, I had nothing that I felt chic enough to wear. Not having much reason to be out these last couple of years, I hadn't gotten around to shopping much. What I really wanted to find, for this, was a double-breasted cape like so:

Seems I missed that bandwagon! Anyways, while I was out, I went into Nordstroms and discovered this stunning wool coat by Ted Baker. 

However, while I wanted to get it (and I did get it), I ended up at the Ted Baker corner of The Bay and found this:

It may not be a cape, but still great! I really quite love this coat, it looks and feels so good! So, final day 1 look came together as:

Well, being a bit on the tall side, my knee-high boots were a little below the knee, lol.

Next crisis up is technically still a week away at a company cocktail party. I have my dress, it's a gorgeous Ted Baker white floral, but that left me hung up for shoes. I ended up buying a few different pairs to get where I wanted, but I did land on some strappy pumps in a tan colour. My remaining crisis is a shrug or wrap that works with the dress because it's off the shoulder and I freeze in a sauna. Hmm... may also need to consider a small purse. Sigh.

I do this to myself. Anyways, for the curious, this is the dress:

Of course, now massively on sale. Anyways... it's actually made of neoprene! It's quite comfy, feels substantive, and it looked great on me. Actually, I don't even have myself for that opinion, that was blurted out by a random customer in the Ted Baker store! Which, of course, pretty much ensured that I would buy it.

Anyways, when it comes to crisis moments, these are the ones that I prefer. I'm going to try to keep it that way.