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Let me be clear: this is not an essay about a maximalist turning into a minimalist. This is an essay about a maximalist (cough, me, cough) coming to appreciate that it’s high time to own a gray cardigan. It will make me no less a maximalist, and I might even enjoy it.
My foray into neutrals *involuntary shudder* all started with blue jeans. I went to Japan last winter and had one shopping desire to take something home from the denim icons at Kapital. In my dreams, I would buy a pair of the kaleidoscopic patchwork bell bottoms known to streetwear denizens everywhere, but in my budget were the blue jeans. So, in a whirlwind of Japanese denim induced desire I thought, well, alright, maybe I’ll try this whole “blue jean” thing. Everyone else seems to be doing it.
When I wore the pants back at the Vogue office, my co-worker remarked that she had never seen me in a pair of blue jeans—ever. What she was used to was my wide variety of colorful bottoms, from my green tie-dyed jeans done by a Bushwick artist to my hot pink CDG balloon pants, my Lower East Side-made orange cargos, and countless vibrant pairs in between. Suddenly, I couldn’t stop wearing the blue denim.
Well, my dear reader, it turns out the blue jeans were just an introduction—a tickle, a gateway drug, if you will—to neutrals. Behold, the horror!
The story continues. I was shooting social content at (ironically) a “Vogue editors’ essentials: favorite white t-shirt” shoot. (Shocker, I didn’t own a white t-shirt.) I asked our producer, Fujio, if I could borrow his sweater to alleviate my frigid temperature when next thing I knew I was 10 degrees warmer, and, actually, dare I say it, enjoying the outfit even more? The sweater was grey, but that’s exactly what I needed. It made my colorful, patterned Pucci skirt really pop, and I appreciated its elegant silhouette all the more, the flamboyant aspect of its appearance no longer being its only appeal. The sweater “pulled the look together,” if you will.
I still love and wear my colorful items, but I realized that what the neutrals gave to me was a base to play off of, to enhance other parts of the outfit—whether it be a shoe or a jacket or a particularly bold hair color of the moment. (Ask me about my orange hair era.) I proselytize that minimalists can find colors that work for them outside of greys, blacks, browns, and beiges, so it’s only fair that I consider what neutrals will work for me.
To borrow from the words of Coco Chanel, “Before you leave the house, ask yourself: will one neutral make the rest of these brights pop?” So my style resolution to you, Mrs. Chanel, isn’t to take one thing off, but to buy one gray cardigan.
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