I'm always interested in bags and
shoes. And shoes and bags. Always. But this year, stores and the
glossies seem to be offering so much more of them both to love, so
I'm not surprised that they are so especially intriguing to me. Some
years for me it's skirts or dresses or tunics. This year looks like
it's shaping up to be the Jan's Year of the Accessory.
We are enjoying strangely extended
mild spring temperatures this year, with lots of rainy days, so I've
been enjoying a few more days that I can keep comfortably wearing the
perfect-for-me, long sleeved, crisp, white and black tailored shirts
that I discovered last year. They'll make way for similar-but-sleeveless tops in
the miserable heat that is coming soon (and as you see below, the
transition is already underway) but I've been digging the unexpected
extra opportunities to wear them with my recent and typically
Jan-Come-Lately discovery of straight leg jeans on the skinny side.
This very simple combination just begs for a great shoe and notice-me
bag ... I know "third pieces" are not supposed to be about
the shoes, but I think they can often function that way with very
casual outfits. There are so many fresh looking shoe shapes, many of
them creative iterations of retro classics, that it's easy to focus
on feet-first outfit planning. A bag, too, can make a huge difference
in how polished a basic shirt-jeans combo can look.
I was shoe shopping when I found this Boho-beauty, and it was a huge accessory crush for me at first sight.
I had a similar bag long ago, a much loved and more rustic version in the
way-back, that sported antiqued brass metal rather than the shiny and sleek silver fittings of this more polished design. My current
tastes don't usually run to strongly Bohemian looks, although it has never gone away and seems to be enjoying some extra fashion-passion
from trend lovers, classicists and vintage enthusiasts alike. I was
there for the late 60's version and have frequently dipped a toe into some revivals
in the decades between then and now. We eldest are so often
cautioned that "if we did it the first time around we shouldn't
do it again" but this bag, for me, is an illustration of why we
absolutely should do it again and as often as we wish.
One of the things I love about having
lived through the decades of style that I have is that I can enjoy
the evolution that allows past favorites to reappear, renewed and
reinvented and with refreshed relevance.
It occurs to me that the white,
sleeveless shirt-waist, complete with popped collar was typical of
the late 50s-early-60s. By the late 60s and 70s, it would have been
looking dated, and the fringed bag would have been paired with quite
a different look ... my straight leg jeans wouldn't have arrived yet
and the bag would have paired with bell-bottoms. The wooden
platforms were throwbacks even then to the 40s and 50s, and now I'm
happy to reintroduce them (yet again!) to other pieces from other
decades. Like the rest of the pieces, it's become a classic in it's
own way, and I am delighted to field the compliments I've been
getting. I fully admit to enjoying again the swish of fringe when I
walk, without going full-on hippy chic from the Summer of Love.
This slightly sleeker version of the my grubbier, rougher,
Woodstock-era carryall has evolved, and so have I. (Just from the era
... I wasn't AT Woodstock.) Neither of us are exactly the same as
we used to be, but both of us in our current versions are more
versatile, more useful than we were then.
And if that isn't a perfect excuse
inspiration to indulge in a new bag in a style from my youth,
I don't know what is.
(The color isn't as true as the photo above, but you can see
what a nice drop it has from the shoulder.)
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
That's it for this week ... come with me over to Pretty Patti's
Visible Monday and see what all the glamourati are up to!
