Seasonal Essentials

Sezane blouse (similar)
Grlfrnd jeans (c/o REVOLVE)
Sezane sandals (similar)
Ellen James bag
Le Specs sunglasses
Wolf Circus necklace
Madewell rings
Urban Outfitters earrings (similar)
Location: The Bay Downtown – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Outfits are, in many ways, like individual time capsules. When we look back on them in old pictures, they tell us who we were, what we loved and who we wanted the world to think we were in a particular moment in time.

If there is a look that sums up the person I am in the summer of 2018, this is it. This look combines all of my essentials, the pieces I’ve come back to again and again in the last three months. And the interesting thing about that is that nothing that I’m wearing, aside from my accessories, was purchased this year.

In my first few years of blogging, I felt immense pressure to constantly have new pieces to wear. I worked incredibly hard for every single reader back in those days. And I worried that repetitive outfits would bore members of my minuscule audience, ultimately making them look elsewhere for style inspiration. What I learned, with time, is the people who visit Coco & Vera are regular people just like I am, with budgets and finite amounts of closet space in their homes. You all rewear your their clothes, just as I did before my blog gave me the silly idea that that was boring. I’ve been a strong proponent of shopping in your own closet ever since, because it’s exactly what I do in reality.

And that’s what I did when I put on this outfit.

I remember when I finally took the plunge on white denim in 2013. I’d long lived in fear of stains and spills, despite loving the look of white jeans. My worries turned into a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy; the first time I wore my new white jeans from Gina Tricot, I brushed up against bright pink and blue chalk art, leaving the black left leg of my pants a purplish hue. But the chalk washed out. And I happily wore those jeans until I wore a hole in them, replacing them with a pair from Mavi before these beauties from Grlfrnd came into my life in 2016. White jeans are having a moment this summer, it’s true. But they will always be on my list of essentials – I can’t imagine my wardrobe without them.

I bought this silk tank from Sezane the same year I got that first pair of white jeans. We were living in Paris and absolutely broke; treating myself to a pure silk blouse was incredibly indulgent. But it was on sale, and I loved it. And five summers later, it owes me nothing, but I will wear it until it is threadbare.

My bag and sandals are both from last summer. I splurged on the sandals at the last minute in the week before we left Paris. (They were not the only thing I bought in that week that I didn’t really need – the anxiety of leaving the French capital, no matter how short or long our stay, always makes me do things that I wouldn’t normally do.) But they have proven to be both versatile and comfortable for long walks. The bag, on the other hand, required a fair amount of judicious research. I scoured Etsy and eBay and countless online shops before settling on “the one.” Despite the fact that it smells like what I can only describe as an exotic campfire, it is just to easy to throw on and go.

My jewellery and sunglasses are all new this year – but quite honestly, that’s all I really needed to change to turn pieces from years gone by into my go-to 2018 look. These are my summer essentials. And it’s a good chance some of them will be my summer essentials next year, too.

What pieces have you worn over and over this season?