White and Cream

Zara sweater (similar)
Zara jeans (similar)
Flattered boots (similar)
Chanel handbag
Celine sunglasses
Linjer rings (c/o) (similar)
Mejuri earrings (similar)
Location: Irish Houses of Parliament – Dublin, Ireland

I’ve gravitated towards light colours since my mid-teens. I want to say always, but the reality is, I spent my early childhood utterly obsessed with all things purple, and definitely went through a phase where I was less concerned about colour because I was so preoccupied with making sure as many of my clothes are possible were made of velour. (The adult version of my won’t even attempt to find an explanation for that – there are some questions to which there are no answers.) My love of light shades started with pink, the shades of which just kept getting paler as time went on. When I started doing my nails regularly, it was always in a shade of white.

Since I’m nothing if not consistent, I’ve always decorated my homes primarily in shades of white. And I still favourite French manicures – the palest of pale pinks, with a white tip. But wearing white can be a dangerous proposition. The world is full of ketchup and glasses of red wine and puddles of dirty water from melting snow. For a long time, I wore black far more often than white, even in the summer, because it’s equally elegant but eminently more practical. (When I did dare to wear white to a party once, a long ago summer in Vancouver, someone did spill an entire glass of red wine on me, which just reinforced that I’d been making the right sartorial decision all along.) But, slowly, black shifted towards beige with black accents… white with black, white with beige… and, more recently, white and cream.

White was historically considered a summer shade and, practically speaking, that makes sense; it absorbs less light than black, which keeps you cooler on hot days. But when you love something, why should you limit yourself to wearing it for only half the year? Winter is a season of white, at least in Winnipeg. It seems natural, somehow, to dress accordingly.

In case you were wondering, winter white remains totally impractical as a sartorial choice. It rained the morning we took these photos, and again later in the afternoon. When we got back to our Dublin hotel room, the back of my jeans was, predictably, speckled with dots of dirty water. The good news is, the water marks were nothing that some time spent in the washing machine couldn’t fix. And beyond that, clothes are for wearing, not to be put on display. Life is indeed full of ketchup and red wine and mud puddles; it’s also short and none of those things are a good reason to save clothes you love for some undefined later date. If you have a chance, take it. That’s my philosophy, sartorial and otherwise; you never know when it may come around again.

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