Monochrome

Well right after a crazy outfit, here is (another) monochromatic look. These are shot by the talented Mildred and Zhi Jun in an environment that was surprisingly charming. It was blazing hot in the late afternoon and long sleeves+long pants+outerwear was not as chill as these photos captured it to be.

Ever since borrowing clothes from my brother, I’ve been really digging the oversized, loose and comfortable vibe of menswear. This outerwear is indeed from my brother’s wardrobe (it raised quite a racket with him to find out I was wearing his clothes). For this outfit, I decided to challenge myself with the proportions of the individual pieces. Skin tight and well fitted clothes seem to be the majority of what people like to wear nowadays, but there is a whole world out there of different silhouettes to style, and I would like to try it.

The enormous, oversized effect of the white button down and the parka like outerwear creates a good balance with the skinny jeans. To be honest, the oversized effect doesn’t really sit well with me because I am relatively bigger and taller than average, which makes it harder for me to find something oversized. When I do, there is always the fear that dressing oversized makes me look bigger and occupy more space than I already do. That is the main stigma surrounding oversized silhouettes which probably dissuades a lot of people and they choose to opt for the fitted, skimming pieces instead.

I really liked how this outfit turned out though, the crispness of the contrast between a pure white and matte black is in itself something that stands out from the rest of the environment. Lesson being: oversized stuff is actually pretty cool, I mean it would look good on anyone: for taller peeps like me it hangs really well and doesn’t drown me out in fabric, kinda like the mast of a ship; and for the tall peeps, it is just freaking adorable to be swathed in oversized clothes, kinda like a nomadic pillow fort.

The thought process that goes into this outfit was centered around the colours, and from that concept I pulled in pieces to match it up. There are a couple of ways to come up with an outfit, one being how I styled the previous, crazier look around one statement piece (could be anything from shirt to shoes really) and this, around a colour scheme (could be colourful or monochromatic).

At this point, I feel obliged to gush a little about the versatility of something like a white button down. I think I mentioned briefly about key details like buttons and zips in the blue look for styling school t shirts, but it does not stop there. For example, in this monochromatic outfit I pulled together, I changed a total of three styling details with just the parka and the white button down, mainly the sleeves, the neck buttons, and finally the zip of the parka.

Whether you have a big wardrobe, a smaller one, or anything in between the spectrum, I think it’s always great to get the most mileage out of every single piece if possible. Personally I don’t see something bad in repeating an outfit, but that problem could be reduced if the pieces are versatile and there’s extra fabric to work with to tuck it in/tie front/button up/left unbuttoned. Small details like that make it always a little different from the last time you wore it.

To conclude, this is one of the coolest moments in the entire photoshoot, when the rainbow from a tiny prism FINALLY appears and all of us just freaked and scrambled to get pictures. Behind the scenes, I was squatting at the most uncomfortable level to move my face to where the rainbow was, lest moving the prism meant this elusive light would forever escape our grasp. IT IS SO SHOOKENING TO SEE THE FINAL PICTURES OF THE PRISM!

Surely, I hope this isn’t the first and last time that the pictures would get an upgrade to be taken by professional photographers instead of my begrudging brother 😀