The Accidental Color Palette of My Summer
I’m usually a cool tone person. Most of my clothes are some tone of blue and my house is mostly blues and greens with some pops of pink. Pink is usually as warm of a color as I get.
But something happened this summer and orange became the base color for my summer outfits. It started with a visit to Mulberry in Edinburgh in search of their mint color (my favorite color!) Bayswater bag. I’d always wanted a Mulberry bag and the fact it now came in my favorite color was irresistible. Yet, I ended up leaving with the orange version very much to my own surprise!
When I saw the mint it felt like the safe choice. Everything I had been buying lately was a similar color and once I saw the orange, it felt fresh and fun. My fiancé said the same thing as I wavered between my favorite color and the bright orange. A color that is almost completely absent from my wardrobe.
Before this, I only owned a pair of orange Jack Roger sandals, an orange tropical shirt, and an orange Lilly Pulitzer dress. Basically all Florida wear for when I visit home. Not things I would normally wear in San Francisco.
Then as I returned home, without consciously doing so, the fabric colors I was choosing for my sewing projects all seemed to work perfectly with my new orange handbag. Corals, pinks, reds, and more oranges.
What I love most is that developing a color palette was not intentional. I didn’t decide at the beginning of summer that orange would be the color of summer. I simply chose the purse in the color that excited me and not just the color I normally choose. And since orange sits opposite blue on the color wheel, my existing blue wardrobe has worked really well with all the oranges and corals I’ve added this summer.
It’s made me think differently about adding color to my wardrobe. Rather than choosing a palette first and shopping to fill it, maybe it’s more interesting to notice the colors you keep reaching for and see where they lead you. When choosing new fabric for a sewing project or a new accessory, sometimes it’s more useful to find something that complements, rather than matches, your current go-to pieces.
