Glad You Held On

Putting my hand on my hip like so helps counteract the
fattening effects of wearing a floaty empire-waist dress.

Up until now, I had been mostly focused on this dress' brown aspect, but a closer inspection reveals that it is really full of pinks and muted greens. I was somewhat surprised to find that this dusky rose necklace looked better with the dress than any of my brown ones. Astonished and pleased, because goodness knows, wearing all brown gets me down. Although adding straps made this dress much more work-appropriate than it had been when it was halter-tied, I still felt conspicuous wearing it (besides, it's not summer-hot any more), and wanted to cover up with a sweater of some sort. The discovery of the additional colors freed me from feeling like I needed to wear it with my brown bolero (which clashed with the shoes anyway) and experiment with pinks or greens...which I don't have. I went with off-white—a color-coordination stretch, but not a complete snap.

I headband-curled my hair again, but I vow that this will be the last time I try to wear curls, at least until winter. Long high-speed bike rides and precarious hairdos just don't mix.

I am proud to say that my modifications seem to have worked—I wore this dress all day without it sliding down, and it even helped hold up my too-large strapless bra!

This is one of those instances where ankle straps really do
make your legs look shorter.