Styling Statement Coats

This coat came from the RealReal and was gifted to me by my mom when she decided the coat didn't work for her. I'm absolutely in love the the texture, and I wanted to play around with that element when styling it, so I purposely picked things that each had a different, distinct texture. The color of the jacket teeters in the neutral category, so I decided to lean into the the gold thread woven into the jacket and went with warm browns and reds broken up with black and gold accessories.

The dress (worn as a skirt) and sweater came from Goodwill, earrings from a flea market, and boots and scarf are hand-me-downs from my grandma.

This is a jacket I made from Mccall's m8156 pattern. I got the fabric during Joann's Black Friday sale, and as soon as I saw it I was like "yes, I want to be a witch". I was a little concerned when the fabric first arrived since I bought it online, and it's the kind of material you think of when you think faux velvet 80s track suit, and I couldn't help but then think "yes, mistakes were made" Fortunately it worked out thanks to the structured lines of the pattern and added lining, so mistakes were not made except for the fact that naturally the glitter was not all glued on super well so there is not glitter everywhere in my sewing space, and I have glitter on all my current projects. Good thing I find the whole situation hilarious .

For styling, I decided to stick with the star theme, and wore these constellation pants I found at Goodwill. I wanted to go with an entire black outfit to fit this "punk witch" thing I have going on and was going to wear a plain black shirt, but that has mysteriously vanished, and I'm sure is in the bottom of some drawer where it doesn't belong and will get discovered during spring cleaning. The shirt I'm wearing waas the next best thing and still fit the general aesthetic. Added some star earrings, dramatic lipstick, and a headscarf, and voila!

Okay, so this one the statement piece is more of the dress just because...I mean...just look at it. However, paired with another dress, the jacket would definitely be the statement. The dress is one of the Vintage Vogue patterns v1696 and was extremely easy to complete. The entire pattern is only four pieces. I cut it out on Saturday and finished it on Sunday. I threw on the coat because, first, it was a little chilly and, second, because even I have to follow the school's dress code, and I couldn't swing wearing just the ribbon straps as following guidelines. With styling the rest of this, I figured go big or go home and decided to just make all the accessories statement pieces, which still didn't overwhelm the dress since they all seem muted with their shared red color compared to the busy, colorful pattern of the dress. Although I did just wear a simple pair of black heels, but that's more because of a lack of shoes in my closet.

Okay, okay, here I am kind of bending the rules and theme again with this outfit since, yes, technically this is not a coat. It is a button-up shirt turned into a jacket by having it unbuttoned. This is another shirt from my grandad, which I talked about in my last post. I'll admit when I wore this to school, this outfit was put together in a rush, and I missed the part where it's a man making a martini, but none of the students noticed, so I'm in the clear.

I wore the dress to pull out the subtle yellow in the jacket/shirts pattern, and I wore my Starry Night tights to continue with that theme. I debated between wearing earrings to match the yellow or the blue, but I ended up going with the blue to really emphasize the dress and make it the focal point that all the other items revolve around (the earrings were made by me).