FASHION
THE WARDROBE EDIT
BACK TO WORK STYLING
Something shifts in September. The light changes, the calendar fills, and getting dressed becomes the first decision of the day rather than an afterthought. Nobody needs a suit to be good at their job, but there is no arguing with the effect of a skirt that fits properly and a jacket cut to your shoulder.
The wardrobe that does this is built in two halves. One half stays in rotation for years: the grey pencil skirt, the fine knit, the black pump. The other half is the pink suit and the blue heel, worn less often and remembered longer.
By Ina Eliska
Colour is not optional this autumn. Green with grey, and blue on the foot where most people default to black. The Magda Butrym skirt is the one to buy properly, grey wool cut straight to below the knee, and it will keep giving long after the rest of the outfit has been swapped out. The Tom Ford heel in blue is the part that stops it reading as office standard. A little sexy at work has never done anyone harm.
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Again, colour. The Dolce & Gabbana suit is an investment in the old sense, the kind of thing that gets handed down rather than replaced. Jacket buttoned high, full skirt instead of the runway's pencil. Saint Laurent boots underneath give it the edge it needs.
The Ralph Lauren suit is the workhorse of the four. Trousers here rather than the runway's short skirt, the shirt left open at the neck, the brown belt with the gold buckle pulled over the top. It goes to the office, it goes to dinner, and it will still be in the wardrobe in ten years.
Brown crocodile, a black high neck, a black pump. The formula belongs to the same family as the slim knits Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy wore through the nineties, and nothing about it has dated since. Dark on dark, with the leather doing all the talking. For grey mornings, for the days when the last thing you want is to stand in front of the wardrobe making decisions, and for the meetings where you would rather the clothes stayed out of it. Add the brown leather pouch and it is done.
