getting dressed

Sometimes you get a new dress and you wear it three times within a week of getting it.  I'm not saying I just did that with this dress... okay, yes I am.  Maxi dresses in winter are incognito-comfy because I'm totally wearing leggings underneath to keep warm but nobody knows but me!  Style does not have to equal freezing-your-ass-off.  I once wrote an article in my college newspaper criticizing how almost the whole school wore sweatpants and sweatshirts 80% of the time and got a ton of hate mail.  One in particular mentioned how girls who wear skirts in the winter are slutty and it made no sense to wear revealing clothing in winter.  I was baffled at the correlation that wearing a stylish outfit equals showing an inappropriate amount of skin in freezing temperatures.  I think after I got that email I was even more determined to dress stylishly in spite of cold weather (and certainly not in an irrationally skin-revealing way, because frostbite).  I think the poor guy simply couldn't conceive of tights, or cardigans, or perhaps any skirt-based outfit that didn't involve a tube top and a miniskirt that barely covers butt cheeks.  
Let's face it, putting on an outfit that has any semblance of personal style in the winter can be a challenge.  It's cold, it's snowy (or rainy, or just gross), and the dismal weather can leave us totally uninspired.  I'm certainly not immune to those feelings, but I can't deny that it boosts my mood to "get dressed."  Not just putting on a hoodie over the leggings I haven't taken off for three days dressed.  Since it's hard to get dressed in the dismal pit of winter, I love dresses like this maxi that aren't just fancy looking, but are also ridiculously comfortable.  I picked this dress out for the fabulous print, color, and the sexy blocks of black down the sides, but it's so comfortable it's basically like wearing leggings on your whole body.  In my mind that's pretty much the holy grail of dresses.

 

dress + cardigan/courtesy of modcloth :: short necklace/handmade long necklace/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis