Monochromatic Outfit Challenge
When Annalee, my fellow blogger and part of our Her Campus Executive Board, challenged me to wear monochromatic outfits for a week, I honestly thought there was no way to do this. As a fashionista in blood, there was no way I could stand wearing just one color each day, especially when Annalee mentioned that I even had to match my makeup to the outfits. Despite that extra requirement, I took on the challenge.
Wearing one color often turns into one of two things: A bomb matching outfit that slims you OR the outfit makes you fade into the color of your gray hoodie and sweatpants. Groutfits (Gray Outfits) and other single color outfits are usually hailed as a taboo in the fashion world. When most people think of a groutfit they think of sweatpants and a hoodie or some sort of athletic wear. I was one of the people who automatically jumped to that conclusion. I have never worn sweatpants to class and I was not about to change that just for this challenge. So instead I took to the internet and found that there are many ways to do monochromatic outfits and many ways to spice it up. Here are the different outfits I wore!
Day One: Gray
For the first day, I paired a pair of gray dress shorts with a metallic silver shirt and silver jewelry, wearing a silver round necklace, long star chain earrings and making a DIY belt out of one of my necklaces. Since I didn’t own any fully grey shoes I chose to wear a pair of my black and white high heels which seemed to match just fine. What I liked about this outfit is that it made me feel unified and slim. Just because I had to wear one color didn’t mean that I had to wear only one shade of that color, a loophole I certainly took advantage of during the rest of the week.
Day Two: Maroon
For the second day of my challenge, I decided to wear all maroon, knowing it was one of the colors I had a lot of. Setting out I found a maroon button up skirt that was corduroy, a striped white and maroon crop top with lacing around the neckline, maroon and gold earrings, and a purple and maroon necklace. Since I didn’t have maroon shoes I decided to stick in the range of colors that fit and paired the outfit with my pair of pink Timberland boots. This outfit seemed cute and girly but also really casual, to the point that I didn’t have to explain why I was wearing so much of a single color.
Day Three: Brown
On my third day of the challenge, I wore all brown clothing, which I surprisingly didn’t mind. In my closet, I found a button up suede tawny brown shirt, a dark brown flower blouse, and paired that with my brown riding boots. Since each part of the outfit was a different shade of brown it felt and looked really natural and had some cute earthy tones to it. With it I wore bronze jewelry, which worked really well.
Day Four: Blue
Okay I guess you can’t combine an outfit with every color but on my fourth day of the challenge I wore all blue. I felt like out of all the days this outfit looked the most natural since I just wore blue jeans and it worked easily. I wore a periwinkle blue and dark blue flowered blouse with my favorite high waisted pale blue jeans and paired it with some light blue and silver matching jewelry, and then wore my favorite pair of navy blue booties.
Conclusions
While wearing one color can seem boring and perhaps a bit daunting, I actually really liked wearing monochrome outfits. While I wouldn’t recommend wearing them every day, I think they’re nice to wear now and then. My only tip is to plan ahead and look at what you have, especially finding different shades of the colors.
Good luck!