Ways to wear: goldilocks and lilac frocks

 
I absolutely love doing these 'ways to wear' blogposts; I think they're my favourites to come up with. I just love how many outfits you can make out of one thing. Infact it does make me wonder why I buy so many clothes when I manage to make so many outfits out of each thing. You're probably wondering about the slightly odd title - well this is the last post where I'll have light hair! Tomorrow night I'll officially be back to being a brunette (well as long as John Frieda doesn't let me down). I wanted to go back to brunette for the summer and thought it was a fitting time, just after leaving college and just in time for me to turn 18 and start my next chapter (incase you can't tell, yes I am getting a bit nostalgic about the whole thing). I've also had my last exam today and so am officially no longer a student - I did consider burning all my college notes in a dramatic bonfire but then I realised that was bad for the environment and a massive waste of time so I settled for dumping it all in the recycling bin. Dramatically, of corse. There will be one last set of photos with fair hair which you'll see in my Friday blogpost when I blog all my birthday outfits (there'll be quite a few because I'm doing so many things for my birthday). Anyway, I am so in love with this dress that I got from missguided that I just couldn't wait to show you all. It was only £24.99 and the lilac colour, halter neck style, bodycon fabric, mesh inserts and kaleidoscope print make it pretty much the perfect dress.

 
I started with the most obvious way to wear it; for a night out. I simply added black high heels (this pair were from new look for roughly £35) and my rose gold watch. I think the length of this dress is perfect as it's not too short so you risk flashing people as you get in and out of taxis (a real and ever-present danger), but it's still short enough to elongate your legs. Although lilac is a pastel colour and so you'd assume that white shoes, bags etc. would look good, actually the black mesh panels mean that white looks a little odd, so I'd stick to black accessories. I finished the look with my No7 lipstick in Classic rose.

 
Then I thought I'd try and daytime it up so the first step was to swap high heels for flats. I went with these black La Moda sandals (£22) as the white ones I would normally wear looked odd, and I love cleated soles for acting like heels without being heels (make any sense? no ok). I added a coat because even though the weather forecast predicts sunshine all week, you never can trust it and it's better to be safe than sorry. Besides, the green of this Choies coat (roughly £35) matches the green in the print of the dress perfectly. I also wanted to do something different with my hair because I felt the outfits looked a bit too similar. So I put it up in a simple ponytail (something I only do very occasionally) and then took advantage of the fact that you'd be able to see my earrings for once and added these cute little hanging owl earrings, which were only a pound or two from primark ages ago. It's actually really hard to take photos of outfits with my hair up; I end up looking bald in most of them so I hope you appreciate the struggles of this blogpost.

After doing going-out and casual, when it comes to dresses it's pretty hard to think of another way to wear. But seeing as I never do less than 3 outfits, I had to find some inspiration. So I resorted to looking through all my wardrobes and I ended up finding my black bowler hat (Topshop £22) that I haven't worn in forever. I didn't really think it was going to go but when I tried it on I did actually like how it looked with the dress so I added small heels (new look £24.99) in an attempt to create an outfit halfway between going-out and casual. Maybe for daytime cocktails or a nice lunch. The black accessories went with the mesh panels in the dress perfectly and the black hat and black shoes balanced the whole thing out. Plus it was really fun to pose with the hat. Although warning: do NOT wear on a windy day.