I felt like channeling the 60’s for work yesterday, and swapped out my planned pencil skirt and blouse for this funky patterned, flared mini-dress, paired with black tights and knee-high heeled boots. My mom used to have a dress just like this when she was my age, and similar styles can be found in different vintage and thrift stores if you keep your eyes peeled. I actually wasn’t entirely sure I liked how the dress fit when I first put it on, fearing it made me look a tad box-shaped since it was a size or two too big, but I think the interesting pattern detracts from that, and it’s an issue that can easily be resolved with the help of cinching a wide white or black (or if you wanted to add a pop- maybe even a bright red or pink) belt around the waist, so I wasn’t terrible concerned for long.

In a dream world, I would have been able to get my hair up into a flawless beehive, but let’s be  real- there is no amount of time, patience, or hairspray in the world to get my mass of curls to stay put on top of my head for more than a couple of hours at a time, so I opted to let it fall over my shoulders and kept it off my face with a large white headband. I’m thinking the next time I try this look, I’ll wake up a little earlier in the morning and attempt to get my hair into a sleek bun or high ponytail.

I was kind of bummed, since I have a pair of large black & white circular dangling earrings to offset the square pattern on the dress and would have looked PERFECT, but I couldn’t find them for the life of me and instead opted for a pair of white chunky hoop earrings. I haven’t worn earrings in a long time, so the back of my earlobe had closed up without my knowing it. When I went to pop the hoops in, they essentially re-pierced my ears. Ouch.

I kept my makeup minimal, using just a light pink blush (Clinique’s Quick Blush in “Pronto Pink”) on the apples of my cheeks, since the dress is loud enough as it is. For my eyes, I used a cream colored matte eye shadow from my lid all the way to my brow, and just a touch of a charcoal grey/light brown matte eye shadow in my crease. The shadows I used were from a limited edition Clinique Color Surge Shadow Quad called “Clementine” (shout-out to my fellow Walking Dead fanatic, Imogen, who will get the reference!), but can easily be obtained through another Clinique quad with similar tones, “Teddy Bear” (CLICK HERE TO VIEW).

I lined my eyes with a black pencil liner- I used Clinique’s Quickliner for Eyes Intense in “Intense Ebony” (CLICK HERE TO VIEW)- curving the liner upwards passed my outer corner to give a small cat-eye effect. Again, I was going to work, so I didn’t want to do anything too extreme, although I’m sure if I wear this on a night out, I’ll go a little further up with the cat-eye and line my eyes a little thicker to look more dramatic.

Add two (or in my case, three), coats of mascara on your lashes, a matte nude lipstick (I used Chanel’s Rouge Allure Velvet lipstick in “L’ECLATANTE”), and you’re ready to hop onto your scooter and go.

I got a lot of compliments on the outfit throughout the day, including a comparison to Nancy Sinatra’s style (cue me squealing), and I look forward to playing around with this dress again in the future.