Blue and White Stripes for the Win

This blue and white stripe is very basic, but the cut of this Sacai tank is so interesting. Dramatic, cut-in armscyes and waist cinched with a grosgrain half-belt. So chic.

For those who have missed it, Anthropologie has a second franchise to rival the Somerset dress/skirt/jumpsuit juggernaut: Colette!

Colette started as one pair of wide-legged, ankle length pants with patch pockets a few years ago. Now it comes in a dozen colors and prints, in several fabrics, and a skirt silhouette. So though I am late in encouraging you to take a look, I feel confident it will be back in 2025. Indeed, it may be available year round. There is a leather Colette!

Do order early in the season as sizes sell out and they never go on sale anyway.

I waited until June to order these and was unable to purchase a petite size. The regular rise is a little too long for me, and thus I have rolled my pants down at the waistband.

This top zips along one shoulder. Sacai always has the beautiful details.

Note the necklace I am holding. We’ll get to it in a second.

I think I obsessed with you a couple of years ago about glass ring necklaces by Monica Nesseler? They were sold by the Museum of Art & Design in NYC (which is how I found them), but she has her own website — Kettenmacherin — which offers many color choices.

The Kettenmacherin website used to specify the different glass finishes that make one color read so differently — opaque or translucent, matte or shiny — but unfortunately that explanation is there no longer. You just have to eyeball the options. Or write to Monica and ask. She takes special orders.

If you poke around the Kettenmacherin site, you will see that Monica Nesseler makes beaded beads — like the blue beads at right — by hand. Many of her necklaces are a string of such beads, and the cost is commensurate with the amount of time that it takes to create a strand of handsewn beads. The ring necklaces are more affordable — combining glass rings and two hand-beaded beads for the closure.

What I love about these ring necklaces is that they have great movement. Throughout the day, the rings shift around and the necklace takes different shapes.

Here’s the other summer staple: a long, bias cut linen skirt. This one came from The Reformation, a brand that I like, but generally find too youthful and revealing for myself. This skirt, however, is just right.

Actually, it may be a little big. I bought a petite M because The Reformation runs small, in my experience, and then dithered. I can always have it taken in a little next summer.

I’ve paired the skirt with this favorite J.W. Anderson top last seen in 2015. Let it never be said that things don’t live a long time in the Directrice’s closet.

The big lesson here, coming at the end of August, is that a pair of linen pants and a linen skirt will see you through the summer. I’ve worn mine every week with a rotation of tops and tees.