Styling Bold Prints / My Monochromatic Life

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I am not one for bold prints. I prefer neutral tones, and I am ok with some patterns but I don't prefer a loud pattern. I really admire those that do it well and look amazing, it just doesn't typically fit my personal style. Every once in a while something will catch my eye and I think I can make it work even though it's a little outside my comfort zone.

This is that shirt. I posted about it a couple of weeks ago. I hemmed and hawed about it, but it was on sale so I went for it. Actually the first time I wore it was for pajama day at the school I work at it. See, it's pajama-style top....see what I did there? ;) I kept it pretty proper for work, but last weekend we went to celebrate my birthday with my family. The celebration was delayed because I went out with my friends around my actual birthday then we went out of town after that. This was the perfect opportunity to style it how I really wanted to (and before the polar vortex so I wasn't totally freezing). I really loved the colors on this top and how they popped. Pink isn't typically my go-to color but I do love a hot pink moment. I am, however, a sucker for a bold floral pattern. I don't like little florals, I prefer big, in your face floral patterns. I like that about this shirt too, how the pink is accepted by the blue. It's a color mix that I don't see very often. The downside of these they are kind of low cut. The upside is that there are bralettes everywhere these days that makes this perfect!

For those of you like myself who get a little spooked by bold prints here is my tip: you are allowed one loud part of your outfit. If you have pattern pants or a top go very neutral with the other items. Same as if you were wearing statement earrings or a necklace, the other accessories would be toned down. To follow that rule here I wore my absolute favorite Madewell distressed denim. If you haven't noticed I tend to have about 3 pairs of jeans I wear on rotation. Who needs 100 pairs of jeans? Finding one or two good pairs is hard enough. I chose black because the backdrop color on this shirt is black and I thought it would create and cleaner overall presentation. A blue jean would introduce another color into the mix and I couldn't do it. We were going out for dinner so I swapped out a low boot for a heeled bootie. These are an old faithful for me but I found some similar options that dress this up a bit. I decided to take the risk and wear the Baublebar earrings. It's a lot of look for me, but because the earrings are pink I wasn't introducing a new color to the overall scheme. I guess the lesson here with prints for me is to stick the print color palette when pairing other items and keep it simple.