In my last post, I lamented that cute sale swimwear often lacks matching tops or bottoms in my size.
But I’ve been thinking: isn’t mix and match a core tenet of travel fashion? Isn’t it good travel game to bring separates that play well together?
Recently, The Budget Babe blogged about her guide to artfully mismatched swimwear. She gives sound bikini recipes like mixing stripes and florals (if in the same color family) and pairing a solid top or bottom with a print. She’s also a fan of our good friend, color blocking.
Here are some examples from Roxy‘s blog:
I also dig this upscale Zimmermann swimsuit (photo from Saks).
Fear not, matching swimwear is still A-OK. And these days, according to the interwebs and my clutch of fashion magazines, matching happens beyond the beach, too.
In a recent article, style writer Jess Cartner-Morley claims, “The new matchy-matchy is not the return of ladylike suiting, but derives instead from a more irreverent catwalk ancestry. This is not a cowed retreat to colour co-ordination, but a new generation who have grown up with mix-and-match as the reigning style orthodoxy discovering the visceral power of a head-to-toe matching look.” Cartner-Morley identifies daring prints and bold colors as strategies to keep your matching fresh (and, as she advises, avoid the 80s power suit pitfall.)
Wanderchic would like to claim “irreverant catwalk ancestry.” But really, these aspirations of tongue-in-cheek effortless chic have bloomed in adulthood, formed by fashion magazine primers and intervening friends (especially you, Erin T).
Mine was a very matchy youth. In early 1990s Appalachia, there was strict adherence to An Outfit from County Seat or Express or The Limited or other Sanctioned Mall Store. Coordinating was key. Did the scrunchie gathering the strands of your Aqua Netted French braid match the belt around your Guess or Z Cavaricci jeans? There was a lot riding on your answer.