Styling a khaki jumper and mini rara skirt for winter

Forever 21 seems to be very hit or miss as to its quality of clothing. Considering it’s remarkably cheap prices, you wouldn’t expect much, but on this trip to America, I found it to be quite impressive.

Before I go on, I have to admit that on my next two trips across the pond I didn’t have as much luck. Forever 21 is one of the larger shops in the Stamford shopping centre, and as I very rarely get to browse the one we have in London, I always have a look. The prices are cheaper in America though. The down-side of the brand is that only a few items go up to Extra Large, which means you have to look at all the labels to find out if it does or not; and mostly it’s not. There’s a plus-size range, but the choice and whether they have items that are my taste is often limiting.

Anyway, back to my original point(!) On this particular occasion I found two, very nice jumpers. And the best thing about them is that they’re made from cotton. WHY OH WHY aren’t all jumpers made from cotton? Acrylic is the usual budget option, but can sometimes feel very man-made; and wool can be very itchy. So seriously; why is it so difficult to find jumpers made from cotton?

This khaki green cotton knit jumper is absolutely perfect. It’s soft, warm, comfortable and has the cool design details of the lacing up at the neckline and cuffs. If you watch my vlogs, you’ll have seen me wear this jumper A LOT! It washes well and hasn’t bobbled. The only damage you might notice now is from my cats showing affection with their claws.

Khaki green and burgundy go so well together, so I wore it with this little mini rara skirt I’d packed with me, and the long khaki green thigh-length socks. And yes, I was frozen! I was going more for style than temperature practicality that day, and popped out the car in this outfit just to take photos for the blog! It was a massive frozen lake in the Catskill Mountains, New York, and it was an amazing day out. (See my post about visiting the Kaaterskill Falls in winter.)

I haven’t spotted the lace-up trend so much this winter, but last year it was everywhere and is one of those fashion details that I wish would stick around longer. It reminds me of a favourite green top I had in the nineties that laced up at the neckline. Annoyingly, somewhere at the lake the lacing on one sleeve must have fallen out as I’ve never found it since. I keep meaning to cut the other one in half as it’s probably long enough to do so.

Khaki is one of those colours that I almost class as a neutral in my wardrobe. I say ‘almost’ because it doesn’t go with the pale dusky blues I own, but it does pretty much every thing else. It styles well with pink, coral, black, cream and yellow. And grey if it leans more towards green than blue in hue. It’s also one of those colours that I think suit all skin-tones whether you lean towards cool or warm.

Although I was clearly not dressed appropriately at the time of these photos (it was minus twelve); this is actually a really good outfit option for this weirdly warm weather we’ve been having these last few days. I think we’ve got one more before it starts to get colder and rainier again. Have you been confused by what to wear? I mean, I’ve been sitting out in the garden, and I don’t think I’ve ever in my life done that in February before!

Shop the look from *Asos:

See how I styled the khaki jumper with a velvet party dress.
See how I styled the rara skirt for a Harry Potter look.
See how I styled the rara skirt for a cliff-top walk.