Hey Curlfriends!!

I hope you enjoyed my last article on rocking blazers. If you haven’t read it, check out the article HERE. However, today, we are going to talk about pattern mixing. Pattern mixing is the art (YES ART) of mixing various patterns to form a complete look/outfit. Now, now, before you go off running and hiding under a rock, give me a chance.

Like any fashion trend/look, you can definitely pull it off if you do it right. You have to combine the right patterns to get the look you want. For example, some GREAT patterns to mix are stripes and florals (one of my personal favs), stripes and polka dots, and stripes and houndstooth. You get the pattern here? You can virtually mix stripes with everything! That’s just a start, you can really mix whatever you want.

I think the easiest way to demonstrate how to pull off this look is to show you examples:

1. Here’s me mixing stripes and florals.  You can see that this works because the shirt is black and white and there’s black and white in the floral skirt as well. This helps to create a complementary look with two COMPLETELY different patterns.You can see me mixing patterns HERE too!

2. Here’s Kim of Naturally Fashionable demonstrating how to subtly mix patterns. You can see she jazzed up her look with a skinny leopard belt. (See those stripes at it again)

3. Keep COLORS in mind. Think of the colors that complement each other such as black and white and orange and blue and rock them together. See Cherry of Cherry Amore using complementary colors to mix patterns.

4. Mo of Curvy Geekery mixes polka dots with an abstract pattern. I don’t know about you, but I can’t make out exactly what the pattern is. By choosing abstract/”weird”/unique patterns it opens up the opportunity for you to mix other things with it and still look fashionable!

The point of all of this is to let you know that you shouldn’t be afraid to mix patterns. I remember there were the days when you’d wear a fully striped/polka dot outfit but those days are GONE!! Now, all the “hip” and “fashionable” people mix it up so you do not want to be lost in the crowd!

That’s it naturalistas! Hope that helps!

Love, SheRea

What do you think of these looks?

Do you mix patterns?

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