What to Match; What Not to Match

Closet Content Analysis: Monochromatic Matching 

NICE      NEED      NECESSARY

Matching your hat to your shoe to your bag, or your necklace to your earrings, has a tendency to look dated. Mixing up your accessories adds interest to an outfit, and can make you look more modern and polished. 

 - Stacy London

NO THANKS: There once was a time where shoes and bag had to match, a time when shoes were dyed the same colour as the dress . . . thank goodness that is over. Matching shoes to a bag is a definite NO THANKS, as are exact matches of necklaces and earrings. 

At the same time that I write about not matching shoes to a bag, I must reveal my "unintentional match" of my patent ballet flats with my Lancel bag. It works for me because the colour of the bag is a tone lighter and has a differentiated colour effect because of the texture. The pants too are in the same taupe tone.

Matching taupe ballet flats, skinny Theory pants and Lancel Premier Flirt bag. Photo by JoyD.

NICE: However, vestiges of the basic principle still exist and are quite valid. Monochromatic matching is my thing. I have seen a pink formal gown with a leather shoe that was beige with a pink tone that looked very NICE. If the tone of beige was yellow, it wouldn't have worked. I learned to match certain accessories because I am short relative to most everyone I know. I always wore a colour or tone of shoes matched with the trousers because I believed that it gave my leg an illusion of length, as you see in the photo of my Theory skinny pants and ballet flats. For the same reason, I prefer a black skirt, black tights and black shoes and couldn't imagine wearing a white skirt with black tights, and never ever black tights with white shoes. There are those who do it but I am not one of them.The match now should be subtle in its tone because a perfect colour match seems too garish, too planned, too coordinated.

In fact, when I am designing jewellery I tend not to make "matched sets" of earrings and necklaces. Rather I will make several earrings that have certain of the same elements as a necklace but not in the same assemblage. I have made matched sets because there are people who still want that look but usually it has been done because of a direct request.

Monochromatic Matching:

Shoes with trousers: men have done this forever - black shoes with black pants or tones of colour together; brown with brown tones, etc.

Shoes in one of the colours of a print so that a pair of shoes could match any one of the colours in my Italian-made Manila Grace print dress which has blue, mauve, a couple of shades of rusty brown on a creamy white background. Anyone of those colours will look terrific with this dress.
















NO THANKS: Analogous "matching" is clashing in my assessment. Think of a colour wheel, now pick a colour and then the next colours on either side of it would be considered analogous matching which means that if you choose red, you could put pink or an orangey shade with it - sorry, I just can't do pink and red; nor can I do orange and red. 

Life was so much easier when your clothes didn't match and boys had cooties. 

- Unknown 

Check out my other post on Matching: Unintentional Matches