Stylesheet 012: Checkerboard • mixing check print with yellow accents 💛

We’re well and truly into summer in Sydney, but we have been getting a lot of rain thanks to the effects of la niña. We took these photos on a hot day, hence the shorts and the crop top with no sleeves. 🙂 I also mentioned my haircut in my last weeknote, so that explains why my hair is still long and up in a bun in this one. A more up-to-date Stylesheet on its way soon… 😆

Image 1: An Asian woman with dark hair in a bun. She is standing under a sheltered path with vines and leaves growing over the wooden shelter. She is wearing a checkered top with black piping detail, white shorts with a black checkered pattern, and white sneakers. On the right are wooden park benches and on the left is green bush.
Clean lines and black and white 😊

I have had these shorts for a while now and have found them versatile enough to wear in both winter and summer, so I love that they have gone a long way in my wardrobe. I’m still very much obsessed with the cut, fit, the pockets, and of course the print. 😅

When I got this top I thought it might look like too much checkered print if I wore it with the shorts, but it actually looks alright. I think it helps that the amount of detail and the scale of each checkered print differs, so there is enough contrast and interest. I think it might be my shoulders being muscular, but I’ve found that a lot of square neck tops I’ve tried recently haven’t fit me very well. The straps kind of slide down my shoulders and often feel tight in the armpit, but it doesn’t feel like a problem that sizing up would solve. It might also be that I have sloped shoulders? I used to occasionally have this problem with some bras. Thankfully this top doesn’t have that issue as much as other tops, and I think it helps that it is made from less constrictive and body-hugging fabric because it’s not too tight in awkward places or anything like that.

Image 2: A close shot of the same woman in the same outfit as image 1. She is standing in front of a beige concrete wall, with her hands on her hips and with sunglasses on top of her head. The sun casts some shadows on her face and the wall, in the shape of tree leaves
Tried to get a cool shot with shadows 🍃

As with most clothes I buy these days, I thought a lot about the top before I bought it. I was definitely drawn to the square neck, but also the fact that it’s a bit of a rounded square neck, even though the pattern is an angular one. I have been looking for clothes with slightly softer lines, and I like that the style of this top was still very much in the realm of what I’m comfortable with and what I like to wear. This girl can’t get past a good square-neck top, and this one fits the bill of being one of those “elevated basics”. Simple in its cut and style, but a bit more dressed up in its pattern or print.

This top matches really nicely with most of my bottoms. I think I only came across one instance where it was weird, and it might have been when it was with a heavily patterned bottom. I think it was too much pattern going on, and the part around my middle that is completely black looked a little odd when looking at the outfit as a whole. But this top has been extremely versatile.

Amusingly, the top seems to give the illusion of me having a bigger bust, and it’s all the more funny when I don’t wear a bra with the top most of the time. 😆🍈 I feel like it’s the print and probably the fit creating some kind of illusion… I realise I’ve worn a lot of tighter tops in a similar style that sort of just compress my bust a bit. Hahaha. Anyway, I’m not complaining. 😛

Image 3: A close-up of the woman’s hands at her side. Her nail art is yellow with some detailed nails with lemon and leaf pattern. She is wearing some silver rings and bracelets.

I didn’t really intend on matching, but the yellow in my nails matches the yellow in my top. I chose the nail art because I really wanted something summery and fun, and it’s not often that I have a bright and sunny colour like yellow on my nails.

It goes without saying that white sneakers are well and truly part of my style uniform, and it’s between my white leather sneakers and my Vans these days. The two are looking really worn out since I walk several kilometres daily, so it’s fair to say that they might be getting replaced soon. I’m wearing my Vans with this outfit, supposedly because I felt more of a need to wear my orthotics in my shoes. (They don’t fit in my leather shoes.)

Image 4: The same woman in the same outfit as image 1. She has her hands clasped at her front, and her left leg is extended. In the background is a residential street with some jacaranda trees.
Haven’t got long to catch the jacarandas 💜

To top off this outfit, I put yet another checkered thing in my outfit and added a hair scrunchie. I’ve worn this one before and I like the pattern and how it contrasts with other colours and other prints. It helps that it’s black and white so it naturally goes with any of those two colours as well. I like this outfit as a whole because it does mix different styles of check. Normally it would be overwhelming, especially if they are different colours, and some people are better at pulling it off than others, but I like how I’ve styled this outfit because it really suits me. 🌟

I’ve decided to do away with my “outfit retrospective” section where it doesn’t make sense to include it. So there isn’t one for this post. 😇 Mostly because I don’t have too much extra to add. Sometimes I have a lot to say about an outfit and sometimes I don’t, and it often depends on whether I’ve shown an item of clothing on my blog already, or if I haven’t and therefore have a lot to write about.

Do you like wearing or seeing any particular pattern or print combinations?

Outfit details

Footnotes

📸 All photography by Nicholas Cooke. (on my iPhone 12 mini)

We took these photos in some residential streets while we were walking to brunch. It was a really hot day. ☀️ I named this outfit Checkerboard since I was thinking of something simple that described the patterns in this outfit.

Leave a Comment