PURPLE FLORALS - josephine ellen

Here’s the best advice I will throw out for today: wear booty shorts with your skirts!

Summer may be hot, but that doesn’t mean there are no sneaky gusts of wind ready to blow your flimsy skirt up! To keep your dignity intact involves one very simple item of clothing: booty shorts/spanx/shaper shorts/boy shorts. Whatever you want to call it, booty shorts are the best thing to have on when you’re wearing any kind of skirt, and the best part is that you don’t have to drop a lot of money on these! Here’s just a small sampling of the many effective and inexpensive booty shorts out there: 1) Yummie by Heather Thomson; 2) Maidenform Pure Genius; 3) Jockey Skimmies Slipshort.

In my high school, different grades were assigned different class colors for class competition and spirit day purposes. Purple was my class color, but believe it or not, I did not own a single decent purple item of clothing in my closet except for a baggy plain purple tee. It was not pretty, and it was irreparably unflattering for my figure. To this day, I’m still not sure why I didn’t have other purple clothing available. I do remember keeping an eye out specifically for purple items whenever I went shopping, but somehow that never panned out (and back in those days, online shopping wasn’t really a thing yet). So for four years, my class competition/spirit day uniform consisted of that baggy plain purple tee and jeans.

But look how far I’ve come today! I’ve never been a huge purple fan, but I do love the deep shade of it here on this shirt (yes, this shirt is the same exact one as seen in this post with the only difference being the color), and it matches so brilliantly well with this floral skirt from Forever 21. I wanted to keep the overall hue on the darker side, so I swapped nude heels for my trusty-dusty black Madden Girl booties (best buy ever – but seriously, what will I do with myself once these are worn out beyond repair?!).

Other covetable sensible black booties under $100:
B.P. ‘Trolley’ Ankle Bootie
Sole Society ‘Sidney’ Bootie
AEO Cutout Bootie
Express Stacked Heel Midi Bootie
Black Leather Chelsea Boots
ASOS ‘Author’ Leather Chelsea Ankle Boots
Circus by Sam Edelman ‘Hamilton’ Bootie

They say that no one really notices your flaws until you point them out yourself, but I’m just going to bite the bullet here and head you off before you start noticing the inevitable observation: yes, I’m that girl with the pale legs, but as much as I crave and wish for beautiful, evenly tanned gams, I’m forever cursed with pale-skin DNA. Fact: one whole day out in the sun will turn my skin two shades darker at most, but it’ll revert back to its original pigment the very next day. Until I can wake up one day with naturally-induced lasting tan, Jergens Natural Glow lotion will be my best friend.