Casual Friday | Boden Bistro Crops and Grace Jumper

Remember last year, when I started a feature called ‘Casual Friday’, and it was a roaring success, in which I faithfully documented my weekly attempts to dress in a way that was casual-but-stylish (in other words, not remotely how I usually dress), learning a series of important lessons along the way, and ending the year a better, more casually-stylish person?

Remember that?

Anyone?

No, me neither: because it didn’t actually happen. I mean, I did do a handful of ‘Casual Friday’ posts, but then I got bored with photographing the same pair of jeans all the time, so I abruptly stopped, as is my way.

I may not have kept up with the posts, however, but I DID continue with my bid to revolutionise my wardrobe: to make some more “sensible” purchases (along with all the green dresses, obviously), and to at least attempt to stock up on the basics, before allowing myself to be led into temptation in the ASOS sale. I actually did OK with this project: there are still some gaping holes I need to fill, and I think I’ll always gravitate towards the type of clothes that many people would consider too dressy to be practical, but I have picked up some pretty nice, reasonably casual pieces, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that almost all of them have come from Boden. Well, except the ones that came from Zara, that is.

This outfit, for instance, is head-to-toe Boden, and I know some people are going to consider it a terrible fashion faux-pas to be wearing just one brand. Honestly, though, I really struggle to care about “rules” like that, and I think most people in “real life” (as opposed to in Fashion Blog Life) do too. The fact is, as you go through life, and your style changes and adapts, you tend to find that certain brands are just a better fit than others: both literally and in terms of them being the best match for your personal taste. When I was in university, for instance, almost all of my clothes came from Topshop, Miss Selfridge, or Mango: these days, while I have a fairly wide variety of brands in my closet (including those three, which I still wear), I’m finding that most of my day-to-day clothes come from Boden, Zara or ASOS, with a few others thrown in for luck.

Of course, those are the outfits I tend not to feature too often on the blog, mostly because they tend to be pretty boring, really. I now own Boden’s Bistro crops in four different colours, though, and I fully intend to buy more of them, so I figured it was time I showed you some of them! I got this gold pair in the sale at Christmas time, and actually wore them on New Year’s Eve, with heels and a Bardot-neck top: as I mentioned, we spent New Year at home with our families this year, but I didn’t want to dress down completely, so I figured sparkly gold trousers were a good mix of casual and dressy.

For this outfit, I’ve paired them with the Grace jumper, which was a gift from Boden, and which I picked purely because it seemed like the kind of thing Audrey Hepburn might have worn, in her more causal moments. Finally, I had to wear the jewelled pumps which were my other sale purchase back in December – even although I can’t actually wear them out of the house right now, on account of all the snow. It’s now long past the “pretty” stage, and has moved onto the dirty, slushy stage, which I don’t think ANYONE likes, so as much as I hate having to take indoor outfit photos (and apparently can’t stand to look directly at the camera when I’m taking them!), I don’t have much choice for now. Anything’s got to be better than slush, though, right?

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WEARING:  Boden Bistro crops / Boden ‘Grace’ jumper* / Boden gold jewelled flats  / Michael Kors watch*

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