by Claire Star
One of the first things that drew me to Nicole was her sense of style. I distinctly remember -- within the first ten minutes of meeting her, after we happened to sit next to each other in our first-ever 8am college seminar -- being impressed with her cool-girl, New York chic floral dress, daintly little necklace, and simple brown sandals. Yes, I remember exactly what she was wearing. (This was made easier by her then-small wardrobe, she was a former Catholic school girl with only a finite number of non-uniform pieces, after all!) She has the beauty and the brains, and I happily realized that within minutes of our instant friendship.
All this to say, both of us have honed a uniform of sorts. While Nicole is the classic New Yorker and can't get enough black (and gray, let's be real here), I'm a sucker for a good striped shirt. I may or may not have five-plus iterations from J.Crew's sale section. So, after a year of living down the hall, weekends spent together at her apartment in New York City (and being asked "where's your other half?" more times that I can could should we have strayed more than 20 feet), our respective uniforms began to merge. While we might not share our closets (Nicole is a teeny little thing and I have oddly large feet for being 5'2"), I now wear black skinny jeans at least three days a week and Nicole has developed a healthy relationship with stripes. We do, however, trade scarves back and forth, and plan to post some of our favorite sale finds in the coming days.
If you'd like to try out our uniform, I have these black jeans and love them, and this striped shirt has a shirt-tail hem, is a little thicker than most tees, and is also ridiculously soft.
For now, though, some of my favorite stripes and black jeans outfits to serve as inspiration for anytime of year (if you live in season-less Seattle, like me)!
