Underskirts on a Budget

victorianme rocking a lovely
long underskirt with her JetJ

Underskirts are one of those things that I advocate for. Especially if you're tall or uncomfortable with showing off your knees (like I am), underskirts can make an unworkable skirt workable again. They allow me to wear Bodyline skirts with ease and to keep my budget down. They also add visual interest or an accent color.

But getting underskirts can be expensive if you don't know where to shop.

Before You Start

Get your measurements. You can use a site like this for guidelines on how to measure yourself, though I would recommend getting a friend to do the measuring so your arm position doesn't impact the measurements. The most important measurement for underskirts is the waist.

You should also figure out your ideal length for skirts. You can do this by measuring a skirt that hits you at just the right length or by holding a measuring tape to your waist and using that tape to measure to your ideal length (find a friend to help with this). My ideal length is somewhere between 23” and 25”, so when I look for underskirts that fit into that measurement when I go shopping.

I would also recommend knowing these measurements in both metric and imperial/United States customary systems. Because these measurements are not likely to change all that much, it's worth knowing the measurement in both; I have mine (along with bust, hip, and other measurements) written down on an index card that I keep in my purse for easy reference.

Things I Love For Autumn

In this edition of "Things I Love...", we're talking about the things I love for autumn outfits!

Leather

Whether it’s on my shoes or my bag or my belt, I love adding touches of leather to my clothing in autumn. I usually go with faux leather rather than genuine leather for my own outfits. Leather isn’t just for autumn, of course. This is just when it works best with my wardrobe and my needs.

Plaid

Plaid (or tartan, if you prefer) prints and wovens can make a stylistic nod to schoolgirl uniforms or to the coziness of plaid flannel. It’s classic, goes with a wide variety of styles, and it comes in almost any color you could want.

Heavy Knits

This tends a little more toward mori kei than most of my lists, but I’m a huge fan of heavy knits, especially cable knit sweaters. While they might not always be perfect for the vintage or lolita aesthetics I tend toward, heavy knits are an essential autumn item for me. I love cable knit cardigans paired with plaid skirts. I love cable knit tights as part of a monochrome outfit that layers texture upon texture (whether that’s in mori girl or another style entirely).

Heavy knits are just so darn cozy. To me, they’re the uniform for sipping apple cider and reading a book on a gray day in October.

Corduroy

And another type of fabric that isn’t necessarily in my usual vein: corduroy. Corduroy pants are a pretty common autumn wardrobe choice hereabouts, and corduroy makes for really cozy clothing. It doesn’t pill or look too informal like flannel, but it still gives just the right amount of warmth.

I’ve got a couple of corduroy pencil skirts, myself, and I’ve been considering adding a corduroy JSK.

“Autumn” Colors

This one might seem like a no brainer given the name, but an autumn color palette is pretty essential to the way I go about dressing in the fall. I wear a lot more brown and ivory, add in touches of forest green and burgundy, and dust off my burnt orange. I pull out the quintessential autumn color palette from back when “doing your colors” was a thing that people did.

And “doing my colors” is probably part of the reason why I love clothing in autumn so much: it’s the color palette that looks best on me.

Do you have any autumn essentials that I haven’t mentioned? I’d love to hear about them.