Red Blouse, Black Suit: A Work Outfit

✥ Spiders On My Jacket ✥

This week is Red and Black Week, a blogging event organised by the wonderful Victorian Kitty of ::Sophistique Noir::. I'm starting my posts on the theme with a work outfit. Looking darkly stylish in the work-place is Sophistique Noir's speciality, so I thought I would do a post on the subject as my first entry for this theme. This is pretty much my style for most days at work. It has rarely got warm enough for me to not wear a blazer of some sort. Sometimes I even wear a v-neck of some sort over my blouse for extra warmth! It is early june, and this is today's work outfit - a trouser suit, warm vest beneath, and a blouse.

See, I can be business-like and such - I'm not all frills!
Photograph by Raven

One side only replaced to show difference.
Blame me for the bad photo.

The trouser suit started off as a rather dull suit from Tesco. It had hideous buttons - cheap plastic copies of real regimental buttons. I felt that the cheap reproductions, and their place on a non-military, non-regimental jacket was disrespectful as well as unsightly, so I removed them and replaced them with some art-deco buttons that remind me of Spider Man's logo. The new buttons are spidery enough to appease my liking of creepy-crawlies as decorative motifs, but abstract (and with too many legs) so are not too obviously spiders, and not too Gothic for the work place. Since I have modified this blazer - and switching buttons is an easy and very minor modification - I have incorporated this jacket into several outfits, some of which were far removed from work-place style!

I am aware my pen is upside down.
Photograph by Raven

My new ring

As it is red and black week, I thought I incorporate a few more dashes of red. I am allowed coloured nail-polish at work, as long as it is not too outlandish (no neon green, black, electric blue, etc.) and as red is a fairly acceptable colour for nails, I decided to give them a good coat of a shade similar to my blouse. In the photographs they appear a lot warmer in tone than the blouse, but the difference in reds is far less noticeable in person. I do take some of my rings off at work, for practical reasons. I did not used to do this, but with the warmer weather making my fingers expand, and with having been at my new job longer, I have decided that it is just more comfortable (as well as more professional looking) to remove some of my rings. I have, however, for this photograph, retained the ring on my right little finger with the red stone. This is a new ring I bought myself as a congratulatory present when I received my first pay-cheque from my new job. It is too large and too easily caught to actually wear to work, though. 

Attempting to look like I am paying attention and taking notes.

Photograph by Raven.

The notebook is black and white flock in a damask pattern, bought from a mainstream retailer (WH Smith, I think). I like accessorising according to my aesthetics outside of clothes and jewellery, such as in my notebooks, laptop covers, etc. My next plan is to get the vine-patterned black metal cut-out design office equipment - e.g letter rack, stationary tidies, waste-paper basket, magazine files, etc. Currently my mug is black gloss with white matt vines. I feel that it is quite possible to make every aspect of work life stylish but still professional. A key element in being Goth at work is keeping things within mainstream boundaries and from mainstream sources, but to balance that with an aesthetic that is in keeping with your tastes. I think it is best to be more minimalistic and sleek than normal, and to cut down on the kitsch aspects (no plastic skulls, stick-on spiders or gaudy patterns for me) but that is just my opinion.