I am a firm believer in being my own person. I think challenging convention is truly important in paving the path to our own personal freedom. Getting "stuck" following the crowd is limiting and creates complacency, but drawing "inspiration" from the crowd is important! The stuck part can be lazy and comfortable - we have all done it! It's so much easier to watch what others are doing and follow suit - sure we all have a human inclination to fit in and be accepted by our friends, family, and peers. My point is that we can accomplish the same thing by becoming "inspirational" to each other!

Whether it's our food choices, travel ideas, clothing purchases, or general life decisions we should strive to be original in our approach and when we syphen cool things from each other we put our own personal spin on it therefore re-creating the "originality" piece all over again - then it becomes a domino effect. We already live in a homogenized, strip-mall, restaurant chain ridden world - who needs more of that! Let's dare to be inspired by each other and not exact replicas!

THE NECKLACE: I truly love the company - The Giving Keys (here). Their mission is simple - they employ people transitioning out of homelessness. Pay it forward is their credo. Put a message on the recycled vintage keys and when you don't need the words of encouragement anymore, you pass it along to someone who does. LOVE!

This outfit is "inspired" by a Zara look that I love. I am also completely in love with wearing brown and black together. There are a couple tricks to this though -

- treat the brown bits as "pops of neutral" against a relatively black pallet.

- accessorize using brown leather items

- go for the same "shade" of brown across all pops - belt should match the bag should match the shoes, you know what I am saying!

have a fun, fashionable day and remember... don't be a copy cat, be inspired and in turn, inspire others,

kiki

lillian and alice