The Clothes In Your Closet #026

Feat. Hilliary Bianca Salamanca, Celine Fall 2004 RTW-inspo, outfit math equations, and dressing for the weather

The Clothes In Your Closet is a series where I style people in their existing wardrobe and share how to make the outfits your own.

A follow, a DM, and a few weeks later, I was sitting on

Hilliary Bianca Salamanca

’s steps chatting sustainable style for her Circle of Friends video series.

hilliaryb

A post shared by @hilliaryb

Hilliary, a sustainability consult and the founder of Circle of Friends, works to foster meaningful conversations and connections around circularity. Over coffee on that very cold Friday morning, we swapped stories about what lead us to the intersection of sustainability and fashion.

Both of us working in marketing at buzzy venture-backed companies, then asking questions about what it was that we were actually promoting, then exploring what to do with that information. Hilliary’s path took her back to school, where she earned her Master’s in Sustainability Management, Sustainability Studies at Columbia. She now helps brands with their sustainability projects, and host events and The Stoop Series through Circle of Friends.

Of course I wanted to style her. A few weeks later I was back in her cloffice—her closet-office, how good is that?—on yet another very cold day. “I’ve been defaulting to my winter uniform of black sweaters and jeans,” Hilliary told me. “I just hate being cold.” Same. My goal was to style her in a few weather-appropriate outfits that incorporated some of her lesser-worn secondhand and vintage pieces. And okay so maybe a couple of spring looks too, but that’s perfect for this in-between March weather. Here are five outfits to inspire you to shop the clothes in your closet.

OUTFIT 1

We needed a look for that night: something dressed, but not capital F “fashun.” Hilliary was going to the opening for Love Letter Gallery.

“What about this?” I asked, pulling out a cream-colored cape made of bouclé fabric. Hilliary hadn’t gotten much wear out of it yet.

A gray fitted sweater first, then a white button-down layered over a brown cable knit sweater, just the brown sweater, a cream-colored sweater with a black sweater layered over the shoulders, and finally, just the cream-colored sweater. That’s a lot of sweater. I liked the monochromatic effect.

I pulled these super cool vintage Escada print pants that worked in theory, the colors referencing the creams above, but nixed them because I agreed with Hilliary that they were competing with the cape. So jeans it was, a medium wash with a light fade.

I tried a maroon shoe—I like swapping maroon for black, it’s similar in tone, just a bit more special—but here the style of the shoe didn’t work with the crop of the pant because the little sliver of skin visually shorted the leg, but with these taupe square-toe boots, yes!

What else? Hair, lipstick, they can be an accessory in their own right. “Do you have an orange-y red lipcolor?” I asked. Hilliary walked over to a shelf near her desk and pulled out a jar filled with tubes. “These are all lipsticks I found going through my bags,” she laughed. She swiped on Valentino Refillable Matte Lipstick in Nude in Roma. Perfect.

Considering a pop of color, I layered Hilliary’s burgundy Chanel bag under the cape. Pretty, but I liked the idea of something more tonal. I grabbed her Louis Vuitton pouch. It would easily double as a clutch.

I didn’t mess with the jewelry—I liked the pieces Hilliary had on, and kept them for the other four looks. And there we had it: an outfit that was warm, comfortable, and real chic.