Happy Easter everybody! Spring is here at last! Spring means birds, bees, buds, flowers, green shoots, sunny walks in the park and ice cream!
It's hard for me not to get excited about the return of pastels this season when you call them something as mouth wateringly enticing as ice cream colours. Given that it is Easter and everyone is about to crack open their Easter eggs and indulge their sweet tooth, I thought it appropriate to reflect on how fashion designers have been imploring us for some time to give in to our sartorial sweet tooth and embrace the saccharine sweetness of pastels.
A couple of years ago pastels burst onto the catwalks in the form of sugary shades. Then a couple of seasons later they reappeared, watered down and icier in tone, relabelled as
sorbet shades. This year there's been some cream and eggs added to that sugary sorbet mix and pastels have emerged with ice cream flavours. How many ways can you say pastel green in ice cream? Pale mint, spearmint or pistachio? Cream becomes vanilla, blush pink is now strawberry, rose, bubblegum or candy. Berry flavours translate into ice blue or lavender and fruity ones into palest peach, lemon sorbet and lime sherbet.
Of course it's all the same really. Anyone who bought pastels the last time around is likely to have things they can recycle to work the trend again this year. Whether you call pastels candy colours, sugared almond hues, gelato shades, or ice cream colours it's just another way the fashion industry tries to sell us an old idea with a new label. And sugar is much easier to market than say "pale and washed out" or "chalky".
I'm usually quite sanguine about Spring Summer trends but this year I am buying into this one. Walking into clothes shops lately and seeing all those pastels lined up on the rails in all their macaroon tinted glory has literally made me feel like a kid in a candy store. I'm on the lookout for pastel shades in icy tones that suit my skin tone - ice pink, mint, lavender and ice blue - and then I want to wear them altogether! Something in my brain has snapped with the opening of the first daffodils here and I am suddenly craving lots and lots of colour. Or maybe my senses have just been fooled to think that all those sugary shades hitting the stores right now and delighting my eyes are going to fizz on my taste buds and delight my palate instead when I get around to wearing them.

A couple of weeks ago we had an usually warm, sunny spell for this time of year which had Londoners scrambling at the opportunity to wear summery clothes and enjoy the sunshine. I was expecting to find nothing in pastel hues in my wardrobe, but lo and behold, seek hard enough Veshoevius and ye shall find. This is mostly shopped from the wardrobe. I found a patchwork suede coat and a vintage beaded cardigan I've had for years in a similar shade of pale blue. I also pulled out last year's blush pink maxi skirt, which I suspect is going to prove very useful this season! But I couldn't resist this very sweet bird print shell top which is the new purchase. Oasis - all is now forgiven on your
Stargate of last season for bringing a print this unashamedly pretty into my life! And I'm wearing some vanilla espadrilles (not seen).
Funnily enough when this photo was taken in the park we saw many small children walking past and the occasional adult with ice cream cones piled high with scoops of brightly coloured ice cream. Amongst the vanilla and chocolate were bright pink, minty green, and a rather lurid blue.
This outfit is featured over on the
"How I Wear My..." series over at
Everything Just So which Jill is hosting this week and the theme is
colourblocking. And it is also on
Friend Friday's Easter Colours over at
Modly Chic. Head over to these blogs to check out how other bloggers are working colour for Spring.
And if you think I couldn't get any more mileage out of this post I've also submitted it to
Everybody, Everywear!
Blush pink pleated maxi skirt, Miss Selfridge; Bird and floral print tank: Oasis; Beaded pale blue cardigan, Vintage; Pale blue suede coat, Chine, Bag: Marc by Marc Jacobs