If you'd seen the listing for this black top on the Asos website, you might have taken one look at the cropped length and bare midriff shown in the photos and immediately passed it by. And ordinarily, so would I. But as it turned out I had also just added this white dress to my cart, and this top immediately struck me as something I could wear with it.
As much as I love the clean look of optic white, it doesn't look great near my face. So I bought the dress knowing that I'd need to wear it with something else, because at the sale price it was a good enough deal to live with the limitation. And since in San Francisco layering is a necessity for much of the year anyway, it wasn't really that big a sacrifice. The black top, which is made of t-shirt jersey in the front and sheer chiffon in the back, was perfect. With its funky dolman sleeves and asymmetrical hem, it provided an interesting, modern look and a nice sharp contrast against the white.
If you look closely at the dress, you'll see that the opaque lining layer is scandalously short. For that reason I was initially dubious about wearing the dress over nothing but leggings, because it essentially amounts to wearing leggings as pants. In the end I decided I didn't care, because anything I tried to layer under the dress took away from the clean, simple lines of the outfit. And looking at it now, I feel like I was plenty covered up. Score a victory for style over modesty.
Dress, top: Asos.... Leggings: Foot Traffic.... Bag: L.A.M.B..... Shoes: BC Footwear