Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

• White turtle neck sweater, Vero Moda
• Patent leather belt, L.K. Bennett
• Blue and brown smock skirt
• Gold crinkle patent ballet flats, Coach

You’ll be seeing more of this blue and brown smocked skirt in variations of use. It’s a simple cotton skirt that I bought in Hong Kong about two years ago, at a store just round the corner where our hotel was located. You can’t see it from the picture above but the top of the skirt is gathered or smocked, for a versatile fit of waist or chest. Because it falls to the ankles when worn as a skirt, it goes very nicely as a knee-length strapless summer dress, with or without a belt, depending on the style you wish.

I’ll bring you the variations of this skirt in the following weeks to come. I’ve also hand sewn a sprinkling of black sequins onto some of the black ‘florals’ around this skirt, so that it catches the sunlight when I use it during the summer.

What attracted me to this skirt was the mix of colours, the smocked top and the border of florals at the hem. The prints reminded me of modern batik paintings (or free hand) and the border of florals hinted towards prints of the 70s era, bold and stylized.

The textures, prints and versatility of this skirt made what I thought was an interesting piece of clothing.