Palette Swap: All I really need to know about style I learned from video games

As you might have garnered, I have a very colorful wardrobe.  This can present problems from time to time when I find myself wearing something nice, but not necessarily appropriate for the (weather, occasion, locale, etc...)  Fortunately I'm also a nerd and video games (as they often do) have the answer!  If you've ever played a game that came out before... let's say 2000, you're familiar with the palette swap.  This is a tremendously effective tool for managing an otherwise out of control colorful wardrobe.  So let's level up our style here, shall we?  (now that's a good pun for before the jump!)

what am I? an undertaker?

I was going to wear this <-- today.  One of my favorite outfits,  a blue (in this case navy) gingham shirt with a gray pinstripe vest and red (burgundy) polka-dot tie.  Simple, pretty clean and apt for the gray weather we've been having.  But then mother nature had to go and fuck with me.  I wake up and it's blinding sunlight and 10 degrees.  Suddenly my outfit seemed pretty drab, plus I now needed a serious coat to brave the outdoors.  And I just wasn't feeling my look.  Too dark, too severe, not enough color.

Step one was to brighten it just a bit.  Swap the navy for a lighter, sort of cornflower blue (I found that description all by myself, I didn't even need Ashley to tell me what color I was wearing), and the burgundy for a bright red tie.  That didn't do it though, the dark overcoat/dark jeans were too... uh... dark.  Fortunately I have several pants of the same fit, but in differing colors.

So then it was just picking the right color.  (note: I don't actually put on all these clothes every day to figure out what I'm going to wear, one advantage of a palette swap is that it's pretty easy to picture outfits in your head.  The following pictures are purely for a visualization of my thought process.)   First was purple, but that was still too dark.  And while not quite as severe as in the picture it still didn't look... I don't know... right.

So maybe green.... until I remembered I wore those really recently.  Plus I wanted to do this post, so I needed to try on more things.  I have 2 more pairs of cords in the same fit, and they're both red, one ruby, one rust (sounds like the name of some indie band from Iowa).

I think my pants are trying
to escape through my collar

The ruby pair was the same tone as my tie.  That looked kind of like I was wearing a halter top onsie that tied in the front under my vest...  Not quite what I was going for.

Which left the rust colored ones, which are what I ended up wearing.  Definitely an improvement in my mind.  Not quite as maudlin, a bit more perky, brought out the blue in the jacket a bit more.  And I haven't worn these yet on the blog, so... hey, bonus.

I'm sure some people would decry the red tie/red pants combo, but the pants are much more muted than my photography skills (and picasa's color correction abilities) can accurately show.  Plus I was wearing a scarf over the tie for most of the day, so no harm, no foul.

The palette swap doesn't just cover pants, I use the same principle in shirts, ties, belts, sneakers, you name it. It lets you have a quick mental image of what your outfit will look like and makes pattern/color matching easier by giving a frame of reference to what you have in your closet (i.e. which of my 8 gingham shirts best complement my striped/polka dot/foulard/etc... tie, or my brown/gray/navy/etc... pants).  Just think of every day as a level in Zelda, everyone knows the green Link, but the blue and red Link's are not only cooler, but can breathe underwater and resist fire.  Too bad my wardrobe only gives +5 to style.