J Crew TALL Minnies and the Long Beach Cardi

My lovely little UPS package arrived yesterday afternoon and I could not wait to tear into it. It has been a while since I've been *this* excited for a package. And what was in my package???

Well, for starters, as I mentioned in my Wednesday post, my beloved Minnie pants are now available in Tall. ($24646, $89.50) And that means a 29" inseam instead of the usual 26". The Talls are offered in sizes 0 to 14. And the regular and petites start at size 00. (GingerSnap and Rosa in DC - think the petites in 00 might work finally?)

Yes, I know the Minnies are supposed to be cropped, but they were a little too cropped for bare 45-degree weather wear. They were great at 50 degrees with ballet flats and they were awesome in boots. But sometimes, even when it's in the 40's, I get tired of wearing boots all the time and want a change.

These are fantastic - still definitely an intentional crop but with a bit less skin showing. And I can always wash and dry them once to get the length to shrink up a bit if I think they need it. Honestly, I ran into a situation with my current Minnies and needed to machine wash them several times to get Lake-smell out of them and they definitely appear a wee bit shorter (but that probably was due to the dryer).

In any case, now I have 2 pairs of black Minnies and I'm positively thrilled.

But don't even get me started on the next item or I just won't shut up. I have been lusting after this cardigan ever since it came out in January. And imagine my disappointment to see the dreaded phrase "jcrew.com/catalog only". So annoying...


I present the J Crew Long Beach Cardigan (#20796, $138). I ordered the navy in M. Right now, it looks like all sizes of the light pewter and XS & XL in navy are backordered until 5/17. (But we all know that JC usually ships early, right?) I got the navy, and as it shows on the website, it's not a solid color - there are some gorgeous color striations in it. Just lovely.

On to fit...um...perfect. It was so comfy that I didn't want to take it off and put on my day's outfit. The sweater is a nice and chunky linen & cotton blend. Just thick enough, but not bulky. I was impressed with the streamlined fit of the cardi. The collar is a great detail - a generous width. Haven't tried buttoning up the collar yet to see if it works, will have to try that.

From the pictures, it certainly seems sheer, but IRL, it doesn't really seem that way. Interesting. I guess it's like when starlets get photographed on the red carpet with all kinds of things showing - the flashbulb makes a lot of things show up.

How am I going to wear this? To begin with, I doubt I'll be pairing it with the black Minnies. Forgive the styling here...they were in the same box. I had the camera out. Trying to keep it easy (on me) here...

In reality - I will wear the cardi with jeans - lots of jeans - boyfriend jeans, skinny jeans, white jeans. All of them. Probably my khaki cafe capris. Maybe a shorter pair of khaki shorts for fun. Top-wise, this could be the main event with a tank/cami, or layered over a tee or pretty much any other shirt.

For a cooler-weather spring look, a tissue turtle would totally work with the cardi. And it would be great over the right dress. Not sure I have that dress. If only JC had made the Playa in tan linen like I wanted them to, that would have been perfect. In any case, I'm quite sure I'll be sporting it often this spring and summer.

And I'm sitting here trying to figure out when "not too early for linen/cotton" is. Of course, we are getting our storm of the century with 20"-30" of snow right now, so what on earth am I thinking?

As you can see by the pictures at left, I tried it open, closed, and with the top 2 buttons only done. And they all worked. You belters out there will have fun belting this with a myriad of underlayers.

I'm sure you're wondering about the price, huh? For me, is this full price worthy? In a word...absolutely. Here's the thing...for me, it replaces not 1, but 2 sweaters.

The first is a navy linen/cotton longer hooded henley sweater from Banana Republic that is about 4 years old and most definitely shopworn. Bye bye to that one.

The second is the library shawl cardi which, much as I love it, is showing its age because I've had to get 2 small holes repaired (1 totally my fault, the other only partly my fault and really Lucy's, but seriously, who wears a good sweater around a small puppy???) and even more so because of my weight loss. When I got the cardi in an L last year, 15 pounds ago, it totally worked. Now, it's just kinda too big for me. (won't be getting rid of the LSC, though, as it will be perfect for wearing around the house with yoga pants).

Could it be my perfect sweater? Hmmmm, I don't know that anything can truly replace the Jackie, but this is pretty darn close. It definitely makes it into my sweater hall of fame.