Pearl necklace: Birthday gift from Tony ♥
Photography by Antonio Cangiano
This outfit really captures the sort of thing I typically wear when running errands, such as grocery shopping, going to the library, or stopping by to visit someone, when the weather is having one of those lovely "not too hot, not too cold" Goldilocks approved kind of days. It's also precisely the kind of thing I'd wear to go thrifting or yard saling in, too.
It's a relatively simple look in terms of the fact that there aren't too many components to it, which is A-ok in my books, as sometimes it's wonderful just to let one or two garments or accessories take the limelight. In this case, the star of the show is this darling grey and white striped cropped sweater that I picked up at Value Village a few months ago, and have been wearing quite often ever since.
Being petite (5'2"), I frequently find that sweaters (and cardigans) are cut much to large for me in the sense that they often hang down to my thighs (at times when that's not the look I'm going for) and/or have scads of extra fabric in the shoulder area. In such instances, it's cropped sweaters to the rescue! They usually hit me right around my navel and so are fantastic for partnering with medium to high waisted trousers, jeans, and skirts, such as this classic black velour vintage pencil skirt.
The only teeny-tiny qualm I have with this sweater, and I've encountered this before with cropped tops such as this, is that the arms are rather long. I realize that I don't have particularly lengthy limbs to begin with, and am certainly no stranger to pushing up or cuffing my sleeves on all manner of shirts, sweaters, dresses, and jackets, but you'd think that given the scaled down proportions of a cropped sweater, the sleeves might be a tad shorter. Nope, no dice there. It's as though, to help make up for the lack of fabric at the bottom hem, the designers felt like they needed to attach it all to the sleeves.
So in this case, I just sort of scrunched and pushed the sleeves up a tad, yet still tried to keep them fairly far down my wrists, as it wasn't the warmest of days out when were grabbing these snaps. No matter though, it's still a great little shirt with a charming illustration of a sophisticatedly chic woman taking her dog out for a stroll. If I had a dog, which unfortunately I do not, I would try to mimic her pose while wearing this very shirt (and ensure someone took a picture of it).
Though their arms are sometimes long enough to house a family of outstretched boa constrictors in, I say three cheers for cropped sweaters. They often to call to mind stylish lasses of the 1940s and 50s, are a great way to include knit wear in your summer and early autumn wardrobe (when sporting two pounds of Fair Isle knit is out of the question), and can look wonderful on gals of all heights and shapes, those lucky lanky armed lasses very much included! 
