Styling Oriental-Style Print : #OOTD in Lisbon

Words: Yours truly • Photos: David • Location: Jardim Botanico Tropical, Belém

Let’s get the formality out of the way : if you’re reading this from the UK, happy Bank Holiday! Otherwise, I hope you’re having a terrific day nonetheless.

Now here’s a confession : I’m not very good at fashion-blogging when I travel. As in, I rarely ever blog about my travel outfits these days, but as it was my birthday trip, I felt I had to post at least one OOTD post from Portugal to remember what I wore – so here’s one I shot in Lisbon… more specifically, Belém.

 

As I’m sure you can imagine, Lisbon in May equals hot, hot, hot(!!) and I was very well-prepared for the heat. (Look this way if you want to check out my other Lisbon blog.)

 

As any personal style blogger worth their grain of salt will tell you : nothing screams ‘heat’ than short-sleeve shirt, shorts, and sandals. So I made this beautiful, silky, and very breathable River island shirt – that I bought in autumn / winter last year in preparation for the extreme summer I knew we were about to have *sarcasm* – the hero piece of this look…

Here’s another confession : I’m not usually a fan of oriental-inspired patterns or logos. In most cases, I find them to be culturally appropriating… If you didn’t know, a lot of those Asian-character motifs you see on jumpers probably don’t mean anything. Some monolingual manufacturers probably put them on their designs just because they thought it’d look ‘kinda cool’…

Call me pressed or precious all you like, but I am not ok with that.

Not with this shirt tho. As much as it is graphic, I like that it is still simple and subtle, and it stands out without screaming ‘oriental’ when paired with minimal, monochrome elements.

 

Where do you stand on printed garments? Yay or nay? Let me know in the comments below, and I will see you in the next one!!

 

Oliver ❤