When you find an outfit color combination you like, sliding the colors between the component pieces is an easy way to make new outfits.
Mastering good style isn’t about endlessly mixing and matching every item in your closet. Just like the millennial work mantra—work smarter, not harder—applies to your daily grind, it can also guide your process for building looks.
Have an outfit you already love? Create iterations with the design concept of color blocking: a simple and powerful tool that allows you to create new outfits for different occasions, weather, or moods by strategically shifting the colors of your fav outfit’s components in the new look.
One way I personally like to do this is with a dusty color palette in summer. With the heat and humidity calling for a pared-back approach, sticking to a core palette of dusty neutrals—beige, charcoal, white, and tan—enables pieces to be both flexible and weather-appropriate.
These shades not only embody a classic, refined vibe but also make it easy to mix and match, giving you the flexibility to be ready for whatever the day might bring, from morning brunch to a casual evening out.
Here are four easy summer outfit ideas that illustrate the power of neutral color blocking. By just shifting where these tones appear in the look, you can transform the feel of your outfit—from relaxed and modern to something that’s a bit more polished and classic. Best of all, all four make use of something you’ve likely already owned for years: a trusty pair of suede desert boots.
Let’s start with one of my current favorites:
Beige Linen Shirt with Faded Black Jeans and Tan Desert Boots
With a looser shirt and straight fit jean, this outfit feels laid-back, comfortable, and classically rakish.
Keeping the same color palette, we can simply slide the hues around:
Charcoal Linen Shirt, Beige Jeans, and the Same Tan Desert Boots
This order of colors still feels cohesive but has a decidedly different feel. While the darker shirt will always have a more evening-essence to it, the low contrast between the jeans and the boots has a very dusty summer effect.
We can continue shifting things around now that we have the tan jeans. Anchoring that as the darker focal point like the charcoal jeans were in the original, we can swap the dark linen shirt for a white one:
White Short Sleeve Linen Shirt, Khaki Jeans, and Tan Desert Boots
When the other elements are shades of beige, a simple, everyday white shirt can become a vibrant addition to balance things out.
Compared to the outfit with the same jeans and boots with the dark linen shirt, this one feels more appropriate for a daytime activity in the mid-day summer sun.
Circling back around, we move the white from the shirt to the jeans, and bring back the charcoal linen shirt:
Charcoal Short Sleeve Linen Shirt, Natural White Jeans, and Tan Desert Boots
White jeans can feel like a bold move, but when you keep things within the subdued colors we’ve been working in, like with the dark shirt, it keeps that boldness reigned in. Plus it’s such a dead-simple pro summer move: Take an outfit you like, swap in white jeans, and you’ve instantly got summer-is-for-vacation vibes.
