All it takes are some simple style tweaks and voila, your favorite summer wardrobe staples are ready for fall. In this article, I’m sharing 10 super simple ways that you can get those summer clothes ready for fall. You wanna hear what they are? let’s do it. Felt hat, tights, booties, tall boots, sneakers, brown or black bag, blazer, moto, trench, sweater. Hold on a minute, that was a little too fast. Let’s rewind. Go back to the beginning. I’m gonna take all 10 of those tips and weave them in throughout this article by sharing your favorite summer staples and showing you how to take those summer staples from summer to fall. Are you ready? Okay, let’s do it.
What should be in a summer wardrobe?
In summer clothes you should have little white dress, little black dress, printed dress, white top dress, white tee etc. These have been discussed in your fashion guide and etc. Check it out now.
1. Little white dress for summer wardrobe essentials
For outfit number one, I wanna just start with the little white dress. This is a heavy hitter for summer. This is something I reach for again and again and again throughout the summer. Here it is, this little white dress. This one is by Alexis. It’s a cotton poplin mini dress. You guys might remember the green midi dress that I featured also by Alexis. It’s the exact same dress, just one is midi and the other is mini. This dress, perfect for summer wardrobe, paired it with some colorful wedge sandals.
These are by Veronica Beard. And a beautiful woven Bottega Veneta quilted bag. How do we take that from summer to fall? It is so simple. And here’s what you do.First, I wanna add a hat. In this case, it is a felt hat by rag & bone. This is one that I got during the Nordstrom sale. I don’t if it’s still available or not, but we’ll put a link to it below in the description box. It’s a beautiful beige tone, and I love this color so much for fall and it’s a beautiful transition color.
‘Cause it’s still light and airy, so even though it’s fall, it can still be for many of you just super hot, right? So this feels like fall, but it’s not gonna add tons and tons of heat to your look. But it’s also just a beautiful neutral tone. So I added the hat. I swapped the sandals for a pair of Vince Camuto booties. These booties with that V in the front, it means you can’t wear like regular socks. You have to either wear a no-show sock or no sock. I personally just wear no socks, okay? So that’s worth noting.
Also, I think it’s great that these booties are in more of a skin leg lengthening tone because I’m pairing them with a dress. So, you could go for a deeper brown, honey brown, dark brown, but I really love how this color blends into my skin tone. Next, I added a blazer. The blazer is a similar color tone to the hat. This one is by Reiss and it’s a bit oversized, which is a very big trend with blazers right now. The one I’m wearing right now by Bosch is also oversized.
I think an oversized blazer would be a great piece to invest in this fall. You know, the oversized trend is just starting. And remember how I talked about with trends, if you catch it on the infancy or the beginning of the trend on the upswing of the curve, then you have years and years and years of wearing that. So, this would be a great piece to invest in. I also added a beige clutch. As I mentioned in the beginning, a bag swap is a good way to transition from summer to fall.
2. Little black dress
I personally think a black dress in the summer is very sophisticated, very chic. And if it’s not sweltering hot, it’s a great option that can look really stylish and lovely. I wanted to show you the summer option of this BB Dakota Steve Madden dress that I did feature in our Nordstrom sale coverage. This is a mini dress with a cinched waist and an A-line skirt. I’m five, four for reference. It is a bit short on me even, so that’s a consideration. I’d say if you’re five six, five seven, probably that’s the cutoff for this dress.
This is a dress I’ve been wearing since I got it at the Nordstrom sale. I love it. I think it’s just an easy kinda one and done piece to throw on. Here, I have it paired with some Dolce Vita wooden platform sandals. These feel really fresh and fun to me, these sandals. I also love that they are skin tone, so it really elongates the legs. This is the summer outfit. Now, how do we make it ready for fall? all we do is we swap those sandals for some booties. In this case, I added tights.
You don’t have to add tights, but adding tights is a very simple way to take a dress from summer to fall. These are a silky dark gray tight, so they feel good on the skin and they feel silky and soft. I like that they’re gray ’cause it creates a little bit of contrast between the black booties and the black dress. On my feet, I’m wearing some Isabel Marant booties. These are very western-inspired, so I went all-in with the western on this look.But don’t worry, I’ll show you another option in a second. I don’t see that slowing down.
3. Printed dress
Now let’s talk about a printed very summery dress. Your dresses that are dark floral prints, those will beautifully transition into fall. Dresses that have blacks and browns and beiges, all of those will transition beautifully into fall. They’re a little bit easier. It is trickier to take like a big, bright, bold colored dress, like this Saloni mini dress with long sleeves, and make that feel more like fall. So, what I did, here’s the summer version. It’s a Saloni floral print mini dress with some Marc Fisher strappy sandals.
Again, you notice a theme. They’re in a very light beige, which is a skin tone for me, so it’s leg lengthening, highlighting the legs, lengthening the legs. I swapped those out for some tall boots. These are by Veronica Beard, suede, with like a three-inch heel and a pointed toe. And then I added an Elisabetta Franchi cardigan that’s fuzzy and oversized and just so like yummy. But you could do a regular cardigan. You could do a longer duster cardigan.
I would just make sure if you’re gonna go with choosing a summer standout floral print in bright colors like this one, I would go with a cardigan that is like white or ivory or taupe or beige. It’s gonna be hard to do this with a black cardigan. And then for the boots, I did wanna also try just some really fun Schutz boots. These are white croc-embossed boots, stiletto heel, and I thought that was just really fun.
So these two looks give you some ideas of how you can take that summer floral print dress and turn it into more fall-appropriate outfits. Now, full disclosure, it’s much, much easier to go back to your little white dress or your black dress or something neutral solid and transform that into a fall outfit than it is to take those bright floral prints and turn them into a fall outfit.
Another thing that I just wanted to mention again is that if you do have dresses that are dark florals, like this, this is a MISA dress, this is already so fall. So you don’t have to really go to any kind of extreme to make it feel more fall. The colors inherently make it feel more fall.
Read more: 9 Wardrobe Pieces You Will Wear Forever
4. White Dress for summer
Related Posts:
Another summer favorite, at least for me, and I think it’s a real basic, is a white summery top. So I wanted to show you this new top I got by Reiss in the Nordstrom sale. It’s an eyelet top. This one does have long sleeves, but it doesn’t matter if your favorite white top is short sleeve, sleeveless, or long sleeve. You can do exactly the same thing. So just think about what white top you wear over and over and over again in the summer. We’re gonna take that and we’re gonna make it more fall-appropriate.
So in this case, it’s the white eyelet Reiss top paired with some Ammo shorts. Love these shorts, by the way. They are so, so comfortable and so cool and just great, easy, throw-on, everyday shorts. Some See by Chloe sandals, again, more of a skin tone to leg lengthen. And a Prada triangle bag in raffia. So this is the summer version. What did we do here? We swapped the See by Chloe sandals for some booties, added a blazer, swapped the shorts for some jeans, and swapped out the Prada bag for a Celine belt bag in beige.
So white for beige. And here again, these are the same booties I just showed you, the Vince Camuto booties. It’s that same Reiss blazer and the Celine belt bag. So those are very simple tweaks, again, instant, simple, easy. Think about what you have in your closet already that could help you make these transitions, right, these transitional outfits. It really does boil back down to that list that I started with in the beginning. The hat, the tights, the booties, the tall boots, the sneakers, the brown or black bag, the blazer, the moto, the trench, the sweater.
I wanted to show you this same fall outfit but add black instead of the brown or the beige. So I just swapped out those Vince Camuto booties for some black combat boots by See by Chloe and then a black YSL bag instead of the Celine bag. So it also, like the brown and the beige look so great together. And that’s another easy fall look. So here you have the summer look, then you have the first fall look with the neutral tones. And then you have the second fall look with some black thrown into the mix.
5. White tee for summer wardrobe
What’s another heavy hitter, you wear it all the time in the summer? It is a white T-shirt, right? White T-shirt, I feel like you wear it all year round. But I wanna show you how to take your white T-shirt and easily transition it into fall.They’re T-shirts, but they always have some interesting detail. In this case, it’s a puffed shoulder, it’s a puffed sleeve, little bit of a gathered sleeve, love the crew neck. It’s a very breathable fabric in cotton, body-skimming but not too tight. Just a awesome tee.
Pair that with some PAIGE dark wash flare jeans. These are amazing. I love how flattering and lovely these are. I’ve also talked about how the flare jeans’ silhouette is kinda where we’re heading with jeans. This is another one that if you haven’t purchased a pair of flare jeans yet or a wider leg or a straight leg jean, this would be a great time to invest in a pair and then you’ll wear them for a lot of years to come.
Read more: 5 European Style Secrets to Always Look Effortlessly Chic
6. Moto jacket is minimalist summer wardrobe
And here you have it. What did I do? I added a moto jacket for minimalist summer wardrobe. This one is by AllSaints in black. I swapped those sandals for some black booties. Again, these are those Stuart Weitzman sock booties. And you have a very simple fall transitional combo. You could add a great scarf to this. You could add your hat back in. You know, you’ve got options. But if you just wanna keep it really simple, that is the very, very simple way to transition that tee into fall.