Back of the closet: Handmade, Vintage Poncho

One of my coworkers recently said to me, "Christen, I would love to see inside your closet. I don't think I've seen you wear the same thing twice."  I laughed and said I didn't think she'd be impressed. As much as I love my house, if there's one thing I could change, it would definitely be the closets. While decent-sized, they certainly aren't walk-ins and the doors slide so that you can only see one side at a time, which makes creating new outfits more difficult than it should be. Sigh. If only we could all have fabulous closets like Emily over at Cupcakes & Cashmere, seen here. (who, btw, I like to refer to as Emily Cupcakes. I mean, isn't that cute?)

But since neither my closet space — or my wardrobe for that matter — are anywhere near close to that of hers, I gotta do the best I can with what I've got! So I like to make my wardrobe only seem bigger by rotating out certain pieces and mix-matching different items together. One way to do this is to pull something from "the back of the closet" that you really haven't worn in a while and rockin' it in a new way.  Hence my new column: Back of the closet. I think I'll devote this column to Thursdays since that seems to be the day of the week that I need the most fashion motivation.

Today's "Back of the closet" actually came out of the very back of my mom's closet. Apparently my great-grandmother on my dad's side had made this poncho for my mom when my parents were still newlyweds back in the 70s. I still can't believe my mom had been holding out on me with this piece of clothing. Luckily it somehow came up in conversation around the holidays and I still consider this piece to be my favorite Christmas present from last year. It's an instant vintage addition to any ensemble I'm currently wearing.  I prefer to wear it with jeans, but here I decided to mix things up and rock it with a dress.

A sneak peek of what's underneath the poncho.