To close out Summer 2018, I spent a three-day weekend at Outside Lands in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park! As a Bay Area native, I remember hearing ads for the first ever OSL ten years ago and, this year, bit the bullet on buying a ticket! I appreciated the diverse line-up and have heard great things about the local food booths,I thought there was no better way to celebrate the beautiful city I will always call "home" - knowing that I was going to be heading back to NYC in mid August, this just seemed like the proper send off! I couldn't have been more right.
Layering was essential for me. Being from the Bay Area, I knew San Francisco weather can change from one moment to another. For day one, I wore a loose, thin, short-sleeve shirt under a sweater and an over-sized corduroy jacket. I styled this look with a black beanie, the Fun Home logo featured the primary colors but mostly yellow - which tied in with the goldfish on my top and the tights I was wearing under my trousers.
These pants are some of my all-time faves! I picked them up from Primark for £6 and they're made from a stretchy fabric that made them great for moving around in all day. The length on these is a bit weird to wear with a boot, my usual go-to shoe, so I added the yellow tights to make the gap more of a statement than an awkward occurrence.
My Frye work boots served me well all weekend. I remember talking to one woman in line for Johnathan Van Ness tickets about how many girls we had seen in open-toed, heeled shoes - as cute as they may look, that's a bad call for a festival like OSL. The boots I wore blended in with all my outfits and evoked my personal style while still being practical for my needs. At an outdoor, all day, three day festival, you live and die by your feet. Making sure you pick a pair that is cute while also sensible for walking 5+ miles a day through the polo fields that can also withstand any weather SF may throw your way is key!
Saturday I went with a different vibe - I listen to a very eclectic mix of music genres and have varying taste in style to match. This outfit highlighted a different side of SF than what I wore on Friday. Karl the Fog was nowhere to be seen on Saturday, but I kept a sweater and heavier jacket in my backpack along with my picnic blanket - just in case.
The tie-die crop top I wore on day two is one I almost never break out of my closet, but when I do I always get compliments on it. I love the holographic unicorns and the way it feels like a very cutesy/pastel take on the hippie movement - a great nod to SF. I paired it with some Levi's 501s, a true San Francisco staple. In recent years I've been pretty committed to the "wedgie fit" Levis, but so, it seems, has everyone else. When I was in-store last spring there was nothing in my preferred style in-store in my size, but I found myself drawn to these 501s. I'm not usually one for ripped jeans and I had to have these shortened, but, I completely fell in love with them! I loved that the spring line had the pastel button fly - they matched my shirt perfectly, even if I was the only one who knew it still made me feel cute!
I traded in my beanie for a pastel pink dad hat that I'd picked up when I saw Beyoncé's world tour a couple years ago. This hat traveled with me everywhere (I'll wear a pop of millennial pink with any outfit) when I was in Europe and it's served me well. It's starting to fall apart a bit, but the distressed look worked with my vibe for the day. I had my beanie in my backpack too, but never needed to switch it out.
For Sunday, I styled my outfit around the theme of the festival itself. I picked up the raglan tee from the OSL campgrounds collection on Friday within an hour of the gates opening and barely managed to get one in my size (I had to pull it off the wall! The few left on the shelves by the time I arrived were all XLs). I'm glad I checked the sizes of the display shirts because I really didn't want to pass this one up - the tri-colored sleeves really put this on my "must-have" list.
I put the raglan under my old Fall Out Boy denim vest that I haven't worn since high school. Outside Lands sent us all commemorative patches with our wristbands for the festival and my mom was nice enough to attach it to my vest while she was doing some other sewing. I attached the other patches on this vest myself when I was younger, I thought this layer would be a nice nod to OSL's camper/merit badge concept and it was the perfect thing to wear for a picture with Ranger Dave!
I threw on my black wedgie fit Levi's and my combat boots and was ready to camp out at the front of the Lands End stage until the end of my queen, Janelle Monáe's, set when I retreated to the back and kicked back on my blanket for the last two mainstage acts of the festival.
Sunday was the day that our famous San Francisco fog, Karl, decided to join the party. Though I arrived in a SF Giants cap, I got half-way across the polo field before realizing that wasn't going to work and switched it out for the same Fun Home beanie I wore on day one - the red, yellow, and blue probably matched my outfit better than the orange SF I had entered with, but I made sure everyone could see the logo in my clear backpack anyway! When I was in the heart of the crowd, my vest and t-shirt were enough to keep me warm, but by the time I was out of the crowd and the sun started going down, I threw on both my sweater and my dark blue North Face fleece jacket (another Bay Area staple, I saw a number of identical jackets walking around this weekend) and even then probably could have done with another, heavier layer. If you learn anything from this post, let it be that if you're ever in the Bay, layers are key! Weather can change from moment to moment and it is never all California sunshine like you may expect!