no 20: what I wore for a week (in portugal!)
what I wore, my packing list, and the three purchases i made for this trip.
The Farm Table, Julius Roberts. A professionally trained chef who left his life in restaurants to live on a small farm in the English countryside, Julius has long been my favorite comfort tiktok accounts. His first cookbook combines stunning imagery, written essays, and seasonal recipes. Currently loving the “Spring On a Plate” - peas, asparagus, fava beans, gem lettuce and herbs with lemon, white wine, and ricotta - and the Pear and Walnut cake is *gorgeous*. Looking forward to cooking along through the year.
Grey Bergamot Solid Perfume, Next Memory: during my trip to Lisbon this past week I found the most stunning perfume shop a block from my hotel. A former pharmacy laboratory, Next Memory Atelier creates handmade perfumes, candles and other fragrances with materials from, and inspired by Portugal. I scooped up a solid perfume in the grey bergamot scent- with crushed green leaves, a sweet floral black tea, and undercurrent of vetiver, it’s warm and fresh, like your favorite cup of tea took a tropical vacation.
The Regime, Max. Kate Winslet is Chancellor Elena Vernham, the delusional chancellor of a vague central European country. She is paranoid and unstable, increasingly crippled by anxieties about illness and toxic mold infestations, and by the enablement of her simpering cabinet and household staff. She turns to a soldier responsible for brutally quashing an uprising, and the unlikely pairing enables both of their worst instincts. I’ve seen the show compared to Veep, satirical and only a bit more surreal.
In a previous life, I used to travel for work fairly regularly; jetting from LA to New York or San Francisco when I worked at a sort of fancy, fairly well funded non-profit, or from Seattle to DC for my current job (pre-COVID). I was practiced and polished;packing a carry on with business casual / smart chic, mental health non-profit meets the entertainment industry appropriate clothes, rolling off redeyes and into conference rooms or business lunches, and tacking on a few days here and there for each trip for wine tasting, tourism, or time with friends.
Fast forward to today and I haven’t traveled for work since Fall of 2019 (where I attended a highly prescient conference at the FDA, including talks about infectious disease surveillance networks- yikes.). In the intervening years, my wardrobe changed dramatically as I navigated several huge life changes: COVID and a near-permanent “work from home” shift, a move to a *much* smaller personal closet (my personal favorite time to purge my wardrobe), and the approximately 18 months of pregnancy and postpartum where pretty much nothing fit and I wasn’t the same size for more than 5 days in a row. hellooooooooo stretchy pants.
So when I found out about a last minute trip to Portugal for work, the urgency of my personal style journey this year went from zero to sixty in about 2.5 seconds: the approach and lifestyle changes to my style since 2019 have resulted in a wardrobe that I’m quite happy with but that has had some decided gaps – largely in business casual wear, especially for multiple days in a row.
SO, I pulled out my best spreadsheeting to put together a plan for the week, map out what I had, what I needed, and what I would wear against our planned itinerary. This had the double benefit of reducing the amount of extra stuff I lugged across the world, while also clearly identifying where there were gaps in what I had that *needed* to be addressed.
I wanted to continue my efforts to dress in a way that is “classic, minimal and whimsical” while embracing the workwear vibes I don’t usually need to dress for all that often. I tried to primarily rely on clothes I already have in my closet rather than reinventing the wheel, but took some inspiration from recent fashion week show recaps and style forecasting. As a long time anxiety overpacker (...but what if i *need* something and don’t have it??!?!) it was also so important to me not to overpack, and to bring along pieces that could mix and match to dress up or down depending on the situation, without overdoing it.
Today I'm bringing you with me on how I ended up pulling it all together, resulting in some of my favorite outfits in quite some time. In this issue we’re covering:
What I wore: travel & leisure plus workwear
The 3 purchases I made for this trip (and which one is my favorite!)
What I brought that I wished I left at home (and vice versa)
Full packing list with links to everything!
Okay that’s it, love you!
Xx
As mentioned above, this was a work trip that we squeezed some leisure time into. for context, our itinerary was roughly chaos, as follows:
Saturday: Depart Seattle 1 PM
Sunday: Arrive Lisbon ~ 1PM local time.
Monday: Explore Lisbon
Tuesday - Saturday AM: Work, including dinners.
Saturday PM: Explore Lisbon
Sunday AM: Depart for Seattle, Arrive home 8 PM local time
While I was gone for 8 total days for this work trip, a not-insignificant amount of time was spent on the actual journey to and from Lisbon. My work bestie and I added in what came out to about an extra day and a half to our required itinerary, to ensure we had time to actually adjust to the time change and explore Lisbon before official work events began.
I wanted my clothes for this leg of the trip to be comfortable and travel friendly (not fussy, easy to walk and stand in), in materials that hold up well to wear and tear, don’t wrinkle easily, and are fairly basic but can be layered to be a bit more style-forward. In practice, this ended up being a few different versions of the same outfit: casual trousers with sneakers, and then either a tshirt or tanktop layered with an elevated sweatshirt (more casual), sweater (less casual) and a reversible quilted jacket. This “uniform” of sorts is absolutely going to be my new travel go-to, a step up from my usual leggings and ratty sweatshirt for a look that is pulled together, polished, and above all, comfy as hell.
Knowing that I would have two dedicated travel days (which were both 18+ hours), plus roughly two days for exploring, I worked on a 3x2x2 packing list as a baseline, knowing I could rewear or add in something from my work clothes if needed. (I also did a very small load of laundry at the hotel. highly recommend).
What I wore:
Travel Days : Aiming for maximum comfort with wide leg pants, tshirt, grey hoodie, quilted jacket, sneakers
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe2dbe45e-6981-454e-8966-bc6cd1433cb5_3024x4032.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F3e2c0d07-e009-4d5f-b65b-2814307c89f6_3024x4032.jpeg)
Tourism Day .5: Attempting to explore long enough to make it to a reasonable bedtime after being up for approximately 30 hours in a row. straight leg jeans, tshirt, cardigan, sneakers. too tired for photos!
Tourism Day 1: Feeling bright eyed and busytailed after 10 hours of sleep, and ready for our only full day of exploring. Looking for peak comfort to walk around, so stuck with wide leg pants, swapped out the tshirt for a white tanktop, was cold so added on a crewneck sweater in the morning, kept the quilted jacket & sneakers
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5e3812e6-6429-41f6-a295-eeacd004bf85_3024x4032.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F49c73fa5-fed8-443d-bdbd-87af243d8155_3024x4032.jpeg)
Tourism Day 2: It’s the end of the trip and I’ve worn all my clothes. A repeat of the wide leg pants and tanktop, pulled in a cardigan from my workwear list, same old quilted jacket (but reversed to the floral pattern), same sneakers, several shopping bags.
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ff649aaef-6423-4561-9e7c-f6df16cab12d_3024x4032.jpeg)
![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1bfae362-14b4-4e0f-8fc2-e7c2355bba55_2771x3468.jpeg)
All up, this section of my wardrobe was really hitting the marks on function without too much fuss or variation. definitely not my usual approach, but was nice to pull of minimalism, for once?
This was the section I was most at-risk for panic-overpacking in, for two reasons: first, the sheer amount of time it’s been since I’ve needed to do business casual dressing for more than a 2-3 hour meeting (let alone 4.5 days in a row), and second, that I really only had a loose idea of what the energy and formality of all the events I would be attending would be.
I decided to err on the side of formality while applying the “classic, minimal, whimsical” approach, pairing basic workwear style elements with a fun shoe, oversized top, or thoughtful detailing. I also focused on a very small color palate (white, navy, green) so that everything I brought could mix and match.
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