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Tina, here.

Hooooooo-ray it's November! My favorite month. (I'm sure I'll say this again about May.) We briefly talked yesterday about making sure your wardrobe is holiday-ready. Is it? Because you do realize it's time to plan it, don't you dear friends, unless you're just gonna wing it the night before or day of your events? I can't let you do that. It worries me, even. So I thought I'd share with you my holiday wardrobe plan and I hope it helps you with yours!

1. Choose your holiday color palette. I chose forest green, black and winter white. If you read this you already knew that.

Green is the new black (or red). Red is conspicuously absent from my wardrobe and house, except on rare occasions. And green is one of the very few primary colors I like pairing with black. And white, well, you do know me, right? Let's have some fun with mixing and matching our palette.

You know my favorite style tip is to mix it up high - low. In this case, I'm wearing a green cashmere sweater, not extremely fine but good enough, with a fancy satin flounce skirt. I added a satin belt embellished with Swarovski crystals. Here's a pretty belt to dress up your outfit, and it comes in lots of colors.

Black and white is always a great combo. I would take this ubiquitous outfit and add my green velvet heels for a holiday-timed party.

You can see my green velvet heels here. They will be a mainstay of my holiday party circuit. My featured accessory.

2. Pick two dresses from your closet you can wear multiple ways by switching up the supporting players.

Sticking with my color palette, I'm choosing one of my classic wardrobe investments, the LBD, and a winter white dress.

Now we start stretching these dresses into multiple looks for all the upcoming fun parties. That's getting me great cost per wear. And one piece styled multiple ways. These phrases are ones you'll hear often from us.

Add a black topper to your fancy LBD or party dress of your choosing. Depending on the fabric of your dress, you can either dress it up or dress it down with your jacket or topper. My LBD is black satin, so it's pretty fancy. My jacket here is bouclé, with a nubby texture, so it dresses it down a good bit. (Insiders can shop some styles here. If you're not an Insider, try it out for 5 days and take a look around inside.)

This would be a great look for a nice dinner or a casual party. Yes, satin to a casual party. It's the holidays, people. And people don't dress up enough anymore. Let's bring dresses back! Choose a dress over jeans for your next outing!

I added a black leather jacket (also brings down the fancy factor of the dress), and instead of my holiday shoes, a leopard print heel. This outfit could be appropriate for a work function or dressy dinner.

My winter white dress becomes office party-ready or school play-appropriate with a belted cashmere cardigan. The only nods I'm making to the holidays are the green velvet heels and sparkly belt buckle. To strike the right note during the holidays, I'm all about subtlety and pops of holiday references. I don't want to go overboard.

To keep your cardi from being boring or stuffy, don't button it! Just fasten the one or two buttons right where you want your waist to be, and insert belt. Voila. Insta-hourglass!

Now I'm getting a bit more cocktail-ish with the addition of a velvet jacket. Velvet is such a holiday favorite, and certainly one of mine. I veered slightly from black to a warmer brown velvet. And I just want to underscore how refreshing winter white can be in a riot of holiday red and green ugly Christmas sweaters.

You can always start out with a less formal shoe like brown or black suede, and switch over to your fancier heels for that cocktail event.

You may choose a gorgeous palette of merlot and olive. Or how about pomegranate and chocolate. Or emerald green and silver or gold. There are lots of beautiful holiday palettes for your wardrobe. You'll notice none of mine are both red and green at the same time, and I prefer more complex shades of those traditional colors. Now if I had little ones running around the house, you bet I'd have all sorts of bright red and green everywhere in the house, and probably on their clothes, too. But that's kinda the point, isn't it?

Thanks for reading so very much.

Best,

Tina