Cherry Blossom Viewing After Work

Wooster Square on a Weeknight in April

Wearing pink with white and sax accents drinking a cherry blossom lemonade, carrying a cherry blossom themed purse in a cherry blossom blooming park. Photo credit to Sarah F.

Now the April 2025 Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival had actually been canceled this year due to predicted weather. It wasn't actually THAT bad on the day of, but the festival committee had called it two days in advance just in case. However, I still wanted to go and view the blossoms in a cute outfit.

From mid March-end of May 2025, I participated in a fashion challenge called the "75 Hard Fashion Challenge" with a small group of international EGL enthusiasts. The challenge is to document what you wear for 75 days straight without purchasing any new pieces into your wardrobe. I was doing this challenge with some folks who wear EGL and/or ALT fashion daily, and I wanted to start incorporating some of my most what I considered benign office friendly EGL dresses with light green, pink, violet, cream, and sax blue as solid colors and/or mixed florals into my office clothes rotation a few times a week. They didn't say anything for weeks, but this is the outfit I got dress coded for.

To this day, I still can't exactly figure out why I am not allowed to wear this to work. Is it the pastel colors? Is it the knee socks? Is it the shoes with the star buckles? How did this offend someone? How did this break dress code? The best answer I could get was that I "looked too much like a doll".  I understand every workplace is different, and I respect the dress code, but I guess they have to add "don't look like a doll" to the dress code regulations, just after too many visible piercings and articles that are ripped, torn, or have profane words or symbols.

Looking up at the Cherry Blossoms. Photo credit to Sarah F

Now that I've gotten that off my chest, let's talk about how magical it was to go to the park after work. Some of the cherry blossoms were past their prime and the petals were already romantically gathered on the ground while other trees still had open flowers. I also loved the fact that there were way less people walking around and that we were able to have an easy photo shoot as well as a few lovely snacks on a park bench to ourselves. 

Hanami Dango

The cute cafe in my office complex happened to be selling Hanami (cherry blossom) colored Dango (see Hinamatsuri post for more info on that) with honey for dipping and Onigiri (spicy tuna and rice seaweed wrapped triangles) that I picked up for Sarah and I to eat before we started our little photoshoot. 

As I've gotten into the fashion more and more, I seem to be chasing the aesthetic on every level. I am eating and wearing all the colors of this very special time of the year and I'm sharing my knowledge of Japanese customs with friends who are learning about them for the first time. 

My outfit from the back. Wait is that a Spirited Away backpack with Cherry blossom petals and Haku as a river dragon on it? Of course it is! Photo by Sarah F.

Coordinate from the house

I was very proud of how well I put together this coordinate. This dress is the same pink dress I wore to the Witchy Alice Tea , just without the apron. I paired it with light blue-ish gray and white cotton knee socks (because it had started getting a little warmer outside) and then I had a vision to repeat the light blue. Technically the cardigan and shoes are considered sax blue, and are a slightly brighter blue than on the socks, but when you put everything together, close enough becomes rather cohesive. I added a gold, violet, and pearl long necklace as well as a cameo barrette in my hair. I am also wearing a plastic pink and sax striped star ring, to echo both the main colors in my outfit and the star buckles on my shoes. 

I had actually worn this same dress with the same cardigan in violet to work a different time during the fashion challenge, but I wore it with nude colored tights and oxfords... and that was somehow more okay. Is it the visible knees this time that got me? Perhaps it is the fact that it is actually too well put together. In the earlier incarnation, I wasn't wearing jewelry at all and I plopped an off white beret on my head, while wearing tights and shoes that were two different shades of the same color. I feel like this dress has tremendous potential, and more outfits to unlock, but just not at the office. 

The sparkly striped sax and pink star ring by Dandy Puppeteer

Backlit aesthetic. Photo by Sarah F.