An Interior decorator once told me that she always treated stripes as a ‘solid’ rather than as a pattern as they are so easy to mix with multiple other prints and patterns.

Many of you will have a simple striped t-shirt which you may usually wear as your patterned element of your garment. But how about you think about wearing it more like a solid and mixing it with other prints? From florals to abstracts, stripes on stripes there are easy ways to wear your stripes with other prints.

Here are some ideas of how to mix stripes with prints

How to Wear Stripes with an Abstract Print

An abstract print needs to contain the colours in the striped garment to create harmony. That’s the basic rule of mixing patterns which I’ve explained before here.

How to Wear Stripes with Spots or Animal Print

Stripes can mix well with a dot pattern or even an animal print provided there is some harmony between the colours of both patterns. Notice that I’ve also added an accent colour with my shoes, bracelet and necklace.

How to wear stripes with florals

Stripes and florals can mix easily if both patterns include the colours in the striped top. If you feel it’s rather intense, why not try breaking the patterns up with a wide belt as I’ve done here.

How to wear stripes with stripes

The key to mixing stripes with stripes is to ensure that the stripes on each garment are of a different width, and ideally flow in a different direction to each other, as my skirt and top are here, one vertical and one horizontal. An easy mix here might be a striped top with a pinstripe pant or skirt.

How to wear stripes with houndstooth (dogtooth)

Houndstooth or a tweed style fabric is a very easy pairing with your striped top or shirt.

How to wear stripes with a patterned shoe

If mixing your prints seems a bit scary, you could try doing it in a small way by mixing your patterned shoes with a striped top with a solid garment in between to break up the patterns.

Need to get some new stripes?