Val’s First Collab: A 10 x 10 Challenge With ‘The Everyday Mae’

Have you ever looked at one of your friends and noticed that the two of you have some fashion sense in common?

I wouldn’t quite call us style twins, but, I will say that I’ve always admired Rochester local Samantha Erickson and we do love similar outfit pieces. She runs The Everyday Mae.

While you might have noticed that we do love a similar color palette with a sense of “edge” to it, we also strongly believe in authentic presentations and real conversations about mental health too. We’ve both been honest about our individual mental health journey. This is what bonded us to begin with.

Since we’ve also got a passion for fashion, we figured why not mix it up and discuss that for a change!? This is how we decided to collaborate on a “10×10 challenge” this week.

You might be asking what a 10×10 challenge is. Hey, I did too at first! I get it! Simply put, Style Bee explains, “The 10 x 10 Style Challenge™ is an exercise I established in 2015 to help encourage myself to get more creative with my clothes during a 30 Day Shopping Fast. The concept is essentially a mini capsule closet of 10 items that you work with for 10 days, creating new looks and styling your clothes in ways you might not otherwise try.” We did ours a little differently basing these pieces on three “staple pieces” in our closet that we have in common.

Sam and I realized that we love to rock animal print, graphic tees, and black hats – so, we went about this challenge making sure to wear those things specifically in the outfits we created.

Want to see what we did?

Here’s how we chose to rock black hats!

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Honestly, these hats make for a great day or night look.

Then, we have our fave… rocking animal print!

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Whether its a skirt, shoes, sweater, or pants, we love to make sure some form of animal print is in our outfit!

Lastly, we love a good graphic tee too!

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For me, a “graphic tee” usually means a fun music related or band tee. I’ve got Alice In Chains, Mötley Crüe, The Velvet Underground, and Spice Girls on full display here. For Sam, when it comes to t-shirts she likes funky bohemian prints with an edge to them too! She’ll rock a band tee occasionally too.

If you do a quick scan of all of these collections, you’ll notice earth tones and black are heavily represented between us. That’s what brings our style together!

I think we both appreciated learning new ways to use what’s already in our closet, and we did absolutely get inspired by each other.

How do you and your friends blend styles? Do you coordinate?

Thank you so much for checking out our collaboration! This was a lot of fun to do! Be sure to follow Samantha Erickson at The Everyday Mae on all social media platforms, at that handle.