Katie Holmes Pattern Clashes Like a Pro With a Classic Striped Shirt and Eclectic Checkerboard Bag

After studying Katie Holmes's best outfits professionally for nearly a decade, I can definitively say she thrives at the understated-yet-elevated errand look. Give her nothing but a sidewalk, a Reformation coat, and Adidas sneakers, and she'll build a weeks' worth of coffee-run outfits—making each one feel special with a colorful pant or a trendy belted bucket bag. Send her to buy flowers like she did on March 19 in Manhattan, and she'll unlock a cohesive method of styling two vastly contrasting prints (stripes and checkerboard) while she's at it.

The Dawson's Creek star didn't have to venture that far from her usual outfit formulas—or paparazzi-filled route home—to deliver her Pattern Clashing 101 lesson. Holmes took in the early spring sun with a poplin stripe shirt unbuttoned to reveal a few choker necklaces, tucked into a pair of single-pleat gray jeans. Had she left the accessorizing at her pointed-toe (and currently unreleased) white Vivaia ballet flats, the outfit would have been a template for preppy spring layering. But then she toted her essentials in an out-of-stock Serapian checkerboard bag, and things got interesting.

Hanging in her closet, Holmes's striped shirt and checkerboard bag might not have been an obvious pair. But they're both grounded in a cream base that allows their juxtaposing geometric prints to fit together like puzzle pieces when they're layered into the same look. Neither one is too flamboyantly colorful or busy to overly distract from the other.

She made things even more cohesive by grounding her outfit in creamy white flats and a neutral-toned jean. I even suspect her bouquet of cream and purple flowers were handpicked to coordinate with the whole outfit.

Sure, Holmes's recent appearances in New York and Paris have made it clear ballet flats and trendy jeans or butter yellow on butter yellow achieve instant outfit harmony. But she's also just proven two opposing prints can be a perfectly imperfect match.

Shop Clashing Patterns Inspired by Katie Holmes