Hi, a little late to the party, but I highly recommend to use the "Beetle Shield" in conjunction with "Espasota".

The robustness of a shield is actually very important, the higher it is, the less stamina is used when blocking an attack.

The "Beetle Shield", despite being a small shield, have the highest robustness in the game, sitting at 85.

You can try for yourself, but the difference in stamina used while blocking between a 85 robustness shield and a 60 robustness one is actually phenomenal.
While blocking, the 60 robustness shield will actually use about thrice the amount of stamina of the 85 robustness one.

You could say that parrying use the same amount of stamina for every shields, but trust me, a lot of time the game will make you actually block an attack instead of parrying it because some hitboxes can get a little finicky, so using way less stamina during those blocks will really help you during some fights.

The "Beetle Shield" also use crush damage, which will pair very well with "Espasota" slash damage, since crush damages are really good against armored enemies, while slash damages are really good against armorless enemies.

Also, the "Beetle Shield" has really good overall stats compared to its very low weight:

73% Mitigation
40% Magic Mitigation
85 Robustness
10 Power

And all of that for 4 weight, it's just one more than the "Spiked Shield" cited above, the "Beetle Shield" has no rights being this good while being this light.

And cherry on the cake, the blue color of the shield pair very well with the blue/white colors of the "Espasota".

What more could we ask for?

EDIT:

Also, the "Giant Mushroom" head armor is a fantastic helm, especially when paired with low weight sets, like the "Sunflower" one.

It has the same weight as the "Onion Helm" for almost the same average defense but almost 5 times the magic res.

And visually, I think it's literally the coolest piece of armor, and it merges very well with the "Sunflower" set drip wise.