Styletiquette – Dressing The Part
… would anyone have dared tell Tina Turner to “dress her age”?
If you ask a cross section of ladies what inappropriate dressing means to them, you are likely to get answers ranging from dressing younger than your age to revealing too much flesh, wearing the wrong outfit to an occasion… etc. while all these may be valid, I would like to go by my personal interpretation, where ‘inappropriate’ means an outfit
that is wrong for your body type, does nothing for your assets while emphasizing areas you don’t necessarily want to; otherwise you see, it’s easy to fall into stereotypes.
We’ve all witnessed someone who got the dress code for the party wrong but we easily forgave them the ‘faux-pas’ because they looked stunning nonetheless.
By the way, would anyone have dared tell Tina Turner, (or anyone of a number of others I could name) to ‘dress her age’? As a matter of fact, till today when I think of Tina,
I automatically think ‘legs!’ Her body seemed to completely defy time and she looked
hotter than a lot of women half her age. Beyonce on the other hand can wear next to nothing and still look like the (impossibly beautiful, ok) girl next door, not trashy – a case where ‘revealing’ does not automatically equate inappropriateness.. Each of us has a body type and we all ought to understand and embrace what it is because there’s no ‘wrong’ or ‘right ‘ body type. Everyone has assets we need to play up and weaknesses we need to play down; that in my opinion is where inappropriate dressing comes in. Dressing wrong for your body, or playing up weaker features, is not appropriate. There are different ways or methods of analyzing body types but basically, it all boils down to whether you’re bigger on top, bigger below (pear shaped) or are evenly proportioned, top and bottom. Everything else is a slight variation of one of these.
Get before a full length mirror, and be honest with yourself (dishonesty leads to inappropriate dressing by the way…) Ask yourself what you would like to accentuate – you probably get complimented on the particular feature(s) already and also what you don’t feel so confident about. Another point is that our bodies change over time, especially after life changing milestones like pregnancy and childbirth etc.
Also with time, parts may shift, change shape and form etc… It would be inappropriate to keep dressing the body of today as if it were yesterday’s body because it has clearly changed! So a current appraisal is necessary.
Once you have a clear and honest understanding of your body and its most flattering features, it’s time to organize your wardrobe choices – physically or mentally. So whether you’re 16 or 60, if you’ve beautifully toned legs, you know you can get away with a smart skirt but how far above the knees it goes would again depend on the condition of your knees and thighs. Beyond that, we also want to respect the standards deemed acceptable in our society.
So here are some tips for dressing up or disguising some of these features:
Arms
If they’re nicely toned (think Michelle Obama), you can wear everything from
sleeveless to short sleeves to three quarter lengths etc. If they’re not, avoid sleeves
which stop at the fleshiest part of your arms as these would only emphasise them.
Feet
Sandals or pretty shoes (mules…slides, etc) as well as great nail polish would showcase your pretty feet beautifully.
Hands
Jewellery, nail embellishments et al are guaranteed to draw attention to this part of your physique.
If you have fleshy fingers, avoid very long nails (filed to sharp points sometimes).
People often imagine the length of the nails would somehow slenderize their fingers but it actually
has the opposite effect. The contrast simply exaggerates the chubby hands.
Keep your nails at a reasonable (moderate) length and follow the natural shape of your nails when filing.
Neck
A long graceful neck invites chandelier earrings, collars, stacked beads and so on,
and can carry very dramatic neck pieces well, whereas someone with a shorter
neck would do well to steer clear of chokers as these would further shorten it.
Proportion is the key word!
Waist
A slim waist begs to be belted for further definition. If however your stomach isn’t
as flat as you would like, pass over the belts and reach for details like ruching in
your clothes. They are more flattering and will spare you the ‘muffin’ effect.
Again, do not underestimate the importance of wearing the right undergarments.
They will smoothen, disguise and contour your body to near perfection if you choose
the right ones for your outfit. Is it any wonder Sara Blakely the inventor of Spanx is now a billionaire?
And so the rule is, you want to play up your strong features and minimize
attention on your not-so-strong ones. To highlight generally, you embellish,
choose a bright colour or wear a pattern etc and if you want to downplay,
then you keep it plain with minimum embellishments or go for dark colours..
There are more tips but we’ll save them for next time!
And there you have it, your surefire blueprint for dressing appropriately!
by Ngozi Princewill Utchay of @ArtelierStyle
(Printed in our April 2013 edition)