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    What to Wear: A Style Handbook
    What to Wear: A Style Handbook
    What to Wear: A Style Handbook
    Ebook199 pages1 hour

    What to Wear: A Style Handbook

    By Kimberly Bonnell

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    About this ebook

    What To Wear is a funny, fast, smart user's guide to clothes. Keep it handy, because it's designed for easy, frequent reference. It takes you right to what you want to know --- what to wear in everyday situations that trigger fashion anxiety.

    What to wear to dazzle at your high school reunion? Impress at a job interview? Celebrate at a wedding? Party over business? Keep a grip on style during your pregnancy? Look serious about work on casual days? Ride out a weight loss in style? Escape a style rut? And lots more.

    Kimberly Bonnell blends a fashion insider's know-how with a down-to-earth understanding of every woman's occasional sense of bewilderment about what's best to wear, given today's huge range of fashion options. Her approach is democratic, not exclusionary, and her advice is truly accessible.

    Sparked by Eliza Gran's witty illustrations, What To Wear assures you'll face your closet, and what's on your calendar, with confidence. editor for 13 years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateSep 27, 2016
    ISBN9781250138156
    What to Wear: A Style Handbook
    Author

    Kimberly Bonnell

    Kimberly Bonnell was a Fashion Director of Glamour magazine and a fashion editor for many years. Now a mother as well, she's a style pro online at Oxygen.com and the author of What To Wear: A Style Handbook. She lives in New York City.

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      Book preview

      What to Wear - Kimberly Bonnell

      Introduction

      This book is your rescue for all the situations in your life that provoke a first, probably panicked response of Yikes, what am I going to wear?

      It’s for the class reunion where you’re seeking unmerciful revenge. A new job in a casual workplace, then the interview for the next job. Pregnancy. A black-tie fund-raiser or business gala. As you surely know, these aren’t unusual situations but they are unusually important. The choices are so abundant—a by-product of casualization and few remaining fashion rules—that they’re utterly confounding. Confidence vaporizes.

      Frankly, I think What to Wear should live right in your closet, on call for instant reference and emergency consultation. It’s like a friend who’s style-savvy yet not intimidatingly chic, clearheaded and rational yet sympathetic to your phobias and obsessions, experienced enough to know these moments yet not so fixed in her own ideas that she won’t listen to yours.

      I chose topics for the book based on questions I’ve received over and over as an on-line style pro. The advice isn’t so much about which hemlines are in or colors are out (though there is help in making sense of that). Instead, it’s meant to clarify the issues to keep consciously in mind as you choose between the fuchsia daisy-print slipdress and the sleek black sheath.

      Finally, What to Wear acknowledges that we’re talking clothes here, not the meaning of life. But let’s face it, there are times when clothes are more than what you put on your back—they’re tools, for revising our past and inventing the future. They’re your kit, this is your manual.

      ►If the anxiety-making situation you’re facing isn’t among the ones here, or you simply want one-on-one advice, go to www.ask-kim.com and ask away. I can help.

      What to Wear

      A Style handbook

      1

      To Make the Most of Your Figure

      Or is it the least?

      Damn those pounds or welcome them, but don’t try to dress as if they’re not there.

      Let’s be realistic. You can have the healthiest, most evolved body image in town, fully accept that you’re not Elizabeth Hurley, and still want to look five pounds thinner. A boost curvier. A head taller. An inch broader in the shoulders; a belt-notch skimpier in the waist, a size smaller in the hips.

      Assuming you tip the scale somewhere between wasted waif and Danger, Wide Load, you can dress your way to your goal. The only person who might psych out your strategy is the one who probably prefers you naked anyway.

      Myth #1: Where you’re big, dress big.

      No, don’t. Whether it’s your hips, bustline, bum or third-trimester belly, if it’s draped or billowed in yards of fabric it looks bigger.

      ►Flattery formula: If one piece of your outfit is roomy the other shouldn’t be. If the top’s spacious, the bottom should be lean. If the bottom piece is fullish, make the top closer-fitting.

      Ten Absolute Truths for Every Figure

      1. Dark colors are slimming.

      2. Pleated skirts are fattening.

      3. Ankle-strap shoes make your legs look chunkier and you look shorter.

      4. So do ankle boots worn with skirts or dresses.

      5. Beefy textures beef you up.

      6. Shiny finishes are like a topographical map of all your bumps and bulges.

      7. Monochromatic outfits are more minimizing than ones that mix colors.

      8. A slim knee-length skirt that’s a bit pegged looks better than one that’s dead-straight. Lycra helps.

      9. Legs look longest when hemline, stocking and shoe match or are in the same tones. If you want to vary one element, it should be the skirt or dress.

      10. The number-one universally flattering item is a fingertip-length tailored business jacket with subtly padded shoulders, torso-skimming fit and gently tapered waist.

      Don’t panic. Your swimsuit size, like everyone else’s, will be up to three times bigger than your usual clothing size. Who was the sadist who determined that?

      ARE YOU A CANTALOUPE?

      Huh? Why have women always been shoved down the food chain when advised about what will look good on them? Congratulations, strawberry! Or forced to imagine themselves as human grids with that triangle, circle, square, rectangle thing? Why not just say it the way we all do in fitting rooms, locker rooms, bedrooms and bathrooms across the land.…

      I HAVE BIG HIPS

      Myth #2: Balance wide hips with wide shoulders.

      Yeah, then sign up for the NFL draft—you’ll be ready to play linebacker.

      ►Balance is a good goal, but not if it makes everything look bigger. Tops with some natural-looking padding and subtly defined shape in the torso—a gentle nip at the waist, straight lines and a natural, not deep, armhole—extending either all the way past your hips or just to the top of the hipbone are less obvious and more appealing than a gridiron getup.

      More hip-shrinkers:

      • Concealing the curve where your hips begin can make you look slimmer. Do it with narrow-cut tops long enough to pass that curve, worn over a slender skirt or pants.

      • Lean, fingertip-length tops like long jackets, tunics.

      • Top-of-hipbone length tops.

      • No cropped tops.

      • No tops that hit you at the widest part of your hips.

      • No boxy tops.

      • Streamlined bottoms that don’t add inches.

      • Tapered knee-length skirts.

      • Dead-straight pants.

      • Flat-front or single-pleat pants, skirts.

      • Knee-length hemlines.

      • No billowy pants or skirts.

      • No drawstring waists.

      • No allover pleats or gathering.

      • No bold patterns, thick textures, shiny finishes.

      • Loose, ankle-cropped pants worn with hip-passing lean tops.

      • Dresses that streamline you or skim gently past

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