What Not to Wear to Work: Velour Track Suit
Re-posting this. And admitting, although I still feel the same about the public wearing of velour track suits, that my tone was more dictatorial than I generally intend. For that, I apologize.
Seriously.
Some people have no clue. Unfortunately, most of them don’t read fashion blogs, or other sources of clues. Like the woman in the very nice vintage clothing store I was just in, who was wearing a brown velour tracksuit (with black tee-shirt) and a ponytail! This was no teeny-bopper, either, she had to be in her early 40s.
Since this is a conversation, where would you wear a velour track suit? And what’s your opinion of the professional appearance of a ponytail?
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The Triumph of Individual Style
If you were to own only one “what (not) to wear” book, this is the one to buy! It is a college art text. Formerly no less than $68, Amazon now has sells it for quite a bit less
Book Description
This text aims to teach the reader how to assess her body type and then choose clothing that looks good on her. The process involves what the authors call an individual’s “design pattern.” This pattern is made up of lines, shapes, proportions, body particulars, scale, colors, and textures. How they fit together in harmony and how an individual infuses them with her innate creativity is what authors call “style.”Text Features:1.Principles of art as they apply to understanding and enhancing the female body
2.Art reproductions from museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Musee du Louvre, illustrating women’s body forms and surface features
3.Hundreds of line drawings suggest contemporary wardrobe strategies
4.Two color wheels and pages of charts for skin, eye, and hair color.
5. Provides color swatches to create a color wheel
Personally, after studying this book, I have found that there is a way to figure out any “what-to-wear” problem “from scratch”, providing freedom from the legalism of following somebody else’s list of “shoulds” and “how-tos”.
If you’ve been considering taking the plunge, now could be the time! (My copy was a birthday gift from my hero.)
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What to Wear to a Casual Christmas Party
Well, I’ll tell you right off the top what not to wear: American traditional holiday knitwear. 24 comments and the most commonly repeated word was “hideous”. Tiffany suggests the following reasons people wear them:
- love of that cutesy, “country” Americana,
- love of crafts and decoration (I’ve run out of things to make and decorate for the holiday, so I’ll decorate myself!), and
- “thriftiness”/pack rat tendencies (it only gets worn once a year, so it’s too nice to toss).
Do you see yourself in any of those?
I’ll be honest; if I were ever tempted to wear that kind of thing, it would be because that’s what my host(ess) was wearing and I wasn’t sure how to translate “casual” + “festive” into my own idiom. But I’m thinking, this year, that my new dark brown trouser-style cords will come in handy.
What’s your Christmas casual formula?
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Fashion Authority
“I am always representing my own level of fashion authority.”
When I said that, more poking fun at myself than intending to be profound, several of you liked the quote so well you mentioned message t-shirts. *chuckle*
So now, in between wondering whether the inherent humor in that concept is worth putting aside my disdain for clothing with printed messages and scrambling to pick up the fumbled pieces of my personal makeover, I’ve been chewing on the question: What goes in to fashion authority?
The answer I like best? Congruence. That is, being true to your own idiom. I thoroughly enjoy seeing a woman dressed in a manner that reflects both her unique personality and God’s astounding creativity. Truly, being around a woman like that can encourage me to express my own style, though it be different from hers.
But there’s another form of fashion authority, a sort of counterfeit of genuine style, where the more a person looks like Barbie or Stacy or the fashion layout in the Sunday paper, the more fashion authority accrues to their account. Here, the pressure is to conform to popular style (or unpopular style, as in some micro-cultures with their own “what not to wear” code”).
What are your thoughts about what goes into fashion authority?
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The Text on Texture
Searching the October 2006 archives brought up this previously published discussion:
Vildy’s comment hits me right in the uncertainty zone (at least we’re there together:)
I’m not sure anymore how I feel about textures. I would wear this out to a casual evening but not stretch velveteen in the daytime. Not any more, anyway. I’ve just gotten rid of all of my flannel suit jackets, skirts, trousers. I realized I never wanted to wear them because I like smooth fabrics. I like fabrics with substance and crispness, too. This goes against the whole “there should be movement in your clothing” philosophy.
I get a lot out of reading your thinking about clothes and life. I’d love it if you’d write more about texture. Even though I’m rounded, I have a crisp personality and feel awkward in soft, draped clothes - like I’m selling a bill of goods.
The textbook answer to the taute vs drapy fabric question is this:
Skeletal (straight line) body types wear taut fabrics, muscular = semi-taut to semi-drape, molded (smooth, where the natural padding obscures the visibility of either bone or muscle) types wear drapy fabrics. Combination types wear taut on the straight parts and drapy on the smooth parts.
But that advice has never suited my personality either. And it seems to contradict Clinton and Stacy’s regular practice of making chubby people look slender by putting them in structured jackets.
Obviously I am not finished exploring this topic. What are your thoughts?
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Do You Look Hopeless?
From a recent email:
I always wonder –and maybe you can ask the question on your blog – why do people lose all hope and start dressing in those terrible old lady clothes?
(Referring, I assume, to the “elastic-waist pants, boxy top, earth shoes” uniform template. And let me just say that I don’t believe people are generally critical of those who can’t wear heels, etc. We can all agree to be understanding about that, can’t we?)
Pondering the question, next to everything else that currently resides in my brain, I noticed the following similar themes (it’s my job to notice patterns):
- the use of the term “lose all hope”
- longer, floral dresses are known as “I give up” dresses
- quite a few of the “types” (a more complimentary and probably more accurate term than “caricature”) in Trinny and Susannah Take on America
- In Staging Your Comeback
Add in the following, from private discussions I’ve had:
- one beloved friend feels like a failure for being (insert age) and not knowing what to keep and what to biff.
- a reader wrote, in response to the What Do Your Clothes Say About You discussion, that she wasn’t sure what her best look is.
- bodies change as we get older, necessitating different styles for comfort.
- polyester never dies.
My conclusion: I’m afraid alot of women are unintentionally giving the impression of being hopeless in matters of personal style. In other words, they think they look fine, like I would if I wore the long, pretty dress with the small print. :)
Please, correct me if I’m wrong. Why do you think people wear “old lady clothes”?
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Reader Question: Are Longer Floral Dresses Hopelessly Dated?
The standard Closet Clean-out for a Woman in her ‘30s, at Wardrobe Oxygen, 
promises to “improve your reputation at work, your chances at finding a mate, and will actually make you look younger and more confident.”
Aimed at the woman entering her 30s, who may even need to do her first major post-university closet purge, this is a fabulous post, and funny. But the question which has come up here is this:
Can a 40-year-old with a well-developed personal sense of style still wear the Church dress, Laura Ingalls Wilder dress, granny dress, prairie dress, or, “I give up dress” without looking hopelessly dated?
I confess, I think the pictured dress looks good.
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TST: Teen Weight Gain
As a nation, we have become complacent about our weight. You can always find somebody bigger and you can always find somebody smaller. So much so that another phase of life has joined going to college and the kids growing up as a predictable period of weight gain: the later teen years.
You can suggest reasons. You can suggest solutions. I suggest what not to wear.
- Instead of the capsleeve top, choose 3/4 sleeve (or even sleeveless, if it’s summer).
- Rather than the stripe of a contrasting layering tank running around your middle, how about one that blends?
- Whatever you do, don’t wear a light-colored, flare legged jean, especially if they are the slightest bit tight. (Mine I’m wearing in this picture are going in the biffer bag today!)
This outfit is cute for the older teen, not that this one is overweight.
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Teen Style Tuesday: What Not to Wear According to Skillet
First, about firsts. Not like baby’s first haircut, that type of thing, but the way all of the sudden life is pitching more and more opportunities that I am not prepared for. Like a press conference. Whatever possessed me to offer the first question at my first one?
Me: “… what advice would you give young people who want to honor God by their personal appearance?”
Measurable silence.
John Cooper of Skillet, quietly, looking around while opening his bottle of water: “I’ve never been asked that before.”
Me, looking for a rock to hide under: “I’ve never been to a press conference before”.
Everybody laughs.
Buy their record,
John, his wife Korey, and drummer Lori. Both ladies played the show in their very modest outfits pictured here.
Ultimately, the answer to the question centered around modesty (imagine that!), and led into a follow-up question by the moderator about Christian t-shirts. John mentioned two in particular which I agree are inappropriate.
Have you seen the ones advertising Free Hugs? Speaker Justin Lookadoo
Rub your body here
on the front and
because I’m lonely and desperate
on the back.
There was also a t-shirt sold at the festival that said I (heart) hard core christian guys. Oh yeah? How many?
What, may I ask, is the tackiest “Christian” t-shirt you’ve seen?
Back to the theme of being unprepared or unskilled to do all the things I would like to do, I consider the simple act of asking a question at a press conference more of a success than a failure. I tried. But most of my challenges these days are in the technical arena.
Can anyone tell me how to edit the CD of the interviews and post it to the blog? I’d be willing to send you my itunes card with 15 or 20 songs from Creation artists.
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What Not to Wear … to Church
To warm up for the upcoming Modesty Carnival, here’s a re-run from December 2005.
Things that I’ve heard some nice guys (and we all want to encourage guys to be nice, right?) don’t really care to see at church (or at the office):
- cleavage
- thighs
- any part of an undergarment, including a bra visible through a shirt
- clothing that resembles lingerie
- boots with short skirts
- fishnet, or other provocative-type, stockings
- “more than they want to see” when you sit down
What would you add?
