Flying Your Colors

So, you decided to see if you could make a difference in the way women dress in your social circle and perhaps influence overlapping circles. You’re seeking to reintroduce a sense of chic and personal style. You even recruited close friends to the cause.

You’ve cautiously begun accessorizing the ubiquitous jeans and T-shirt. You’ve introduced skirts and dresses and pumps, ballet flats and sandals with heels. Maybe you’ve gotten a new hair-style and seen a make-up consultant. (As I have discussed in my two previous blog posts).

Now you’re ready to begin in earnest.

Beyond just wanting to change the way you dress, have you considered how you want to dress? Your lifestyle certainly enters into it. If you’re a professional you’re going to lean into a crisper, more authoritative look than if you’re a student. And there’s everything in between. We’ll do a deep dive into different styles next week. Meantime, let’s begin with color, a subject that applies to everyone.

My position may offend certain commercial interests, but I think that with very few exceptions, if you love a color, it’s your color!.

The whole matter of who can wear what color began many generations ago and it was premised on the certainty that you had to work with what God gave you because no “respectable” woman would wear make-up.

Strangely, we’ve never reexamined that assumption. We still talk about color as though our complexion is all determinative and there’s nothing we can do about it. Whole “color theories” are based on it, books have been written about it and careers launched around it.

Now, I’m not out to crash anybody’s color theory empire, but, if you think about it for about one minute, you know that it’s no longer true and hasn’t been for decades. We have skin-tone adjusting make-up!

You’re probably already wearing it. You long ago determined that your complexion is too “red” or “yellow” or “ashy” or “pale” or “drab” and you’ve chosen a foundation make-up that neutralizes it.

You knew you’d improved the look of your complexion but somehow, it never occurred to you that you had also opened the whole world of color. You went right on letting those offending undertones rule your wardrobe choices.

Well, you need to stop that!! Open your metaphorical color wings and fly!

Over the coming weeks, I’ll devote a lot of time to the discussion of what goes with what to achieve a certain effect, but for now, I’ll just offer an overview.

There was a time when wearing an outfit where literally everything matched was considered high chic. Today, it looks too much like a costume. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t match some elements of your outfit.

One of the fastest ways to turn a dress or a top and skirt or pants into a pulled together look is to match your shoes and bag, particularly if they have color. Of course you don’t always have to do it, but If you have a red bag and shoes, you’ll be surprised by how many things they go with and how they’ll bring instant chic to a white blouse and a black skirt. That’s why the word “Matchie” is dying as a pejorative.

If you have a few of these “outfit makers” - a couple of matching shoes and bags, a great blazer, a good skirt and a pair of well tailored trousers, you’re on your way to style, because you accessorize them with things you love, in colors you love.

A word here about deliberate mismatching:

For the past several years, many perfectly solvent people have been dressing “street.” What does that actually mean? I’m not trying to be glib or dismissive when I say it means extreme poverty. At its base, this look was inspired by bag ladies, homeless veterans, unemployed former convicts and victims of substance abuse..

Are you shocked? Well, you should be. “Everything goes with everything” was born of the necessity for the homeless to wear whatever came to hand just to cover their bodies, They also often wear shoes that are too big because they were the only shoes they could find. When you dress that way, you’re not showing solidarity with “street people” anymore than Marie Antoinette’s satin milkmaid outfits were showing solidarity with milkmaids. 

If you want to offer support to poor people, don’t mock them, volunteer at a homeless shelter or donate what you can. As people realize where a few decadent designers have led them (I actually heard one famous English designer say that “Bag ladies have such an intuitive understanding of style”), this patronizing and condescending trend is, thank God, passing.

And now I’ll climb down off my soap box and tell you that next week I’ll take a look at silhouettes and shapes. Creating a great look around your unique body is the most satisfying part of fashion.

- Gabrielle