Choose Flattering Over Fads
Commenting on my post Do You Look Dated? Christine, a long-time reader, writes:
I think if you only buy clothes that flatter you, you probably won’t look dated. It’s the extreme in clothes that date us, as early as wearing last season’s trend the following year. Honestly, I think most people just notice if someone looks good, and not whether they’re up to the minute in their clothing choices. I suppose that may be true in fields such as fashion.
Clothes are too expensive to completely replace in 3 to 5 years. And I have yet to work in an industry where people seriously cared what I wore unless it was inappropriate. I sure wouldn’t wear my heavy shoulder pad 80s jackets but often the skirts were simple, classic pencil skirts that, with a little tailoring MIGHT be ok for today.
Fabulously flattering clothes have far greater staying power!
Here’s a little personal example. Who remembers a few years ago when flip-flop necklaces were all the rage? Well, my daughter helped my hero pick one out for me and, although the moment has passed, I can still wear it: the flip-flop is pink and white stripe and it hangs at a flattering balance point.
Watching fashion trends IS frugal, but what’s more important than looking good? That’s a riveting question, not a rhetorical one.
Many basics last longer than 3-5 years, but they won’t last forever, the classic black trousers of the 90s are not the classic black trousers of today. The fads go much faster and look more dated more quickly.
If you want your clothes to last longer there are a couple of things to do:
Wear plain fabrics not patterns. Patterns date more quickly, plain fabrics last much longer.
Express your creativity - the more creative you are with your dress, the less they have to do with an era, and the more they are about you as a person.
Avoid any extremes of fashion, stick to the more conservative looks.
You will look good when your clothes harmonise with you - your colouring, your personaity, your body-shape and proportions and work with your lifestyle.
This discussion assumes that your body will keep to the same figure for three to five years or longer. Also, it assumes a markedly slow rate of clothing wearing out.
I have to completely agree. The clothes that stand the test of time in my closet, are the ones that are flattering and look good.
I notice when someone clothing is less than flattering before I notice if it’s out of style or not.
I openly agree with your view, if you just buy quality flattering clothes and good care is taken, then they would look good. Even though the fad is gone with a little modifications your flattering clothes will always look pretty good.
I don’t think this is quite as true as I wish it were. Perhaps it’s just me, but I have noticed, at least in regard to skirt lengths, that whether something seems to flatter me depends in part on what is in fashion. I have in my closet a number of skirts from different times that, when I bought them, seemed to me and to stylish individuals I know, to be very flattering. The only trouble is, now they look dreadful and I can’t imagine how I thought they looked good. And it is not that I have put on weight: I weigh the same as I did at the age of 15. This puzzled me greatly until I read something about skirt lengths. Not sure if I read it here or somewhere else, but the point made was that even ‘classic’ clothes can’t be relied upon to be timeless, and that if you keep wearing the same skirt length (or tapered jeans or shoulder pads that seemed to look so good in the ’80s) decade in, decade out, you will end up looking dated, and at least to other people, your clothes will not continue to seem flattering.
When I read this, the light bulb went on: without consciously thinking in terms of current fashions, we can be influenced by what is current, and view our appearance in the light of what is current, such that it was possible in the ’80s to be genuinely convinced that a hugely shoulder-padded straight down upper thigh length jacket over a slim skirt hitting a few inches above the knee (like some of the illustrations in my copy of a book mentioned here, Always In Style) was flattering. Similarly, I cannot imagine how I could have thought that my shoulder-padded double-breasted suits with insufficient waist highlighting and mid-calf length long straight skirts flattering, and yet, at the time I worse those suits, not just I, but many others also thought they looked good on me. I am sure I would have thought those suits timeless classics at the time but they are quite dreadful now!
So I personally think it is important, if you don’t want to look very dated and, more importantly, as though your clothes are extremely unflattering, there is no getting around the need to pay at least a little attention to the underlying trends. What I mean by underlying trends is that although things come in and go out season by season, if you take a longer view, there are more slow-moving trends too, that make up the context in which the fast-moving trends come in and go out. If you ignore the fast-moving trends, there is no problem, but if you also ignore the slow-moving trends THAT is what makes you look horribly dated and NOT FLATTERED by your clothes.
There is of course a wider variety of options one can wear now, compared to in previous generations, but I still think that there ARE underlying slow-moving trends that can’t be ignored unless you don’t care in the slightest how you look.
When I was a child, at some point, my mother was still wearing her ’60s short dresses, and I had to take her aside and tell her that it was completely inappropriate to wear those dresses at that time, because at the time of our conversation, the only people wearing such short skirts were … well… let’s just say that my really quite conservative mother did not want to be giving out the message her short dresses were giving out, once I pointed it out to her. Like women who wear what we now call granny pants now, my mother was wearing something that was completely out at the time she was wearing it. It is not that her figure had changed: we have good genes in that respect. It is ONLY that she had failed to notice the change in the underlying skirt length trend at that time.
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