Top 5 tips to avoid fashion mistakes

As cute as some of those garments look on celebrities and fashion bloggers, certain things are simply not for you. Price is usually the number one reason, but also your figure and lifestyle. Let me explain some of the best considerations when deciding to follow a mindless trend that you have no business following anyway. These my tips to avoid fashion mistakes:

1. Does this look good on anyone other than a model?

Evaluate each piece for its intrinsic qualities and apply what you know about your body. The no bra trend is a hot one right now, however if you are a C cup, you don’t have the right to show the world how THAT looks like without a bra on.

A light silk tiny tank can look awesome without a bra (some cannot even be worn with one), but you have to be a skinny flattish girl to pull this off.

Always look to enhance your best attributes: if you have a nice waist, don’t wear boxy tops; if you are petite, over-sized anything could make you look funny; if you have short legs, look for little visual tricks to elongate them (or just straight out 6 inch platforms, like I do).

2. Price tag

I would define the maximum you are allowed to spend in a single item as a fixed percentage of your annual income. I came up with 3% based on personal experience and price data sources. Yes, yes, too many factors come into play when making a purchase decision, including your financial responsibilities and lifestyle, but this number seems like a good threshold to me. For example, if you make $50K a year, the maximum you are allowed on a single item is $1500. I know that if you live in LA, you consider this impossible, “what about my Louis?”, you weep.

3. FROI™ (Fashion Return on Investment)

Intimate related to the prior point, the question of how many times can you reasonably wear a given item throughout your life is key to any fashion splurge. Price is just a nominal measure that could be considered irrelevant without the appropriate context. Fashion has become more of an investment than necessary consumption, we are not buying clothes only to not be naked, but to look better, prettier, more professional, to get a husband, to appear powerful, awesome or constipated (if you wear cashmere). Therefore, taking thedepreciated cost is the best way to attack this problem.

For example, just going by price, two items that cost $1,500 could be considered equal, but imagine item A is a nice black wool coat that you can wear easily for 10 years and item B is a pair of trendy stilettos, very fine and delicate that you will wear only in special occasions because they are not very comfortable and are too delicate to be worn daily; because the style will be outdated in a few months, you know you are not keeping them for a long time and if you do, they will spend most of their life in your closet. Item A has clearly a higher FROI than item B.

Simple designs, solid colors, durable fabrics and figure flattering pieces tend to have a higher FROI.

4. Personality

Try to make your outfit be consistent with your personality. How would you feel if someone just swapped all of their clothes for yours and you had to wear only that for a week? You would probably be uncomfortable and feel a little out of tune with reality. Our color palette, the cuts that we pick and the style and combinations we like say a lot about our aesthetic aptitudes and our way to see the world, to some extent. It is clear when someone is wearing something they didn’t pick or that simply doesn’t match their personality.

Feel good about being a black and white person or embrace colorful patterns and graphic t-shirts if that’s what makes you feel good. There is nothing worst than feeling like an idiot wearing something that is supposed to be cool but it’s not.

5. Are you getting this only because X is wearing it?

One of the reasons why they are wearing it, whether celebrities or other kind or mortal, is because it looks good on them. A lot of money is spent on stylists and PR to ensure these people look a certain way. For whatever reason, that pair of Balenciaga boots might not look good on you. Also, major fashionistas have very limited skills and looking good is one of them. Showing your “admiration” by mimicking a style or referencing someone famous that was wearing it only shows you don’t realize these people are not smart or worth your time outside of their particular field (movie, blog, trashcan).