Big Fashion Misconceptions

The Pocket Stylist: Behind the Scenes Expertise from a Fashion Pro on Creating Your Own Look
by Kendall Farr

A celebrity fashion stylist reveals the tricks of her trade and shows women of all sizes how to pull together their own polished, individual look.

Whether she's petite, average, or plus size, every woman has experienced the frustration of searching for flattering clothes. In The Pocket Stylist every reader can have a consultation with her own personal stylist and use the author's behind-the-scenes wardrobe wisdom:

• Taking her true measurements - from eight different body zones - to ensure an attractive fit based on the reader's unique silhouette and the proportions that will flatter it best

• Why ready-to-wear isn't, and how and when to use a tailor for a custom fit

• The best fabrics for your unique silhouette

• How to balance trends with the classic, indispensable pieces that are the backbone of any well-conceived wardrobe

• What "closet archaeology" can unearth and reveal about your wardrobe needs

• Why the right lingerie makes a critical difference in the fit of your clothes

• Tips from other experts on the beauty principles that ground your everyday look - Bobbi Brown and Sonja Kashuk for makeup and Kevin Mancuso for hair - offer backstage access

• Accessories that give an outfit an individual look and that no versatile wardrobe should be without

Best of all, The Pocket Stylist features specifically edited shopping lists for various body types. Four "styled" looks for each silhouette - from jeans-casual to cocktails - illustrate ideal proportion and fit. The reader becomes Kendall Farr's client and will learn to shop and dress herself like a pro. The Pocket Stylist delivers the behind the camera expertise of a veteran stylist in one purse-size indispensable guide.

Few things are more seductive than fashion the transformative quality of clothes that really fit and flatter us. New clothes offer us the potential to reinvent ourselves a little bit each time we get dressed. Wearing a great outfit provides salvation on a lousy day, armor for the tough meeting, the courage to walk into a cocktail party full of strangers. Our choice of clothing can be one of our most creative forms of self-expression. The colors and shapes we wear telegraph how we see ourselves. Like it or not, in a rabidly visual, image-obsessed world we're assessed in nanoseconds, dozens of times per day, based on what we are wearing.

I have been a fashion stylist for over fifteen years yet I often feel that when reading the top women's fashion magazines, I have come in in the middle of a conversation. If I have this sensation (being familiar with all the references) it's no wonder that so many women are mystified by fashion coverage that seems to be aimed at "It" girls, socialites, and actresses.

Somehow, good advice is not getting through to many women. I see evidence of this every day: women dressed in clothes that don't fit properly or don't suit the shapes of their bodies. A whopping disconnect exists between what women read in fashion magazines or see on celebrity style television and what they really need to know about dressing themselves well.

I've written The Pocket Stylist to be your style compass in a confusing fashion terrain. You can and will be a woman who knows how to shop for the best shapes and fit for her individual shape.

You can be the savvy girl who knows how to mix well-edited trends with your classic pieces. Real personal style often has little to do with what is considered fashionable in any season (or week). Style is a state in which a woman's own sense of what works for her body, and what does not, overrides the marketing hysteria that ushers in the newest, hottest, must-haves. Style is not only the province of iconic swans like Audrey Hepburn or Jacqueline Onassis, it is learned behavior and a simple and gradual process of training your eye to lock onto your best silhouettes and proportions in any season, any year. For now, however, let's start with three of women's biggest misconceptions about fashion.

Big Fashion Misconception #1

To truly look great in your clothing you must maintain a model's figure. Ludicrous, not to mention really unhealthy. High-fashion models, the anointed superstars of the runways and magazines, are the rarest of body types. Many are built straight up and down like boys, but with boobs and broad shoulders. Their preternatural shapes are one in several million, the genetic equivalent of winning the lottery. Rationally, we all know this, but we live in a culture that barrages us every day with the message that extreme thinness is the body ideal of any stylish woman. Your only fashion ideal should be you at your best, and that means well-dressed for your body as it is now not ten pounds from now, or six months of Pilates from now, but right now.

Big Fashion Misconception #2

Your style quotient is raised whenever you wear the must-haves of any season wearing the BIG LOOKS assures that you look like you have an insider view of fashion. Just not true. Hunting down the latest runway looks original or adapted with no regard for how they'll look on your individual proportions is where style ends and fashion enslavement begins.

The woman without a realistic sense of what fashion can and cannot do for her wastes her money, drives herself crazy trying to get a look, and often still feels like nothing in her closet really works. We've all seen her: The logos are mixed and matched; she's an unrestrained cowgirl; a new romantic; flouncy in folklorica; or a rock chick on the prowl in crotch-high leopard and platforms. She's a walking billboard for the sensibilities of a design house or has embraced, all too literally, what is promoted in fashion magazines, but she hasn't cracked the code of truly individual style.

Consider two characters from HBO's Sex and the City as examples. Carrie Bradshaw, whose wardrobe schizophrenia establishes her as the fashion risk taker of the group is, from a costume design perspective, a vividly drawn character and memorable in every scene. From a style perspective, she's fashion's prisoner. In an early episode, one of Carrie's outfits consisted of a Salvation Army cape that swamped her small frame (yes, capes were spotted on the runway at that moment and yes, her thrift variation was meant to bestow a kind of insider credibility on this getup), and was accessorized with white gloves and a silk flower the size of a satellite dish on her lapel; she was teetering, as always, in skyscraping stilettos.

Charlotte, on the other hand, has figured out how to dress as a stylish individual. Her look is current, not slavish: a Prada skirt here, a Chloé top there, suggesting that she has an eye for trends, but wears them selectively. Her clothes fit her perfectly in part because they fit her proportions.

Don't get me wrong: Seasonal trends can be irresistible. They infuse excitement into an often monotonous landscape of basics and clothing that looks the same season after season. But a little bit of a good thing may be enough. I'll show you how to choose what works for you.

Copyright © 2004 Kendall Farr

About the Author

Kendall Farr is a fashion stylist and a former fashion editor whose work has appeared in numerous publications from InStyle and People to editions of Harper's Bazaar, Elle, and Marie Claire. She has dressed a number of celebrities including Sigourney Weaver and Diane Sawyer. Her work has appeared in ad campaigns and commercials for fashion and beauty clients including Revlon and Almay, among many others, and she has styled the clothing catalogues of upscale retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.