Fashion for Dummies: How to Dress for Your Body Type

I’d like to relate something about yours truly before I go into my Fashion for Dummies lesson on how to dress  for your body shape.  Before I was the fashion savvy, confident (but anonymous) blogger that I am now, I used to be quite nerdy as a kid.  I had the owl glasses and I wore hand me downs.  In fact, I had two sweaters that I rotated per week.   The glasses I paid for myself from my paper route because I didn’t come from a rich family.  Why oh why did I buy those when I had the choice since I was paying for them myself?  And they weren’t cheap either.  We’re talking about $240 for the glasses and this was like 15 years ago.  Because they were plastic and durable and they had spring hinges.  They were practical and I was thinking long-term.

Here’s the lesson.  Even though I had the money to invest in something worthwhile for the long-term, it didn’t fit me at all.  So many times I’ve seen people invest in clothing because of a brand name or because it’s the fashion trend.  Honey, if it doesn’t fit your body shape, it isn’t doing you any favors.  And then these fashion victims compound the disaster by wearing it over and over again thinking, “I’m wearing *insert name of designer* so therefore, I must be cool”.  Bzzt!  Wrong!   There’s so much more to fashion than throwing on a brand name – especially if you don’t know how to put an outfit together.  There’s also such a thing as trying too hard, you know.  It makes you seem desperate.

So the moral of the story is, dress for your body type.   Oh wait, do you even know what your body type is?  How many times have you tried to put on something and found out that they don’t fit anymore?  Our bodies change throughout our lives and it’s important to evaluate ourselves through each major milestone:  teenage growth spurt,  filling out of maturity,  aftermath of pregnancy, menopause.  In order to dress to impress, we need to know how to deemphasize our flaws and highlight our assets.  My advice before you even go out to buy more clothes is to take a good look at yourself in the mirror – naked and review your body shape.  Be honest, but not overly critical.  People often have a better body than they realize.   It’s just the way they were dressing before that made them look in an unflattering manner.  You’d be surprised how buying the appropriate clothes for your body shape can take pounds off your body.