Style Tips & Style Advice for your Everyday Life


If we want to speak about style, we first have to know what it is. Many of us tried to behave or act stylish, without really knowing what we do, and admit it, most of the times we felt like monkeys, imitating persons that are served to us like icons of style.
Thinking about it, entire world of industry is pointed to that direction, publishing magazines, making photo sessions, employing famous models, diets, fashion, jewelry, commercials, madness of starvation and all of that, just for one cause. To make a definition of style. To say "there, this is style" with meaning "this is the way of behavior we should take if we want to be called stylish".
What is style, nobody knows for sure. There can be discussions and discussions and yet, nobody will be able to define it. The best way of reaching that definition is saying what is not style.

Illusions and Lies

I'm sure that all of you will agree with me that 99% of our time we are bombarded with messages from all around. As soon we step with our foot on the street, we will see a great billboard, with a huge smile showing perfect teeth on some attractive female person who holds tooth paste in her hand, all packed with a slogan "perfectly white". Translated it means "if you want to be accepted in society, you must have perfectly white teeth. If your teeth isn't perfectly white, don't show yourself out on the street, because society will reject you. Buy our product because it will open your door to the world".
As soon you recover from this impression, you will bump on another. A thin girl wearing five times bigger trousers, showing how she lost weight with a nice message "in 5 days, 15 kg less with our marvelous product". So the next message you got is that "if you are not as thin as the girl in the commercial, you will be again rejected and better buy that product else who knows what might happen to you". Naturally you will instantly take a look in the mirror to check your teeth, if they are white or not, and with the edge of your eye, measure the size of your body (not anybody else to notice). And there you go! Instantly you will get attack of self criticism because you will never be able to beat "PhotoShop" and to look better than the idol that you saw on the commercial.
Not to mention that this is not the end. You will be walking in your office seeing your colleagues drinking specific type of coffee, just because its coffee without caffeine. They will eat specific type of food for lunch, just because its flagged as healthy organic food or food without cholesterol. Your best friend that you know since childhood, will call you to join her in shopping center, where she saw a discount of some famous brand, and because you want to please her you will return home with full bags of things that you might never use. You will open your mail box, and see a magazine that serves fashion, you will flip it up and down and you will say that you should wear this and that. You will open TV and you will switch channels, and there will be a smiley happy family with two children, usually boy and girl and usually all blond, and they will smile and eat bread and margarine. You will switch that channel and yet, you will continue thinking why are all the children in commercials blond, why every family should have two children that are boy and girl and that if you don't buy indeed that specific margarine, you will never get thin, never find the perfect man and never make a blond children to continue eating the same margarine with them in the future.
While you are still in your thoughts regarding the previous happy family, you will also see a happy wife using exquisite washing powder for cloths, that makes her cloths more clean and shinning in comparing to her neighbor's cloths. And also you will see her smile of vanity. You will also still be wondering, why one village cleaned dishes fast, and started celebration while in another village, they still wash, only because they didn't had chance to encounter that specific detergent. And now you will see why the guy with famous branded watch, always arrives in time to save the world. And how its not good to have small breasts, big bottom, round waist, dark hair and that you should have already reserved your place at plastic surgery because they give discount until the end of the month. That guys should have muscles, do only sports, use antiperspirants, wear white cloths, naturally they must not have dandruff in hair and you will close TV all tired, disappointed pass next to the mirror, see your image and notice your imperfect nose, small wrinkles that appeared around your eyes. You will get sick, close the lights and lay down next to your already sleeping bold husband, thinking how it would be nice to buy him a shampoo for growth of  the hair, and something to stop him snoring, and in your dreams you will still process all the things that you should correct, only to be according to standards that are requested from you, and nicely hidden behind a word "style".

Enough!

As you can see all of this what we commented here, is way overpriced and it's costing us our nerves, our life habits, and time.Lets see what all of this we can use as a knowledge in order not to make new mistakes.
From various sources, we can notice that "style" is explained through fashion, good looking, nice makeup, branded clothes and its penetrating even further into our lives dictating the food we eat, the drinks we consume, going even to decoration of our living environment, prestige of schools where we educate our children and many, many more.


The Fashion Confusion

Most people if not all will say that fashion produces style, or that style is inevitable with proper fashion. We wouldn't disagree on that. Fashion is one of the components that brings us one step closer to the style, but not the most important one however. Its true that fashion is dictated from the side of famous clothes creators, designers of enterieur & exterieur and behind all of that stands mighty industry that combined with profit brings us to a dangerous dead end.
Fashion as it is today tells us that in order to have styling we must fit in standards of the famous designers "and invest in their products". Translated it says "if you can't fit in the size of clothes that they create  (that everyday becomes smaller and smaller) you are automatically excluded from the styling and elite society".
You can belong in three categories.

You might be extremely lucky (or unlucky) and belong in the first category.

a) You have enough fortune to follow fashion
b) You are also thin enough to actually wear the fashion details that you buy


You are maybe extremely lucky because you can follow the fashion and also because your existence is making fashion designers happy because lets face it, if people like you didn't exist, fashion would have gain totally different direction.
If you belong to second and third category:

a) you have enough fortune to follow fashion
b) you unfortunately can't fit into fashion details that you bought, and you buy them just to make envy to all others that can't afford it

same bounds the third category:

a) you neither have fortune to follow fashion
b) neither you can fit fashion details

then you should definitely forget about that bad habit of following fashion and read the further text and start creating the fashion of your own.


Confection

Lets see: in the beginning before this fashion madness appeared, was existing classical manufacturing of confection. That beautiful word "confection" meant that, "most of the people can dress in it". It also meant that in order to cover most of the people's needs it has to exist in large range of sizes.
Yes, you will tell... it exist today also, but it is not providing you style because it is not published by some famous creator. What makes you think that your taste in fashion is worse than the taste of that creator? Why is he so special? Just because he had means to attain name and brand? Wake up ladies! I am sure that in every one of you exists a creator who will know how to choose colors and combinations  from "good, old confection", add some details of your own and believe me, the results will be unique and astonishingly marvelous. In the end of the day, why all of us has to have straight blond hair, suffer diets and stress about fitting into some whacked ideas of who knows whom.

Dear ladies, you wish to buy something for yourself. First of all, you will stand in front of the mirror, remove your clothes, take a tape measurer and measure the size of your three important zones.
  • Breasts
  • Waist
  • Hips


Once you measure your size, take a list of measurements and find your confection number. Good. Now you know your number.
Why numbers exist? Because if size 34 ~ 36 is fitting beautifully to some skinny girl, so nicely, believe me, size for 44 ~ 46 will fit on you if that is your number, or even nicer, just because it is proportional.
So scare not of your number, because it is bigger than the one that you though you should have fitted. Break the illusions and see that if your number is bigger and you can't easily find it, it only means that fashion designer for the collection that didn't consist your number, didn't bother to design it from two simple reasons:

a) He didn't want to waste more material for the same price or
b) Its far easier to design for thinner than for round people, and that he is not a real master of the craft he does so he hides behind small sizes.

So, seeing these reasons you will realize that its not shame to walk from shop to shop, asking for the number 56. You are the customer, you pay for the product and if they don't have it, it is their minus, not yours.
Once you find all in your size and dress up, you will see how beautiful it is to design your own combination that you proudly wear, and believe it or not this is the first start you did in gaining the real "style".


Accessories

Now since we know our size, we choose wisely our cloths and jewelry details. Here are some useful tips how to be always in trends.

Daily going outs

We will use light colors, small sized jewelry that goes along with the color of cloths and light make up.


Night going outs

A bit darker cloths, or depending on your mood they can be pretty extravagant but all of that has to be packed with more remarkable jewelry and combined with a bit stronger make up. That will do.

In every occasion, shoes, bag or purse and belt we wear, MUST be of the same color.
You must NEVER wear more than three colors on you.
And with this we are done with another step towards style.


The Perfect Make up

All of us have different shape of face. You can have oval, round, triangular or heart shape as  you see bellow.


Depending on your shape, while placing your make up you must learn to play with shadows. Most important visual tip that i can provide to you is, to play with liquid and stone powder.


Oval Shape

If you have oval face, try to make it broader by placing light colored powder on the edge of your cheeks. That will visual make your face less oval.


Round Shape

If you have round face, you will visually make it longer if you place darker powder on the edges of your cheeks.


Triangular Shape

If you have triangular face, place some dark powder on the side of your head behind eyes to make that region smaller, and light powder on your cheeks to make that region bigger.


Heart Shape

For heart shape, main problem is on the chin. How to make it smaller and more round. Easily, by combining dark and light powder on the region. First you will apply the dark powder on the edges of face and smooth it in roundish shape. Then on the edges of the dark powder regions, add some light powder.

After setting your shape of face with powder, take good care of how you make up your eyes.
If distance between eyes is too close, you will use crayon from the outer edges of eyes, to make them visually in bigger distance.
On the opposite, if the distance is too wide, you will draw crayon around the inner edges of the eyes.
Shadows, hm, they depend on trends. Earthly colors, vibrant greens, deep purple, radiant yellow, vintage...
However, you will never make mistake if you use the same colors of shadows as the color of your eyes (example, green eyes - green shadows).


Need Plum Lips?

No need for plastic surgery. There is always lip liner and lip gloss. Small lips to transform to plum ones? No problem, just draw the desirable shape of your lips, fill it totally up with pencil (lip liner) and on top of the lip add some lip gloss in the center of the lips. That will give impression of you just arrived from surgery with perfectly new lips.


Always with Perfect Hair

Most important one. Always choose type of hair style that looks good according to your face. No you don't need to visit the hair styler every week. Be practical and choose one shape that is easy to attain by yourself. You will always be trendy and at any moment ready to be on the move, instead of panic attack if something unplanned occures.
As regarding dye, choose the color that is the most similar to your real hair color. After all, nature knows the best why she gave you precisely that color.


How to have Perfect Nails

With all of this goes perfect nails. No need for visiting manicure styler. Fix the nails yourself. The most important thing is for nails to be clean and to look healthy. If you want to have that impression, like you just came out from manicure session, paste "French manicure" and everyone will envy you.



With this, since we dressed up, placed a nice make up, having perfect hair and nails, we finish fashion chapter. Don't we have a style? Not yet!
Style is not gained only by appearance. Once you open your mouth dear ladies, you must always say something smart. So, grab books in hands and learn always something new, and that will allow you to be constantly current in all topics.
A real lady who bears the burden of style, glows beautifully from outside, as well from inside. So very few can really attain it. As you see, its much easier to gain outer appearance of "style" and yet it is damn hard to attain it if we don't have a solid inner basis to lean it on.

Resources

The Fashion Designer Survival Guide, Revised and Expanded Edition: Start and Run Your Own Fashion Business
Fashion (Taschen 25th Anniversary)
In Vogue: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine
The One Hundred: A Guide to the Pieces Every Stylish Woman Must Own
Fashion 101: A Crash Course in Clothing
The Little Black Book of Style
American Fashion