Elegance 101 (animal skin and fur)

Besides calfskin and kidskin, all other animal skins which are called "exotic skins" are meant for morning wear, regardless their price and the type of attire item they became. They are unsuitable for the evening, even in the tiniest details such as a watch band.

The alligator bag, the snake skin pumps, the ostrich belt, the pigskin jacket are all intended for a walk in the city, better yet, for a weekend in the country, where the natural environment of those animals is. 

We should buy items with exotic skins with as less hardware as possible. Golden clasps, metal chains and generally decorative details are too much for those skins. Their texture is enough to keep the eye interested. We also try to buy them in their original color, which has an unparallel variety.

Today we know a lot about the production of fur, so, we all of us know that we must stay away from the real fur products -including the ones we inherited. Fake furs is an alternative, but even so, we buy garments with a short pile, in solid dark colors and straight or loose cutting patterns. This means no polar bear coat, no monkey fur jacket, nothing in fuchsia or yellow. 

Each one of us is a woman of the world who is going to work or for shopping, not an actress in "Tarzan, the king of the jungle" parody. 

(illustration Rebecca Moses)

Elegance 101 (bags)

Unfortunately, it has been at least 50 years that totally rediculous bags have been worn by women. Once they were called "novelty" bags, nowdays they are called the "it" bag. Yet all those years the recipe for an elegant bag is: good material, simple cut, moderation in proportions.

 Yes, a lady's handbag cannot be as big as a luggage for the weekend. If we can put some groceries in it, then it's too big. On the  other hand, a handbag for the night cannot be as small as a cigarette case either, it should hold our phone, our keys and our money. 

We start our bag wardrobe with bags a little bit bigger than an A4 sheet of paper, in basic colors (black, navy, brown) from leather, 2 middle size handles, no decorative details, without obvious stitching, at least 2 compartments inside and a zipper pocket. We add a black (probably) satin evening bag, with some sort of handle obvious or concealed (because we  should be able to carry somehow our bag when we climb a stair holding our dress too, or when we fasten the buttons of our outer wear). Then if we can afford something fancy, we proceed to a colorful one, a red, yellow or green, also from good quality leather. The colorful bag will make a huge difference in our wardrobe and will prove to be money very well spent.

The metal parts of our bags (if there are any) should match the jewelry we wear/the metal buttons on our clothes. The decoration of the bag should be taken into account when we decide which and how many pieces of jewelry we will add to our outfit (we cannot have ornaments all over our outfit). If the bag has short and long handles, they should be removable; only one type of handles should be obvious on the bag at any given time.

If we want to buy a bag that follows the current trends, we do so with a not very expensive model and use it frequently with our regular clothes within the limits  of the related trend. We keep in mind that halfway through the season we'll have to leave it aside (because everyone will be wearing it) and we won't be able to use it ever again, it will be dated. 

There are many beautiful bags out there, very artistic, with a lot of imagination on their design, especially vintage bags of 1960s, 1950s and 1940s. If we already own the basic models, we can buy as many artistic ones as we like and wear them as focal points of our outfits, but we should be careful: the line between artistic and ridicilous is often hard to define.  In any case we keep away from designs that repeat images from fairytales and children's books, e.g. a cloud, an animal, a rainbow,  a lipstick, a camera, a flower, a burger. Those bags look like a joke. We don't joke with our appearance.


(illustrations by Rebecca Moses)

Elegance 101 (wear clothes that fit you properly)

Rule n. 5: wear clothes that fit you properly. 

Any garment should fit our body everywhere and have an ease. How much ease a garment can have is dictated by its design, e.g. an A-line dress should touch us nowhere at all below our chest. We buy each type of garment on the size that it will allow us to show its flare. The smallest ease should be found in the waist of our skirts and must be one inch (just what allows us to eat 3 cookies with our coffee). As we move further away from your skin, the ease is increasing, which means than  a coat must be a lot bigger than our measurements.

A smallest than the proper size garment can add pounds even to a skinny woman and can accentuate the flaws of any  body. So, when we buy new clothes,  instead of just standing up in front of the mirror, we make a small fit session on our own: we sit down, we strech your arms, we lift them above our head, again and again. We should be routhless in our critic and pay attention for all the signs that declare we have to go up one size, like those ones:

1)side pockets that open

2)shirts that reveal your breasts/belly when you are sitting

3)sleeve seams  that climp higher than your shoulders

4)skirts that have horizontal lines over your belly or pubic area

5)pants that create the camel-toe effect around the zipper

7)any seam that stretches to the point you can see the thread of the stiches

8)a coat so tight that can reveal to a third person details of your inner clothes, e.g the belt loops of your jeans. 

A very common mistake among the vintage lovers is to buy too small jackets and coats, mainly because women were really smaller during the 1940s and 1950s, they were both, thinner and shorter. We must never believe that we  can wear a jacket too small as long as we leave it unbuttoned, anyone can figure out how many inches are missing for this jacket to close. 

We also must be reasonable in our expectations from supportive lingerie and corsets. Those items cannot cut-down our figure and subtract pounds from our weight overall, they can only move those pounds lower or higher from whenever they are.
Bottom line:
We buy our clothes for the body we actually have. 

Elegance 101( mixing black, blue and brown)

Mixing colors for our outfits is a tricky business with many details, so, we must first mention the most important guidelines and the disastrous mistakes. That's why we move forward to...

Rule n.4: Brown, blue and black do not mix. 

Οne can see by the previous line with the names of the colors in a beige background how ugly those three appear when put  together.

One can also watch the poor results on the real women of the photos. I know each one of us thinks she can do it better in her own clothes, but we can't unless we  match royal blue with black, or rust with black. These shades are the only exceptions to the rule.

In a case of emergency one can wear black shoes with brown or blue outfits, but this can be done rarely, not on a regular basis. 

All the above means that if we want to buy an item that is very expensive (a coat or a suit) in brown or blue, we keep in mind that we also need the money to buy shoes and a bag in brown or blue. If we cannot buy the bag and shoes, we do not buy the item either. 

We must be escpecially careful during sales, this is the time when we can easily being carried away by the big discount of a coat. If we do not have already the proper shoes and bag, then this coat will cost us a great deal more money, or it will not be used in an elegant way.

Elegance 101 (black, white, jeans as colors)

Are you considering doing a monochromatic outfit but using only black, or white, or denim? Then you should know that black, white and denim have shades too like all colors and you must treat them with extra caution.
Rule n.3: in the case of black, white, jeans, we do not mix diferrent shades in one outfit. 
The reason is that if we put shades in one outift, then,
 

On white costumes, one of the pieces will look dirty.

 

On black, one of the pieces will look faded. 

On jeans, one of the pieces will look οlder or cleaner than the others. 

 

I am sure this is not what we want, since we are elegant women. We buy our top and bottom at once and we don't forget to give the whole suit to the cleaners , so that all of it will have the same amount of wear. 

If we want to create a total black or an all white outfit, it's easier to use garments in different textures like the exambles on the photos above who have fur, gabardine and knit. This way a small difference in shades will be un-noticable.

Elegance 101 (colors)

Rule n.2: In any outfit we do not mix more than 3 colors, including all our accessories, our bag and shoes. 

As a matter of fact, a 3 colors combination is very difficult to handle, we must be an artist to do it properly. The easiest way to do it is chose one of our garments from a printed fabric in all 3 colors. This way all of them will "bond" together.

Two colors combination is a lot easier. If we want to be completely safe,  we may use one of them as the main color and use the second one in small doses or "accents" (let's say, for our scarf and our jewelry). 

       

One color, the monochromatic look, is the easiest of all and the most pleasant to the eye. We can do the famous french "ton-sur-ton" trick by wearing different shades of only one color, or wear the same shade but mixing fabrics of different texture, like wool and satin, linen and silk. The way the light is reflected upon the surfaces is enough to make the outfit interesting.

We should keep in mind that that the stiches of our shoes and bag have a color too, and those stiches have to follow the general rules of elegance, e.g. a beige bag with brown stiches is not suitable for a black outfit, we must use it with  brownish outfits.

Shoes with red soles like the famous Louboutin pumps, are too much for an outfit what already has 2 other colors, e.g. purple and yellow, with those pumps we raise the colors of our outfit  to 4. We keep the Louboutin pumps for the moment that we'll wear our pied-de-coq suit in black and white. 

Elegance 101 (one focal point per outfit)

The general idea behind elegance  is that our appearence must be carefully planned as to allow the viewer to take a short look on our outfit, smile slightly and then search with his eyes for our face. That’s it. If we can do that, then we have already an elegant appearance.

So, let’s talk about…

Rule no.1: in each outfit there can be only one focal point. This point shouldn’t be our make-up or our nails.

Let us elaborate on this rule, because it’s fundamental. We choose the clothes and the accessories for an outfit, so that only one piece would stand out. I'll give you an examble: do we  have a fabulous embroidered evening bag in the shape and the colors of a peacock? We wear it with a cypress green velvet gown, black leather shoes without decoration, plus a black maxi cape. We will leave the cape at the entrance of the house or the club, and our face will be the attraction except for the brief moments that we reach for something out of your bag. We do not pair the bag with an embroidered top too. As a matter of fact, we don’t buy the bag at all. With these colors it’s too strong of a focal point, why draw attention to something so far away from our face? The dress is already a discreet focal point and a beautiful frame for our face, so we wear two big earrings peacock-shaped, and we stop there.

The makeup can be taken care of, but without something spectacular. We want people to concentrate on our face, not our makeup. So, no rhinestones glued on our cheeks, neither fake eye-lashes made of feathers. We  are women, not birds. We simply avoid resembling an animal, a bird or an insect. Why? Because animals, birds, insects are pretty but they are a form of life lower than humans, they cannot think. We don’t want to be regarded as something beautiful who cannot think. 

Our nails should be taken care of, but they cannot be spectacular either. No stickers, no dots/hearts/ stripes on them, no holographic nail polish. All this flashy details belong to the show girls. Is there aynyone who thinks that the sentence “an elegant show girl" is valid? Well,  I‘ve never heard it, anywhere, I just made it up.

Bottom line: we allow the viewer to concentrate on us.