How To Choose The Perfect Shoes For Your Outfit

If you're confused about what shoes to wear with which outfit stay tuned for today's video. Hi there, welcome to my channel. My name is Sarah and I am the award-winning style coach here to help you refine your style and increase your confidence. One of the most common questions my clients come to me with are around shoes and how to know what shoes work with the right outfit. So I'm here today to clear up some of that for you. Before we get started can I please ask you to like the video. If you learned something new and if you enjoyed it and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and of course you can find out more about my online course over on my website thestylecoach.ie. I wanted to point out a few things that I can't believe weren't talked about in other videos. I was doing some research ahead of this video just to see you know what other people are talking about what points they've missed out on and I can't believe nobody's mentioned style personality and body proportions. This blows my mind because if you don't know your body proportions lateral vertical and of course the mixture of your style personality coming into that then all of this other information is generic and it's not going to suit everybody. So I want to give you a little bit of more of an insight so that you can make better decisions yourself once you understand your body proportions. Now this is something I cover in depth in my online course so I'll link it below do check it out. The first thing you want to check in with you know when you put an outfit together including your shoes is how do you feel in the outfit? Does it feel good? Are you comfortable? Do you feel confident when you walk out in the street? Can you hold your head high and say yes I look good? If you can then all the other stuff doesn't really matter. Go ahead rock your outfit and don't overthink it too much. What you do need to be thinking about is if you're questioning your outfit then we need to get into the other little details and that's what I'm here for. The first thing I want to talk about is the weight of your outfit. This is something I've talked about on many different occasions. I've talked about your body shape and the right boots and it all comes down to this idea of the weight of your outfit. What I mean by this is the balance of it. So if you have a lot going on on the upper half of the body and then you go for a simple delicate sandal or a little delicate pump it's going to look off balance it's going to look top heavy. So you don't want that you want to have something that balances out that heaviness of the upper half with something on the lower half like a chunky boot a chunky sandal something like that. Also if you go for something that's a little bit more delicate on the upper half you're going to want to go delicate on the lower half so that you don't upset that balance. So the weight of your outfit is key and the choice of if you go for heels a stiletto is much more delicate than a block heel. A platform trainer is much heavier and will impact your outfit more than a simple tennis shoe for example. So all the time you want to be thinking well what's the weight of my outfit is it balanced. You'll also want to be taking into consideration your lateral proportions so that means you know whether you're an hourglass if you're an inverted triangle all of these types of things you will want to be very clear on this because that's going to impact also the type of shoe that you're going to choose. I've mentioned this in a few other videos but I'm going to recap it here quickly. So if you are a round shape also known as oval or apple shape then you are going to want to create a little bit more balance on the lower half by choosing something a little bit more chunky on the lower half of the body. That could be a chunky trainer it could be a wide leg boot something like that something that gives a little bit more interest and balance to that lower half of the body. If you are an hourglass you're already balanced so you want to be very careful not to upset that balance. So how do you not upset the balance? Well if you go slim on the upper half you go slim on the lower half. If you go heavy on the upper half you go heavy on the lower half. For the inverted triangle they are top heavy which means you have great freedom in going for chunky chunky styles of shoes on the foot. However please avoid those delicate little shoes on the lower half if you are inverted because that is going to further create that inverted shape. The pear shape is going want to go for something a little bit more delicate because they are already bottom heavy so you want to focus on creating a little bit more of a delicate look on the lower half rather than something that's going to ground you even further and pull the look of your outfit down even further. The rectangle shape is a balanced shape so you have to be careful similar to the hourglass that you don't upset the balance by going too chunky on the lower half and not compensating for that on the upper half or indeed if you choose a lighter delicate shoe on the lower half that you go for something similar on the upper half as well. So your body proportions play a big role in the type of shoe that you're going to wear as well of course as the rest of your outfit. The next point you will want to consider is the outfit sandwich and I've mentioned this also before in previous videos. The outfit sandwich means that you are connecting colors on the upper half of your body to your shoes. If you have black shoes for example you're going to want to bring some element of black to the upper part of the body because that makes a cohesive look. If you don't form a relationship with the colors it can look a little bit off. It's not going to look terrible but it just won't look as styled as it could have been if you considered the outfit sandwich. So consider where you've got color in your shoe and how you can tie that into the upper half of body. That could be in the way of a handbag, it could be a full t-shirt, it could be a piece of jewelry but either way tying in those colors with a different color in the center of the body so on the legs or a skirt something like that that's going to look really well thought through and styled. You'll also want to consider your style personality. If you are classic for example you're not going to want to go outside the box too much in terms of trending items of shoes particularly at this moment we have those chunky sandals trending at the moment. They're not going to be your thing so always honor your style personality. If you are dramatic or creative for example you're probably going to go a little bit crazy with your choice of shoes which is great it suits your style personality and you probably have the confidence to pull those things off. Whereas somebody like the romantic will feel very out of place going for something you know very chunky maybe trending at the moment. They are going to stay true to the delicate nature of their style personality and so their shoe choice is going to be reflected in that. So never neglect your style personality when you're considering your choice of shoe for your outfit. Another point I want to make which is I think really important is the straps on your shoes. As we come into summer we're all going to be wearing a little bit kind of lighter shoes and they're going to be strappy shoes probably and the placement of straps on your shoes are going to be so important when it comes to what you wear with them in terms of the length of a skirt the length of a crop jean. As a rule of thumb if you go for an ankle strap that cuts you off right at that point and the color of the strap is in contrast to your skin it can make you look shorter it can cut you off a little bit particularly if you're going for a crop style jean as well. If it's a flesh colored sandal then it's not going to have such an impact where the strap is placed because it's going to blend in it's not going to interrupt that flow of the leg line too much. But generally speaking if you do wear a cropped trouser or a midi length skirt you'll want to bring down the length of the leg as much as possible so you want the strap on the shoe to sit a little bit lower than where the ankle is. This is going to play great optical illusions with the length of your leg and give you legs for days. Your vertical proportions are going to come into play here if you have legs for days then the placement of straps is not going to be so impactful on your overall look because you can tolerate cutting yourself off at those joints. So don't worry too much if you do have great length in your legs however if you have a longer torso and shorter legs your strap placement is going to play a big part in how your outfit looks. You are going to want to bring that strap down as much as off the ankle in order to give you that length in your legs. That's it for today's video I do hope you enjoyed it if you learned something new please like the video and subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you again next time. Take care.