How to Make Your Outfits Better (Avoid These Styling Mistakes!)

If you ever felt uncertain about walking into a room knowing that your outfit doesn't match your success level, this video will change everything for you. I'm about to show you five styling fundamentals that will eliminate outfit confusion forever, plus why your expensive pieces might be working against you. Hi, I'm Ana Rova and I'm a certified personal stylist who works with successful women who struggle with wardrobe decisions. And after working with hundreds of high-achieving women, here's what I've noticed. Most women think that they need better clothes, but they actually need better strategies. In this video, I'm showing you five styling mistakes that are costing confidence in high-stakes situations. And these aren't complicated fashion rules. They're simple mindset shifts in how you think about fit, texture, color, and accessories that will instantly elevate any outfit you put together. You don't need a closet overhaul to see results, but you do need to stop these habits that make even designer clothes look cheap. By the end of this video, you'll have a clear system for creating outfits that look polished and intentional, whether you go into a board meeting or a weekend brunch. And stay until the end because I'm sharing the texture-mixing secrets at instant dimension, plus a capsule wardrobe formula that my clients call a game changer. So the first styling fundamental is all about fit, proportion, and silhouette. And here, we're going to talk about four things. Number one is body shape. Number two is fit. Number three is focusing on attributes. And number four is balance. So let's start with body shape. So each of us has a different body shape, and there's many theories out there on body shapes and how to dress your body shape. But essentially, what you need to know is when, you know, you look online through different websites or on Pinterest or whatever, or you see another woman, let's say, and you like her outfit, know that specific outfit that you like might not look as good on you as it looks on the other person that you saw or the model in the store or whatever. So to make sure that the outfits that you pick for you look good, you need to understand your body shape and use what I call illusion dressing principles that really make sure that you achieve the effect that you want from your clothes and your outfit, that you want to achieve, that the proportion and the silhouette that you want to have when you put a certain outfit on is in balance and it is exactly how you want it to be on your body. So let me give you an example. The traditional way of dressing body shapes categorizes women in different vegetables or triangles, geometrical shapes, and so on and so forth. I don't like to look at it like this, but it is important to understand your body shape. So for example, if we use traditional body shape principles, then basically we look at the body and the different proportions of your specific body and all bodies are very unique. So your job is to understand your specific body. The best way to do this is you take a measuring tape and you measure around the circumference of your shoulders, you measure your waist area, the thinnest part of the body, which is the waist, and you measure your hips. And so essentially when you measure your shoulders, your waist and your hips, you get your measurements. And then the most important thing here is to compare these three. Most flattering, most attractive body shape is normally an hourglass figure, which means that your shoulders are the same length as your hips. And then your waist is the narrowest part of the body. Now the conversation about body shape and bodies in general and what to wear and how is quite sensitive. So please be mindful of what I'm explaining. I'm explaining genuine principles here. Every body shape is different, but if we really want to use clothes to create this illusion of what we want to create, for example, I'm quite petite, my legs are really short. And so I always want to create outfits and use illusion dressing principles to elongate my look, to make sure that my legs are longer than they actually are. And we can do this with clothes, what an amazing tool. So let's say you discover that you are an hourglass figure, which again means that your shoulders are the same width as your hips and your waist is the narrowest part of the body. Amazing, congratulations, you have a body shape, you're one of the few that has a body shape that you can dress your body in pretty much anything you like and it's going to look good. Now not all of us are this lucky. And so for example, you might find out that your shoulders are narrower than your hips or vice versa, that your hips are narrower than your shoulders. You might also find that your shoulders, your waist and your hips are pretty much the same width. All of that is okay. Once you find out your body shape according to what I've just explained to you and how to do measurements, then you literally use clothes and use this illusion dressing principles to create more and more of the hourglass shape. Does that make sense? So for example, if your shoulders are broader than your hips, then you obviously want to make your hips wider. You can do this with color, you can do this with prints, you can do this with texture. Basically it's all about balance and balancing those proportions. Now let's say if your body type, which is traditionally called, you know, an apple shape or a rectangle shape, whatever fruit or geometric figure that's categorized in, then you obviously need to work with what you've got and every shape again is beautiful and make sure that you're getting closer and closer to the hourglass figure, which means that we'll be working with paying more attention to the waist area so we create this look. So basically it's simple math. Now let's talk about fit. After you've discovered your body shape, the most important thing, and I tell this to all of my clients, is fit. There's nothing worse than an outfit that just doesn't fit right. Say it's too big or too small or your sleeves are too long or it just doesn't fall how you need it to fall. The fit of the garment is more important than the cost, how it looks, the color. The fit is king so to say. So make sure that your clothes fit properly and if they don't fit properly and you really like that piece, then make sure that you get a size bigger and then you go to the tailor and tailor it. Now the next thing I want to teach you is about your attributes. The best way to dress your body is how you feel in your clothes, even though they do not fit those body shapes or illusion dressing principles and all that. If you don't want to bother with any of that, I give you permission. But the most important thing here to know is to dress for your attributes. Every single woman obviously has a body and she has certain parts of the body that are amazing, that she loves. So I invite you to stand in front of the mirror and this can be quite a sensitive exercise, but stand in front of the mirror and really look at your body without any blame or embarrassment or shame. Look at your body and ask yourself, what are the parts of my body that I really love? And so for me for example, I really love my collarbones, I really love my shoulders and so I always try to accentuate even what I'm wearing today. I think it's quite flattering on my body because these are the parts of my body and my waist I will accentuate because these are the parts of the body that I love. So ask yourself, what are the parts of the body that you love? And when you dress your body and when you pick out outfits, make sure that you accentuate those parts of the body. So maybe you have a beautiful waist like me, then make sure that you always tuck things in and you wear high-waisted pants or skirts or any high-waisted bottom and tuck things in or you wear a belt. Maybe you have beautiful hips that you love and you accentuate them then you put more attention to your hips. Maybe it's your legs, you have long beautiful legs so make sure you always accentuate your leg either obviously with bare leg or you wear long pants or in any other way with print, color, accentuate your leg. And the last thing I'm going to teach you today which is a little bit more advanced, a principle when we work with fit, silhouette and proportion, this idea of balance or how I call it is structure and flow. Structure flow is a principle that I've learned when I became a certified stylist and really when you understand this, you understand why an outfit looks good. So what this means is basically adding structure and flow to any outfit in terms of texture, garment construction and silhouettes. I want you to think about different outfits that you like and notice that let's say if a woman is wearing everything super tight, her top is tight, her bottom is tight, everything is tight tight, it creates a certain look you know but it doesn't look proportionate and balanced. Then on the other side right you've got all the baggy oversized clothes like oversized hoodie, oversized pants, everything is oversized and so it's basically a person who looks like a sack right. So these are two extremes so you can have everything tight and then you're Kim Kardashian and on the other extreme you're a sack. So you don't want to be, well maybe you want to be Kim Kardashian but that's a very very specific style that in my opinion doesn't look good on most people. Kim rocks it but you know I wouldn't wear that and then you also don't want to look like a sack unless this is really your style. So no judgment about any of these styles but it's a specific style that you will need to know how to wear. So how we balance these two is basically in the middle. When you dress yourself and put outfits and I'm going to be showing you pictures on the screen but I also invite you to go on Pinterest to look through pictures as well. Make sure that if you're wearing a tight top, make sure that your bottom is more flowy and the other way around. If you're wearing some tight pants let's say or a tight skirt or short whatever, your bottom has to be a little bit more flowy. You've got to give it some air and so this is how you balance the look. So the second styling principle is all about color and color coordination. So the first thing that you need to know is that color or a certain type of color can make you look dull and tired or very rested and alive. And I'm sure that you've heard compliments from people when you wear a certain color that they would tell you oh you look amazing a radiant. So how you identify your color is you do a color analysis. Now you can do it yourself or you can use tools or professional services to do that. If you want to do it yourself you basically go to bright daylight and you look at your veins and so if the color of your veins is green that means that your best colors are warm undertone colors. If the color of your veins is blue or purple this means that your best colors are cool but if you see green and blue and purple that means that you're neutral which means you can wear warm colors and cool colors. Now when I did this myself I was a little bit confused and I didn't know what is warm or cool or whatever so if you don't want that confusion I recommend you use a professional service that can do it or you use AI tools or any other tools and you can even try ChatGPT. I've heard that ChatGPT does really good color analysis so you can try that. So understanding your color tone and which color is best not only warm or cool but also your best color palette will really help you with your shopping with whenever you're putting outfits together because I'm sure you've had days when you bought something and it looked cute in the store and then you come home and then it doesn't suit together. This is why. One thing I'm going to tell you about the color palette is that's a foundation that you need to know. When I work with my one-on-one clients we always do a color analysis but know that just like anything rules can be broken. It really depends on how you want to feel during that day and what you want to wear. So for example a cool pink is not my color because I'm a deep autumn or fall and I'm not supposed to wear pink but I found a really cool pink shirt that I really love and I wear it on days when I want to feel a certain way. So know that it's good to have that foundation and especially when you're wearing things closer to your face it's good to understand the color theory but then you can wear whatever the hell you like because we don't live in 1970s anymore. So once you understood your color palette you have that foundation. Now the question is how do you then build your wardrobe? What I recommend is especially in the beginning when you're learning how to put your outfits together and create this amazing wardrobe that represents you and the success that you have I recommend really starting with the neutrals. So in your color palette however way you do it there are certain neutral colors well obviously we have black and white but they're quite stark and contrasting. Choose some neutral colors that really fit your undertone your skin undertone and build your wardrobe around that. So obviously white can have different shades of white so find your shade of white. Black can have different shades of black obviously when you add and mix different colors. Some of the best neutrals are grays, beige, navy colors like that combine between themselves really well and start building a wardrobe like that. That's the easiest way to work with color and to build a wardrobe that is cohesive in terms of color. The next thing I want to teach you is two ways to work with color that I really love in putting together outfits is monochrome and color block. So monochrome outfits look so elevated and chic and very expensive when you know how to put them together. Basically a monochrome outfit is when you're wearing the same color just in different saturations so to say. So it goes from light to dark so for example I'm going to show on screen here you can wear let's say color red and you go from light red to dark red and you choose pieces in your wardrobe that fit that color palette. The only caveat here is that these colors have to be the same temperature. So why sometimes outfits don't work together is that if you start to mix let's say you want to create a monochrome outfit and it's that red that goes from light to dark if those pieces they have to be all in the same temperature which means they all have to be warm reds or they have to be cool reds. So again this is really important to understand because for example for me I know that my best colors are warm so I will opt in when I create a monochrome look I will opt in for warm reds rather than cool reds. So make sure you pay attention to that and if you're not sure warm or cool or whatever this comes with training the eye so you don't wake up one day and you understand what is warm what is cool it really takes time to build that training with the eye or again you can work with a stylist like me or you can work with a color analysis professional who can help you build that. And if you are looking to hire me as your stylist I'm actually enrolling one-on-one clients right now so click on the description link below to schedule a free call with me where we're going to talk about what is your current challenge with style what are you looking to change what are your goals and we'll see if we can work together I'll see you in the call. But essentially a monochrome outfit is so fun and so amazing to do and so elevated this is what one of my favorite techniques to do when I work with clients and trust me you have something like this in the wardrobe and by the way all black or all white is also monochrome so you don't need to go for example from light to dark although this is a more sophisticated version of monochrome you can also go all white all black all red which is called a total look like a total black total red or total white. And the second thing I wanted to talk to you about is color blocking. So color blocking is a is a technique that many people use in their outfits and it looks quite cool so essentially it's all about wearing a few different a couple or a few different colors together so maybe you wear a red top with white pants this is kind of a basic color block technique but then if you want to go more advanced and more sophisticated you start to mix and match different colors and it looks so cool and it's also one of my favorite way to help clients dress in a way that really elevates their look. But again you have to make sure that those colors mix well between each other so you can't have cool colors and warm colors because they're not going to go together. Now there's other things of how do you match color this is again a little bit more advanced but there is a technique that you can use a color wheel and you use different principles around how to match different colors around the color wheel they're like contrasting colors or similar colors around the color wheel that you can mix and match so have fun and play with it. So the third styling principle is working with texture. Now again this is something a little bit more advanced and when you look at your wardrobe I'm sure that you'll find items and pieces that will really help you with this more sophisticated look because a boring look is when you're just wearing one texture and by the way most people just do that they either wear all cotton or jeans and a top and it just doesn't look right. When you see outfits that look amazing together it's when you start to combine texture. So for example you could wear a silk skirt and a sweater so obviously you have mixed two textures which is silk and let's say wool or cashmere that looks really nice or again any texture and I really recommend that you wear natural fabrics that are breathable and you don't sweat in it it's not too hot and also the natural fabrics look really expensive and chic make your whole outfit look elevated. So next time you put an outfit together I invite you to think about how can I wear different textures in one outfit and so if you're wearing let's say a pair of jeans then you think about your top and let's say your top is cotton then your blazer might be you know tweed or leather or any other texture so I invite you with every single outfit to start to think about texture and how you can mix those textures. Texture really adds dimension because wearing one texture just creates a flat one-dimensional look but if you want to add more dimension and more complexity to your outfit then I'd really recommend playing with textures and mixing and matching different textures and again remember how I talked about structure and flow in the beginning where it's like if you're wearing something tight on the top make sure that you wear something much more flowy on the bottom this is what creates balance same thing with texture. There's also a principle about how do we mix texture and this is the secret that I mentioned in the beginning it's better to mix texture that is a little bit more structured with something that's a little bit more flowy like I mentioned before you would mix silk with tweed or with leather or with wool instead of let's say if you mix silk and viscose for example yeah they're both of these textures are very quite thin and they create this drape look and it's not going to look good so make sure that you mix that structured texture that's maybe a little bit more thicker like when you touch it with another texture that's a little bit thinner and it's going to give you that amazing multi-dimensional look. Styling tip number four is wearing intentional accessories. Now accessories is a really big subject because I see and this was myself in the past I see a lot of clients who don't know how to use accessories or they just buy accessories that they like let's say randomly or impulsively and then they see that they don't know how to wear these accessories so what I really recommend is do not be afraid to wear accessories and build a foundation again like we talked about color start with building your color foundation with some neutrals with texture for example you can build a foundation with just basic textures and start to combine them before you go crazy same thing with accessories you need to build a basic foundational accessories set so to say that will go with everything and this what I'm talking about is timeless jewelry so I really invite you to invest in some pieces some gold or silver or a mix of gold and silver pieces that you know will go with everything something that is timeless I recommend investing in pieces that have those clean lines that are either hoops or they have these rectangular or triangular shapes that look really balanced and can make any outfit look expensive and elevated and then when you continue through your styling journey which is always going to change and improve and depending on where you are in your life whether you get married have babies become a mom get divorced or in a new relationship or get a new job these things will evolve your style and as you learn more about style you can start to invest in pieces that are a little bit more fun and funky when you know how to mix and match it together so what I really recommend here besides the jewelry that can really elevate your look is to invest in a quality bag quality pairs of shoes a belt or a scarf and you don't need a lot you need just a few pieces that you will know work with everything so make sure you use that intentionally and you know accessories are details that really add that multi-dimension to your outfit your outfit is so plain without accessories even if you use color block even fits perfectly there is texture when you add accessories it really creates this total look and it doesn't have to be overdone you know I normally wear jewelry and maybe a belt and a bag that's it so keep it simple but intentional okay and the fifth styling principle is building a foundation which is called a capsule wardrobe if you don't know what's a capsule wardrobe it's basically building a wardrobe that makes sure that all the pieces mix and match together wouldn't it be great if you wake up in the morning and without even thinking you pick out a top some bottoms maybe another piece like a jacket or a blazer or a leather jacket and you're good to go and your bag is there your jewelry is there this is how I get dressed in the morning I don't sit there and think about what I'm going to wear because I've built an capsule wardrobe and so when we think about a capsule wardrobe it doesn't mean that you need to have a lot of pieces you can have 10 pieces in your capsule wardrobe and create more than 30 outfits basically which means that your outfits won't be repeated for a whole month so how do we do this now we do this by starting with investing in basics and how you build an intentional capsule wardrobe is that wardrobe has to fit two criteria number one it has to fit within one style and the style that I recommend that is timeless is your casual style your basic casual which means that again it has those clean lines right so on the pictures that I'm showing you you will see that these pants are just casual which means that you know there's no ruffles there's no crazy garment construction there's not it's just clean and basic that you can wear with anything same goes for tops same goes for your dresses so on and so forth so for your shoes for your accessories that is the one thread that ties in this whole wardrobe this doesn't mean that you can't wear you know trendy pieces with frills and whatever else is trendy here but think about this like a like a recipe for example right you have the basic recipe when you cook your I don't know chicken soup you add carrots potato soup pasta whatever you add in your chicken soup and then there's condiments right and every single person has their own flavor of condiments like you like more pepper and salt and I like to add garlic maybe right so same thing with your wardrobe the recipe the potato the carrots the soup and I'm from Eastern Europe so I'm like talking about chicken soup I don't know why anyways so the same thing goes with a capsule wardrobe this time this piece is you know that everything will fit together and you'll just pick everything and all goes there's no decision making here but when you want to add some condiments which means you want that trendy Balenciaga bag or whatever Miu Miu came up with right or like crazy textured shoes you can do that but then again it's like adding condiments and trust me when you add you know a super fashionable bag to your casual outfit it's going to look amazing so the first thread that combines that whole capsule wardrobe is one style which I recommend casual basic and then you add the trendy condiments depending on your taste and preference and your lifestyle and the second thing is color so remember how I talked about cool and warm colors your capsule wardrobe is not going to be a capsule wardrobe meaning that pieces there you won't be able to mix and match if they are in different color temperatures so if you have pieces in there that are warm in color and cold in color they're not going to mix well together not going to go well together you have to decide which one you're going for cold or warm because if these don't match you're not going to have a capsule wardrobe that's how you build a capsule beginner foundational wardrobe so there you have it the five styling fundamentals that will help you eliminate outfit confusion and feel confident in everything you wear one of my clients Sarah after implementing these principles into her own wardrobe went from dreading getting dressed in the morning to having her colleagues at work ask her who her stylist was and that is without buying anything everything that I shared with you today I'm sure that you can go in your closet and you can start to think about and put pieces together that you already have and if you're ready to take this further I actually created two shopping guides with shopping links that are called timeless wardrobe and timeless jewelry that shows you exactly what you need to buy to build that foundational wardrobe and to get those timeless pieces now how you get these two shopping guides is by joining my styling community it's an exclusive styling community of successful women just like you besides the shopping guides what you will get there is number one my complete foundational system when it comes to color analysis how to put outfits together how to create a capsule wardrobe how to find your style and how to make sure that your wardrobe fits your lifestyle you also get two monthly coaching calls with me where I answer any of the questions and we also do real life wardrobe edits and of course there's nothing else than having a supportive community of women who are on the same styling journey as you I'm opening limited spots for new members right now so if this sounds like something you need and want don't wait all the links are below this video in the description and this is also where you'll find information about how to work with me one-on-one before you go please make sure to like this video and subscribe to my channel so I'm more motivated and inspired to create more videos like this for you