Why Most People Get Their Outfits WRONG

Let me guess, you have a full closet, nothing to wear, and no idea why. It seems like such a silly or small problem, yet you never seem to solve it. You might think, I need more clothes, but the problem isn't quantity, it's compatibility. You order a trending outfit, you wait all week for it, excited to look amazing, but then you try it on, and instead of feeling fabulous, something about it just falls flat. All of these years, you've been shopping based on trends, models, and influencers, instead of your own body shape and color season. As a style coach and image consultant, I'm going to help you fix that today, so you know exactly what flatters your unique proportions, which colors make you pop, and how to make dressing feel exciting again. Are you ready? Let's go. To look great in clothes, you don't need a perfect body or a celebrity's budget. Style is less about your size and more about creating visual balance. This is a learnable skill built on two pillars, shape and color. Your shape is your framework. It's about how clothing responds to the structure of your body. This includes your horizontal shape, the width of shoulders, waist, and hips, and your vertical shape, which is your torso to leg ratio. So, your shape guides the eye when someone is looking at you. Our eyes constantly follow lines, and in fashion, these lines are created by hems, seams, necklines, and the overall drape of the fabric. When an outfit looks off, it's often because its lines are fighting against your natural shape instead of flattering it. The second pillar is color. Color is the lighting you wear every day. When you wear a color that harmonizes with the natural pigments in your skin, hair, and eyes, it can make you look more glowy and healthy, even without a single drop of makeup on. But the wrong colors, they can clash with your natural coloring, casting shadows, and make you look washed out. Once you understand what works for your shape and what colors suit your skin, they work together to give you that wow factor. Your complexion, it looks radiant, your eyes sparkle, and you're actually crafting a look that feels balanced and intentional. Now, let's figure out what your body shape is. First, you're going to want to look at your horizontal proportions to figure out which of the five main body shapes you fit into best. First, we have triangle. This is where the hips are clearly wider than the shoulders. Then, we have inverted triangle, where the shoulders are more broad than the hips. Next, there's rectangle. This is when your shoulders, waist, and hips hold almost the same width. There's very minimal definition. Then, we have oval, where the midsection carries more visual width compared to the shoulders and hips. And lastly, hourglass. Both these shoulders and hips are equally wide, and the waist is the most narrow point. So, this shape is the standard to try and create in other shapes because of the natural balance that flows. So, the eye doesn't focus on just one area. The shoulders, waist, and hips all get to shine. But your body shape isn't only about width. It's also about length as well. And this is often overlooked, I feel, compared to the horizontal proportions. So, your vertical proportions are the secret behind why a dress or maybe a pair of jeans might look one way on your friend but look completely different on you. So, your vertical shape is how long your legs and torso are and the difference between them. Knowing this becomes very helpful as it will allow you to think about the rise of a jean or a pant, what dresses and shirts allow for waist definition to help you apply the rule of thirds. This rule of thirds has been used for centuries throughout art and design because, interestingly enough, our eye tends to enjoy a visual split of one-third to two-thirds rather than a 50-50 split. If you have a long torso and short legs, opting for high-waisted pants will visually raise your waistline, instantly creating that perfect one-third to two-thirds balance. If you have a short torso and long legs, your body already naturally sits in that one-third to two-thirds ratio. If you blindly follow trends and wear like an ultra high-waisted pant, you might find that your torso looks too short where a mid-rise would be better suited for you. If you are balanced, meaning you have close to equal lengths in both your torso and legs, you have more wiggle room between how you want to apply your rule of thirds. Now for color, there are four main color seasons, spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Spring and autumn are our warm seasons, while summer and winter are our cool seasons. And then within those four main seasons, there are 12 subseasons in total. There is a lot to color season that we don't have time for in this video, so if you want more of a deep dive, I do have a previous video where I go over all of the subseasons, what their dominant traits are, and best colors that I will leave linked for you below. But the two main things you want to think about regarding color and how your skin reacts to it is temperature and intensity. How your skin reacts to these two things is what makes up your color characteristics. Temperature asks if your skin and features harmonize better with warm or cool colors, what temperature brings out the best in your skin, what temperature casts shadows or makes you look sallow. Intensity asks if your skin and features shine in bright saturated colors or softer muted ones. Which level of intensity makes your skin look like you have a filter on and which level makes you look like that you are more so competing with the color. In my case, warm colors suit my skin and features best. My hair has an auburn shade and my skin is warm and peachy. This means I fall into either the spring or autumn seasons. The spring season is filled with bright vibrant saturated colors and the autumn season is filled with softer muted ones. For cool seasons, winter is where the bright colors are found and summer is where these soft shades are found. I am an autumn season specific to the warm autumn season. The bright vibrant colors from spring just overpower me and wash me out where the softer colors from the autumn season allow my skin, hair, and eyes to all blend cohesively with the color. You see me over just seeing the color. So once you've discovered both your body shape and your color season, it opens the door to choosing items and colors that enhance you and your body in ways you never thought were possible. Now I do understand that learning all of this in theory is much simpler than actually applying it to yourself in real life. We're often a little biased and we're not always able to objectively see ourselves. As a hairstylist, style coach, and image consultant, this comes much easier to me. I have spent so much time studying this and working with women to help them discover these exact things. I do have several other videos here on the channel as well that you can also watch to help you figure this out if you're still confused. And I'm also happy to share that I offer a virtual body shape and color analysis. You simply submit a few photos based on my guidelines to make sure everything I need to see is visible. From there, I personally assess your body shape and proportions, analyze your features to determine your exact color season and sub-season. You'll get a full personalized guide of style suggestions, recommendations for clothing, hair, makeup colors, and jewelry tones that will bring out the best in you. You'll also get a complete digital color palette that you can have on your phone to take shopping so you can always be sure of a color. So if you're interested, be sure to check out my website. I will leave it linked in the description below as well as a pinned comment and you can also find a discount code there as well that will save you an extra 12% off at any purchase at checkout. Now let's get into some styling tips. So let's talk about what we need to be paying attention to when we see an outfit we like. Do you like it because of the color? Do you like it because of the shape? I want you to think about your body for a bit before you decide to purchase something. For reference, my body shape fluctuates between inverted triangle and hourglass. When I gain or lose weight, I always notice it first in my hips, then my butt, and then my waist. When I have more weight on me, my hips start to even out with my shoulders. When I have less weight, my hips narrow out a bit more. Between these two photos, there is probably a difference of 15 to 20 pounds. You can see where my hips curve out a bit more in the orange and black and narrow in the pink and teal items. So do remember that your horizontal body shape can change based on your weight. With it being summertime, I really like to wear dresses often. I like something that I can move in whether it's casual or dressy. And my go-to when deciding on an item used to always just be that I liked the color, that it just looked comfy with really no thought about the actual fit, and I would wind up with dresses such as this one. It's in a color that works. It is comfortable, but it doesn't really actually do anything for my shape. It just looks overall very boxy. This gives no waist definition and there is no separation between my shoulders and hips. I am much better off in something that is a little bit more fit and flared. The color still works for me. It's still comfortable, but it allows for more definition in my waist. It flares out at my hips a bit, and with the open chest, the eye is just drawn in a little bit more. So this creates balance between each of my horizontal points and creates that hourglass illusion. So dresses like this, they tend to be pretty universal as far as flattering all shapes. If you have broader shoulders, you might want to opt for a They're going to help to soften your shoulder line. Triangle and oval shapes, you tend to need more structure in your shoulders, so you could opt for more of a boat neck style or cap sleeves that's going to help to balance your shape. And then oval shapes, you might prefer more of an empire waist that's closer to your bust to sort of allow for the rest of the dress to just smooth over your tummy. The key with all of these dresses is that they give waist definition, and they allow both these shoulders and hips to shine. It allows for the eye to smooth gently through the body and have everything flow together. Let's discuss a classic top and jeans fit. I have an entire video that dives deep on how to elevate basic jeans and tees and really implement the rule of thirds. It is a great video to check out, but I wanted for this video to touch more on how we can create some nice rule of thirds without tucking in our shirt. Tucking is a great way to create the one third on top and two thirds on the bottom, but it's not something that we always want to do. And there are other ways to create waist definition and still apply the rule of thirds. So if we take a look at some of these tops that I have here, they all create waist definition that also helps to smooth the tummy, and they have angles to prevent a solid line that cuts the body in half. The options with the higher necklines are great for defining the shoulders. The options with the open chest help draw that eye in to minimize the shoulder and the options with the angles through the bottom helps to give that feeling of a one third two thirds split without tucking, which I know you guys will love. They create a lovely flow through the top half of your body. And I have these tops paired with a wide leg high rise jean as my torso is quite a bit longer than my legs. I actually have a hard time finding jeans as high as I prefer. If you're naturally, if you have wider hips, you could opt for a straight leg instead of a wide leg pant. Bootcut jeans are also a great option as well. And remember, if you have a very short torso, you're going to do better with a mid rise over high rise. Pairing a few of these tops with a pair of shorts also helps to create a two third on top and one third ratio on the bottom to still apply that rule of thirds. And it creates a different look and feel to the outfit. What is so nice about paying more attention to an item before you purchase it is that it allows you to see how that item can work for you in more ways than just one. And now I want to actually talk about how you can make an item work for you, even when it's not in your color season, or maybe the option for your body shape. So as I mentioned earlier regarding color, the two main points you want to remember are temperature and intensity. So temperature is whether you look better in warm or cool colors, while intensity is whether you look better in bright, vibrant shades or soft, muted ones. So you are either going to suit warm or cool, bright shades or warm or cool, muted shades. I am a warm autumn, which means I look best in warm shades that are softer in intensity. So when I'm shopping, those are the two things I remember when looking at color. So thinking of my body shape, I keep in mind that my shoulders hold the most width and I want to avoid adding too much bulk here. And instead I want to add flair to balance my lower half. So I ordered this classic white and blue pinstripe dress online a couple of months ago. I love the look of it, even though I knew the color wasn't ideal for me. It does also appear a little big, maybe in the top half that I was worried about whether or not it was going to feel too big and bulky, but something about it I just really liked. And I was like, who cares? I'm going to buy it. So when it arrived and I first tried it on, I wasn't quite sure about it. I felt a bit puffy through the top and with the sleeves down, I felt like all of the attention went into my shoulders, kind of just making this area look larger. But before giving up completely on the item, I decided to try a couple of things first to see if I could create better balance. So I opted to roll the sleeves to align with a narrow point in my waist, allowing for the eye to separate from the shoulders. So this highlights the dress's lovely waist definition, allowing for it to stand out more. I also opted to unbutton it more along my chest. So anytime you draw the eye towards the center, it helps to minimize the shoulders and I unbuttoned it down to just above my bra and I kind of folded it out a little bit more to create a V-neck appearance. So paired together, these two adjustments instantly helped to balance my shape by drawing the eye into the chest, defining the waist, and it gets to show off that hip flare a bit more. Although the shoulder area still fits maybe a little big, this style approach is much more balanced than wearing the sleeves down and more buttoned up. So let's also look at the color really quick. It is cool, which goes against my warm undertone. However, the intensity is soft and muted. So while the temperature isn't perfect, it does match the intensity level I do best in. This dress, of course, would be more ideal for me in a warm tone, but because it matches one out of my two color characteristics, it makes it workable. A vibrant white and blue would not work for me at all since neither of those options match my need for warm, muted tones. When I wear this dress, I make sure my makeup is accurate to my color season and I opt to style it with a warm bag and shoes and opt, of course, for gold jewelry to help keep this balanced. Knowing your body shape and color season doesn't limit your choices. It is the exact opposite. Once you understand what works and why certain pieces don't, you get to see clothes and color in a whole new light. This prevents that full closet with nothing to wear, helping you make even less than ideal pieces work for you. I hope you enjoyed this week's video. Drop a heart emoji in the comments if you did. If you're interested in a body shape and color analysis to understand yourself like never before, be sure to check out my website linked below, and if you want to hear more about body shape or color season, I will leave these two videos for you that you can check out next. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you on the next one. Bye!