Rules of Style

Today this middle aged woman on the bus was wearing a black turtleneck top with a hot pink, velvet strappy top over it. I was just staring in disbelief. Despite the colour, the strappy top would have looked nice as summer evening wear on a shapely young woman. But on an autumn morning, on a middle aged woman, over a long-sleeved turtleneck top – I just don’t understand people sometimes.

So that got me to thinking about style and fashion. I mean, what guidelines should you follow to avoid looking like a complete dick?

My thinking on the subject is that less is definitely more – you’d think this would be obvious, but not to the people of Sydney – and that clothes should always have a practical as well as a fashion purpose. For example, climate and cultural standards of decency require that people cover the trunk of their body in public. To do this, you have to wear some kind of shirt/t-shirt and trousers or skirt. What you actually choose can depend on your taste, and if you want to wear an embroidered top in a nice fabric instead of something rough and scratchy, there’s no reason you shouldn’t. Similarly, if your trousers are in danger of falling down and you need to wear a belt, why not choose one that you think looks good? If we have to wear clothes, we may as well wear nice ones. But, for example, once you start wearing, say, two belts, that’s another matter. How can you possibly need two belts? You just look like an idiot. I have actually seen people wearing two belts at once. If you’re going to wear two belts you may as well complete the look with a t-shirt that says ‘I try way too hard’. At best, pointless fashion accessories look vain; if you get them wrong, they look stupid AND vain.

My fashion rulings are not arbitary; they are based on principles that anyone can follow. And I would suggest that they do. So many people seem to be lacking any fashion sense of their own – it’s like, as soon as a fashion is released onto the shop floor or pictured in a magazine, they think it’s ok to dress like that, because they have no common sense of their own to rely on. It’s like autistic people who can’t interpret other people’s facial expressions by instinct, so they have to learn how to do it from a guidebook. I would go so far as to say that the majority of women have absolutely no clue how to dress.

By the way, I’m not meaning to imply here that I always look stylish. I often look pretty bad, especially on the way to work, when I can be seen wearing trainers with my work skirt, and a jacket that really doesn’t go with what I’m wearing, with a hood pulled up over my hair. But at least this is for practical reasons – the shoes are for the sake of my health, and the hood is to protect my hair from the elements so that it doesn’t look like I’ve been electrocuted by the time I get to the office. I’d rather look daggy in an ‘I don’t really care’ or an ‘I put practicality above style’ way than an ‘I think puffball skirts and footless tights (formerly known as leggings) are so hot’ kind of way. I mean, wouldn’t you?