Mar

14

Pregnant and Fashionable

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So you’re in the family way! Congrats. Don’t feel like your bulging tummy in any way detracts from your beauty. In fact, many women say they feel even more beautiful and radiant when pregnant than ever. And high-end fashion agrees, even big designers like Gucci and Prada have hit the runways with prego looks, and you’ll find all manner of formal, casual and sexy relaxing maternity clothes.

Some things to keep in mind to look trim and adorable when pregnant include featuring the smallest parts of your body. Under your chest your belly is it’s smallest, and this is a great place for a belt or dress cut. You can also use the bell-shaped dress to highlight how trim and lean your legs are, and of course heels make your feet look even more dainty and adorable. Additionally, keeping your hair sleek or pulled back helps to detract unwanted volume.

Additionally, the patterns and colors you wear can add or detract volume, depending on your desired outcome. Spots detract from volume while lines (horizontal especially) can add it. Black and white (high contrast colors) cause the eye to focus on pattern instead of shape.

Another way to move the eye away from the obvious baby bump is to add color splashes. In the image the woman is doing everything right. High contrast pattern with polka dots, a high waist line and a bell-shaped dress. The color splashes of red add high fashion, but they also pull the eye to the smallest two aspects of her shape.

Mar

10

Celebrity Red Carpet Fashion

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This year has been an astonishingly dull one for red carpet fashion fans. It seems all the crazies took their pills before they strutted into their suits for all the major events this year. Even Lady Gaga didn’t really stun anyone. The craziest look was by Sasha Baron Coen, dressed as the dictator from his upcoming film—and even that wasn’t really enough to draw more than a bored eyebrow raise. Still, some of the best names in designer fashion were on the red carpet and they didn’t do anything flamboyant either. Imagine Prada throwing away the opportunity to win best or worst dressed? Dior stuck to classic lines, Versace (ever the flamboyant design house) was as traditional as ever and only played around with color and texture, not form or fit.

Some of the hottest looks were by Angelina Jolie at the Oscars 2012. She wore a traditional black form-fitted dress with a slit up one side to reveal a sexy leg and black shoe. It’s as traditional as it gets, and yet it drew rapt attention.

Another fascination was the beautifully clad overweight women, like Octavia from The Help, and the robustly round comedy queen from Bridesmaids. Both looked stunning in form-fit dresses that revealed all the right curves. Bigger women are not shunned in Hollywood anymore. Look at Queen Latifa, and the normal body shape on Kate Winslet.

Finally, there has been a return to more traditional lines, cuts and textures in recent years on the red carpet, perhaps in retaliation to how the mass public has become obsessed with mimicking any fashion trend a celebrity starts.

Feb

29

Hot Yoga Fashion

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Yoga is in vogue, and not just the benefits you get from the sport, like leaner muscles, toned limbs, flexibility and serenity, but the clothing, the social status of the activity and the social aspect. Yoga is blowing up, and with it is yoga fashion. Even mega stores like Wal-Mart and Target have yoga gear for sale, something you wouldn’t have seen ten years ago. But are the designer brands like Prada and Versace keeping up?

But so far yoga is a high-end thing. Is middle class and above in the Western world, and the exact opposite in the East. So, are the hottest designer brands making garb and accessories for the new hot sport? So far, the answer is no. But that doesn’t mean you can’t adapt sexy fashion for your bendy athleticism.

Dior sunglasses would look stunning on this yoga practitioner (image left). Especially on her way to and from the studio or for days when she conducts her yoga outdoors. Sunglasses shield your eyes from the sun’s harmful rays and are wise to have on at all times when outside, plus nothing can kill your concentration like a sudden refraction of light into your eye. For added difficulty, some extreme yoga practitioners even do blind yoga, which you could start on with dark sunglasses.

Regardless of your style while you practice yoga, be sure to be safe. Always work with a licensed instructor, always protect your body from the environment, whether an indoor or outdoor one, and never work beyond your limits.

Feb

24

Blue eyes, dark hair and pale skin

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Fashion isn’t easy for anyone, and even those who make it look like a natural habit have to work to achieve those results. Paris Hilton doesn’t wake up with perfect hair, nails and skin, or clothed in Dior. She spends her time, and her dad’s money, on getting that way each and every day. It’s exhausting, it’s hard work and it’s something the outside world takes for granted, assuming you are just naturally beautiful. If you have pale skin, dark hair and blue eyes you’re in for a world of beauty—with a bit of work. Here’s how to maximize your natural beauty and make it work for you.

Embrace your oddities. One of the smartest and quickest ways to enhance your natural beauty is to embrace the things about your look that set you apart. If you have a big chin, play off of that. If you have a tiny forehead, make it a feature. Being memorable is often more important in fashion that truly being Hellenistic.

If you swaddle yourself in high-end fashion you’re bound to get respect from fashion fans, but following blindly isn’t what fashionable people would do now is it? Pick and choose what will work for you. Dark hair and pale skin demand lighter colors, pastels, and a touch of softness. Blue eyes add the sparkle that makes the whole look stunning.

A few makeup points for this face type include blush as a means of adding color back to the face, lighter, peach-colored lipstick and enhancing the blue eyes with tans, browns and coppers rather than any ostentatious colors or smokey eyes during daytime.

Feb

21

Funny Fashion Mishaps

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There are a lot of famous fashion mishaps, and some really strange fashion decisions, too. Like Bjork’s decision to wear a dead bird around her neck, or J-Lo’s choice to wear a sheer green jungle dress to the Oscars, or even the infamous nipple slip that has forever ruined half time shows. But what about fashion blunders with high-end designer brands like Gucci and Prada?

Yes, designers make mistakes too! Just look at any random runway during Paris, Milan or New York fashion week. You’ll find a barrage of thin women in clothing that isn’t flattering and wouldn’t look good on a even a perfect body. What’s the deal?

High fashion is concept art. Essentially, designers capture an idea with each line of clothing and then take it to extremes to test the boundaries of public awareness. Take, for example, the ridiculous sunglasses on the runway by Fendi last year. They were outlandishly bright, cubic, multi-tones and had gradient tinting in reverse. In short they were simply ridiculous. Still, Fendi gets points for thinking outside the box during fashion week, and for demonstrating what not to do.

Just like Vanilla Ice’s yellow parachute pants, every step in the wrong direction we go with fashion serves to guide is more in the right direction be contrast. This is useful especially in high fashion where boundaries don’t mean anything and designers are willing to send a model down the runway in literally anything. Still, these fashion mishaps are acceptable in the long run, and we can all rest assured that no “real” folks in “real” cities would ever be caught dead in fashion week clothing.

Feb

18

Redefining Beauty

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Beauty is only skin-deep; it’s what’s on the inside that truly matters. We all know that, but our society still places a lot of value on looks and prestige. Beauty is about being yourself and feeling proud about that. If you feel comfortable wearing a tutu, leggings and a coon-skin cap then knock yourself out. Happiness and identity are important. If you want to fit in, you’ll have to leave the tutu at home, but you can still infuse your wild sense of fashion into your wardrobe with fun pieces of flare. Wild Ray Bans with patterns or bold colors are a more socially acceptable way to show your love of color and creative fashion.

Redefining beauty starts with your perception of fashion. True, most high-end fashion is too high end to be applicable to most of the public. It’s inaccessible and cold, and often times the models look sickly, and without personality. It’s hard to imagine a group of women who look like they are enjoying life any less than the models who strut the runways in cold, alien fashion. But breaking into new looks has always been hard, and many proponents of high fashion have defended the sickly, twig-like look of the models as being the ideal size for designers, and the best shape to showcase clothing without distracting from the garments with overly sexy bodies. That’s a shame because fashion was meant to make women more beautiful, not out shine them. Perhaps redefining beauty can begin with the designers.

Feb

7

Annoying Eyewear Fads

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Sometimes a fad will pop up that simply shouldn’t survive. Recently, many of these fads have been in the eyewear industry, prompting many to wonder if the giants like Prada, Gucci and Dior have simply lost their minds, or if they are pandering to an unruly, unfashionable mob.

The recent surge in white sunglasses is not only annoying, but ill timed. Wearing white in winter only makes you look washed out and older than your age. Perhaps this is why the fad is strongest among pre-teens. We recently spotted Justin Bibier in white shades that made him look like a poser. This may well be a fair assessment, but we would have thought the Biebs’ fashion team wouldn’t have let him leave the house in strap-on sandals and white Oakley shades.

However, the single most annoying new trend, especially hot in Asia at the moment, is the seemingly fashionable concept of wearing ugly, black-framed eyeglasses with no lenses. For most of us who are forced to wear corrective lenses to see, this is just insulting. We know being the chic nerd is in, but fake glasses don’t make you look smart, they make you look dumb. Enough said. In Asia, part of the fad comes from the strong affinity for anime, where the characters have larger-than-life eyes. The large frames add this effect ever so subtly. This also has the advantage of making your chin and lips seem smaller, the ideal anime appearance. But, if you don’t think looking like a hyper sexual Japanese cartoon is ideal, drop the fake glasses and move on.

Jan

31

Fashionable Frames for Spring

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Although winter is currently hitting, and hitting hard, it’s time to start thinking about spring fashion. Those who plan ahead, after all, end up with the cutest stuff at cut-rate prices and are the first to roll out their fresh spring look. So, instead of waiting to see what’s hot, why not start the trends! We’re here to give you pointed advice on what those in the know expect to be hot. Tom Ford sunglasses are always a spring-time favorite and a sure bet. You can also go colorful and bold with the brighter colors of Ray Ban Wayfarers or Versace’s intricate and frilly designs. Depending on your spring wardrobe, any of these will be sure to get you some positive looks when the snow thaws.

But spring fashion isn’t as easy as many think. It isn’t all flip-slips, florals and brighter hues. To really be fashionable you have to seamlessly blend your winter wardrobe into your spring one to make the transition a beautiful and seemingly effortless one. Here’s how:

As the last thrashes of winter start to die, start wearing bolder, brighter scarves with brighter tops under your jacket. Your hair can be freshly dyed, your lipstick can get brighter and your blush more dominant. Shoes can turn from boots to slip-on’s and then segway into flip-slops.

Seamless transitions are part of a true fashionable person’s talents. And making it a smooth one isn’t as easy as it may seem. Still, without the transition it will seem as if you jumped from a winter catalog directly into a spring one without any real thought to the middle ground.

Jan

10

Winter Shades

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Sunglasses in winter seems like an illogical fashion choice, like wearing sunglasses indoors, but believe it or not there are great reasons for both activities. Rappers and other musicians wear sunglasses inside to block some of the harsh glare from stage lights and the constant flash of photography. Not so silly, after all. And with darker shades like the Carrera men’s shades or the dark Prada and Dior that women celebrities wear on stage, pros are sure to keep their eyes protected. In winter, the glare is harsher, shade is less available, and the sun reflects off snow and ice to extremely damaging results. Sunglasses indoors and in winter is, in the end, a smart choice. So join the celebrities and slip into your Serengeti sunglasses all winter.

Here are a few tips to picking your winter shades. First, you’ll want to go a bit darker than normal with the lens tinting. We’re talking dark brown to black. Especially in winter. If you can get polarized lenses on your glasses so you don’t forget them when you go outdoors that’s smart, but one of the problems in winter is peripheral glare, so form-fitting or wrap-around sunglasses are actually the best bet for winter. We’re talking huge Carreras or something sporty and snug, like your Nike or Adidas.

Second, you’ll want a material that doesn’t get too cold. Plastic is better for holding your warmth to your face than metal would be. Frames like Ray Bans or Serengetti shades may not be the best choice, for one because of gradient or lighting tinting, but also because of the thin metal frames. You’re not getting much in the way of coverage for your face or keeping yourself warm in the coldest months unless you go big, go thick and go plastic.

Jan

6

Men who Know Fashion

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Some men have good fashion sense, most of them simply play copy-cat with the stars they see on TV or their favorite musician, or even more terrifying, they copy the Brawny man. Check out the recent Rolling Stone Magazine image of Zach Galifanakis. This isn’t exactly a look many people could pull off, but as a comedian he is allotted a certain amount of odd leeway. These Tom Ford – Carter shades are a bit too John Lennon for most, but Zach manages to pull it off using his super serious persona, the one he uses throughout Hangover. We suspect that hippies, and those with gauged ears would adore these Tom Ford shades, but that the majority of folks will find them too goggle-like. Still, for unique, male fashion Zach is getting high marks.

It’s hard to do a roundup of great male fashion without mentioning Brad Pitt. He was launched into the big time seemingly overnight, and his decision to pair up with Angelina Jolie made him half of the most powerful celebrity couple in Hollywood. We’re not sure if he is dressing himself or else has a team of experts, but Brad hardly ever makes a mistake with his wardrobe. We’ve seen him in Tom Fords, Dita, D-Squared, Prada, and even Versace. And his recent foray with Police sunglasses proved successful and sexy, even for a middle-aged man.

Daniel Craig is another celebrity who isn’t caught on camera, ever, without looking primped and cool. We’re talking James Bond 24/7 with this guy. It’s all creased shirts, clean jeans and shoes that match his belt and, we’re betting, his wallet too. This guy was a born looker, and although he has a bit of a rough side we think the fashionable side emerges more prominent.

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