Consultants Are Honest to a Fault for Best Results
A ll humans believe they possess two essential traits: good taste and a sense of humor. But Pat Buchanan and green polyester golf slacks with little pink whales on them continue to exist.
With that in mind, we both figured we could use a bit of good wardrobe advice from the pros, if for no other reason than to confirm our own, ahem, impeccable clothes sense. We handed over our bodies, and here’s what the experts came up with:
HE: I’m glad I did this, but the experience reminded me a bit of an essay I read years ago about a man’s first visit to a Savile Row tailor, during which the tailor darted around with a measuring tape calling out fitting instructions to another tailor with a pen and a ledger: “Stoop! Pot! Hunch!”
If you’re not a C&R; model, you’ve got to be willing to hear about your physical faults, because the idea is to camouflage them.
Fortunately, Lorri Joyce, the manager of the men’s furnishings department at Neiman Marcus in Fashion Island Newport Beach, made the honesty pretty painless. I showed up wearing a dark blue double-breasted suit, and I was glad to know that she approved of the choice. It was, she said, appropriate for my body type and coloring: medium height, long-waisted, gray-haired, built vaguely like a fireplug (that last description is my own; Joyce was more delicate).
SHE: I had on a tailored black St. John one-button jacket with matching straight skirt when I met with Billur Wallerich, a fashion consultant with Neiman Marcus. My only jewelry was a gold cuff necklace and simple stud earrings.
Billur told me my streamlined look was correct because I have a slim, petite figure--”continue to avoid too much material,” she advised--and lots of personality ( my , consultants are nice). She told me to steer clear of bulky, shiny accessories. “The more personality you have,” she said, “the less ornamentation you need.”
HE: For the most part, I tend not to be a flamboyant dresser, so I was happy to hear that this native conservatism will serve me well. Natural lines in my suits, moderate shoulders, a longer jacket cut to accentuate my long-waistedness (that’s right; Joyce said it looks better accented), and fairly monochromatic basic colors rather than bold patterns and lumpy, bulky, highly defined tweeds.
The short explanation is that because my body isn’t sleek, my clothes should be.
SHE: When Billur and I began to discuss fashion in general, we agreed that too often people use clothing to make statements about who they are. They’ll toss on a ton of diamonds and a cloud of fur to tell you they’re successful.
Or they’ll don hard-edged power suits day after day so you’ll know they’re The Boss. Wrong, wrong, wrong. People should be who they are and let their clothing follow. The idea is to be true to good taste, not overwhelm.
For example: Barbra Streisand sweeps into a gala filled with women in organza, glitz and feathers. What is she wearing? “Probably an elegant tuxedo look,” Billur says. “She is a mega-personality, so she needs only to wear the simplest and most streamlined creation. I mean, can you see Streisand in a froufrou gown?”
HE: We touched on that idea as well, with an added turn: You can’t let someone else dress you. Just as, psychologically, you have to be comfortable in your skin to be happy, so you have to be comfortable in your clothes to feel at ease.
If your friends, your wife, your girlfriend, your co-workers think you’d look great in, say, bright silk print shirts or cowboy boots and you’re a cotton broadcloth-and-Weejuns kind of guy, you’ve got to stick to your guns.
So, naturally, I rebelled when Joyce suggested that I’d look fine in a spread-collared shirt, possibly in yellow. I’d always been told that if you had a round face you wore nothing but long collar points, and if your hair was gray you’d look hideous in yellow.
Not so, she said. A large tie knot would mitigate the spread collar, and yellow is OK with gray hair as long as you’ve got color in your face. My complexion is fairly ruddy, so I could get away with it. I’m still not ready to embrace those garments yet, but, heck, she’s a pro. I’m thinking about it.
SHE: Things really got juicy when Billur talked about the mistakes people make when they dress.
The worst thing I could do, she said, would be to wear ruffled, busy clothing, multicolor separates, or bold prints. “Since you go out a lot (as a society reporter for The Times), you should wear tailored, finished clothes. You don’t want that ‘Look-at-me!’ silhouette, but you do want a classic outfit that reflects your position.”
In general, women blow it with bad haircuts and poorly kept shoes, Billur said. “So many women have a mass of hair--their security blanket--with no shape, or a shag cut. The shag went out with the flood.
“Give a woman a good haircut and a good, decently maintained pair of shoes, and she’ll be well on her way to looking terrific. I mean, how many times have you looked at a woman and noticed her shoes were scuffed and her heels were worn? It kills everything.”
HE: I was happy to hear that there were still such things as truly classic men’s clothes. I brought up Cary Grant as an example, and everybody nodded and smiled. ‘Nuff said.
SHE: I was surprised to hear that the fashion dictums expressed by John Molloy a decade or so ago are out. “Career women have given up the uniform ,” Billur said. “The dress-for-success look--constant use of the masculine suit--is out. Things are not that rigid now.” Women have more confidence. They are relaxing a bit.
