Memo to Katie: Find a look and stick with it

In 15 years, Katie Couric’s hair has been in a pixie cut and a flip, blond, brunet and everything in between, bangs swept neatly to the side, gelled into rock star spikes and teased into something resembling a dinner roll.

She’s worn men’s suspenders and sugary sweet twin sets, tablecloth check jackets with shoulder pads the size of a linebacker’s and waist-nipping hourglass suits more appropriate for a cocktail party than a televised coffee klatch. But rarely has she worn anything that didn’t leave this viewer choking on her Cheerios.

Never before has there been such a stunning display of a lack of personal style as Katie Couric on the “Today” show. On Wednesday’s farewell episode, roughly six minutes were devoted to her look(s) through the years. If there was any constant in the kaleidoscopic montage, it was that her skirts got shorter and her tan faker, which says something about what Couric thinks it takes to stay on TV past age 40. Without any consistent style, she evolved into an easily digestible caricature -- a toothy grin and a great pair of always-bare legs, which suited the show’s ever more mindless content just fine.

Hairstylist Jonathan Antin of the Bravo series “Blow Out” noted that Couric has been a “trendsetter” and that more women had come to him over the years for her haircuts than for Madonna’s. Maybe because over the years Couric has had every haircut known to man, but more likely because viewers see her every day. She is a style icon by default, which makes her lack of it all the worse.

Couric wore 3,500 outfits during her tenure on the show and countless more during public appearances. She never employed a stylist, according to her publicist Matthew Hiltzik, but she could have used the help. One wonders why Couric didn’t recognize the power of personal style in the workplace, especially this workplace? It is a signature as important as good grammar or speech. And regardless of whether you are working in a business that relies on Q scores, it is part of creating one’s brand. Having one knockout haircut, an always-present cuff bracelet or a penchant for beige pants suits are visual cues that translate into confidence, self-awareness, dependability and vision.

Couric’s most elementary fashion mistake was that she never met a color she didn’t like. Carole Jackson’s “Color Me Beautiful” books fell out of favor before Couric started her morning tour of duty. Still, she could have learned something from them. Any expert will tell you that not every color looks good on everyone. The most basic rule of style is to pick a color suited to your skin tone, or at least a palette, and stick to it.

The same goes for hairstyles. Couric barely gave one a chance before snip-snipping into another. How much more confidence and wisdom would she have conveyed if she had settled into a style for a few months at least?

A tomboy, a siren, a mother-of-the-bride, a happy homemaker -- every morning it felt like Couric was playing dress up. A professional stylist might have suggested that she find a fashion identity by creating an inspiration book with magazine and catalog cutouts, even a few photos of role models. Is Katie the kind of woman who wears pearls or a man’s tie, dangling earrings or studs? These are questions she could have asked herself.

But fashion has always been a sticky wicket for women climbing the corporate ladder: You have to care about it, but you shouldn’t appear to care too much. (And, in fact, Couric regularly admitted to being clueless about clothes.) Her dilemma, deciding how to dress to impress millions of viewers every day, isn’t unlike the dilemma all women face when they stand in front of their closets in their underwear every morning. Whether it’s right or not, women are judged by their appearance, and even choosing not to care about what you wear is a deliberate choice. Men don’t have the same issue. From one morning to the next, one can hardly tell if Matt Lauer has changed clothes. A suit is a suit is a suit.

Some have whispered that Couric debuted her latest look at the urging of her boyfriend, Tom Werner. She started adding blond highlights to her hair, wearing sleeveless shirts to show off her toned arms, playing up her legs with shorter skirts and heels and her decolletage with dangling earrings that draw the eye downward. The result was always overwrought and overdone. Next to the subdued Ann Curry, she stuck out like a peacock. Some pundits even suggested Couric’s look contributed to the show’s declining ratings.

On the farewell show, she wore a striped Dana Buchman circle skirt and a white, wasp-waisted Giorgio Armani jacket with a plunging neckline -- more Stepford wife than serious CBS anchorwoman, which she will soon be. After the wardrobe segment, she seemed embarrassed, pleading with her colleagues, “Why wasn’t there someone saying, ‘No, no, you can’t go out like that’?”

But the truth is, Katie, that someone should have been you.