The Art of Flattery: Use These Tricks to Elevate your Style

At My True Style, we believe fashion should be an act of self-expression, not a rigid set of rules. You can – and should – be your own stylist! While we don’t love prescriptive style guides, knowing a few key principles about colour and fit can radically elevate how you shop and ensure you only bring home pieces you absolutely love wearing.

Know your colours

You can use a colour season analysis theory, but knowing the principles can be enough to elevate how you shop. The 3 dimensions to consider are:

• Contrast
• Saturation
• Hue

An extreme example of contrast would be black hair and pale skin. Hair and skin tones that are similar to each other are low contrast. At My True Style, we’ don’t we’re pretty rebellious when it comes to fashion and we don’t love rules. What’s most important, is whether you like yourself in High or Low contrast clothing. We love black. Do you love YOU in black? Be your own stylist.

Saturation refers to the vibrancy. Do you prefer yourself in muted tones or bright and bold colours? Examine how your skin looks in these. Look for dullness, shadows, yellowing and pink pigmentation. This should give you an idea of what level of saturation you feel great in and what makes you feel ‘meh’.

And lastly, hue. This refers to how warm or cool your skin is and will affect which colours you will find more flattering. Red is not just red! It can be cool or warm and different reds will be more flattering on different people. You might have the experience of loving how you felt in a particular colour and then buying something else, thinking it was in the same colour, but it turns out the hue or saturation was slightly off and you don’t feel the same in it at all!

On the Left is an example of a warmer red and to the right is a cooler red. You will also notice that the left is more saturated than the right.

So in summary, when shopping, consider the colours and whether you love how YOU look in them, not whether you liked them on your style icon – for whom they look totally different on!

Know Your Shape

There are three key aspects to your shape that will impact which clothes you like to wear and which styles should stay on the rack. These dimensions are:

• Short/tall
• Broad/narrow
• Curvy/angular

This will affect the cuts and shapes of the clothes you enjoy the silhouettes of on your body. This will also impact what kind of fabrics you like to wear. Examine the cuts of items that you love. Look at the hemlines and necklines and see if you can identify what it is you find flattering about them. It’s not about right or wrong, but about honouring your preferences and finding what you like on yourself. One person with broad shoulders might love structured suits that emphasize that feature and make them feel bold, powerful and striking, while another might feel bulky and uncomfortable in how that falls on her.

Try Before You Buy

This leans back to the aforementioned point that in the artificial lights of the shop floor, an item might look like it’s the same colour as something else in your wardrobe, but you won’t know until you try it on. It also takes a lot of experience to understand the the shape from on the hanger – a skill probably reserved for designers and stylist.

Think of Outfits When You Buy

If you are buying a singular item, do a mental check of what you plan to wear it with. Sometimes it can be a good idea if you know ahead, for example, that you need a sweater for a particular pair of jeans; to wear those jeans shopping or take them with you in your bag to cross reference. Another option is to download a wardrobe Ap, so that you can look on your phone for what you can wear with it.

Let Go

Make space, both physically and psychologically, for what you actually love. Follow the Marie Kondo method: if it doesn’t spark joy, donate it and hopefully it will end up in the hands of someone who will.