By: Sheanneen Shelby
Obviously, the blanket statement in this article's title does not encapsulate everyone. That is always going to be impossible; however, there are trends with every generation. People who experience childhood and adolescence simultaneously will have things in common. This is true even if the people have polar opposite experiences in every other regard.
Why do I spend so much time on this point? It’s because this article will cause you to dig a little deep and ask yourself some hard questions. Who am I to have you ask them? I am the fat girl in the back of the room who has a ton of knowledge on fit and proportions but spent most of her life getting passed up for fashion opportunities.
So instead of becoming completely defeated, I sat and listened while no one cared that I was in the room.
If you’re over 30, you have probably, at one point or another, had a question about clothing and fit. It may have concerned your body type, color palette, shopping in general, or your current wardrobe.
It might have simply concerned the fact the size that you have consistently been surprisingly no longer fits you. It has been impossible not to notice the current shift in inconsistent sizing, product quality, the influx of fast-fashion, and the call for individuals to shop more sustainably.
This an interesting rock and hard place because as females we are expected in our society to intrinsically know the answers to all these questions that were never NEEDED to know until the last five years.
This skill doesn’t really get addressed with our generations though because it is viewed that knowing how to dress your body is an intrinsic skill of being a woman, no excuses. Asking questions about how to dress or even re-thinking how you currently dress is not permitted.
This is why most of us just shop at the same places for longer and longer and branch out occasionally for inconsistent results. Even though before vanity sizing exploded via online shopping, you could shop without your measurements or knowledge of your body shape, and it did not take all day to find what you need.
No longer is this the case. Shopper’s anxiety is at an all-time high. People hate the term, but all it means is that you go shopping with the negative feeling that the session is not going to end well. This often leads to people, especially women over 30, avoiding shopping entirely.
Even though the fashion community still makes me incredibly nervous because of how I have been treated over time, I do have a ton of knowledge when it comes to the consumer (I’ve styled over 3,100 people throughout my career) and the exponential decline of the consumer experience that the fashion industry blatantly, sometimes audaciously ignores.
“How do they do this?” you may ask. I have experience in marketing and in the past, they simply accomplished this by shifting trends and societal expectations every 5-10 years and hitting “pain points.”
We are mean to ourselves, and we need to stop it! This deep insecurity has been cultivated because it is lucrative. If we were truly content with ourselves, we wouldn’t feel the need to purchase items to “fix” ourselves.
Almost every beauty or fashion ad has this undercurrent message: “You don’t want to be ugly, do you? You don’t want to be fat, do you? You want to belong. You want to be wanted?” so buy this (insert product). The “ugly” and “fat” are pain points. Those are obvious ones. Because everyone is on the internet now where data is collected while you stream and browse, if you’re online, the pain points are way more subtle and hit way deeper.
When I was in my 20s, I worked out too hard with two jobs, a 5-day workout schedule, and a full-time college schedule. I had no idea that if epilepsy ran in your family calorie deprivation could trigger a grand mal seizure while I was driving. They were going to take out a chunk of the creative side of my brain (left side) and I wanted to go out swinging if I lost it. I spent this time also styling at Dress for Success and cementing my styling business.
One of the things that I discovered shocked me. I styled all genders, but when I would style women over 30 almost every session would start with the female insulting herself within the first 60 seconds of the start of the session.
This led me to start doing some research. I spoke to as many women as I could about their style after revealing that I was a stylist. I had no idea how excited they would be to speak with me. It didn’t matter what size they were, most the women I spoke to had many things in common.
Almost everyone had some sort of issue with the way they looked. They also shared some sort of issue with fitting different types of garments to their unique proportions. It didn’t matter if they were a size 00 model or a size 32W.
Only a tiny percentage of the thousands that I spoke to knew their measurements. These women usually modeled or made their clothes. This is terrible because knowing your measurements is the single most powerful tool that you have for shopping efficiently and accurately.
Also, your measurements are concrete data that can hold a vendor accountable for a product that has not been constructed properly. Feelings of shame keep you in the dark and allow vendors to distribute anything they want to you. The result, most likely, is you blaming yourself for no reason.
There are apps out there like 3DMM (3D Measure Me) that keep your data secret, and it makes it possible for you to have every measurement that you could ever need. It is not the newest app with the cleanest interface, but the raw data is accurate. This makes buying things like pants online a breeze.
Body shape is another huge thing to learn about your body. This is because even if you only utilize the techniques of basic shape knowledge with work wear, you will experience positive results from it. The core strategy behind body shape techniques is to create visual balance in your body shape by wearing different styles and colors for your specific body type.
This is because the human eye has been trained to favor balanced things. Things that we purchase or endorse tend to be balanced and symmetrical. Beds, coaches, stoves, cars… The list goes on forever.
The one last thing that I’ll mention in this blog is a color palette. Knowing your skin’s undertones is so important because you can age yourself by a decade or more just by wearing a color that’s not friendly to your skin tone. It can even create bags under your eyes. If this doesn’t matter to you, huzzah!
But most of us would like to glow for as long as we can. The app Dressika allows you to take a pic by a window of natural light and upload it for a free skin tone analysis. The app also allows you to upload online pics to see how compatible a garment is with your skin tone. It will even give you a percentage match on how close the garment is to matching your palette.
Hopefully, this blog made you feel more comfortable asking questions.
Once you discover what shape you are, please feel free to download My Fashion Support's “How to Dress Your Body Type with Confidence Guide.” It’s a free guide that answers many of the questions clients have asked me throughout my career.
My goal now as a stylist is to take all of the knowledge that I have acquired over the years and use it to, help you learn how to combine all of these tools so that they feel like second nature, and have them help you accomplish your style goals with an inherent boost of confidence.
This is key because women only tend to wear about 20% of their wardrobes in the same combinations.
With us, you can even ask a Fashion Stylist questions for free with our “Free Style Confidence Consultation.”
Until next time, may your shopping be easy and stress-free!
Link: “How to Dress Your Body Type with Confidence Guide.”:
Link: "Free Style Confidence Consultation"
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