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Step away from the fanny pack |
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Written by asap
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Friday, 03 November 2006 |
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They've been dishing out no-nonsense fashion advice to the Brits for years.
Now Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine, former hosts of the BBC's original "What Not to Wear," are calling America out.
In their new book, "Trinny and Susannah Take on America: What Your Clothes Say About You," Constantine and Woodall reveal 12 of our common "style crimes" — the middle-aged woman who wears a baby tee showing a slither of flesh, the tomboy who lives in men's jeans and baggy sweatshirts, the flashy woman who doesn't realize a zebra-patterned top and bright orange purse just don't go together.
They assess what those styles communicate about each woman and then give them the Susannah and Trinny treatment, encouraging her to change how she looks and feels without compromising who she is. The approach can be harsh — the duo have been known to tell women they look terrible — but the results are usually flattering.
asap spoke to Constantine and Woodall about our fashion challenges and what we can do remedy them.
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asap: Let's start with America fashion vs. British fashion. What's the difference?
Woodall: Fashion is not so different from England because for us it's about how much pressure a woman is under to feel influenced by fashion. So if you are in a metropolis, whether it's New York or London, every day you're on the street with women — you have every reason to compare yourself to other people. So I think the pressure is very strong there to realize you are making a mistake or to feel you need to keep up.
And then the further out you go, so if we were in England in the countryside or you were in Utah, that sense of pressure to make an effort as a woman is less. And we do find having done the "Oprah" show when a woman was living in what we would call "in the sticks," she would have more of a uniform that was safe. We had one woman who had 28 pairs of Dungarees and that's all she wore.
asap: I know there are some fashion mistakes that are more American. What are some of them?
Constantine: Women who dress very, very brightly, very loud. The British are a little bit more reserved in that way. And while we kind of celebrate the wearing of color — we think it's fantastic and it's so wonderful when you see a woman wearing color well. The kind of woman we're talking about is wearing every animal from the jungle, the parrot, the leopard and the zebra.
And then the other lady who wears the tracky bottoms with the big cotton top or big man's T-shirt who is basically just hiding her figure completely and is just wearing clothes because she has to.
asap: What about the Baby Boomer who is dressing like a teenager?
Woodall: I think she's another one — she had her height of her sexuality in the early 70s. She was like a hippie child and she hasn't moved on. She still wears hippy clothes, long hippy hair, but she might be 50 or 60. And she's doing that flower child moment. She finds it very difficult to be a sexy modern woman because her sense of sexuality when she found her sexual freedom was very much a certain way of dressing.
asap: The thing is, clothes are modeled on these stick thin figures. So then we go and try them on, and they don't look good. How do we get around that?
Constantine: I think you have to look past fashion really. Yes we all want to be fashionable. But it's not about fashion. It's about showing off your assets and hiding what you don't like about your body. You can take elements of fashion. So someone in a leopard print coat, you can think, "That's actually going to make most people look huge unless you're teeny teeny weeny. So I'm going to get the handbag, or I'm going to get the shoes."
asap: How does a woman find her look?
Woodall: She has got to understand her body. Standing naked in a mirror, you'll never look thinner because so many women dress, and they look bigger when they dress. So it's saying "OK, what do I love about my body? Love my cleavage. I don't like my legs. I like my arms." Really cherishing what you love and then saying, "OK my ass is big. My saddlebags are big, so now I always have to look at clothes that will hide what I don't like and really show off what I like."
Every woman needs to have something they love, and tragically you find quite a few women, you ask that question, and they can't come up with anything.
asap: Sometimes we have a hard time finding something about our body that we DO like.
Constantine: If you are the kind of woman who looks in the mirror and just goes, "I hate myself," then I think it's important to get an objective opinion from a friend. Because so often if you are feeling terrible about yourself, you can't hear the compliments. So it's really trusting the person you are with and saying, "My friend has told me I've got an amazing décolleté, I've got beautiful wrists, great ankles, and I am going to show them off."
asap: Who is doing this fashion thing right?
Woodall: Someone like Christie Brinkley. She wears styles that suit her. They might be 10 years old — the dresses, or she might have bought them yesterday. And you don't quite know where they are from. You don't look at her and think she's so "Charlie's Angels" from the 80s. She has kind of moved on, where some of the younger girls who are all dressed by perhaps the same person might feel they lost their sense of individuality. They are all so obsessively following one look or one quirky, vintage-y short dress. I don't find it aspirational.
Constantine: On a lot of the stars — it's so obvious they haven't listened to themselves, they have listened to their stylists. Where is the old-fashioned Hollywood glamour? As soon as you know that a stylist has dressed someone, it loses something.
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Megan Scott is an asap reporter.
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