It is one thing to do a style transformation with the perfect dress, heels, make-up, haircut and a limitless budget of time and money. It’s much harder to maintain a sense of style daily when you’ve had 5 hours sleep and 15 minutes to get ready. Most of us need an assortment of affordable throw-it-on-in-2-minutes outfits that make us feel stylish, fabulous and comfortable.

This is where I come in, because I have the same needs as you. I’m a fashion stylist and every day I deal with real people with real bodies who lead real lives. I studied Psychology and Fashion Design and have 16 years of international mileage in the fashion industry. I love to use that experience to help people feel good about how they look and what they wear. I firmly believe that style is not a size, age or designer label. It’s about dressing well for the life, body and budget that you have with conviction and confidence.

Along with my style consulting business and my work at Dress for Success, youlookfab is big part of how I like to spread the word that looking fab is not hard to do. Like wardrobes, websites need updates too, so we’ve updated the design of our site and added a few new features to make it a more effective resource. Here are the changes in a nutshell:

• My blog: the formula stays the same, with a few tweaks that make the header more useful by giving quick access to the most sought after information. I’ll continue to blog daily on how we can all achieve and maintain a tangible sense of style affordably and practically.
• Other blogs: There are many great fashion and style blogs out there in the blogosphere – too many to list in the already-cramped sidebar. So we’re maintaining a selection of blogs on a seperate page. If you have a blog and would like to see it in this list, just let us know. If you fit one of the categories, we’ll link to you – no strings attached.
• Cheat sheets: Blog entries are our bread and butter, but from time to time I’ve wished that I could go into more detail, or cover a topic more comprehensively. Cheat Sheets will allow me to do this. Each one will help you to dress for a special occasion, put together a certain look, or adapt one of the new trends to your lifestyle and body type. I’ve made a start with the Summer Day Wedding and will grow the list over time.

The designer/developer bloke behind the site assures me that things are ready for prime time, but no doubt we’ll experience a few hiccups after the transition. If you see something odd or broken, or if you just have a suggestion, please leave us a comment. Thanks for visiting our site and remember to keep those fashion feet moving… there isn’t a style or fashion challenge we can’t solve together!

I work with a plus-sized gal who dresses extremely well. I’m always excited to see her sport ultra-trendy styles appropriately and effortlessly. Her favourite look at the moment is a comfy and superbly flattering knee length printed jersey dress worn over leggings. She finishes off this ensemble with patent accessories and funky specs. So fab! She truly understands fashion and adapts an “of the moment” trend to her body type very effectively.

I recently asked her where she likes to shop and she told me about a super new on-line site: b & lu. She’s been very impressed by their fit, quality and prices (we’re talking $60 for a jersey dress and $30 if it’s on sale). They offer their items in sizes 14-30 and even ship internationally. Remember ladies… style is beyond size.

I have been preaching my perfect pants length mantra for as long as I can remember because it’s a fashion faux pas that I feel especially strongly about. While the default perfect pants length (when hems skim the surface of the ground) works beautifully for boot-cuts, flares and wide-legged pants and jeans; it won’t work for skinnies, tapered-legs and super straight-leg pants and jeans. Narrow pant-leg openings scrunch at the ankle and over your heels instead of skimming the surface of the ground no matter how long their in-seam. It’s therefore fab to wear these types of long pants ankle length. This is an acceptable and ultra fashion forward look. And thus far the only exception to my very rigid rule.

Skinnies and tapered pants are stylishly acceptable ankle length.

“Vanity sizing” is a term for the industry’s practice of inflating the dimensions associated with a particular size tag over time. What was considered an American size 8 a decade ago will pass for a size 4 today. Size inflation becomes more extreme the further back in time we go. Marilyn Monroe’s voluptuous size 12 body would probably fit into the equivalent of what we know as a size 6 today.

How this phenomenon started is anyone’s guess. It is thought that vanity sizing is “designed to satisfy the buyer’s wish to appear thin“. This boosts self esteem and thereby ensures the sale of a garment. Designers and manufacturers were quick to realize that there was money to be made by satisfying perceived insecurities.

The increasing dimensions of garments have subsequently caused retailers to introduce additional size designations at the low end of their size ranges (0, 00, or subzero sizes). This is hilarious! Next thing you know, a healthy size 8 will be wearing  a size 0 and a tiny size 0 will be in a size marked “negative 8”.  At the end of the day, there is no getting away from the fact that we live in a fashion world in which smaller clothing sizes are an obsession.

If you’d like to learn more about vanity sizing, Wikipedia is a good place to find related articles. What are your thoughts on downsizing size tags as a way of fooling us into a false sense of security?