Who is she? Amy Smilovic is the founder and creative director of the brand Tibi.

Why am I talking about her? Through a few recent articles I realized she has produced a huge amount of content in the form of style classes. I was intrigued.

What is her point of view? In a nutshell, she rethought her 25 year old brand a few years ago, and has decided that all the pieces should be made for herself and her fellow creative pragmatists (basically women of a certain socio/economic class that want to look NYC cool, or as she says chill, if I may summarize and over-generalize).

What are her lessons about? She has created a LOT of jargon to describe her system which is based on the idea of Without Fails (WOFs aka Essentials), In and Outers (more trend driven pieces), and Had to Haves (aka wildcards). She is literally on lesson 31 of season 3, so I cannot possibly summarize everything she says in one post, but want to highlight a few styling ideas that intrigued me.

Rule of three - This is a classic design principle but she gives many examples of how more or less than three design elements in a piece, or more or less than three attention grabbing elements in an outfit, doesn't work. LJP has mentioned this as helping her, and I also find it an interesting way to look at an outfit. BUT I am not sold on her way of counting three elements and also see a lot of outfits with a lot more going on that I like.

Juxtaposition - This is obviously not a new idea, and Angie has highlighted this fundamental concept in modern styling many times, but she has a few specific twists including thinking about the antonym of the vibe of your pieces when you feel your outfit is off. So if you want your outfits to be modern, classic and chill (the official Tibi style goal), and your outfit looks too classic you try to add a very modern shoe. If it looks too uptight you add a very relaxed element. I find this more helpful than the rule of three although my style goals are different.

Skin Sandwich - A big no-no in the Tibiverse! This seems to refer to showing skin both on the bottom and top of your outfit - so for example a low neckline and cropped pants with sandals. I say whaaaaat? I wear this all the time.
(The outfit below was made with these principles in mind.)

In short, I find these and many of her other ideas interesting as tools not rules. So if I am looking at an outfit and want to know why I don't like it, or even to analyze why I do like it, I find these ideas interesting and am very curious to know what you all think.

(She has a lot of interesting thoughts on color - basically this is the tip of the iceberg - but this post is long enough already .)