Don’t let the ice and mince pies ruin your look
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You don’t need us to tell you it’s cold right now, but Bristol24-7′s Clothes Doctor will help you face the weather in style, whatever unpredictable conditions prevail.
Plus, how to dress to hide the wobbles that somehow appeared after eating those extra mince pies…
Dear Clothes Doctor,
I’m fatter than a pregnant hippo. It’s all my fault — I ate myself silly at Christmas and now I’m living to regret it. Please help me look better until I can get to a gym and really do something about it.
Zara, Redland
Dear Zara,
How I sympathise. I have the exact same problem — but you wouldn’t know it because I’ve learned to hide the (I hope temporary) bulges and continue to sport a reasonably svelte silhouette, accessorised by a perky smile to dazzle or irritate, depending on your temperament.
Sometimes — particularly in deepest January — strategic concealment really is the only way to go. Fight the urge to pile on extreme quantities of wool…the only things allowed to do that ought to be born with merino already in situ. By the way, please take a peek at my last column for some pertinent suggestions for layering your outfit stylishly and not sheepishly.
Now: the big idea, when you’ve deemed one part of you personage unfit for human scrutiny, is to confuse any critical eyes. So choose tops that stop attractively at your delightful bosom; or, conversely, which shimmy on safely down past the danger zone to your thighs. In other words, wear sweet little bolero jackets or A-line tunics with aplomb, with ultra-plain black stuff on underneath, and leave the waist-cinchers until you’ve become re-acquainted with the running machine in May.
Alternatively, try a fancy new haircut and think of the investment as money well spent: even if it goes horribly wrong, nobody will be looking at your spare tyre.
Dear Clothes Doctor,
I’m always in the wrong clothes at the wrong moment. I blame English weather, because when it’s hot I seem to only have thick jeans to wear, whilst in the snow I was caught out with no suitable footwear.
How can I dress right for changeable weather?
Jane, Clifton Village
Dear Jane,
Hmm. Unless you’re prone to putting on those weird faux-jungle trousers that, with a smug ‘zzz sound’, unzip to become equally vile shorts, it’s almost impossible to wear a set of clothes that suit the weather from the dawn of one English day to dusk.
Far better to clad yourself in something light and comfortable because, let’s face it, westerners are pampered creatures seldom without central heating. Don’t start the day angry and boiling beneath — if you’re, say, Terry Wogan – a strangulating polo-neck, or you’ll regret it halfway through your first office meeting.
If you get chilly, says someone patently not a rocket scientist, put something else on, to cover the following areas in descending order of importance: torso (natural-fibre tank top, thin jumper or short cardi); head (soft beanie) and hands (fingerless gloves — see polo-neck and angriness for why it’s best not to wear big mittens). And if you think I’m hammering home the obvious, then observe the number of hip young chaps in straw trilbies whose brains cryogenically freeze on the way to work…because hats, gloves and assorted warming garments are emphatically not created equal.
Shoe-wise, this is the one time of year I’ll succumb to wellies disguised weirdly as things like leather riding boots or Dr Marten’s-type affairs. You don’t want trench foot in the lunch queue. Keep a pair of shoes under your desk: I know, I know, OCD is creeping over Dr Fashion, but you’ll thank me when someone asks you on a date and you’re spared the indignity of topping off a svelte suit with jelly-bean covered wellingtons.
Finally, take a red-hot tip from Trevor, my postman: he’s got actual chains on his shoes and he never, ever slips on the ice while delivering my parcels from Fortnum & Mason — how uber-cool is that man?
If you would like your fashion dilemma answered, please write to clothesdoctor@bristol247.com. If your question is published, you’ll get £10!
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