Clinton Kelly, the cheeky cohost of TLC’s popular show What Not to Wear, offers detailed and entertaining critiques of six of women’s top style mistakes and practical suggestions for fixing them. From his book Oh No She Didn’t, a delightful mix of hilarious dish and expert fashion advice
GAP IN THE BACK
The most common alteration I do for my clients, besides hemming pants and sleeves, is fixing Gap in the Back, a problem of which you are all too aware if you carry your weight in your hips and/or rump but have a relatively small waist. Yes, it’s a drag when things don’t fit perfectly off the rack, but that doesn’t mean you should settle. People with great style don’t settle! When I see a woman who has chosen to walk around with all that extra room in the back of her pants, I wonder why she doesn’t make good use of it — you know, treat it as a marsupial-esque ass-pouch for storing her belongings, like a turkey sandwich and a romance novel.
Gap in the Back is really nothing to get yourself worked up about. When you find pants that fit you beautifully everywhere except in the waist, buy the damn things. Then find someone who knows how to sew. A small gap can be fixed with a little nip in the center of the waistband. A larger gap can be closed with two darts on the waistband, one over each butt cheek. When you get the pants back — voilà — they’ll fit and you’ll feel silly for whining about how pants never fit you.
FIDGETING
You can be wearing the cutest freakin’ outfit in the whole world, but you’ll look a helluva lot less beautiful if you spend half the night adjusting your bra straps and picking a wedgie out of your butt.
People with True Style:
- Wear flattering clothes
- Behave appropriately
- Exude confidence
Fidgeting or fussing with a garment is a sign that something doesn’t fit (that’s strike number one) or that you don’t have the confidence or composure to successfully pull off the look you’re trying to achieve (strikes two and three).
If it’s a question of fit, you must determine the reason the garment doesn’t stay put — and fix it. Is your skirt riding up your thighs? It’s probably too tight. Maybe it can be let out. If not, you need to let it go. Does your strapless dress keep sliding down the boobies? Well, if you have to hoist it up every two minutes, the bodice is too loose! So have it taken in. Or, here’s a brilliant idea, wear a dress with straps next time. Whatever the reason, figure it out and do something about it.
If you’re fidgeting due to a lack of confidence, it might be because you haven’t found your true style just yet. But I’ll give you a piece of advice: Confidence can be faked. Just take a deep breath, relax, smile, and be in the moment. Before long, you won’t have to fake it anymore. Or you can just take a beta-blocker. Your choice.
GIVEAWAY AND SLOGANED T-SHIRTS
You walked a 5K. Congratu-freakin’-lations. How about you just tell people you strolled the hopping 3.125 miles instead of wearing the free, one-size-fits-all cotton tee they gave you at the finish line.
You attended a huge family reunion and your third cousin-in-law made a commemorative shirt. News flash: Nobody gives a rat’s ass.
Your parents went to Aruba and all you got was this lousy T-shirt. That is so funny. Tell your parents you’re going to wear that shirt the day you check them into the nursing home.
Whether you were given a T-shirt or had a momentary brain fart and bought one, I urge you to really think about: a. what it’s doing for your body — probably nothing good — and, b. what it says about you — probably that you don’t have one original thought rattling around in that brain of yours.
Are there funny statement tees in the world? Sure. Are there well-made ones? Yeah. Are there well-fitting ones? You betcha. But the vast majority — we’re talking 99.99 percent of all sloganed or giveaway T-shirts — are lame-o, unflattering, and of poor quality.
Oh, one more thing: If you think it’s funny to walk around in public wearing a T-shirt detailing the twenty-seven ways you can use the F-word, you are a loser and should be sterilized.
OUTDATED PATTERNS
If you were house hunting and you found one with an avocado green refrigerator, a pink toilet, and a bunch of brass trim, you’d probably laugh about it later with friends. Well, I do the same thing when I see a woman wearing chintz, except I don’t wait until later. It’s like Tourette’s — I can’t help it.
Outdated patterns make you look out of touch with society and can age you at least a decade. Of course, retro patterns often become trendy, but they’re usually done in modern cuts and in modern fabrics. More often, over the course of any given decade or so, prints will develop a general feeling to them. For example, in the recent past, florals have trended away from looking like literal renditions of flowers and moved toward the abstract. And painterly prints have been gaining popularity.*
To look modern you have to shop on a regular basis in trendy stores and occasionally pick up a magazine to see what fashionable people are wearing!
*As this book was going to press, little pink & purple rosebud florals (á la “Little House on the Prairie”) became all the rage. Who can keep up with this crap?! You can!
DOUBLE BUBBLE (OR, THY CUPS RUNNETH OVER)
The next time you want to give a man a piece of your mind for staring at your boobs, make sure the reason he’s looking at your rack is not that he’s wondering why you have four breasts instead of two. Double bubble occurs when a woman with a decent-size chest wears a bra that is too small, and then tops it off with a clingy knit. Disaster!
Ladies, ladies, ladies. How many times do I have to tell you this? You must have a professional bra fitting every two years, even if your weight has remained constant, or anytime you gain or lose a minimum of ten pounds. I can almost guarantee that after a professional bra fitter gets her hands on your bingo-bongos, you will discover that you are bigger in the cup and smaller in the band than you had previously thought. I know this because I have performed approximately one thousand booby makeovers in the past seven years. (See Low Boobies.)
And don’t confuse lingerie with supportive undergarments. The same bra you wear in the bedroom to get your partner’s blood flowing is not the same bra you wear to work.
CROPPED PANTS
Women ask me constantly, “What do you have against cropped pants?” The truth is, I’m kind of fine with cropped pants — when they look good. But they rarely do. I am beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt convinced that the vast majority of women buy them because their length is one less thing to worry about. “Well, they fit in the waist! It doesn’t matter what length they are.” That makes about as much sense as Carrot Top’s new face.
You can’t just go around wearing pants any length you want! It doesn’t work that way. Try to achieve one of the following lengths, or your look will have that neither-here-nor-there quality I find so damn annoying.
- Full-length pants should rest about a half an inch off the floor in the back.
- Full-length jeans should rest about a quarter of an inch off the floor in the back.
- Skinny jeans should hit at the ankle or be worn stacked (pushed up).
- Pedal pushers should hit just below the kneecap.
- Walking shorts hit just above the kneecap.
- Clamdiggers are meant to hit at midcalf.
- Ankle pants should be cropped just above the ankle bone.
The shorter and wider you are, the more likely you are to look like Spanky from the “Little Rascals” in a cropped pant. Wear Bermuda shorts or long pants instead!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Clinton Kelly is the cohost of TLC’s popular show What Not to Wear, a spokesperson for Macy’s, and a motivational speaker who has successfully talked thousands of women out of stirrup pants. He has worked as an editor at several noted fashion publications, including Marie Claire and Mademoiselle. In his book Oh No She Didn’t: The Top 100 Style Mistakes Women Make and How to Avoid Them (Copyright © 2010 by Clinton Kelly), Clinton points out the hundreds of fashion mistakes women most commonly make and describes how to fix them.
MORE ARTICLES BY THE AUTHOR
LEARN MORE
- Read the Introduction to Oh No She Didn’t: The Top 100 Style Mistakes Women Make and How to Avoid Them
- Learn more about Oh No She Didn’t
