I’ve seen a lot of things here and there that talk about dressing to flatter your post-baby body, and to be honest, a lot of the ideas are either hard for me to apply practically to my existing wardrobe or too fashion-forward for me (like a baseball cap and a nice dress, for instance). We had a fashion talk in my parent-baby group that really resonated with me, because, not only did the speaker use concepts from art, but it felt like I could actually apply what I learned. I’m not even going to try to tackle body types (triangle, inverted triangle, rectangle, or hourglass anyone?) or focus on all our weight that has redeposited itself in new places, but stick to simple concepts that I really grasped. I also liked that it gave me a different approach to culling down my clothes because I can now easily pinpoint why I don’t want to wear certain items I own.

So warm versus cool. Sure, I’ve always known how to classify warm and cool colors, but I never realized how it applied to my wardrobe. I always gravitate toward buying shirts in beautiful salmons, hot pinks, deep corals, and rich clementines, because the colors are stunning. What I didn’t realize was why these colors looked so bad on me. Basically if warm colors aren’t flattering for you, it will bring out red spots on your face, freckles, or in my case, decades-old hints of acne and rosacea. If cool colors aren’t flattering for you, they will make you look pale. So when you are shopping and are instantly drawn to an item, hold it up below your chin and see how it reflects on your face, and then decide if that great color looks just as great on you.

This was a revolutionary concept to me, because now I could go through my clothes and definitively get rid of certain items that I really loved for the color, when in fact the color looked bad on me. I had gotten rid of my deeply warm hued shirts long ago, so this photo comparison (taken in the shade unfortunately) doesn’t quite do it justice with the washed out warm top, but hopefully you can see what I mean about the shirts reflecting off the face.

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Fashion is like art – I get that in the design of the clothing, but when we wear clothing, it becomes a different piece of art – we all know things on the hanger can look better or worse on our bodies. I love the idea of being aware of the “negative space” an article of clothing creates – it can be too much or too little, and I’m not even talking about too much cleavage. Below are examples of too little negative space, and I’ve crudely photoshopped how they could look better with  more negative space.

Below that are examples of too much negative space, and you can see how even a long sleeved shirt can produce the same effect. Turtlenecks and boatnecks aside, a good rule of thumb is that the width of the neckline should match the width of your head and will be flattering if it mimics your jaw shape. If you have a wide scooped shirt that doesn’t fit this criteria that you want to keep, you can always save it by adding a jacket (as below), scarf, or necklace.

Scarves. Apparently all a woman needs is four scarves and she will be able to accent anything in her closet – a neutral solid, a neutral print, a colored solid, and a colored print. What is a neutral? Black, navy, tan, white, gray. The talk actually coincided nicely with a Nordstrom video clip I saw that day – it suggests four basic scarf shapes – a cashmere, oblong, sarong and square. You could have your neutrals and solids in all one style, or across several styles. These were my four favorite ways to tie a scarf.

Beware of horizontal lines because that’s where the eye is immediately drawn. I wish the shirt on the left wasn’t a print so you could see it better, but the empire waist hits above the bust-line – how many of us have ill-fitting shirts and dresses like that? Or empire waists that hit too far below the bust line? I have a few of the latter (woe to us small-chested women). Good excuse to purge, right? With the girl on the right, your eye is immediately drawn to her pantline, which is very abrupt and emphasized by her right sleeve hitting the same plane.

 

As women, we tend to be self conscious of our bodies, and we often look to baggy clothes to hide our figure. However, by hiding the skinniest part of our torso, it makes us look even larger than we are. Clothes should skim the body and accent the narrowest part of your torso – for some this is the waist, for others, that narrowest spot may be right below the bust. When we choose something too big and drapey, as is the case with many sheath and shift dresses and oversized tunics, our body gets lost in the clothes. The dress on the left could be saved with a little belt at the waist, and other items may be saved with a belt right below your bust.

 

This may sound obvious, but select clothes that flatter your figure size. If you are petite and you buy regular shirts that sit too far past your waist and are baggy in the sleeves, it doesn’t matter what designer made it or how much you spent, it won’t look good. I’m relatively small and definitely wear “short” pants, but my mother keeps buying me petite tops, and apparently my torso and arms are not petite because the cuffs are always an awkward inch too short. Take a good look in the mirror. Do the darts in your shirt hit properly at your bust? Do the shoulder seams on your shirts hit the right spot, or are they a couple inches too low or too high?

You can see all these concepts come to life in these before and after photos at Closetfly by the lovely fashionista that gave the talk.

And, last but not least, just because you run an errand in a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt doesn’t mean you have to be frumpy!  Make sure you don’t grab something out of your husband’s dresser (I’m always guilty of this)… and that there’s no spit up down the front, at least by the time you’ve left the house.