How to Wear Colour and OWN it

I didn’t always know how to wear colour. Find out why I no longer wear beige and what I’ve learned from hiring fashion stylists.

In the beginning of March, I was feeling tired, at a loss for ideas for the blog. I left town THE DAY BEFORE self isolation was announced.

When I returned from Cancun a week later, I asked ya’ll for ideas on what to write about next and I thought I’d start with this question:

“I love your sense of color and style in your wardrobe. Maybe you would be willing to share tips on accessories, color and how you put your wardrobe together.”

So first thanks for that compliment, because I work really hard at it. I love fashion, but creating fabulous outfits does not come naturally and easily to me.

I thought it would be super fun for me to share my latest fashion guru with you!

I have told you this story before but I’ll share it here again.

Outfit feedback I remembered forever

Before I started writing this blog called ‘Colour Me Happy’, I had decided that the easiest way to dress was to just wear neutrals. Black, brown, beige, white, cream.

But then the blog started. I subsequently arrived at two different consultations where both husbands looked me up and down and said “YOU are a colour consultant and you’re wearing BEIGE?”

I immediately thought “Wow, I can NEVER wear beige again”. And, since then, I have rarely arrived to see a client without wearing something colourful.

However, over the years, I found dressing with colour to be harder than I thought. So I hired several stylists to help me and I learned a lot from each one!

Dressing with colour takes talent

Dressing with colour is much harder than wearing neutrals, and obviously decorating interiors is the same which is why most people embrace neutrals when decorating their homes as well.

For example, you can’t just throw on a orange t-shirt with jeans and white runners. Suddenly, in order to make it work, you need a scarf with orange in it, or some jewelry, or perhaps shoes or a bag to match? Or perhaps an orange t-shirt with kelly green pants. It simply takes more thought to dress with colour.

In Hermes (learning a new scarf tying trick) in San Francisco for my sisters 50th birthday last April

Neutral interiors are also much easier to design than colourful ones. It’s why MOST designers start off decorating with neutrals (I did the same).

Anyway, back to fashion, let me be clear, dressing creatively, is not a gift I seem to have. I have friends that whenever I see them, I want to run out and buy everything they are wearing because they throw it together so effortlessly. That’s not usually me.

And I’m okay with that. I have my creative gifts and I’m grateful for them!

But I still really love fashion and wish for the day that I could throw together an outfit like I can pull a room together.

Your new fashion guru is here

But then, the fashion blogger that brought it all together for me wrapped up with a bow was Trinny Woodall. You should follow her immediately on Instagram here. AND You Tube here.

Back in January, I was shopping with a friend and on my insta-stories, I wore a coat I had just bought on sale from Zara.

One of my lovely followers said “Here’s a fashion blogger you should follow, she wears lots of colour and she loves Zara”.

So I binge watched her videos for a couple weeks. And learned something new with every video.

I finally had the experience that I know lots of people have when they start following me. I found myself saying “What would Trinny do? What would Trinny wear?”, “What would Trinny say?”.

She answers the question ‘Why’ constantly in her videos just like I do in my blog about decorating with colour. She is a master at layering and shows you why something works and why it doesn’t work, which is why I’ve started doing more of that too, like in this exterior I recently posted.

This video where she analyzes navy is one of my favourites:

And, if you’re thinking you need to start shooting video for your business, you can get some inspiration from her because her videos are not overly edited either. However, she adds so much energy, she doesn’t need any bells and whistles or heavy editing.

If you’re bored, sitting at home right now, you are about to spend many happy hours watching her vivacious personality on videos and learning so much about fashion.

Your welcome 🙂

Best tip about jewelry

In a recent video Trinny taped, she talked about jewelry and I loved this tip: Match the buckle shape to the earring (like this outfit) and how you can take a boring dress and bring it to life with the right accessories (below).

One more thing I’ve learned from her, is to hold on to items in my wardrobe that I just love, even if I haven’t worn them in a few years. I am the first to give something away if I feel I haven’t worn it, or it doesn’t work for me anymore so I loved this advice (I just need more closet space).

Trinny does not subscribe to the advice “Turn your hangers around and if in one year you haven’t worn the items that are still backwards, get rid of them”. And she says the same thing about jewelry which made me regret a recent purge where I got rid of quite a few pieces I have reached for since.

Here’s what makes her fashion videos so great

She loves Zara which is totally affordable for everyone (except the sizing of course which is bad, and she says that all the time). For example, I’m a size 8 in pants and Medium in most tops, so that usually always translates to Large at Zara. It’s funny, before Trinny, I always thought of Zara as fast fashion, but when I look in my wardrobe, I actually have lots of Zara pieces that I’ve had for YEARS. Tell me if you can relate? Trinny has high end clothes and bags as well, but she is masterful at creating high and low outfits. So approachable.

She is also gorgeous, has amazing energy, super fun, 55 (my age bracket) AND she’s probably a size 2 or 4 AND yet she still says things like “I don’t wear skirts anymore because my knees aren’t great”; “I don’t go backless anymore”; “Ack, this jacket is way too small for me now, here’s how to alter it to make it fit”.

Watching this beautiful woman say things like “OMG my tummy is sticking out and these pants don’t fit me anymore” made me feel okay about the fact that there are some clothes I don’t wear anymore either. And maybe there’s just nothing wrong with that. Her attitude really gave me a lot of freedom in the way that I look at my body now that I’m in my early 50s.

Here’s the number one lesson about dressing with colour, that I have never heard before:

Are you ready?

It’s really good.

Black works best with neutrals

Trinny only wears black with grey and white, or neutrals basically.

She thinks colour + black is too harsh and now that I see how she puts colour together, I totally agree.

She wears colour WITH colour and it’s totally fabulous.

Here’s an outfit I created in January in two different shades of yellow (no black). I have rarely worn this yellow coat (but now I know how), and no surprise, it’s from Zara, every colourful coat I own is already from there. I realized colourful coats are as important to have as colourful shoes (if you want to wear colour).

I read a funny joke the other day where the husband said to the wife “One good thing about being in self-isolation is we’re not spending any money”, “Yes dear”, she replied as she clicked ‘Add to cart’.

So be warned: watching her videos, you will feel compelled to shop at Zara . . a few boxes have arrived at my door since I found Trinny.

Alright my lovelies, hope you are holding up in this new normal. Sadly, no one has any need to buy fashion at the moment but if you spend some time watching Trinny’s videos, I bet you could put together some new combinations you’d never thought of before!

I look at my closet in an entirely new way than ever before and it’s really fun!

Tell me if you can relate to my comment about having a few items for YEARS that were already from Zara!

PS. And while you’re watching Trinny videos, don’t miss this one by Angie from Hot & Flashy on How to look good on a Zoom Call! We all need that these days!

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